3 Ways to Distribute your Business Holiday Videos for Maximum Exposure

The holiday season is upon us and it’s the perfect time to spread some holiday cheer to all your customers (and potential customers), both near and far, with the power of video. Video can not only help drive holiday sales, but is also an impressive way to share a personal holiday greeting that’ll keep your business top of mind all year long. According to a Google consumer study, more than a quarter of shoppers (26%) say that online videos are their go-to source for gift ideas and 32% say they’re planning to use online video more this year when it comes to making holiday purchases.

Whether you’re creating a holiday video to showcase your products, like the below clip from Goldtinker’s jewelry showroom in Red Bank, NJ, promote a holiday event, like the following video from Beth Forester Photography, or simply to wish your customers a happy holiday, you’ll need a good plan for distribution.

Style: Blue Frost
Song: “Midnight Clear” by Richard Freitas

Style:  Documentary, Customized
**Song: “Christmas on Downing Street” by Steve Fawcett

We’ve compiled a quick guide designed to help you distribute your holiday videos for maximum exposure.

Email

The holidays are a great time to connect authentically with your customers or mailing list subscribers. And, according to BombBomb, 81% of senders get more replies when incorporating video in emails, 68% convert more leads, and 56% get more referrals.

Email is a great vehicle for sending out general Happy Holidays video greetings, as well as videos that showcase how your products or services can be used around the holidays (gift ideas, etc.).

If you’re sending a holiday video out via email, here are a few tips to maximize your open rates and click-throughs:

• Let people know there’s a video in the email by including the word “video” in your subject line.
• Choose an attractive thumbnail image that viewers can click on in order to watch your video. Including a play button on the image will entice more clicks.
• Opt for a short animated gif over a static image to capture even more attention.

Social Media

For engagement and reach, be sure to share your video on the social media platforms that you use to promote your business, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. What’s great about social media is that it gives your customers the chance to engage with you and share your videos with their friends, for maximum word-of-mouth exposure. As such, consider posting a video recap showcasing various company milestones from throughout the year and what customers can look forward to in the coming year.

In a recent earnings call, Facebook reported that they’re now getting over 8 billion daily video views and, in September of 2015, 1.5 million small- and medium-sized businesses shared videos. There’s definitely a demand for video on Facebook, and sharing holiday video content can help you stand out.

When posting videos on social media:

• Keep it short.
• Use titles so that people can still understand what your video is about when it’s playing silently in the News Feed.
• Check out our three tips for formatting videos to entice views on Facebook.

YouTube

Finally, be sure to publish holiday videos on YouTube — especially those that include gift ideas. This way, you’ll be more likely to show up in search results for the abundance of holiday shoppers that are turning to video as their go-to source for gift ideas.

When posting to YouTube, be sure to optimize your metadata (titles, descriptions, and tags) so that you’ll show up in relevant search results. To learn more, check out our blog post on video SEO and how to get discovered on YouTube.

How are you using video this holiday season? Let us know in the comments below.