Sure, losing weight is cool, but have you considered growing your audience as a resolution for 2021? Without an audience, a following, or a group of supporters, it is going to be very difficult to gain traction with your video marketing.
In this post, we’ll be breaking down practical methods you can implement to help grow your audience. This framework is based on improving two main aspects of your video marketing plan, the content itself and how you promote it.
Audience vs Viewers
Many people think that getting views on their videos is the most important metric, but we’d actually disagree. While it’s important for your video to be seen, it’s going to be more beneficial in the long run to have people join your audience, which ensures they’ll see your content in the future.
Your audience can be reached in many different ways depending on the various content platforms you use. This could be email lists, a social media following, or even YouTube subscribers.
If you make an amazing video and 1,000 people see it, but none of them follow you, there’s a good chance they might not see your next great video. So, how do you get your audience to sign up for more?
The Content
The first area you should be looking to enhance is the content itself. What you’re producing now might be great, but with a few adjustments, you’ll be able to help put yourself in a better spot to grow your audience.
Show Your Personality
This first tip takes a page out of the “influencer” playbook: capitalizing on your personality. Your individual or brand personality can be used as a point of differentiation from your competitors to get people to join your tribe. While your product or service might offer a unique selling proposition like price or quality, your videos can’t always reflect this. On the other hand, your personality should be consistent no matter the topic of the video. This consistency will help your content stand out from the crowd.
This is exactly how influencers grow their audience. A lot of times, much of what influencers are selling, promoting, or teaching has been said or shown before. The big difference, and main selling point, is the person themselves and their personality.
Maybe your on-camera talent breaks down statistics in a unique way, or your company has fun quirks that you all enjoy. Include these elements in your videos. Not only will this make your videos more fun, but it will make them more relatable and recognizable. If you and a competitor have similar content, one of these points might be the exact reason a customer signs up for your newsletter instead of theirs.
Consistency
One of the best ways to grow your audience is to find a content creation cadence that your team can manage and stick to for the long haul. Consistently putting out great content helps viewers understand that they can rely on you for content on a regular basis. Setting this expectation up will absolutely increase your opportunity for audience growth.
This is going to vary based on your organization’s bandwidth. If you have the means to produce three quality videos every week, go for it. If you can only produce one video every month, that works too. The key here is finding what works for you and your team and sticking to it, so your audience, as it grows, knows when you’ll be putting out content.
Produce Topical Series
Similar to consistency, producing a series of videos specifically around one topic will encourage people to come back for more content. We do this with our How to Video series. Our overarching theme is based on video production, and the episodes address more niche topics, such as cameras, lenses, lights, and so on. Creating multiple parts lets people know that they can expect content that will build on the video they just watched.
Additionally, this helps you to avoid overloading your videos with information. For example, we could have created one long video covering everything related to cameras. Instead, we broke it into multiple parts that are more digestible for our audience.
To get started, try to come up with a concept with a long shelf-life. You should be able to think of at least five episode ideas off the top of your head before you commit to a direction.
Create Highly Shareable Content
In this current social media age, everyone is busy, attention spans are waning, and thus short video formats are an essential part of your video mix. While you might invest more into longer, in-depth videos, short, snackable, shareable videos can help attract new viewers to your audience.
These can be one-off tips and tricks, quick anecdotes relating to your industry, or even snippets from your longer videos. People may not feel like they have time during the day for a 5-10 minute video, but everyone has time for a 30 – 60 second one.
Delivering quality information in a small shareable package helps build your brand’s reputation, and also makes it effortless to share with friends and colleagues. The more people sharing your videos, the higher chance there is for someone to subscribe, follow, or sign up for a newsletter.
Trailers & Teasers
Trailers and teasers are another type of highly shareable videos. A teaser is a short video that is created specifically as a way of generating buzz around a bigger topic. It could be used to promote longer videos, a product launch, or anything that needs some sort of announcement. In comparison, a trailer is usually lengthier than a teaser. Trailers leave viewers with clear expectations for what they will get out of watching or participating.
The key here is to attract viewers and only provide enough information to spark their curiosity to learn more and hopefully follow you. Be sure to explore our full breakdown on “How to Make a Captivating Teaser Video.”
How You Promote Your Content
No matter how good your content is, if no one is seeing it, it’s not going to do your business any good. Not only do you have to promote your content, but you need to get it in front of the right audience.
