Whether you want to build an employees-only video library or protect your content behind a paywall, video websites offer an affordable and effective solution. 

This article covers making a video website from ideation to launch. With the right platform, you can complete your video website in less than an hour. Let’s begin!

Why Businesses Create Video Websites

Video hosting services with video websites, like SproutVideo, combine all the tools of a video host, website builder, marketing suite, and analytics software in one platform.

Businesses and organizations utilize video websites internally and externally across industries. Use cases include:

• Video Portfolios
• E-learning Platforms
• Membership websites
• Learning and development portals
• Corporate communications
• TV, movie, and ad screenings

Video websites make it easy to create a branded portal for any of your video needs.

Create a Professional Video Website in 10 Steps

1. Determine the Purpose & Goal 

There is a wide range of use cases for video websites. From a videographer who needs a professional portfolio to a non-profit organization that requires single sign-on (SSO), video websites offer a flexible array of purposes and potential goals. 

Before selecting a platform or browsing its themes, refine the purpose of your video website and create at least one major goal. For example:

• A video-based knowledge center with the goal of reducing support tickets by 40%
• Employee onboarding that removes managers from the process and incurs a 95% completion rate with new hires
• A members-only video library for paid subscribers that increases retention by 20%

Determine how you will use the video website, what features you need to market the videos or restrict access, and your desired return on investment.

2. Choose a Video Hosting Platform

The video hosting service you choose for your business will depend on what features you need for your website. A video website service should include:

• Website builder: Customize your site design to better showcase your video content. 
• Hosting: Upload multiple videos directly to your website. 
• Security: Ensure only those with permission are able to access your content. 
• Marketing: Require lead capture to view video or direct visitors with in-player CTAs.
• Monetization: Easily integrate payment buttons with third-party applications.
• Analytics: Get real-time data on who is watching and what they’re re-watching. 

SproutVideo offers these features (website included) for $35 a month. 

Note: Our features provide the ability to secure or market your video content anywhere. If you already have a website, you can embed the video content you’ve uploaded while keeping it private. You can even monetize that video content or create a subscription membership.

3. Select a Theme & Customize 

Who doesn’t love aesthetics? Built-in templates make creating a modern video website for your brand easy. Choose the best theme for your goals, then make it shine with customization options. 

Add your logo, favicon, and brand colors for easy setup. You have the option to create two pages, such as an About or Contact page. You can use these pages to promote any part of your business. 

For limitless possibilities, employ custom CSS or Javascript for advanced customization.

4. Upload Video Content

Determine what video content you will upload to your website. Choose content that aligns with your video website’s purpose and goal. Some questions you might consider include:

• Who is this website for? Who is my target audience?
• What information are they hoping to acquire? 
• How can I organize my content for the user’s experience?

As you upload video content, consider the categories you want to feature on your website. These categories should help visitors easily navigate your various video topics, series, or courses. 

Finally, use bulk uploading to upload all of your videos at once. Simply add your video files to the queue; each file will upload until all the videos are ready to play. Videos can be uploaded from your computer or an input source, such as Dropbox or Google Drive. You can also upload videos with the SproutVideo API or by setting up automation in Zapier.

5. Optimize for SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows visitors to organically find your website when searching. Optimization requires positioning your content to fit the way people are looking for it. You can reduce keyword competition by using more specific search queries.

When doing research, notice that the search engine offers queries (known as long-tail keywords) under “People also ask.” These are examples of highly specific keywords that can be used to more easily rank in search and build website authority.

To optimize video metadata for search engines, include keywords in the title, description, and URL. You can easily do this within settings for any uploaded video. 

Your video website’s backend affects SEO as well. SproutVideo optimizes your website by automatically updating the video sitemap and including JSON-LD structured data for newly uploaded videos. Put simply, we ensure search engines can easily find your content.

For more information on optimizing videos for SEO, read our guide on video metadata and review these 17 video SEO best practices. 

Note: Never underestimate the importance of video thumbnails. While the title informs both Google and the viewer what your video is about, the thumbnail helps the video stand out among the competition. A great thumbnail can improve ranking if it encourages people to click. 

6. Secure Video Content

There are multiple reasons to secure some or all of your video content. Depending on the purpose of your video website, you might need to prevent those who haven’t paid or those who don’t work within your organization from accessing the content. 

You can restrict access to your videos with login protection, password protection, or single sign-on (SSO). Login and password protection can be used to restrict access to the entire video website or individual videos. This allows you to set up customized access depending on team roles or subscription tiers.

There are also additional security measures you can take, such as IP address or domain restriction and dynamic watermarking. When setting up the privacy of your videos, use our article on secure video sharing to walk through each step and ensure it’s done correctly. 

7. Utilize Marketing Features

If your website will be public facing, there are various tools you can use to market your video content. These include:

• Lead capture: Require viewers to submit their contact information to watch a video.
• In-player CTA: Display a link or text during on-demand videos and live streams.
• Post-play screen: Feature a link, text, or email list sign-up form as the video concludes.
• Email embed codes: Add a video thumbnail that links to a landing page in an email.
• Third-party integration: Connect your video website host and email marketing platform.

Depending on the goal of your video website, determine what tools you will use and create a marketing plan.

If your video website is built for internal or private purposes, you might use the in-player CTA to link other relevant videos or documentation. Additionally, email embed codes can be used for secure internal email communication.

Example: You add a post-play screen to your best-performing video. The post-play screen offers a valuable freebie to viewers in exchange for their email address. Using Zapier, you employ automatic delivery of that freebie by connecting to your email marketing provider. You decide to take this one step further with a welcoming campaign, which triggers when the freebie email is opened. Now you have a marketing funnel! 

8. Test Mobile Video Website 

Once you’ve finished setting up your video website, test it out on different types of devices. Employ friends and family if necessary to get a variety of perspectives.

At a minimum, view your video website on a smartphone and tablet. 

Step into the mindset of someone accessing your website for the first time. Navigate through categories, play a video, and visit pages.

Take note of any changes you want to make as you explore, then update and test your video website again.

Note: All video website themes on the SproutVideo platform are responsive and mobile-friendly.

9. Add a Custom Domain

This step is optional. Your hosted video website account will include a domain name associated with the video host.

However, most businesses and organizations prefer to use a custom domain name from their website hosting provider. For detailed information on how to do this, read our help article. 

10. Get Feedback & Launch!

The last step before launch is one of the most important. Get feedback on your video website before launch. The best feedback you can receive is from those who will use the video website.

Ask your audience or employees to be beta testers. Create a Google Form or other survey and get anonymous feedback on the design, navigation, security, and content.

Consider offering a gift card or other reward for completing the survey. This will provide more high-quality feedback.

Once you’ve considered all perspectives and made any changes, you’re ready to share. Debut your video website and celebrate its launch!

How to Monetize Your Video Website

Sell access to your video website from anywhere. This step can be implemented anytime during setup or after launch. 

First, determine where you will sell access. This could be a website or landing page, social media, an email campaign, or a combination of these. Anywhere you can share a link or embed a button, you can sell access to your video website. 

You will also need login protection through the video hosting platform you chose for your video website. When someone purchases your video, you can automatically send them an email that includes a link to the video and their login information. 

Login-protected videos don’t appear on your video website if someone isn’t logged in. You can set viewer logins to expire after a certain period of time or number of uses. You also have the ability to allow downloads of the video (this is disabled by default).

Additionally, we recommend allowing viewers to manage their own password, which is automatically enabled. This reduces support overhead, as users can change their own passwords should they forget.

For complete setup instructions, read our help article on video website monetization.

Whether for internal communication or as a marketing tool in your business, a video website makes it easy to create the best possible experience for viewers while staying on budget. If you have questions about how to set up a video website, we are happy to help!

The post How to Create a Video Website in 10 Easy Steps appeared first on SproutVideo.

So how can you stay ahead of the curve, bypass potential challenges, and secure the future of your business? Build your own live streaming website. Trust us, it’s not as hard as it seems; In this brief article, we’ll explain how.

Why Create Your Own Live Streaming Site? 

A steadily increasing number of people are opting to stream education and entertainment from the comfort of their own homes. This is why live video is such a great tool for marketing and monetization. Live streams are also a great tool for corporate communications that need to be timely or interactive.

If you’re looking to monetize your video content, using a third-party streaming platform can have drawbacks and subject you to unwanted fees or structural changes that are out of your control.

Having a standalone website that you own gives you:

• Unparalleled freedom and creative control
• Customized branding opportunities
• More robust security options 
• More control over your income
• Less distraction for viewers (people who come to your site will only be exposed to your content)

By creating your own live streaming website, you can build an engaged community around your topic and really take control of your content.

Which Method is Best?

There are a few common methods for creating a live streaming website. Highly customizable options typically require lengthy time commitments and a higher price tag. The method you choose will ultimately be based on convenience, price, and the ability to customize.

