You produced your video, now what?

How you can use TV, digital & social media to distribute your message

I’ve been a strong advocate of using video to communicate your message, whether it’s telling your story, explaining your company’s mission, or detailing your product or service. Now that you’ve done your video, what are you going to do with it?

First, let’s get the most out of it organically. We’re going to post it on all your social media handles, including your new or current YouTube channel. We’ll also boost the videos on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. We’re probably going to endure a few comments from your expanded audience, but we understand that a few obnoxious comments are worth the reach.

When we post our videos, instead of simply linking your Vimeo or YouTube link, we will upload the native file to these three platforms to optimize your results. Each will allow you to reach a qualified audience based on geotargeting, industry, and interest for a reasonable budget.

Beyond social media, you can place your clips through an online video ad network. Some of the newest and most specific marketing involves semantic targeting, essentially providing contextually targeted pre-roll inventory based on what is spoken and heard inside the video that viewers are about to watch. Artificial Intelligence is used to identify and categorize the words in a video, and the video with the highest semantic value is placed as pre-roll during the displayed video. 

In addition to semantic targeting, you can also use a custom keyword list based on the specific parameters of your campaign. Whether it’s certain celebrities, award shows, brands or parenting terms, you can tailor lists to effectively hyper target your audience. 

Through geotargeting, you can further refine your targeting based on DMA, drilling down to the state, county, zip or postal codes. You can also place your 15 or 30-second videos directly on local websites. Often times your local television or daily newspapers are some of highest visited websites in your area.

Targeting has always been a central tenet of marketing, and Cable TV has been doing it for decades. With Cable TV, you have the ability to only advertise in your local marketplace. Of course, you can’t pick the towns in a specific cable zone and oftentimes have to select multiple zones to customize the area you want to reach. 

The ability to flood a specific area with inexpensive Cable ads on highly desirable networks like CNN, Fox News, ESPN, NESN, HGTV and Hallmark is a strong tactic, especially when you factor in the cost. Cable television can be some of the most cost effective advertising you do, but you want to mix those inexpensive spots with higher performing spots during live local sports.

If you don’t have a video you can’t take advantage of the benefits of social media, digital and cable advertising. In each case, you need to edit the video for the audience. The same two-minute video can’t go up on each platform but will need to be edited down to 10 or 15-second “driver” videos, 30-second commercials, or long form “explainer” videos.

But it all starts with your video.

John Houle is the president of JH Communications. He can be reached at 401.831.6123 or at john@johnh376.sg-host.com.