Anoth­er one of the sev­en ways to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is to use social media to improve your content’s dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty and inter­act with your audi­ence on mul­ti­ple plat­forms. Online video is an inher­ent­ly social medi­um. Peo­ple are drawn to online video and web series because they can inter­act with the cre­ators in ways that they can’t on tele­vi­sion. So, how do you opti­mize the social ampli­fi­ca­tion of your con­tent?

You can begin by apply­ing the 80–20 rule, which is also known as the Pare­to prin­ci­ple. The prin­ci­ple was named after Ital­ian econ­o­mist Vil­fre­do Pare­to, who observed in 1906 that 80 per­cent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. Two weeks ago, this rule-of-thumb was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Unruly, which pub­lished a report that found 17.9 per­cent inter­net users share videos with their social net­works more than once a week. Accord­ing to Unruly, these “super-shar­ers” account for 82.4 per­cent of all video shares.

How do you iden­ti­fy the “super-shar­ers” in your audi­ence?

Well, they are very like­ly to have a Google account, which gives them access to many YouTube fea­tures, includ­ing the abil­i­ty to “Like” your video and “Sub­scribe” to your chan­nel. They are also very like­ly to have used their Google account to cre­ate a YouTube chan­nel, which enables them to leave com­ments. In oth­er words, these “super-shar­ers” are very like­ly to be ful­ly vest­ed mem­bers of the YouTube com­mu­ni­ty.

Com­mu­ni­ties will hap­pen with or with­out you on YouTube. So, make sure that you’re the one lead­ing the dis­cus­sion in a fruit­ful direc­tion in order to build a com­mu­ni­ty around your con­tent.

• Devel­op rela­tion­ships with top con­trib­u­tors:
  • Respond to fre­quent com­menters, and share insid­er news and updates with them.
  • Respond to com­ments in the first few hours after you pub­lish a video because these com­menters are your most loy­al fans.
• Rec­og­nize your com­mu­ni­ty:
  • Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, include your com­mu­ni­ty in your videos.
  • Give them shout-outs by name.
  • Read their com­ments for the audi­ence.
  • Offer fan mer­chan­dise or exclu­sive con­tent shared through unlist­ed videos.
• Engage your com­mu­ni­ty on and off YouTube:
  • Do some research on which social plat­forms is your com­mu­ni­ty using and jump into the con­ver­sa­tion on those net­works.

The Unruly report on “super shar­ers” also showed that the video ecosys­tem has frag­ment­ed. While the major­i­ty of video shares (59.4 per­cent) world­wide take place on Face­book, view­ers share across a mul­ti­tude of plat­forms, includ­ing Twit­ter (13.8 per­cent), Google+ (9.3 per­cent), Tum­blr (5.7 per­cent) and Pin­ter­est (3.9 per­cent). So, use mul­ti­ple social media plat­forms to find and engage your audi­ence.

Final­ly, share your con­tent with rel­e­vant blogs and web­sites, as well as embed it in your press releas­es. A lot of view­ers encounter videos on oth­er sites, and web­sites and blogs are always look­ing for great con­tent to fea­ture. Make it easy for them! Reach out with your most bril­liant videos.

• Get the word out:
  • Cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive list of sites, blogs, online influ­encers and niche online com­mu­ni­ties that are rel­e­vant to your con­tent.
  • Pitch new videos to your blog roll. Be strate­gic: Top­i­cal con­tent is typ­i­cal­ly most attrac­tive to these sites.
  • If you’ve cre­at­ed a video playlist for a tent-pole event, share it with blogs, who often want groups of videos about trend­ing top­ics.
• Build rela­tion­ships:
  • Use the traf­fic sources and play­back loca­tion reports in YouTube Ana­lyt­ics to find sites that are dri­ving high lev­els of engaged views.
  • Share new videos with those sites and blogs first, and let them know they’re get­ting the inside scoop.
  • Build rela­tion­ships with blog edi­tors. Thank them when they repost and only share videos that you hon­est­ly think they’d want to share with their audi­ence.
• Track your brand:
  • Know where peo­ple are talk­ing about you. Set Google Alerts for your chan­nel name, show names, char­ac­ter names and any oth­er key­words spe­cif­ic to your chan­nel.

For exam­ple, Yell, the inter­na­tion­al direc­to­ries busi­ness, hired my firm back in March 2009 to help pro­mote the launch of stand­alone TV ads for its UK ser­vice based on the sig­na­ture tune of cult Inter­net car­toon char­ac­ter Mag­i­cal Trevor. Mag­i­cal Trevor is the cre­ation of ani­ma­tor Jon­ti “Wee­bl” Pick­er­ing, whose dis­tinc­tive style and ani­mat­ed char­ac­ters have a world­wide fol­low­ing on the Inter­net. The com­mer­cial was pro­duced through Tomboy Films, which rep­re­sents Jonti’s work for com­mer­cials.

Yell’s pub­lic rela­tions depart­ment han­dled the tra­di­tion­al media rela­tions and gen­er­at­ed sto­ries in Mar­ket­ing Week, Mad.co.uk, and Mar­ket­ing. The TV cam­paign, devel­oped by cre­ative com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Rapi­er, broke on March 20 and ran for a month, with two 10-sec­ond vari­ants run­ning for a fur­ther two months to the end of May across major ter­res­tri­al, satel­lite, and cable chan­nels. It was sup­port­ed by 40-sec­ond radio ads. There was also a cam­paign page where vis­i­tors could see the ads, down­load a ring­tone of the theme tune, and par­tic­i­pate in a fun poll gaug­ing whether they love or hate the ad. Final­ly, it includ­ed eight videos on Yell’s 118247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en chan­nel on YouTube.

My firm embed­ded “Yell 118 247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en TV ad by Wee­bl,” the 30-sec­ond TV ad, into an opti­mized press release, which was dis­trib­uted March 22 on PRWeb.

We also used PRWeb’s Tweet­It fea­ture to auto­mat­i­cal­ly share the press release through Twit­ter at the same time it was dis­trib­uted through PRWeb. We also con­duct­ed a blog out­reach and social media mar­ket­ing cam­paign. “Yell 118 247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en TV ad by Wee­bl” end­ed up being embed­ded in blogs like Funkadel­ic Adver­tis­ing, C64Glen, Wel­come to my night­mare, and Your Face is an Advert on March 22, 2009, and it was embed­ded in the Scram­bled eggs and mashed bananas blog two days lat­er.

As of April 30, 2009, “Yell 118 247 Direc­to­ry Heav­en TV ad by Wee­bl,” had more than 220,000 views. (It now has almost 329,000 views.)

On April 16, 2009, Camille Alar­con of Mar­ket­ing Week report­ed, “Yell, the inter­na­tion­al direc­to­ries busi­ness, is extend­ing the adver­tis­ing cam­paign for its direc­to­ry enquiries ser­vice 118 24 7, after record­ing a 70 per­cent increase in call vol­umes to its UK call cen­tres.”

Are you ampli­fy­ing your brand’s video con­tent with social media? What results are you see­ing?