Build it yourself: Hiring a full-stack developer affords you complete control over your project. However, this does require a lot of time, money, and collaborative maintenance. 

Social streaming sites: While big-name streaming platforms can save you time and effort early on, you’ll have to play by someone else’s rules to monetize. You may also lose a slice of your income to unnecessary fees and will have less control over your site’s functionality and appearance. 

Use a video hosting platform: If you’re looking to save both time and money, and maintain the freedom to customize, a video hosting platform like SproutVideo is the best option. You’ll have access to customer support and a built-in toolbox of features.

For this article, we’ll focus on the third option: building a live streaming website using a video hosting platform. While we hope that you’d choose SproutVideo, there are a few other platforms to choose from. The information you gain in this example will be applicable to any platform you choose.

How To Create a Live Streaming Website: 

1. Build Your Website (or Update Your Current One)

First, you’ll need a central place where visitors can view your content. You can choose a service like Squarespace or Wix to build a website, or create a video website on SproutVideo in just a few clicks. Our hosting platform offers the ability to create a site specifically catered to streaming and hosting your videos. Here is a quick video to show you just how simple it can be to build a video website with SproutVideo:

2. Look for Key Functions You’ll Need

If you’re using SproutVideo as a host, you’ll have access to custom video players and embeds, powerful marketing tools, and privacy features. These key features lay the foundation for your site to operate smoothly:

• Viewer Login: User-friendly functions like password and account recovery should be expected. 
• Settings and user preferences: Control over your personal notifications, privacy, and blocking. 
• Organization: Make sure you have the ability to organize your content so viewers can search or access your videos easily.
• Security: Make sure your host has extensive security measures to protect your content. Ideally, you’ll want your host to offer multiple security options that can adapt to your current and future needs. This is especially important for content like quarterly reports or internal corporate communications, and any content you want to monetize.
• Sharing: Your host should offer sharing capabilities that allow you to embed onto other sites and allow viewers to easily share with each other. 
• Post-Stream Management: After your stream, your content should be automatically available for on-demand viewing and give you the ability to download the video, make edits if necessary, and generally manage your stream after it’s over.
• Real-time Analytics: This feature gives you the ability to see how many people are viewing, where they are watching from, and similar metrics that allow you to keep tabs on your performance.
• Support: Consider whether or not technical support is a must-have for you based on your experience with video hosting.

Our platform also gives users the freedom to add logos, customize video players, and access special integrations like lead capture and analytics. These are great features to consider utilizing for the growth of your live streaming website.

3. Add Special Features

Interactive features are what will truly make your live streaming experiences engaging and unique. Calls-to-action or downloadable materials can make viewers feel more involved. Live chat is a particularly effective tool to create engagement and build relationships with your viewers. 

There are various chat platforms that serve a variety of needs, such as:

• Chatroll integrates easily with WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify 
• Arena is made for enterprise companies and large group chats 
• Pigeonhole offers Q&A, polls, and quizzes 
• Tlk.io is a simple, easy to install chat that you can use on your site for free 

Integrating a live chat tool into your website is fairly simple. On your site builder, just embed the chatbox code as a widget adjacent to your video player. If you’re using a SproutVideo website to stream, check out our help article on adding live chat to a live stream. 

4. Plan to Monetize

Clarify your costs, budget, and streaming goals. Once you determine these, you can consider what kind of business model you’ll use. Will viewers pay per stream, via subscription, or pay for membership access to your site? If you have the capability to produce ongoing events and consistent content, a subscription-based model may be for you. These models can be beneficial and generally help to increase viewer retention, provide you with stable, predictable income, and build trust with your viewers. If you don’t plan to produce events as frequently, it may be best to have viewers pay per stream. If viewers tend to rewatch or access content frequently, it may be best to consider having viewers pay for membership to access your content.

5. Centralize Your Content

Make sure all of your content can live in one place on your streaming website. This will cater to users that like to go back and engage with past streams, and give you the ability to gather accurate analytics on your content’s performance. SproutVideo saves past live streams on our server and makes them available to you automatically once your stream is complete. You can have a mixture of live streams and pre-recorded content, which is a unique feature compared to streaming sites like Twitch. If you are migrating your streams to SproutVideo or another host, make sure to upload and organize them before you make your new site live. Having a full library of previous streams adds a sense of depth and dependability to your site.

6. Go Live

And that’s it! You’ve completed your streaming site. Now you can gather any additional equipment you may need and prepare to go live. Not sure if you have everything you need to start live streaming? Check out our article Six Steps to Live Streaming for tips on choosing the right equipment and getting started with your own live streams.

The post How to Build Your Own Live Streaming Website  appeared first on SproutVideo.

Partly from our own experience, we’ve found there are specific tactics you can employ at different stages of the video production process to keep everyone on the same page, and as productive as possible, no matter where they’re located. Keep reading for tips on improving your workflow with remote video teams.

Essential Pre-Production Planning

Movies are made in prep – Jendra Jarnigan

While it’s true that some video shoots are unscripted and spur of the moment by their very nature, working with a remote video team usually requires much more forethought and meticulous planning.

Here’s an overview of how to ensure everyone is clued into every step of the process, from brainstorming a concept, to the final stages of prep.

Tools of the Trade

Your whole team will likely need access to certain tools to tackle different parts of the planning process. Here’s a rundown of popular choices for different categories (you probably need just one solution from each):

General Communication

• Slack
• Google Hangouts
• HipChat

Script-Writing and Notes

• Google Docs
• Atlassian
• Any shared online document editor with commenting and other tools.

Task Management

• Jira
• Trello
• Asana
• Shared calendar
• Any task management solution where you can delegate responsibilities and assign due dates.

Content Sharing

• Photos: Pinterest, Slack, Google Drive
• Video: SproutVideo for private sharing during planning, and professional marketing tools for promoting the final product. Different roles for different team members make remote collaboration a breeze.

Brainstorming

Create a dedicated Slack channel for video projects, and share ideas. Pin any particularly good ones to the channel. If you don’t use Slack, a Google Doc or a similar shared online document, can serve the same purpose. Video chats are another good way to kick around initial ideas.

Inspiration

If you’re stuck for inspiration, check out popular brands or competitors on YouTube, look to upcoming holidays, or product releases. Good ideas can come from anywhere – watching commercials, popular TV shows, podcasts, or TED talks are also good sources for trends and new ideas.

The key is to share your sources of inspiration with the rest of your team and document them. Using visuals to showcase your idea is crucial for the vision to come through. Take screenshots, share videos, or make rough mock-ups of what you’re thinking.

If you’re mainly sharing videos as inspiration, you can create a dedicated folder in your SproutVideo account where you can upload different ideas. By adding your remote colleagues as team members to your account, they’ll also be able to upload and share video during this phase.

Decisions

As you make decisions, record the direction your team is taking in detail, as well as the reasons why you’re taking it. Usually, assigning one person to be in charge of this is a smart way to ensure it gets done properly.

It may feel like overkill, but for any remote team members looking back later on, they’ll be glad to have detailed notes and supporting evidence for decisions the team made. Understanding the origins of ideas is crucial for ensuring the vision comes through correctly.

Drafting a Script

This is usually another highly collaborative process. Between your video team, executives, marketing team, and more, a lot of people might be involved in the script.

Using a shared Google Doc, a page in Atlassian, or a similar shared online document editor is crucial to ensure everyone can provide necessary input. Still, you don’t want consensus to kill creativity.

Assign a point person to draft the script initially and give the rest of the remote team something to react to. Set a clear deadline for feedback from different teams that require input, as well as the draft approval process.

Be sure to take into account different time zones people might be located in when creating the deadlines. You want to make sure everyone has adequate time for review.

Storyboarding

Once the team has a clear vision for the video project and a draft script, it’s time to flesh it out. Storyboards are a great way to ensure the video shoot operates smoothly and provides all the footage you need. Storyboards also help you shoot for the edit, meaning the post-production process will be more streamlined. Finally, it’s an important tool for aligning the whole remote team on how the video will unfold in the final product.

So, what the heck is a storyboard? It’s a visual representation of each shot you need to put your video together. Usually, storyboards contain details like the camera angle or movement, the actors involved and the location, and references to the part of the script each scene contains.

Typically, the director will want to put the storyboard together, since they are in charge of delivering on the vision for the project. If it’s someone less experienced, point them to our thorough guide on creating a storyboard.

Scouting

Once you have a sense of what the video will look like, you’ll need to scout locations. Since the whole team is unlikely to be able to travel to specific locations to scout, you’ll have to rely on photos or video to scout a location.

Sharing the photos in a Slack channel is an easy way to ensure the whole team can see them. Pinning the top choices to the channel is key so they don’t get lost. If you don’t use Slack, a private board on Pinterest, or similar visual planning tool, might be a good alternative.

If you were able to film potential locations, collect them all in a dedicated folder in your SproutVideo account. Since you can nest folders, you can make this a subfolder within your main video project folder.

