Downloading and Sharing Your Video
You planned a video shoot, sat down for an interview, reviewed a couple of drafts, and approved your final video. You’ve got a great video, but now what? Here’s a step-by-step guide for downloading and sharing your video to get it in front of your fans and followers.
Step One: Downloading
The first thing you need to do when you receive the final copy of your video is download it to your own computer or server.
You may wonder, “Why do I need to download it? Can’t I just share the Vimeo link you sent me on my Facebook?” While technically you can, it’s not a good idea. Social media sites like Facebook prioritize their native content over content linking to external websites. Meaning they want to keep you scrolling on Facebook as long as possible, instead of providing you a link to another site where you could click away and end your time on their site. By downloading your video first, you can then upload it directly to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube so that the video lives on your pages, and the social media algorithms will show it to your followers. You’ll either receive a Vimeo or Google Drive link to view and download your project, and you’ll be able to download from either of those sites.
Make sure you select the largest file size when downloading from Vimeo, to maintain the quality and clarity of the video. Selecting a smaller file size may seem like a good idea to save space or time on the download, but it will pixelate your video and make it look blurry and choppy when you put it online on other sites.
Step Two: Uploading
The next step is to upload your video wherever you want to share it. You’ll want to upload it directly to each individual site you’d like to share it on. Uploading to Facebook/Instagram will sometimes give you the option to share it to your other account too, and that is fine. Facebook and Instagram are owned by the same company, and their content is shared across platforms seamlessly.
If you want to share this video on your website, it’s best to upload it to YouTube first. It’s much easier to embed the YouTube video onto your site instead of directly uploading it onto your website. Video files can be large, and most website hosting platforms don’t give you a lot of storage space to hold a lot of video files, so embedding a YouTube link is usually easier. Once your video is on YouTube, it’s also really easy to embed it in emails too, so you can send out a message to your mailing list with the new video!
Step Three: Sharing
Once you have your video, you need to share it! Craft yourself a nice text post to share with your video. You can talk about the experience of making the video, give a little context to what the viewer is about to see, or shout out @mollymickleymedia for working with you to make such a great video! Make sure there is some text with your video. Videos with text tend to perform better than videos posted with no information or context. Next, just post your video! Make sure to reply to comments on the video, and encourage other people to respond and share it. You can also pin your video to the top of your profile on most social media sites, then whenever someone clicks to your page, the first thing they see is your video. You spent a lot of time and money on this video, so you want to make sure it’s seen! Don’t be afraid to reshare the video every couple of months to keep it fresh in people’s feeds. You can also run the video as an ad on social media if you’d like to target a specific audience with your video!
And that’s it! A simple guide to help you get your video online and in front of your audience. Here are a few ideas on getting the most out of your video project, and some ideas for your next video project.