11 Ways to Grow Your Audience and Get More Eyes on Your Video Series
November 26, 2019
Topic tags
Jenny Coppola
Creative
Building an audience for your video series might feel a little daunting — how do you get people to actually sit down and watch the show you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into creating? The truth is, distributing your series and getting people to pay attention to and talk about it is a huge part of Brand Affinity Marketing. It’s also something you should actively pay close attention to throughout the entire production process. Don’t just worry about promoting your series once the entire series is made — there’s plenty you can do while producing your content to ensure that the right audience is tuning in.
So, whether or not you’re a few episodes deep on your business' first video series, or if you’re just in the ideation stage of the process, check out these suggestions for how to grow your audience over time and get more folks interested in watching your show!
1. Make it easy for your guests to spread the word
You went through all the trouble of sourcing guests, nurturing your relationships with them, and sending contracts back and forth, but you didn’t follow up with them when their episode actually aired. Oh boy, that’s a big no-no! You don’t want to miss the opportunity to engage with your guests and encourage them to spread the word. Make it super easy for them to share the episodes they’re on with their personal networks by giving them exactly what they need to get going with just a few clicks. Here are some suggestions for what you can share:
- Pre-written tweets and posts with short links to their specific episode
- Different cuts of their episode that features them prominently
- Images and other unique media with quotes and headshots of the guest
This is a great way to get more people to watch your content, and the good news is, you can encourage this type of behavior from your guests without coming off as needy or demanding. Be sure to word your communication in a way that lets the guest know that this isn’t mandatory (it’s the truth after all!), but it would be really great if they were able to give it a share on social media, for example. The main takeaway here is to make it so easy to share your series that your guest would be hard-pressed to not want to do it.
“The main takeaway here is to make it so easy to share your series that your guest would be hard-pressed to not want to do it.”
2. Promote your show within your organization
This is another simple marketing tactic that can be easily overlooked when hyping up a video series — promoting your show internally! Sure, you might work closely with the people on your team who are responsible for creating the series themselves, but people across the organization might not be as in-tune with it. Send a team-wide email every time you publish a new episode and be sure to include pre-written tweets and posts (similar to the ones you might share with guests) so your teammates can encourage their own personal networks to tune in. If you have a big projector in your office, you can even screen each new episode during lunch to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to tune in.
Also, be sure to think about who on your team has the biggest audience and personal network. Here at Wistia, our CEO has a pretty decent Twitter following, so whenever we release a new episode of Brandwagon he shares it along with a little friendly tweetstorm (it doesn’t hurt that he’s also the host of the show, but you get the picture!).
If you sense that folks on your team are a little reluctant to share about your series, you can always point out how getting more people to watch the series will help build brand affinity, turning passive viewers into active fans of your business. It’s a win-win for every team!
3. Add your series to your email signature
While we’re talkin' email, your video series can also benefit from being featured in the email signatures of public-facing employees at your business. Adding your show’s logo to your email signature won’t cost your marketing team a dime and the impact it can have on how many people hear of your show can be huge. Here’s an example of an email signature that a lot of folks on our team have right now to promote our talk show for marketers:
Plus, for those folks in sales, it can be a great conversation starter! Just read out to teams at your company like sales, customer support, and human resources and give them what they need to get set up. Hopefully, you’ve noticed a trend by now — make it as easy as possible for people to help spread the word about your video series.
4. Create supporting content to drive further engagement
You’re going to want to order yourself up a nice plate of supporting content when promoting your new video series. One of the best ways to attract new viewers to your long-form content is by getting them in the door with content that already speaks to their interests. For example, a viewer might not only become interested in watching our docu-series One, Ten, One Hundred, after they’ve read a blog post about how to make a beautiful set based on lessons we learned while shooting it. That’s why we recommend creating and promoting other content related to your series — you just never know who might show up to watch your show!
There are a number of angles you can take to creating this content depending on the type of show you’re making. Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing:
- Share an extended interview with a guest
- Dive deeper into a topic you only covered briefly
- Pull and share key takeaways from an entire season
- Take a segment from your show and expand upon it
- Craft thought leadership content based on overarching themes
7. Run a contest or do a fun giveaway
Raise your hand if you’ve ever entered a contest or giveaway on social media. Is your hand raised? I’m (somewhat) embarrassed to say mine definitely is. From t-shirts and socks to stickers and pens, there are tons of different giveaway options out there that you can consider when promoting your series — and they won’t break the bank. Often it’s less about the quality of the prize (no one’s saying you should give away a car, though that would’ve worked well for Brandwagon), but you should offer some sort of prize or incentive for engaging with your content if you can.
For example, we ran a t-shirt giveaway on our Instagram Story where we had folks answer a series of questions related to the content in the most recent episode of our talk show. The first three people to get all the questions right got a free t-shirt — easy peasy! When you send the t-shirt to the lucky winners in the mail, be sure to ask them to post a picture of them with their prize and tag your business in the post. This will help you reach an entirely new audience, and chances are if this contest winner liked your series, some of their friends might too.