Talent

Once you have your location, you’ll likely need to find some talent to star in your video. It’s a lot more cost-effective to hire people locally than to incur expense for travel. Of course, you can go the latter route if it’s the right choice for your production.

Video chats are the way to go if you can’t meet with someone in person. Simple tools like Google Hangouts, Slack video, Appear.in, or Zoom are all great choices for easy video conferences.

Record the meeting so that anyone who could not attend can still review the footage. Create a new subfolder in your SproutVideo account to share your talent interviews.

Production

The fact of the matter is that only the people on set will be able to have an immediate impact on how the video turns out. That’s why we focused so much on setting up for success in the pre-production phase.

Appropriate Check-Ins

Schedule pre-determined times to connect to review how the shoot is going. Assign one contact person to be on point and reachable for this specific purpose.

By planning your check-ins ahead of time, you’ll reduce the urge to reach out unprompted, while staying in the loop on how the shoot is going.

Sharing Early Content

Chances are not good your production team will be able to share footage with you, especially if they’re using professional cameras.

Footage needs to be processed and edited in order for clips to be shared. The best you can hope for are stills taken from production, and behind-the-scenes photos.

If certain remote members of the team have to approve any aspects of production on the day of, build it into the schedule for your shoot. It’s crucial this is handled in a timely manner to avoid unnecessary delays.

Video Draft Editing and Approval

Once the shoot has wrapped, in many ways, the work really begins! As the footage is processed and edited down, it’s key to share early drafts prior to color grading or even audio processing.

Using SproutVideo’s landing pages with commenting turned on, you can securely share drafts with key stakeholders by using one of our available privacy features. Login protection is a great choice since it enables you to assign video viewing access to specific individuals. You can even track whether or not they watched the whole video in your video engagement metrics.

To avoid sharing multiple links, your video editor can replace the video in your SproutVideo account with a new draft after revisions have been made. This will help reduce confusion since everyone involved in the final review will know which link to use.

Pro tip: you can use SproutVideo’s Zapier integration to connect your SproutVideo account to Slack. Using this integration, you can enable a notification in your video projects channel that alerts members when a new video has been posted.

Ask for comments to be left on the video, so you’ll have all feedback in one place. You can reply to comments and create nested conversations about any aspect of the cut. This is an efficient and streamlined way to gather all input before finalizing your video.

Sharing and Promotion

Once your draft is finalized and approved, it’s time to share it with the world! SproutVideo offers numerous sharing and video marketing tools to help you get your video in front of the right audiences.

Any members of your team in your SproutVideo account can help share your content. Different team members likely have different reasons for sharing it. For instance, your director might need to share the video with the talent who participated, while your marketing team will certainly want to start promoting it right away.

Determine the Right Privacy Setting

Depending on your goals for sharing your video, you might want to restrict sharing, or make it public for anyone to access. By default, all videos uploaded to SproutVideo are private, and only available within your account.

If you know where your video is going to be shared, you can determine the right privacy setting to use. If you’re embedding it on a website you own, you can leave your video set to private. Then, it will only be accessible where it’s embedded.

If you plan to use SproutVideo’s website or landing page features to share your video, you’ll want to set your video to public, password protected, or login protected. Public is the right choice for any videos being shared widely online. If you’re using this video in a marketing campaign, this is probably the right setting to use.

However, if you’re sharing with a restricted audience, password protection or login protection are better choices. With password protection, all viewers have to enter a password to watch the video. In comparison, with login protection, each viewer is assigned a username and password they can use to access the video. Login protection offers greater control than password protection over who can see your video.

Sharing Options

Once you’ve selected a privacy setting for your video, all you have to do is grab the video embed code or the sharing URL for your video.

The video embed code is the correct choice if you are publishing your video on a website you already own. The embed code can be customized in a variety of ways.

If you’re sharing the video on a SproutVideo landing page, you’ll want to use the video sharing URL. If you’re sharing your video far and wide, you can also use the options provided to post your video directly to popular social media platforms.

To add the video to an email campaign, you’ll want to use the email embed code. The email embed code is available for most popular email marketing platforms. It enables you to easily place an image with a play button into a campaign, and links to the landing page of your choice.

Improving For Next Time

At SproutVideo, we’re a huge fan of holding a post mortem meeting after any major project, videos included. It’s important to go over which parts of the process could’ve gone better or been improved, and what worked well. Then, take those lessons and apply them to the next project.

With video, you have additional tools available for determining what worked well and what didn’t. By sharing the video analytics and engagement data with your team, everyone will be able to understand the video’s performance. Compare it to other similar videos you’ve shared to benchmark the performance, and evaluate how it did.

Working with a remote video team can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be! We hope these tips help you work better together, no matter where you’re located.

Do you have any best practices to add? Please share them in the comments below!

The post How to Collaborate Effectively With a Remote Video Team appeared first on SproutVideo.

Packed into this feature release are folders, bandwidth caps, an audit log for team activity, a poster frame picker, and a shiny new integration with Zapier. Keep reading for all the details on the ways these new features will help improve your workflow and account management.

What’s in the Release?

Stay organized and work more efficiently with your team while extending the abilities of the SproutVideo platform through Zapier. Watch the video below to get the highlights.

Those with large video libraries, rejoice! Folders are here, and they’re incredibly easy to use to organize your video content.

By default, all your videos are listed in your home folder. If you have a lot of videos, it can be hard to stay on top of all your content.

Now, you can create nested folders to make it simple and quick to find what you’re looking for. You can easily move videos from one folder to another, delete folders, and upload new videos directly to a folder.

Tags

Tags are still a great tool to help you find content by search, and to surface results within your account across folders. They are also used on your video website to help viewers locate and navigate to your videos.

We moved Tags from the sidebar to a dropdown menu above your list of videos to better showcase your video library, and to help make it clear when you’re filtering results.

Account Management Tools

In our last major release, we added support for multi-user accounts. Since that change means more people are uploading content and helping to manage accounts, we added new tools to help you stay on top of everything.

Bandwidth Caps

More uploading usually means more streaming, so we added support for the ability to cap your monthly bandwidth at a specific amount. Every SproutVideo account comes with more than enough bandwidth for the vast majority of our users, however, for those who want that extra peace of mind, bandwidth caps are a great option.

First, decide how much extra bandwidth would be permissible for your account to use in a given month. Then, simply enter the number in GB to set a limit for your account’s streaming.

Note that this is an approximate limit. If an account is consuming an exceptionally high rate of bandwidth, we might not be able to cut off streaming at the exact limit you’ve set. This is an extremely rare scenario, and not one we anticipate users encountering frequently.

Audit Log

With all those team members helping you upload videos and manage your account, you’ll want to keep track of who’s doing what. We created an audit log for that exact purpose.

Now, you can easily check and see who uploaded a video, changed a privacy setting, or edited a detail about your account.

Zapier Integration

SproutVideo already has many awesome integrations with marketing platforms. But, our latest addition stands out because it’s so flexible and so very powerful.

Our new integration with Zapier allows you to connect our platform to any other app that also integrates with Zapier. Now, you can hook up some really popular platforms, like Slack, PayPal, Salesforce, Google Drive, and many more, with your SproutVideo account.

The ways you can use this new integration are nearly endless. Here are a few uses we came up with:

• Upload videos from storage solutions like Google Drive and Dropbox
• Create a new viewer login after someone makes a purchase through Shopify or Paypal
• Notify a channel in Slack when a video is watched

Of course, there are many more ways to use SproutVideo and Zapier and any of the other apps they support. We’re excited to see what you come up with!

Our Video Website Themes and Site Editor Got an Upgrade

All of our beautiful video site themes are now even more beautified. We made minor tweaks to the designs, including updated fonts and minor changes to layouts for certain themes. We also did a lot of work on the backend to make sure your video website performs just as nicely as it looks.

Note that if you are currently using a video website or custom landing pages, and make changes to your video site, you will automatically be upgraded to the latest version of your theme when you publish your changes. If you are using custom Javascript or CSS on your video website, you’ll want to be doubly sure your custom code works properly with the new themes.

The Site Editor now contains all of the video website settings, though we bet the first thing you’ll notice is the refreshed design. We moved site privacy controls, like SSO and the site password, to a new tab called “Security” and other site settings to “Settings”. As a result, you can find everything you need in one place!

Poster Frame Picker

Last, but not least, we created a custom poster frame generator that allows you to select any frame from your video to use as the poster frame.

The poster frame is the image that’s displayed before a viewer clicks to play your video. Before, you could upload your own, or pick from one of four images we generated for you.

Now, you can select any frame from the video, and we will automatically generate the image for you.

This simple tool will save you a lot of time and allow you to more precisely adjust the appearance of your videos.

We hope you love these updates to our platform! If you’d like to test them out for yourself, open a free trial today to see what all the fuss is about.

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact support or leave a comment below.

The post Update: Get Organized with Folders, and More! appeared first on SproutVideo.

