How to Get More Video Views: 11 Tips

You’ve created your video and are ready to share it. But how do you ensure that it gets seen? In this post, we’ll share 11 tips for maximizing exposure and getting more video views.

We’ll share some ideas for where to distribute your videos, plus how to share them to reach the broadest audience. Ready to increase your video views? Read on for the tips.

Where to post videos to get more views

We’ll start with some tips related to video distribution. There are all sorts of places to share your videos and we’ll explain how to use a variety of platforms to get more video views.

Post to YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine, after Google. By posting your videos to YouTube, you increase the chances of showing up when potential customers are searching for content related to your business.

While YouTube is less ideal for posting quick seasonal videos or promotions, it’s a prime place for more evergreen content. Posting how to videos, product demos, customer testimonials, and other content answering FAQs from your potential customers can lead to more views over time.

PRO TIP: When you post, be sure to consider what people may be searching for. Include relevant keywords in your video title and description. We’ll dive into this more later on in this post.

To learn more about sharing your videos on YouTube, check out our YouTube Marketing 101 guide.

Cross-promote on all your business's social channels

Which social media channels are you currently using to promote your business? Instagram? Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? YouTube? The channels you’ve invested in can all be used to drive traffic to your videos to get more views.

Posting a new video to YouTube or Facebook? Create a short teaser to share on your other social media channels. Then, include a link to send people to watch the full video.

Not sure which type of content is ideal for posting on the different social platforms? Check out our cheat sheet:

Organize your videos on your Facebook page

Did you know that you can organize the videos you upload to Facebook into playlists? Doing this creates an evergreen home for all your content where viewers can return to watch again and again.

Without playlists, viewers can still find all of your videos and scroll through them chronologically. But building out playlists helps you curate collections of related videos, making it easy for people to find and view them.

Embed videos in blog posts

If you’ve got blog posts or pages on your website that are related to the topics covered in your videos, embed them! Adding a video will not only make your written content more engaging, but will also help your video get more views.

Check out our Complete Guide to Embedding Video on Your Website for all you need to know about video embeds. We’ll show you how to embed videos from Animoto, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Share video links in email

If you've got an email list, sending out your video in a newsletter is a great way to drive views. Not only can emailing your videos increase view counts, but it can also lead to better results for your emails in general!

According to Forrester, adding videos to emails can result in a 300% increase in click-through rate! To learn more, check out our blog post on How to Use Video in Email Marketing. Not sure how to share a video link via email? Check out our post on How to Send Videos Through Email.

Tips for maximizing video reach

In the previous section, we shared some tips for where you can share your videos to get more views. Now, we’ll talk about things you can do to maximize the reach when you do share.

Optimize your meta data

We mentioned earlier that it’s important to optimize your YouTube videos by including relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags. This’ll help increase your chances of coming up in search. Here are a few tips from our longer guide:

• Keep titles short and to the point. Include relevant keywords up front so they stand out.
• Be succinct at the beginning of your description so that the relevant information shows up in the search snippet. Then, add additional information to get more keywords in.
• Think about how people may be searching. Include all of those terms, plus common misspellings too.

And optimization isn’t just for YouTube. On Facebook, you’ll want to optimize your videos for search as well. Learn more in our Quick Guide to Facebook Video Search Optimization.

Use hashtags

When sharing videos on Instagram and Twitter especially, include some hashtags. Hashtags can help you get your videos in front of people that aren’t already following you. You can learn everything you need to know to get started in our beginner’s guide to How to Use Instagram Hashtags.

Run ads

If you’ve got an advertising budget, running ads is a great way to get more views on your videos. You can put some spend behind your videos and push them out to a targeted audience. Set your ad objective to views, if you’d like. Or choose another objective such as traffic or sales.

To learn more about running ads on Instagram and Facebook, check out our blog post on How to Use Facebook Ads Manager to Run Targeted Ads. If you’re looking to run ads on YouTube, check out our series on YouTube for Action.

Reshare popular videos

If you have a video that performed well in the past on Facebook, you can bring new life to it by resharing it once it’s disappeared from the News Feed. When you reshare a video, it creates a new post, but all the new views get attributed to the original video.

To reshare an old post, navigate to it and simply click on the "Share" icon and select "Share to a Page." You’ll be able to select your Page and create a new description to go with your new post.

You can also tweak popular videos to create new content. If something got a lot of views in the past, a new, similar video may get a lot of views too.

Encourage engagement

The more engagement your videos get on social media, the more reach they’ll get, which translates to more views. So create the types of posts that people will want to share, like, and comment on.

While you shouldn’t blatantly tell people to share or tag friends, you can encourage these actions through your video descriptions. For instance, saying something like "Know someone that would love this?"

PRO TIP: A big part of getting people to engage with your videos comes from simply creating content that’s engaging and will hold their attention. If they aren’t engaged, they’ll just keep scrolling. Hook viewers from the start and tell a story that will keep their attention throughout.

Dive into your metrics

Last but not least, hone your strategy by paying attention to how your videos are performing. Check your analytics to see what’s working and create similar content. Try new things, iterate, and always be testing to find out what works for your audience.

Looking for inspiration? The team at Animoto has designed a variety of video templates, designed with best practices in mind. Choose a template as a starting point for your next video and customize it to tell your own story! Happy video making!