Why Isn't Anyone Watching Your Video?

Ok - I thought I might write something actually useful rather than just posting music links and photos. While I was walking my dog the other day and she was taking time to sniff a particularly interesting spot of grass, I started thinking about really good videos I've seen online by decent sized businesses that have a sad number of views. They went to all this trouble to make an amazing video, but hardly anyone saw it... Why? I think the reason is what I'll call the "If you build it, they will come" mentality. People tend to think that if they make a video and post it online, people will be so amazed that they made a video, they will automatically watch it and will eventually get tens of thousands of views. In reality it's much harder than that and I'll explain what you need to do to get your video seen

I'm not sure if you've heard of this before or not, but there's something called "audience building" and it's something everyone should be thinking about for any big project be it video or something else entirely. It can be a somewhat difficult idea to grasp and I remember five years ago trying to explain it to a Head of Marketing who just couldn't, for the life of her, understand it. Audience building is the process by which you attract eyeballs to your project before your project is finished. It's what you do so that when your video is released, people are ready and waiting to see it.  It's about building desire and anticipation. It's the opposite of "build it and they will come". It's more like, "build it and while you're building it talk about it a lot and get people interested so when you're ready they will come".

How NOT To Release A Video Online: Hire a producer to make a beautifully crafted video that says everything you want to say about your business in a way that is interesting and highlights your humanity and professionalism. After weeks or months of work, share it on facebook and twitter. The end.

How TO Release A Video Online: Hire a producer to make a beautifully crafted video that says everything you want to say about your business in a way that is interesting and highlights your humanity and professionalism. Announce on social media that you have a new project you're working on and can't wait to share it with your followers. Send a tweet announcing a new collaboration between yourself and your producer. Ask your producer to post an enigmatic picture on Instagram and share it. Take your own enigmatic picture of the title of the script and share on twitter. On the day of the shoot, share behind the scenes pictures on social media. Ask the producer to post photos of the post-production process (editing timelines, voice-overs, external hard drives) and share those posts. Announce a release date on social media. Find 20 people in your social media network on different platforms and formally request they share the video on their social media once you release it on yours. This is important because you can't predict what people will share and you can't just hope and pray it spreads on its own. Get commitments! The more the better.  Do a three day countdown with stills from the video and a "3", "2", "1" superimposed. The morning of, post an announcement that you will be releasing the video at 1pm cst. Then post your video! Make sure your 20 people follow through and post it themselves, then go over to Google AdWords and spend some money to spread it out beyond your own circle of influence and target those people you want to see it. $100 on AdWords goes a long way so be sure to budget at least that much into the project. Write a press release and send it to relevant websites and blogs. If possible contact as many as possible in advance and see if the will commit beforehand. Then follow up. A few days later post a blog or an interview with the producer about the experience of making the video. The following week post a short video of outtakes and bloopers and direct people back to the original video. When you hit a milestone number of views, such as 1,000 or 5,000 post it again with a "Yay! We did it". Share responses to the video on social media and keep talking about it for at least the first month after it was released. 

You don't have to follow this verbatim, but hopefully you get the point. Don't spend a bunch of money producing a video no one will see. Talk about it frequently both before and after release. Spend some money on AdWords and BUILD YOUR AUDIENCE.