Editing and Distributing Your Videos
Once you have created or curated your videos, you must figure out how to get that content out there for people across the web to see it. But before you can disseminate your videos, you have to make sure that they are tailored for each online channel you decide to use. This is where your video distribution strategy comes in.
Deciding Where to Host Your Videos
The first question you might ask yourself is, do I want to host, or post my new video content somewhere else? When it comes to video distribution, publishers can choose to host it on sites owned and operated by them, or post it on video sharing sites and social networks. They may also decide to have their content shared on third party sites by building a network of distribution partners. While publishers can monetize video with ads on their own site as well as partner sites, video platforms and social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, can have certain monetization eligibility requirements or limitations, and take a substantial portion of the revenue that does get generated.
Understanding Platform Dynamics
For example, both YouTube and Facebook take 45% of revenue from video ads monetized on these platforms, and have a right of first-look, giving them the priority to sell ads against your content. Moreover, you can develop playlists on your own site in order to keep visitors engaged with additional video content, unlike on platforms, where hundreds of hours of competitor videos reside.
Optimizing for Each Platform
YouTube is the second largest search engine, and the largest video destination in the world, meaning users aren’t going on the platform expecting to land on your website. As a result, while these platforms can significantly increase your brand awareness and viewership, it is not easy to convert users to your site. That’s why optimizing your videos for each platform is an important step when defining your overall video distribution strategy.
Maximizing Engagement Across Channels
For example, you could upload a short snippet or teaser video on YouTube, and insert a link or call-to-action that incentivizes viewers to go to your site where they can see the full-length version.
Streamlining Distribution with Tools
While this technique might not work on Facebook, where links can only be inserted in the video’s description, you can still increase the effectiveness of your videos on this platform by creating native videos that are embedded, short, have the sound off, include captions and are optimized for the mobile user.
Optimizing for Twitter
Similar practices go for Twitter, however videos can only last up to 140 seconds long on this platform. Optimizing and customizing your video content for each channel you embrace will inevitably take more time than uploading the same content over a wide network, but it can significantly increase the video’s performance with each of your target, and fragmented audiences.
Streamlining with Tools
While this may seem like a daunting task, however there are tools that streamline the process. Vemba provides all the editing tools necessary to create assets appropriate for each social network. In addition to editing, it simplifies the video distribution process by creating a centralized platform for managing, and monetizing all the content distributed on your site, partner sites and social networks. Many leading media companies, including VICE, Hearst, Tribune, Fox, Scripps and Conde Nast use Vemba to manage and distribute their videos from one central interface, recognizing that distributing content from a fragmented network made up of different platforms and tools is a time-consuming and manual procedure.
Embracing Multi-Channel Distribution
While your site will act as a central hub for all your content, partnering with third-party sites and sharing social-friendly versions of your videos on platforms will increase the discoverability and monetization of your content. Publishers employing multi-channel distribution may at first find that it is a challenging process, however platforms and tools exist to intelligently manage and scale the distribution of the video content that publishers work hard to create, yet sometimes struggle to circulate.