Video should never be an afterthought. In fact, if current trends continue, it’ll soon be the standard for business communications.

We’re not just talking about marketing. In many ways, marketing is already there with video.

So, how can you ensure your company is ahead of the curve? By integrating video throughout your company culture. It has to become your professional way of life.

Here’s how you can get started. Follow this in-depth guide to build habits and establish default behaviors to promote the use of video throughout your organization.

Contents

This post is so thorough that we’ve included a Table of Contents to help you navigate it.

1. Why You Need a Video-First Culture
2. Get the Right Tools for the Job
3. Designate Responsibilities
4. Thinking Video First
5. Centralized, Secure Sharing
6. Reporting and Improvements

Why You Need a Video-First Culture

A video-first culture is one where videos are created and shared as a central part of everyday workflows. Video becomes a way of doing business, rather than just another project to manage.

Video is too powerful a medium to leave relegated to marketing departments. When used properly, it can drive employee engagement, facilitate training and on-boarding, and enhance corporate communications across the board. Did we mention it could also save you money?

Here’s a quick breakdown of why a video-first culture will help your organization better prepare for the future.

Engagement

Would you rather sit through a PowerPoint presentation, read a lengthy email or PDF, or watch a short video with all the info you need? We thought so.

Video gets the message across better than other mediums. The importance of this fact can’t be stressed enough when it comes to corporate communications. Beyond engaging viewers in the moment, video results in higher retention rates of information compared to other medium.

The fact that you can hear, see, and read information simultaneously helps reinforce it in your memory, helping you to clearly recall it later on. Video also often contains emotional triggers, helping to promote the formation of memories.

Communications

Think about the time before email (really, there was a time). We predict video communications will become as pervasive for the modern workforce in the next few years. So, you better start now if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

Video offers specific advantages compared to other mediums for communication. Ultimately, it’s all about the personal connection. Humans are hardwired to respond to faces and emotional expressions. A lot of what we communicate is nonverbal. Unlike text or audio, video allows you to speak more directly to your audience.

Training

Training doesn’t just happen when you’re first hired. Maybe you’ve been promoted to a new role, changed departments, or want to learn new skills.

This is where an engaging video resource center can really shine. By investing in tools your employees can access at any stage of their careers, you’ll help drive retention and advancement.

Video is perfect for training because it makes it easy for workers to refer back to a lesson if needed. Since it helps employees retain information better, it’s more efficient, too. Finally, it’s less disruptive to their workflow when training can be accessed whenever its needed, rather than at scheduled meetings.

Saving money

Often thought of as expensive and time-consuming, producing and leveraging corporate videos can be highly cost-effective. It all comes down to your priorities, and how you tackle it. In fact, we’ve often heard from our users that they realized substantial cost-savings by using video throughout their companies.

Take training, for example. It’s often one of the costliest aspects of on-boarding new employees or implementing new procedures. By using online video, you can save significantly on transportation, staffing, and more. Even better, you can reuse video time and again, so the savings accumulate in the long run.

Get The Right Tools for the Job

Having the necessary equipment on hand is as much about reducing friction as it is about getting the job done. If you’re scrambling to find cables or charge batteries every time you want to make a video, you’ll never get around to actually filming anything.

A basic camera kit consists of three main components: a camera, a microphone, and a tripod. Professional lighting can also be extremely useful, but technically isn’t necessary for basic video projects.

Here’s what your kit might look like if your phone is your main camera:

The kit above includes a Joby Gorillapod tripod, a lens, and a microphone, and would cost around $150 (plus cost of the phone) to put together.

We also have a detailed video guide to making a professional 4K camera rig using an iPhone:

If you have a camcorder or DSLR camera with video capabilities available, your setup won’t be that different. You’ll still want to use an external microphone and a tripod.

For a full rundown of video equipment you might want to consider, read this post about the ten most essential pieces of video equipment.

Finally, if you don’t have any sort of camera, you can still make plenty of videos using just a laptop.

Designate Responsibilities

Just announcing you’d like more video won’t get you anywhere. Each team needs a point person for ensuring video is an integral part of their project planning.

Even teams that you might not regularly peg as creative assets can help produce interesting videos. From accounting to sales to support and even c-suite executives, interesting perspectives and useful information can come from anywhere.

The point person for video should be relatively tech savvy, and see this new responsibility as an opportunity rather than a burden. Ask them to come up with a handful of ideas for videos they could produce, and see which get traction on the team.

If they’re not sure where to start, look to other teams for inspiration. Or, brainstorm topics that could be useful internally. Training, special learning sessions, quarterly reporting, new hires, and more can all be excellent opportunities for video.

The people you select to help spread video across your organization aren’t necessarily the ones producing the actual videos. It might make sense to have a specialized person or team in charge of that, depending on the size of your company and the resources available to you.

If you’re not quite ready to expand this across your whole organization, you still need someone in charge of ensuring videos are regularly planned and produced. That person could be you, or a colleague with a passion for video. Ask around for volunteers, and you might be surprised at how many you get.

Thinking Video First

Most companies have plenty of opportunities for capturing great video content. They just don’t seem to know where to start.

Here’s are some common endeavors most companies will undertake at some point. If you plan on capturing video from the get-go, you’ll find yourself with a wealth of content at the end of the year.

Company Events

Planning a conference, round-table, panel, or similar event? Be sure to capture it all on video.

This high value IP can be reused in numerous ways. For instance, you could leverage it for employee education, marketing for future events, or repackage it for attendees.

An ideal setup for filming an event would involve more than one camera, and a microphone for each speaker. By having at least two cameras, you’ll have two perspectives to choose from when editing your clips. This will help smooth over any awkward pauses, coughing, or other audible interruptions in the dialogue. It also reduces the chances a speaker might wander out of frame.

Giving each speaker their own mic also avoids a few annoyances. Ever sit in an audience, waiting to hear from a panel speaker while a microphone is slowly passed their way? Yeah, us too, and it’s no fun.

Wireless lapel mics are usually the way to go, but handheld mics can work just as well. Importantly, your speakers are less likely to walk off with a handheld mic, or to forget that they have a hot mic on them.

That’s the ideal scenario, however, all of that fancy equipment is not required. You can certainly make do with a simpler setup.

Town Halls

Important information is often shared at company town hall meetings. Yet, it’s easy to forget the specifics of what is discussed. Further, at least a handful of employees will likely be out of office for one reason or another.

All the more reason to capture it on video. This requires a really simple setup. Just a camera, a tripod, and a single microphone will usually suffice.

You will likely find a surprising number of ways to use this footage. It can be fun to review at a later town hall to check on progress towards a goal, for instance. You can also look for bloopers or outtakes for the company Christmas party.

Aside from those fun ideas, making the video available to anyone absent from the event helps ensure everyone is on the same page. It will also allow people to check back in the future if they are trying to remember a detail or a goal that was set during the town hall.

Video Conferences

An everyday occurrence in most offices, video conferences help teams collaborate and get work done efficiently. They’re also a great way to interview experts who can’t visit your company on site. By regularly recording them, they can also be a great way to enable teams to easily keep track of what’s going on with different projects, and to promote employee education.

Whether an internal video conference merits recording can certainly vary quite a bit. If you’re discussing a milestone in a project, recapping accomplishments, or planning next steps, it’s probably worth archiving for future reference.

If your video conference involves external experts, recording it is nearly mandatory. You can use soundbites or clips from these sessions in many different ways. From marketing, to education, to blog posts, there are many possibilities.

Producing these types of videos is really simple. Most video conferencing applications come with video recording features. The only equipment you need is a computer and a webcam of some kind.

Test your setup ahead of time with a colleague, and remember to hit record. Then, export the video to an MP4 file, and upload to the web for sharing.

Internal Communications

Beyond town halls, company communications of every variety represent a chance to create video. We are particularly big fans of using video for major announcements, product releases, messages from executives, or introducing new hires.

Similar to town halls, these don’t have to be complicated or fancy videos. A quick soundbite is all it takes to put a human face on an important message.

Since the purpose and audience can vary tremendously, we recommend working with equipment you have on hand. That means a webcam, iPhone or Android, DSLR or even a camcorder might do the trick. The message is the central focus here, not production value.

Charity, Conventions, and Outside Events

If your company is sponsoring or organizing an event for a charitable cause, participating in a convention, or any other outside event, capture it on film. These special one-off events are great material for brand marketing, recruiting, and promoting different causes.

Assign someone to film the event the day of, or encourage everyone participating to capture special moments on their phones. Ask that they film in landscape, not portrait mode, if possible. Look for celebrities or interesting people to interview, too. At the end of the day, you’ll have a wealth of footage to compile into a video about the event.

Don’t forget to grab plenty of b-roll footage of the location, exterior, crowds, or event signage to help provide context to the video.

Try to Keep it Simple

We can’t emphasize this enough – video doesn’t have to be a huge production. Keep production as simple as possible. You’ll find it much easier to produce video on an ongoing basis.

