Online video content is booming these days, with an estimated 32% of firms now relying on video as a primary form of promotion. With the popularity of sites like YouTube and Vimeo growing by the day (YouTube is already the world’s second-biggest search engine, just behind sister company Google), there’s little doubt video will continue to play an increasingly important part in the overall online experience.
Indeed, it’s widely accepted among industry experts that video remains the most engaging media format online – particularly across social media channels.
YouTube’s astonishing growth statistics
YouTube serves more than 1 billion hours of video to an estimated 30 million active users every day and reports more than 500 hours of newly-produced video are uploaded to its service every minute (yes, you read that correctly – every minute).
However, while these figures are beyond impressive, the constant growth of media online is now presenting its own unique challenges to content producers – namely, just how do you make your videos stand out when there’s already so much other media available?
Attracting views and monetizing accounts
If you’re just a hobbyist producer, the stats above probably won’t bother you too much. However, if your business relies on video to any extent for its marketing and promotion, constantly finding low view counts can be both demoralizing and soul-destroying.
Moreover, if you’re looking to monetize your YouTube channel and start earning from your videos, the platform insists you have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch time hours over the last 12 months to join its YouTube Partner Program (YPP) – making it vitally important that you find ways to generate views and subscriptions.
Facebook’s video environment is equally competitive
Most web marketing and social media experts suggest it’s considerably easier to build a following on Facebook due to its mixed content of images, text, and video – but that doesn’t mean it’s any less competitive in terms of finding ways to persuade users to watch your videos. As Facebook increasingly tries to become all things to all people, it too has experienced meteoric growth in the popularity of its video content:
- 500 million viewers per day watch 100 million hours of video content
- There are over 4 billion videos each day on the Facebook platform
- 85% of Facebook videos are watched with the sound off
Tips for content producers to increase their viewing stats
While it can often seem a daunting process trying to increase the views of your videos, there are some things you can do as a content producer to promote your material better:
Have your audio transcribed: As mentioned above, an estimated 85% of Facebook videos are watched with the sound off, so including a transcription or subtitles is highly recommended. Also, using a service like voice transcription by Verbit will mean you can include the transcribed text in your video description, making it much more likely to rank higher in searches.
With YouTube videos, be sure to design your own video thumbnail image: The thumbnail picture is often the first thing people see when scrolling through YouTube videos, so you must use a design that stands out and features a text description of your content.
Remember the importance of posting at the right time of day: All social channels have higher engagement rates at different times of the day, so be sure to check when’s best to post your content online to get the greatest exposure.
As the internet becomes more inundated with content, finding content or even our content being found can be incredibly hard. From algorithms to keywords, it’s a nightmare to get seen or find what we are looking for.