So you appeared on a TV news show. Reporters wrapped their stories around your carefully crafted sound bites. You were an instant hit. A hit at home. A hit at the neighborhood shopping mall. A hit at your email in-box. In this new age of social media, your 15 minutes of fame could well last a long time. This is PR like never before. Your TV news clip is a third-party endorsement that will help elevate your credibility. The power of social media can take that video clip to incredible heights.
- First, you must secure the TV news segment in which you appeared. News video-monitoring services provide clean-quality video clips at a cost of about $100. The clip can include the “show open,” which includes the name of the news show and perhaps the names and faces of the news anchors or show hosts. A news anchor may have introduced the reporter’s story that included your sound bites. The average report lasts about a minute and a half. There may also be an on-camera anchor tag that sums up the reporter’s story in about 10 seconds. The final product is about 2 minutes long.
- The video-monitoring service will email you the completed video clip in a friendly, downloadable format. Sharing your video is easy. It’s a good idea to immediately share your clip while the story topic is hot.
- Your website is a must for parking your video clip. The homepage is a great place to embed the clip. You might add it to your profile page. Be sure to include a few sentences explaining the topic of the clip and your involvement.
- YouTube is still king. It’s free, popular and simple to set up. Descriptive text and tags are very important, so make sure you describe the video in a way that entices potential viewers. Take a few minutes to learn the various features YouTube offers. They make it easy. Real easy. Take advantage of one of the greatest innovations of our lifetime.
- Search for video-sharing sites. See what’s popular out there. New video-sharing sites are being developed all the time. A little navigating may take you and your video a long way.
LinkedIn. It’s difficult to think of Facebook as an also-ran, but here we go: A recent study by Performics reveals that 59 percent of those who use social-networking sites such as Facebook say their most important social-networking account is the one they have on LinkedIn. Last year, only 41 percent chose LinkedIn as their most important account. It’s a nice vindication for LinkedIn, which until its public offering was often perceived as the dull, corporate-minded sibling of more entertaining sites such as Facebook.
- While on the topic of Facebook, your video news clip should find a home on your Facebook page. We’re told that video shared on Facebook performs better than video watched elsewhere – that Facebook users are more engaged and tend to watch more (if not all) of the video clip. One of the more exciting Facebook features introduced recently was the ability for third parties to publish and play back video content directly within their Newsfeed, allowing individuals to watch videos from all over the Internet without ever leaving Facebook.
- Blogs also are a great place to place your news video clip. You can certainly use your blog to further discuss the topic of your news clip. Your blog can be linked directly to your website profile. In fact, your YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts all can be linked to your website.
It’s really no surprise at all that there is a direct relationship between social media referrals and viewer engagement. Social networks give us access to content that we may not find elsewhere. Users prefer content that was suggested by those they know well. This is the definition of viral video marketing. Create good solid content and it will spread, by word of virtual mouth.