Tie the level of effort to the intended audience, and the importance of the message being communicated. Often, less is more!

Centralized, Secure Sharing

All this video won’t do you any good unless it’s easily accessible to your intended audiences. You’ll basically need two things:

• A place where the videos will live.
• Appropriate video privacy tools.

To determine where your videos should be shared, and the level of security they require, first look to your intended audience.

Internal Audiences

Employees, interns, contractors – anyone with a company-issued email address would likely constitute a member of your internal audience. Board members, trusted advisors, and others involved directly in your business are also likely included here.

Executive communications, town halls, training, recorded video conferences, and other proprietary company videos could all be shared with internal stakeholders.

Privacy Controls for Internal Video

Internal video can range from light-hearted, to extremely sensitive in nature. It’s imperative to ensure the proper privacy controls are in place before content is shared.

The right video security tools will vary based on your company’s particular needs. There are two main ways to approach it:

• Embed videos in an existing secure portal, like Sharepoint or a company Intranet.
• Send viewers to a secure video website, hosted by a 3rd party.

Existing Secure Portal

If your company already has a Sharepoint, intranet, or similar employees-only section of your website, you can easily share your videos there.

In this case, you’ll be embedding your videos, and if you’re using SproutVideo as your video hosting provider, you’ll want to leave them set to Private. Private videos only appear and are playable when embedded, not on SproutVideo landing pages or video websites.

To prevent your videos from being copied to external websites, ensure your video embed codes only work on specified websites. Use either allowed domains or signed embed codes to that effect.

Allowed domains is a straightforward video security setting. Enter the domain(s) where you’d like your video to appear, and it simply won’t load anywhere else.

Signed embed codes allow for more precise control over viewer access to your video. Signed embed codes require a secret signing key in order to load. If that key is missing, or incorrectly configured, the video won’t load.

Secure 3rd Party Video Website

Some video hosting services, such as SproutVideo, offer customizable video websites and landing pages. When used in conjunction with our video privacy options, they can be a powerful solution for keeping corporate video secure.

Creating the landing pages or video website is extremely simple. It only takes a few minutes to pick a theme, customize your URL, and add your branding. Hit publish, and you’re almost ready to share.

After uploading your videos, you’ll need to determine the best privacy settings to use for sharing your corporate videos securely. SproutVideo offers several options for controlling video access through our video websites, in approximate order from least secure, to most secure:

• Leave all videos set to Public. Your website will be discoverable and anyone with the URL can access your content.
• Require an email address to view a video, allowing you to track each viewer by their email.
• Unlist a video to make it undiscoverable on your video website.
• Password protect individual videos on your video website.
• Password protect your entire video website.
• Assign login credentials to viewers, and set download permissions, or limit access to a period of time or number of logins.
• Use IP address restriction to ensure your video website only loads for viewers on an approved connection.
• Implement single-sign-on (SSO) to use your company’s Identity Provider (ADFS, Google Apps, or any provider using SAML 2.0), so viewers can use their company credentials to login.

The best option really depends on the level of security and the reporting you require. If you’re unsure about which might work for your company, then contact us for guidance, or leave a comment below.

External Audiences

People outside of your company include prospects, clients, the general public, or friends and family.

Your marketing and PR videos, product or company announcements, and educative content are likely to be of interest to these parties. Designed to engage and convert, these are the types of videos that are ideally shared widely.

On occasion, you might need to share sensitive information via video with an outside party. A deliverable to a client, for example, would probably not be shared publicly.

Privacy Controls for External Video

Chances are, publicly shared videos will be ideal for this audience. You might even look to promote sharing of your public-facing videos by enabling social sharing, or including a call-to-action.

For external videos that require more security, some of the above options for internal video could work well. For instance, password protection and login protection are good options for simple, secure sharing with individuals.

Reporting and Improvements

At this point, you’re producing content on a regular basis, and sharing your videos confidently and securely. By keeping regular tabs on your video analytics, you can continuously improve your process and your content.

Tracking and improving viewer engagement is key to the success of corporate video. It helps you determine whether or not your message is getting through to your intended audience.

An engagement rate of 100% would mean that everyone who started watching your video finished it. Usually, the higher the rate, the better. It means your audience is engaged and consuming your content in its entirety.

For publicly shared videos, you’ll also want to consider other data points for your videos. For example, how many leads did they generate? What was the reach of your video? Did viewers comment on it? Determine the metric that is most central to your video campaign, and track it to see how you’re doing.

Use the data to change your process for making and sharing videos. If you notice flagging viewer engagement after more than one minute of footage, for instance, chop your videos down to size.

By continually improving your content, you’ll keep driving the use of video throughout your company culture.

How does your company use video? Where specifically has it helped, and why? Please share your experience in the comments below.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Developing a Video-First Company Culture appeared first on SproutVideo.

It’s where you tell your story, set out your brand ethos, and start to build a relationship with customers. There’s nowhere better to upload a great video that really grabs their attention.

In this post, we share tips for upgrading your About page with video. You’ll learn how to produce video content that will not only interest prospects, but move them further down the sales funnel.

A history worth sharing.

Think back to those early days when you told friends and family you were about to start your own business. Chances are, they were all interested in learning what inspired you. Your About page is just like those conversations, but online rather than face-to-face. What better medium to have that conversation than video?

Telling the story of your brand is something of an art. You want to pique your viewers’ interest, leave out the boring bits, and make your brand seem relatable. As a starting point, every good story involves sharing the 5 Ws:

• When did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
• Why did you want to make the product?
• Where did this happen?
• Who was involved at the start?
• What happens next?

For more storytelling tips, read our post The Secrets of Storytelling: 11 Ingredients for Better Videos.

What you’re all about.

If we’re honest, this has the potential to be a little boring. In fact, most of your viewers will be able to guess what they’re about to watch: committed to customer care, high quality products, blah blah blah…They’ll switch off and you’ll have lost the opportunity to say something that sets your brand apart from the crowd.

One way to get the creative juices flowing is to see what others have done. But beware of being too influenced – always stay true to your brand voice. This humorous parody makes the point that many marketing videos are a carbon copy of each other. Dare to be different!

A shout-out to the people behind the scenes.

These are the people who make it all happen, so it’s a nice touch to include them in your About page. Try a short interview with each team member where they share something interesting about themselves, what inspires them, or even what they wanted to be when they grew up.

This helps to show the human face of your brand. Business is about buying from other people, so let your customers know who they’ll be buying from.

One element you might have missed…

Once you’ve made the suggested video changes to your About page, your website visitors will be clued into what your organization is all about. That’s important, but there’s another function of an About page. It’s an opportunity to answer some of your customers’ questions.

I’m not suggesting you turn your About page into a FAQ page. Instead, create one or two short videos where you answer just a few of their most common questions. These will be ones that you find yourself answering time after time via email or on the phone. These could usefully address:

• Delivery times
• Delivery costs
• How to access help
• Where to get replacement parts

It’s not all about you!

Yes, it’s called an About page and it’s ostensibly about your brand, but let’s think outside the box a little. This is a golden opportunity to show your customers that you put them first. A video where you show them how your company will put them first is a must. This should communicate that you:

• Understand their goals and objectives
• Empathize with their challenges
• Want to make them happy

A good way to do this is to create a video showing the customer journey. The protagonist should buy the product (this is where you show how easy it is to use your website), receive delivery, and use it. Another video might portray the customer experiencing a minor difficulty, which is resolved quickly.

You might be wary of portraying a flaw with your product, but realistically this is something that customers will be thinking about. For most customers, the problem doesn’t occur when a product is faulty, it’s when the brand doesn’t deal with it swiftly. So, showing what happens when things go wrong reassures your audience that whatever happens, your company is here to help.

Build trust by keeping it real.

Especially if you’re a startup, it’s important that you start to build trust in your brand. Each video should feel authentic. In fact, this is one of the video industry buzzwords. So what exactly what does it mean? A video that’s authentic is one that clearly understands its audience and their needs. It doesn’t try to sell to them, instead it opens the lines of communication. It might even feature an impartial individual such as a brand ambassador or customer.

Airbnb have nailed it with their Stories video campaign. These videos feature real customers who use their product, sharing how the brand has made a positive difference to them.

If you are planning to appear on video, be yourself. Viewers will sense immediately if you’re pretending to be something you’re not. If you’re funny, let this come across in your videos! If you’re snarky, let it out on camera! Authenticity can be difficult to communicate if you’re not experienced in front of the camera. If this sounds like you, 27 Ways to Feel Like a Natural in Front of the Camera is a great resource.

Conclusion

An About page isn’t just about your brand. It’s about what you can offer your customers. Address their needs, tell them how you can meet them, and make them feel comfortable doing business with you. Video is an ideal way to make your brand more relatable, to show visitors that real people just like them are at the heart of it.

