How to Boost Your Site Engagement With Videos
Captivating, original content drives site engagement. Video content continues to rise in popularity, with viewers watching over 500 million hours of videos on YouTube each day. Today, web users are embracing video content — and content creators are catching onto video’s viral potential and ability to relay information in an engaging format.
Websites looking to boost their site engagement with videos must decide on several things, such as what types of videos they should publish, in addition to when and where they should post the videos. If you’re interested in learning how to boost your site engagement with videos, consider the following eight tips:
1. Show Your Expertise
It’s simple enough to produce written content.
A video, however, provides more convincing evidence of a site or speaker’s expertise, especially since your tone and confidence comes across as more persuasive than text. Typically, it’s easy to tell whether someone is well-informed or just reading off a teleprompter in a video. For informative videos, a confident presence combined with useful information can lead to a convincing result.
Home staging expert Tori Toth uses video to highlight her expertise, fitting the footage in between informative and relevant text. The video also features “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran, further cementing Toth’s legitimacy.
The page also mentions that Toth is a best-selling author and lifestyle expert, with the video and celebrity addition making it even more than apparent that Toth’s credentials are legitimate, which can help drive engagement and trust.
2. Provide a Transcript
Including a transcript of your video offers multiple benefits. For one, website visitors unable to watch the video have an immediate way to explore the content. If they’re on public transit, for example, and forgot their headphones, watching a video isn’t an option — unless they’re that person. In any case, a transcript can prove beyond useful.
Additionally, a transcript of the video — with placement below it — can have a positive impact on viewers searching for relevant topics. For example, someone searching for how low engagement produces high bounce rates may come across the above video from Denamico because the website includes the video’s transcript.
By listing the content within the video, Denamico caters to everyone, whether they’re partial to video or text, without excluding either audience. Plus, the site offers support for viewers with hearing impairment, making their content even more accessible.
3. Embrace Live Video
A surefire way to showcase expertise and drive engagement is to host live video events, particularly in the form of a tutorial or Q&A session. Facebook Live is an ideal platform if you have an established customer base. It also offers a familiar interface for users, plus provides the chance to connect with and engage site followers, while also cementing your website’s expertise.
Martha Stewart excels at championing her brand with live video. In this example, Stewart and Kevin Sharkey explore her favorite outdoor decorating ideas. During the video, they answer questions from commenting viewers.
So far, the video has thousands of likes and over a half-million views, driving engagement for the Martha Stewart brand and its online presence. Although this live video example is on Facebook, you can link to the video event via your site and embed it within your site’s content.
4. Post the Video During Peak Hours
It’s ideal to post your video content during peak hours, which is evenings on the weekdays. If you’re uploading the video to YouTube, it’s a good idea to upload during weekday afternoons to give the platform time to index the videos and deliver them to subscriber feeds.
Ideally, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday tend to work well. If posting on the weekend, stick to between 9 p.m. and 11 a.m., or risk getting distracted with other weekend responsibilities.
5. Think About Your End Goal
What’s the purpose of the video? Is it to gain new followers? Inspire discussion among readers of the site? Gear your presentation, content and tone to the type of audience and content you have in mind, whether it’s introducing yourself to new viewers or continuing a weekly video series for members already familiar with the format.
6. Keep Production Time in Mind
If you’re new to video content, it’s vital not to tease upcoming content too far in advance. Video production times can vary and include project delays, so it’s best to avoid a specific date for a video release until you’re confident that production’s wrapped — or have a sense of humor to deflect comments about your procrastination, like YouTuber Natalie Tran.
7. Tag the Video
Tags are an excellent way to gain visibility for your social media and website content. On Facebook and Twitter, they can inspire people to find your video. Seek out your competition’s videos to determine which hashtags they’re using to get a feel for smart tagging. Make sure to incorporate some tags outside of what your competitors use, though.
8. Push the Video
Great video content isn’t worth much if nobody can find it. When uploading a video, promote it on social media, newsletters and general word-of-mouth. Provide a screen capture of the video, along with a link, in emails to website subscribers to pique their interest. Connect with online communities as well, like Reddit, to share your video.
No matter your website’s focus, you can use video to boost site engagement. Keep in mind your expertise, audience, end goal and approach to promotion, though, because it’ll help your web content reach new heights in visitor engagement.
Autor
Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.