8. Engage with the folks who are already watching
Pay attention to the people who are actively engaging with your content, plain and simple. These are your early adopters, the folks you want to find more of so you can grow your audience. Tactically, you can create polls on Twitter to get them to engage with your brand and share countdowns for when new episodes drop on Instagram so they never miss a beat.
Read and reply to their comments, ask them questions about your show, show them gratitude for tuning in, and above all else, be human. Thank them for their feedback and commentary, and then apply these insights when crafting future episodes of your video series. Letting your audience know that they’re making an impact can turn passive viewers into engaged fans, and who doesn’t want that?
9. Turn your video series into a podcast
Now, you might be familiar with podcasts that are recorded (video podcasts), but have you thought about flipping that concept on its head and starting with a video series first? Depending on the type of show you’re creating, you may want to consider turning your series into a binge-worthy podcast so more fans can enjoy your content. This tends to work particularly well for interview-style video series, as a lot of great content often gets left on the cutting room floor in order to keep the video watchable, engaging, and not too long.
Creating a podcast version of your show is also a great way to help get your series discovered — folks in your audience may actually be bigger podcasts-listeners than video-watchers. By turning your series into a podcast, you can meet your audience where they already are, and then ultimately, cross-promote your video series for a deeper, more robust content experience. Remember, though, there are tons and tons of podcasts out there, so you have to make sure your content is actually really good and provides value. In other words, don’t just rip the audio from your episode and slap it on Spotify. Take the time to create a really good podcast that can stand on its own, and then use it as another opportunity to talk about your show. Use your blog to write recaps and synopses of what you covered and include links and relevant time staps directing folks to interesting moments throughout.
“Creating a podcast version of your show is also a great way to help get your series discovered — folks in your audience may actually be bigger podcasts-listeners than video-watchers.”
Here’s an example of a podcast we created called The Brandwagon Interviews that’s based on our newest video series, Brandwagon.
10. Get creative about your content promotion efforts
Don’t be afraid to get creative when it comes to promoting your series. Think outside the box and try new tactics to see what gains traction with your niche audience. Why not make a Spotify playlist that features songs that match the theme of your series? Hang out on Reddit on relevant threads to see what people are talking about as it relates to your series, and if topics or concepts overlap, share an episode there (but make sure you don’t sound too self-promotional or spammy!).
Another way to get creative with your promotion is by finding other video series or podcasts that are targeting a similar audience and trying to get on their show. Many podcasters are already masters of this, which is why you may hear some of your favorite podcast hosts doing the rounds as guests on other podcasts you already listen to. Take advantage of the amazing content you’re investing your time and resources into creating and try to think about how your favorite streaming platforms promote their content. Rip a page out of their book and start promoting your content more creatively with clips, behind-the-scenes content, extras, and more!
11. Market to a lookalike audience based on your niche
Last but not least, you can grow your audience by using your niche audience. After using social listening and customer interviews to uncover your target audience’s passions and interests, which can help you narrow down your niche audience, compile a list of the email addresses of the customers who are in your niche audience. From there, you can create a lookalike audience and advertise your content to them on social media.
A lookalike audience is a group of people who are similar to a source audience, such as your customers or followers. Once you plug your source audience into a social media platform, it’ll create a lookalike audience based on them. Then, you can advertise to your lookalike audience to attract loyal, passionate new audience members to your video series.
In the realm of marketing, lookalike audiences are one of the most effective ways to grow your audience. In 2019, AdEspresso ran an experiment to see whether targeting interest-based audiences or lookalike audiences on Facebook would generate more registrations for a webinar. They spent $500 on each campaign, and at the end of their experiment, lookalike audiences generated more clicks, a higher click-through rate, a lower cost per click, more conversions, and a lower cost per acquisition. It was the clear winner.
If you need help creating a lookalike audience on social media, check out these guides on Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We also recently added a new feature that’s available on Wistia’s Advanced Plan called Custom Audiences that’ll help transform your social advertising, giving you the same ability to build valuable Custom and Lookalike Audiences for ads on Facebook and Instagram, but with viewer data from videos hosted on your own site. Learn more about how this feature creates super-focused ads that will help grow your audience and keep them coming back for more.
Bonus: Don’t forget to let your current customers know
This may sound obvious, but if your content is relevant to your core customer base in some way (which it should be!), send them an email to let them know about your new series. Of course, you don’t want to spam them, so refrain from emailing them over and over about your show. Instead, let them know when and where they can watch your series, and then give them the opportunity to sign up for updates. That way, they can opt-in for further updates and communication about your specific series.
You can also add a notification within your product if you’re a SaaS company, or simply update your website or homepage with a call to action to watch your series. You may feel like you’re doing everything to promote your show on social media, email, and beyond, but remember that not all of your customers might be following your business on social or subscribed for email updates. So what are you waiting for? Start growing your audience and getting more eyes on your content with these eleven tips for promotion!