Did you know that video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more? That’s pretty mind-blowing. We have a challenge that could make a massive difference to your business! Implement our suggestions for video on your About page, and see how your conversions are boosted. Let us know the results in the comments below!

The post 6 Ways Video Will Make Your About Page Stand Out appeared first on SproutVideo.

In this blog, we’re going to share how to build a video marketing strategy that will enable you to set out your road map to success. So step away from the video camera and get out a pen and paper. It’s time to get planning!

Step 1: Establish your video marketing goals.

This is where you determine what success means to you. It’s time to get real. If you’re new to video, you’re unlikely to go viral with your first one. Hits are likely to be low at first, but that’s fine. Video marketing is a process of building lasting relationships between your organization and your viewers. The aim is to steadily increase your views and engagement over time.

Set aside time every month to review your video analytics reporting. This is where the true story of your video marketing efforts will emerge. At SproutVideo, we designed our analytics platform to equip you with the information you need to measure your success accurately:

Plays

See at a glance how many plays and impressions your videos have gained. If a video has been especially popular or unpopular, then it’s time to work out why.

Location

By seeing where in the world your videos are being enjoyed, you can understand more about your audience. This feature is really useful if you’re trying to enter a new geographical market – you can see if viewers in the new location are responding to your message.

Popularity

If you know which videos perform the best, you can make more content in a similar style.

Domains

Do you know how people found your video? Removing the guesswork around how people find your content makes it easier for you to reach them.

Track each viewer

You can track individual users to see how they engage with your videos. Is there a part of your latest video that lots of people re-watch? Or perhaps the majority of viewers switch off after a certain point? This useful feature enables you to make content that’s specifically tailored to your customers.

Step 2: Define the video content that will boost your sales and interest viewers.

If your organization is a start-up, you probably won’t have much knowledge about your audience. But you will know about your business. Determine which parts of the business would benefit from video marketing, for example new products, events, sales, HR, internal communications. Then, you’ll need to work out the types of video content that work best for each of these.

Research What Works

To build this part of your video marketing strategy, we recommend spending some time researching what’s already popular online. As a starting point, the following types of video content are popular:

• Behind the scenes – see our post Let Them In: Go Behind the Scenes with Video for tips
• Events – our post Eight Ways to Showcase Your Event with Video is a great starting point if you’re interested in this
• Customer testimonials – see How to Get Great Customer Testimonials on Camera for expert advice
• Videos featuring influencers – Five Ways to Supercharge Your Campaigns with Influencer Video Marketing contains some essential tips on working with influencers
• Reviews – whether it’s a product or a service, people want to know what it’s like before they try it
• Vlogs – our post 27 Ways to Feel Like a Natural in Front of the Camera is a must-read for all vloggers
• Webinars – Read our post 10 Best Practices for Successful Webinars for details on getting started
• How-to videos – by providing value to potential customers, you’ll establish credibility and trust

Howcast are the go-to YouTube channel when it comes to high quality how-to videos. Their video How to Make Homemade Ice Cream in a Plastic Bag has three million views and counting:

Test Out Different Ideas

You might not have any evidence of what your audience is interested in, but don’t let that worry you. Use your existing knowledge of your customer demographic (age, interests, where and when they like to hang out online) and your imagination! Competitive research never hurts, either.

Try out different ideas, and see what gets the most traction. A video with high levels of engagement, and lots of shares, indicates high levels of viewer interest.

Before long, the type of videos that appeal most to your audience should become clear. By zeroing in on what works for your viewers, you can improve your content over time.

Now, you can write out a video marketing mission statement. Here’s a suggestion:

At [company name], we make video for [demographic group]. The aim of video is to support [business areas] to [outcome you want to see].

Step 3: Maximize video by incorporating it into your social media strategy.

Even if you’re primarily publishing your videos on your website, promoting them using social media is important. Videos that are popular on the main social media platforms will play a key role in driving viewers to your site.

Our post Completing Your Social Media Plan with Video sets out 11 very good reasons for incorporating video into your social media strategy.

What if you don’t exactly have tons of fans or followers? Try to build good working relationships with influencers, or other businesses and friends. They will usually be happy to promote your videos.

For example, the non-profit truth made an effective influencer video to promote their non-smoking message:

Working with influencers is a particularly effective way of using social media to promote your video. We’ve shared everything you need to know in our blog Rethinking Influencer Marketing for 2017. You can ensure that videos reach your audience at the best time thanks to HubSpot’s research The Best Times to Post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Other Social Media Sites.

Step 4: Integrate video with your website.

Making your video content easily accessible for website users is vital. This means creating a video hub as well as using video throughout your website. The video hub is where all video content will be stored and categorized so it can be found easily. The categories can be reflective of your organization. Be inspired by how Lego have organized their video library – they’ve organized each video by story and character.

In addition to a dedicated video hub, video should be used throughout your website. Relevant videos should be placed alongside text-based information. For example, let’s imagine you own a company that produces camera tripods. A ‘how to set up your tripod’ video, accompanying written content about how easy it is to set up the tripod, would likely be useful for website visitors.

Step 5: Decide who does what.

Whether you’re working with a professional videographer or not, you still need to know how to manage the video production process. You’ll probably need to decide which members of your team are responsible for filming, editing, and hiring actors.

Producing high quality videos that are reflective of the image that you want to portray does take time. The time you can commit to this must be reflected in your marketing strategy. There’s no point in saying you’ll make a video a week if you realistically don’t have enough team members to do this.

Producing video by yourself is possible, with a few clever hacks and a can-do attitude. You’ll need the right equipment, a dash of inspiration, and some time to practice. Getting comfortable on camera, as well as honing your lighting and audio skills are essential. Head over to our post How to Produce High Quality Videos on Your Own for more on getting the basics right.

Conclusion: Plan, plan, plan!

Although it’s tempting to jump straight in and start making video straight away, this isn’t the best strategy. A considered, carefully planned approach to video is the one that will yield the best results.

Once you’re happy with your video marketing strategy, then it’s time to get recording! Once you know the basics, the best way to learn videography is by doing.

If you want any tips on the best way to build an effective marketing strategy, reach out to the SproutVideo team on Facebook or Twitter.

The post Follow These 5 Basic Steps to Build a Killer Video Marketing Strategy appeared first on SproutVideo.

1. Keyword Strategy

To get started with video SEO, you need to first identify your target keywords, because that will help shape your content and a lot of the other elements on the page.

The strategy element has to do with the level of competition you are facing when selecting your keywords. If competition is low for a given keyword, you won’t have a particularly hard time if you optimize against just that keyword outright.

That’s rarely the case, however. In all likelihood, you’ll have to use longer phrases that often have less search volume, but also much less competition, making it easier to rank for those adjacent keywords.

Start by identifying the main keyword that you’d like to target, and expand from there. If you’re having trouble thinking of synonyms or longtail keyword phrases, use a website like LSIGraph to get inspiration.

Using Adwords for Video SEO

Another tool that can come in handy is Adwords’ Keyword Planner. You can use it to identify keywords that have a significant volume of monthly searches, and ideally, low competition. Don’t panic if your keyword is showing high competition, it just means it might take longer to rise through the ranks, or you might have to try additional tactics to succeed.

To use the Keyword Planner, log into your Adwords account and navigate to Tools. From there, select Keyword Planner. If you need ideas for new keywords to include, use the first option, “Find new keywords and get search volume data.” If you just want to analyze your existing keywords, use the second option, “Get Search Volume Data and Trends.”

Be sure to adjust your geographic targeting to match the location of your desired audience. Also, add negative keywords to refine your results further, especially if an adjacent or synonymous keyword is typically used for a totally different product or service. The more precise your results, the better your keyword strategy will be.

If you don’t have Adwords, you could check out Keyword.io, which is similar.

The goal here isn’t to come up with a giant list of all possible keywords. You want to find a short list of targeted keywords, ideally with high search volume and low competition, that your audience is likely to use when searching for something closely related to the topic your video addresses.

2. Optimize Content for Keywords

Next, ensure your video, its title, tags, description, and other content on your video landing page, contain the keyword(s) you are targeting. Use them in natural human-readable sentences or phrases. Keyword-stuffing, where you cram as many keywords into a piece of content as possible, is detrimental to video SEO, so be sure to steer clear of that.

For example, if you wanted to create a page for a video of a banana bread recipe you created, you’d want to use variations of the phrase “banana bread recipe” in different ways on the page. The title of the video could be “My Famous Banana Bread Recipe” and the description could be “Is this the easiest banana bread recipe ever? Or, the tastiest quick bread you can make, with healthy fruits and nuts, in only half an hour? See for yourself.”

The right amount of content to include on the page depends on your particular page layout and goals for the video, so there’s no reason to go overboard if you don’t want to.

3. Hosting Provider

When selecting a video hosting provider for your business, especially if improving SEO is your ultimate aim, you’ll want to steer clear of platforms that try to direct viewers back to their websites to view related content, or to view your video there instead of on your website.

