Developing a Social Video Strategy — WistiaFest 2015

Phil Nottingham, Video Strategist at Distilled and whiskey enthusiast, works with companies to fix their problems with video marketing, helping them define their creative and technical approach.

Nottingham answered the top five questions he is asked about social video:

1. Why has my campaign failed?
2. Should I upload my Wistia-hosted videos to YouTube or Vimeo?
3. Which social platforms should I care about and why?
4. What should I be trying to achieve?
5. How can I measure success?

Tackling the first question, he dissected why the normal approach to video marketing campaigns is not working. There’s more to a successful campaign than coming up with an entertaining idea for a video, producing it, uploading to all channels, and judging success based on number of views and shares. Two types of videos you should think about are contextually broad and contextually specific, which relate to social video and on-site video, respectively.

Nottingham advised not to upload Wistia-hosted videos to YouTube or Vimeo because syndication will cannibalize organic search as well as split view counts and shares. Instead, take a platform first approach instead of a content first approach. This is how you’ll be able to make better, more focused content!

“Take a platform first approach instead of a content first approach.”

In 2015, platforms worth investing in included YouTube and Facebook. Nottingham said for some businesses, Instragram, Twitter, Meerkat, Periscope, and Snapchat may be valuable, but came with content restrictions.

According to Nottingham, all social video is fundamentally about building your brand and getting engagement. To get the right kind of attention, understand your position in the market. He presents a graph to identify challenger and established brands in dynamic and stable markets.

For measuring your success, you can find your engaged action rate and predict how likely your video is going to be shared by running your own social motivation survey.

Watch Nottingham’s presentation to hear his full responses and learn more about how to develop a social video strategy.