Be Your Own Biggest Cheerleader
This method is both simple and effective. If your company is putting out content, hopefully, it’s something that you want to share across your own network and social media. While not everyone will want to share the content with their networks, people in your organization that do can make a big impact. Seeing content shared from a trusted source, like a friend, will certainly encourage people to join your audience.
A couple of ways to make it easy for your colleagues to share your video content is to produce items that take the guesswork out of it. For example, creating a list of simple descriptions they can copy and paste with a video you just put out, asking people directly to share your newest video, or even building accompanying graphics for them to use can help entice your colleagues to share your work.
Leverage Your Guest’s Networks
A particularly effective way to increase your audience is by featuring others in your videos. Typically done through interviews, roundtables, or panel discussions, bringing in an expert is an amazing way to expose your brand to a related but entirely new audience, and hopefully, get some of them to follow you along the way.
Ideally, whoever you include should agree to promote the video on their channels and talk about your brand. In conjunction with the outreach you’re doing, their efforts will increase your exposure and help grow your audience. If you can do this on a regular basis, you’ll consistently be putting yourself in front of new audiences which can only benefit your brand.
When it comes to securing guests for your videos, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to lock down celebrities or huge influencers. Instead, opt for smaller thought leaders in your space. This will help your credibility and also help them out with exposure as well. There is a good chance they are trying to grow their audience too, so it ends up being a win-win. If you’re going down the interview route, be sure to reference our ”Ultimate Interview Guide.”
Simply Ask
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it can make a big difference in the long run. Just ask or direct your viewers to follow, subscribe, or join.
For example, if your content is highly valuable and you invested heavily in it, email capture forms are a great option. If your video is part of a series, or you have related content, an in-player CTA is a smart option to point people to a signup page. Finally, post-play screens can be used to display a link or a form after your video concludes, so highly engaged viewers can be prompted to join your audience or share the video right when they’re looking for ways to continue interacting with your brand.
However, if you’re not using a professional video service that offers video marketing features, or the video is on social media, be sure to ask your viewers to follow or subscribe as a part of your script instead.
You’d be surprised how many people need a nudge to take action online. There is no downside to a simple ask. We’d recommend giving it a try and putting your own spin on it.
Live Streaming
Using live video is an amazing way to enhance your chances of growing your audience. Unlike other video formats, live streaming is the only one where you can interact directly with your viewers.
In addition to providing entertaining content to viewers, you’ll be able to combine a couple of the tips above in real-time. Your audience will get a big dose of your personality, you’ll be able to hype up and promote your other video content, and you can ask them to follow you. If you’re new to live video, explore our six steps to live streaming for business.
Audience Engagement
Actively seeking out ways to connect with your target audience is a great way to spark growth. This will help cultivate your current audience, while also showing new viewers what they might expect. Simple steps you can take include replying to comments on your posts, including questions in your videos for your audience to respond to, or interacting with related posts and videos in the comments.
Another popular approach is to join groups where creators and brands are talking about related topics. Sites like Reddit and Facebook are a good place to start. These won’t be areas where you can dump a video link and leave, you’ll need to genuinely engage and become a part of the community before sharing your content.
Pay to Play
Last but not least, if the suggestions above aren’t working or are moving too slowly, you can pay to promote your content. The opportunities to promote content are vast. The right one will depend on your budget and specific needs.
For example, you could retarget visitors to your website with your top blog posts featuring original videos to boost your position as a thought leader. Or, use an ad network like Taboola or Outbrain to place links to your content on other news sites and blogs. You can also boost your posts on social media, run follower campaigns, or use ads on Google to target specific search terms.
Understanding your audience is going to be vital when targeting new people to follow you with ads. Take some time to do an analysis of your existing or target audience, and who you think would share your content. Once completed, you’ll be ready to create some ads that represent your content and target the right people.
The best part is, you can use videos in these ads to help reel in your audience. If they engage with your video ad, they will most likely do the same with your other content.
What’s Next?
The hardest part of trying to grow your community is that the work is never finished. These steps and ideas are just the foundation you need to support your video content. It will routinely need to be analyzed, monitored, and optimized over time for the best outcomes.
There are so many different ways to get your content out in front of the right people, with new avenues popping up every day. Some of these tips will work better for some than others. Some audiences blow up overnight, while others take years to achieve substantial results. Continue to experiment to see what works best for you.
Let us know what has worked for you to grow your audience in the comments below.