Platforms that do this include Vimeo, Youtube and, increasingly, Facebook. Professional video hosting platforms, like SproutVideo, don’t do this, and provide SEO tools to help you optimize your videos to boot.

The reason using a free provider isn’t recommended for SEO has to do with their outsize ranking authority. If your video exists both on their platform and on your website, you don’t stand much of a chance of outranking it with your own website, even for your own video.

The best course of action would be to select a professional video hosting provider with built-in SEO tools that focuses on business needs. For instance, SproutVideo puts you in control of your content, and has SEO tools to help you ensure your site ranks for your content to boot.

4. Video Sitemaps

Video sitemaps are like a signpost pointing search engines to where your rich content lives. A properly formatted video sitemap is a big piece of the SEO puzzle to help your video content rank properly for your targeted keywords.

If you’re using one of SproutVideo’s video websites for sharing your content, you don’t have to worry about a video sitemap because we’ve already taken care of that for you automatically.

If you’re embedding video on your website, you’ll want to create a video sitemap and submit it to search engines. We have a detailed guide to creating a video sitemap and submitting it to search engines in our help section.

5. Metatags

The more you tell search engines about your website and rich content, the better. This allows you to control how your content is displayed in search results.

If you use your target keyword in each element for the page, that will reinforce the relevance of the page for that term. This is where metatags come in.

Otherwise, search engines will essentially guess what the page is about, and which pieces of rich content should be displayed in snippets returned in search results.

The most well-known metatags are title, description and tags, but Google actually supports a lot more than that for video content specifically:

Required Properties (source: Google)

• name: Text, required. The title of the video.
• Description: Text, required. The description of the video.
• thumbnailUrl: URL, required. A URL pointing to the video thumbnail image file. Images must be at least 160×90 pixels and at most 1920×1080 pixels. We recommend images in .jpg, .png, or .gif formats. All image URLs should be crawlable and indexable. Otherwise, we will not be able to display them on the search results page.
• uploadDate: Date, required. The date the video was first published, in ISO 8601 format.

For the full list of supported properties, and guides to implementing them on the page, please visit Google’s documentation for optimizing video content for search.

6. Open Graph Tags

Similar to metatags, Open Graph tags (OG tags) are used by social networks to understand your video content. OG tags ensure the right title, description, image and video appear in the timeline when your video is being shared by users.

Social sharing of the page containing your video isn’t the same as earning quality backlinks to the page. However, social sharing is increasingly a factor for video SEO because it sends positive signals to search engines about the popularity of the page.

If you’re using SproutVideo for your video website or landing pages, you don’t have to do anything to optimize your videos for social sharing. We’ve already taken care of all necessary OG tags for you.

OG tags should be implemented in the header of your HTML for the page. Here’s a great guide from Facebook to implementing OG tags correctly for your video.

7. Mobile-Friendly Design

The most recent Google algorithm update focused heavily on mobile users. A major change was to start penalizing websites with aggressive pop-ups because it interferes with mobile users’ experience when visiting the page.

Luckily, it’s easy to avoid using these types of pop-ups on the page containing your videos. Just don’t do it.

If you still want to capture leads on the page with your video, you can require an email address to view your video. Alternatively, you could use a post-play screen to display any sort of lead capture form, or to drive traffic to a landing page of your choice, among other options.

Another important factor for mobile users is responsive content, meaning images and videos automatically resize to the fit the screen your viewer is using.

If you’re using SproutVideo to host your videos, you can easily generate a responsive video embed code by simply checking a box. Also, all of the themes for our video websites are responsive, so you don’t have to do anything if you’re using one to share your content.

If you’re not using SproutVideo, it’s still easy to make your videos responsive on the page. Everyone on a small screen will thank you.

8. Site Load Speed

No one wants to be watching the clock while trying to load a webpage. A speedy experience is best, and Google rewards fast sites with higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is another piece of the argument against hosting your own videos. When you work with a video hosting platform for business, you benefit from the fact that they continually optimize their player and video delivery method to ensure fast load times on the page.

When you’re self-hosting, you might struggle to get all of that right.

9. Captions

Generating closed captions, also known as subtitles, for a video not only improves the accessibility of your content, but can also help improve SEO. Accessibility of content is increasingly a factor in search rankings, and not just for mobile users.

Beyond accessibility, subtitles and captions help viewers process the information being presented in the video, even if they are playing your video without sound. This increases engagement, leading to more time on page and a higher likelihood that your content might be shared. All of that sends positive signals back to search engines about the relevancy of the page, while also extending your reach and potentially resulting in quality backlinks to the page.

10. Pre-Play Image

Selecting the right poster frame or thumbnail image for your video can greatly impact the likelihood that a visitor to the page will click play and watch it. A poster frame or thumbnail image is the image that is displayed in the video player before your video starts to play.

While setting the poster frame for your video doesn’t directly impact SEO, picking the right one will help drive engagement on the page. Getting visitors to stick around and interact with your content increases the likelihood they will share it or link to it on another site. It also helps search engines evaluate the relevancy of the page for a specific search term.

A still from the video can be effective, and most video hosting platforms will generate one for you automatically. SproutVideo does this during the encoding process.

If you choose to make a custom poster frame image instead, consider using a human face (especially a happy one) in the image to help attract attention to the video.

11. Limit Videos Per Page

Adding multiple videos to one webpage is problematic for video SEO for several reasons. It dilutes the focus of the page, which leads to a broader keyword strategy, and makes it harder to optimize for video SEO in general. It can also impact page load speeds depending on how you implemented the videos on the page. Finally, a page dedicated to one specific topic is arguably more likely to earn backlinks because it answers one or two specific questions.

Ideally, each page should address one specific topic, and contain multimedia content to enrich the experience of visitors to the page. This means using not only video, but SEO-optimized images to support the text on the page.

One video per page is a good rule of thumb. This allows you to focus your keyword strategy for each individual page, and will ensure speedy page load times.

12. Easy Sharing

Once a viewer has finished watching your video, you’ll want to encourage them to share it to expand your reach and help drive more traffic to your page. Whether it’s on social, as an embed code, or via email, getting viewers to share your video will help bolster your video SEO beyond your on-the-page optimizations.

If you’re using SproutVideo to host your videos, you can enable sharing options through the video player, and on your video landing page. If you’re sharing your videos through a 3rd party hosting provider, like WordPress or Squarespace, widgets or plugins will be the easiest route to enable easy sharing.

13. Backlink Outreach

Video SEO is not just about passively attracting organic traffic. Actively seeking backlinks to your content is part of the puzzle for a well-rounded video SEO profile.

To create backlinks to your content, you can selectively answer relevant questions on Quora, reddit, or other online communities focused on the topic your video addresses. Make sure you are adding value and are participating respectfully in online discussions. Spammy contributions will not benefit your video SEO.

Reaching out to influencers in the space is another tactic that can be time-consuming, but rewarding when done effectively. Find people who create or share similar content, and reach out via email, Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin. Be transparent about why you are doing so, and focus on building the relationship over anything else. Even if they don’t circulate this video in particular, they might share something down the road.

Also, be generous in turn by sharing content you curate from other influential sources. This should only be done in a genuine manner, and giving proper credit is always required. By sharing other people’s content, you might just make them slightly more likely to share yours down the road.

14. Share with Online Communities

Outside of your backlink strategy, you can help increase the distribution of your video by sharing it with different online communities. For instance, search for a relevant group on Facebook or Linkedin, and share a link to your video in a contextual and relevant manner. Again, a spammy strategy here is only likely to backfire.

15. Evergreen Content

Once your video is up and circulating, make sure it provides enduring value by revisiting it periodically. Keep the content relevant by updating it for current events, and tweak the images or the video itself as needed.

Treat it more like a product than just another post, and you’ll increase the likelihood it will remain relevant over time.

16. Keep Up With SEO Changes

Video SEO is not a “set it and forget it” marketing strategy. The rules of SEO change over time, so it’s imperative to keep up with best practices.

Make sure your outbound links are still valid, since sometimes other sites change their structure, or even shut down. This will help ensure your content remains helpful and provides value to visitors.

You’ll also want to monitor your backlink profile for any issues as it evolves over time.

17. Analyze Results

If video SEO is done correctly, you’ll see a traffic pattern similar to this one. This example is taken from our very own blog:

Over time, organic traffic to the post has increased more than 8X on a monthly basis. This longevity adds significantly to the value provided by the post, and shows the importance of creating valuable content.

Google Analytics is a free and easy to use platform. You can implement Google Analytics with a SproutVideo website or landing page easily. You can also use it on a website hosted by a third party provider.

To check your organic traffic, navigate to Search Console on the lefthand side, and select Landing Pages. From there, you can filter Impressions and Clicks to identify top-performing pages, or those that could use improvement.

Alternatively, you can navigate to Channels under Acquisition, and pick Organic Search to analyze that traffic in the report. Then, pick Landing Pages as your primary dimension. Finally, you can sort by Sessions or other variables to determine your top performing pages.

Do you have any video SEO tips to add to this list? We’re all ears! Let us know in the comments below.

The post 17 Video SEO Best Practices appeared first on SproutVideo.

Spending even more time customizing a WordPress or Squarespace theme is certainly an option. So is building your whole website from scratch, but in that case, you better know how to code.

A third option, for those of us short on time and money, would be to design and launch a customized website around your video content on SproutVideo. It takes only a matter of minutes. Sound too good to be true?

Here’s how you can get a beautiful video website up and running faster than you’d think possible with SproutVideo, with tips for making it truly yours to boot.

Your Own Domain

When you first open a free trial on SproutVideo, we automatically generate a custom URL for your video website, so you don’t have to worry about finding a web host for your chosen domain. If you don’t like the one we generated for you, you can easily change your video website URL in just a few clicks.

If you want to take things further, you can create a CNAME record that points to your SproutVideo website. This option does require a 3rd party hosting provider for the domain. With a CNAME, you can use a domain like “videos.mysite.com” or “www.myvideos.com”, which might be appealing if you have strict branding requirements.

Since SproutVideo provides a domain for your video website, a CNAME record is not necessary for sharing your videos. It’s just a nice touch if you have an existing web presence, or a particularly strong brand.

Video Privacy Settings

Ever wrestled with HTML, or a content block, only to get frustrated and give up? We have too, and it sucks.

That’s why videos appear on SproutVideo websites according to their privacy settings, meaning you never have to touch a line of code to showcase your videos online with our platform. Public videos are displayed automatically and can be watched by anyone with the link to your video website. For simple sharing, this is a great option.

Maybe you don’t want the whole world to see your videos, and that’s ok. For increased security at the video level, you can make your videos password protected or login protected, or use IP address restriction. If you’d rather handle permissions site-wide, you can password protect your entire video website, or set up single-sign-on (SSO).

This way, you can be sure that only your intended audience can access your videos once your site goes live.

Selecting a Theme

With your domain all set, and video privacy settings sorted, next you’ll want to pick a theme and customize it. Rather than hunting through endless marketplaces of free and premium themes, or downloading and installing files on a server, we have a selection of professionally designed themes ready to go available within your account.

Each theme is responsive, meaning it’ll look great on mobile devices, and is designed specifically to work with our video hosting features. If you have ever struggled to get a piece of content to look just right on other platforms, you’ll appreciate the innate compatibility you get with our video websites.

Toggling between themes is a breeze, and you can see exactly what each one will look like in a preview window in the theme editor, so you aren’t left guessing which will look best in production.

Logos and Branding

Obviously, you want your video website to look like it belongs to you and your brand. Adding your logo and changing the colors is the best way to do that.

For best results adding your logo, make sure it is a transparent PNG file under 500 KB. You might need to modify the dimensions slightly to get the exact look you want. Also, some themes have a max width for logos.

If you aren’t sure exactly which colors to use, a great tip is to use image editing software or an online color picker to match your branding exactly. All you need is an image that contains your brand colors, and the software or website of your choice.

We really like this simple online tool, but Photoshop or Snagit work well too. Most image editing software will have a color picker that will tell you the Hex color you need to get an exact match.

With your video privacy settings perfected, your theme customized, and your domain squared away, all you have to do is hit publish, and you’re ready to share your content with the world.

Further Optimizations

Of course, that’s not all you can do with a SproutVideo website. That’s just the short version in case you’re in a real hurry.

Social Sharing and Interactions

If you’re using video to drive engagement with your audience, or to boost your brand reach on social media, enable social sharing and commenting on your videos. This will allow your fans and followers to quickly and easily promote your content to their networks, helping you reach new audiences.

Commenting on SproutVideo websites is simple to setup. It’s particularly worthwhile if you want to use your content to drive discussions on your video website, or engage with your audience. Commenting is currently powered by Disqus, a free 3rd party application that has great moderation tools.

Lead Generation

Remember that aforementioned easy compatibility with all our features? You can use email-gating and post-play screens to capture leads or drive traffic to a landing page of your choice. SproutVideo websites fully support both of these options. You can start capturing leads as soon as you upload some videos and start sharing them.

Optional Pages

Each SproutVideo website offers two customizable pages that you can use however you’d like. You can enter custom HTML, embed content, and more.

Some common ways these pages are used are as Contact or About pages, although the options are really limitless.

Traffic Stats

Once your site is up and running, you might want to know more about your visitors and traffic. If you integrate Google Analytics with your video website, you can see what people are doing in real time on your video website. You can also track vital stats about your traffic, and watch it grow over time.

Custom CSS and Javascript

If you are technically savvy, or want to implement a 3rd party app on your video website, take advantage of the option to add custom CSS or Javascript. This allows you to enhance the look and functionality of your site beyond what is provided out-of-the-box.

Popular ways CSS can be used include hiding elements on the page, and changing the overall look and feel of the site. Javascript can be used to launch different apps, such as live chat or surveys. Both are great options for making your video website uniquely yours.

Questions about getting started? We’d love to help. Let us know how in the comments below.

The post Why You Should Build Your Video Website with SproutVideo appeared first on SproutVideo.

We now offer three different types of embed codes (responsive, email, and lightbox embeds), custom post-play screens on SproutVideo landing pages and video websites, and we changed how some of our most popular security features work to make them more flexible. We also gave the video detail page a serious facelift, and updated the appearance of the rest of the app as well.

Keep reading for all the details on what’s new!

New Embed Code Options!

SproutVideo now supports multiple types of embed codes, which will make your life a lot easier if you are using our platform to host your video content. We now support basic in-line embed codes, responsive embed codes, lightbox embed codes, and email campaign embed codes. For each type, we offer powerful customization options, and the ability to create presets or defaults to save you time when working with lots of content. Here are the details on all the new embed codes we now offer:

Basic In-line Embed Codes

These are the embed codes you know and love if you have ever used our platform. Our standard iframe embed codes allow you to quickly and easily publish a video on a webpage hosted by a third party like WordPress or Squarespace. Even our basic embed codes are heavily customizable, and allow you to change the player colors, show or hide controls, autoplay or loop your video, and display a custom post-play screen after the video concludes.

Responsive Embed Codes

This is a major change to our standard video embed codes: with the check of a box, you can now generate a responsive embed code! It’s now as simple as copy and paste to ensure that your videos will always be the right size for the screen on which they are being displayed.

LightBox Embed Codes

Even fancier than responsive embed codes are our new lightbox embed codes! These allow you to place an image representing your video on a webpage that, when clicked, launches a video player overlay on the page.

The video player that launches will autoplay by default, and both the image and the player overlay are responsive by default. The same awesome customizations for our regular and responsive embed codes are available for lightbox embed codes too, with the added bonus of being able to easily configure the size of the image and the player overlay.

Email Embed Codes

An email embed codes is a short snippet of code you can place into an email campaign in order to include an image linked to the landing page of your choice in that campaign. The image we automatically generate for you will have a play button on it, you can customize the size of the image, and it will be responsive by default. We also will capture the email address of your viewer when they click to view your video automatically, and track their viewing session in your video engagement metrics.

To generate an email embed code, it’s as easy as selecting your preferred marketing platform, making any necessary customizations, and copying and pasting the code to your email campaign.

Custom Post-Play Screens For All!

Previously, custom post-play screens were only available for embedded videos. Now, you can leverage this powerful marketing tool for videos on your SproutVideo website or landing pages as well. It’s as easy as checking a box to enable the post-play screen, configuring it as you’d like, and clicking the button to enable the post-play screen for your video site.

Changes to Privacy Settings

Allowed domains and allowed IP addresses are two of our most popular video security features for keeping your content secure. Allowed domains ensure your video embed codes only work on websites you specify, while IP address restriction prevents viewers not on approved connections from accessing your videos.

Prior to this feature launch, both these settings were account-wide (meaning they applied to all the videos in your account), but now, you can specify allowed domains and IP addresses on a per-video basis. Any video-specific settings will overwrite your account-level permissions for these two video security settings. This change greatly enhances the flexibility of these settings and how they can be used.

Changes to Download Permissions

Similar to allowed domains and IP addresses, download permissions can now be set for individual videos. Previously, download permissions applied to all videos in your SproutVideo hosting account. With these changes, you can now specify which videos can be downloaded, and which versions of those videos (HD, SD, or the source video file).

Any download permissions set for individual videos will overwrite account-wide settings. If you leave downloading disabled account-wide, you can now set downloading permissions for a handful of select videos, or vice versa.

We really hope you love these new features, and enjoy putting them to work! Don’t already have an account? Open a 14 day free trial account to test these new features out today.

If you have any feedback or questions, please let us know by contacting us or leaving a comment below.

The post Our Holiday Gift to You – Tons of New Features! appeared first on SproutVideo.