9 Essential Video Digital Marketing Tools And Tactics To Master in 2017

9 Essential Digital Marketing Tools And Tactics To Master

Whether you’re a video blogger or a full blown digital marketing agency, you need to know the digital marketing tools of the trade for video.  It’s more than just a camera and shooting video … or is it.   Yes, there’s a lot of tools for video production that can bog you down, but here’s the down and dirty essentials I think every digital marketer or vlogger needs.

The Camera

Obviously you need a camera, so this doesn’t count as one of our digital marketing tools for you (good thing we have alot more). There’s several good ones and instead of referencing one, get one and start using it.  

9 Essential Digital Marketing Tools And Tactics To Master

In fact, that’s a secret to a productive life – the best tool is the one you use.   In many applications your phone may be best.  Not because the quality is good but rather because of your familiarity with it.  In addition, there’s an authenticity that comes through when you use your phone.    I have a client that uses his iphone for all the video we shoot.  We use a Canon T3i for any of his paid content.

There’s two tricks that will take you light-years ahead of your most basic competition:

  1. Get a tripod – especially for phone users.  It’s more likely that you will have a tripod if you’re using an expensive camera but don’t forget to use it.
  2. Get A Mic – a good external mic is worth it’s weight (that’s not saying much they don’t weigh that much).   I use a Audio Technica ATR2100 for our podcast at under $100 I’ve found this is good enough for the quality I want.  If you want a good lapel mic I recommend the Under $20 bucks, Movo LV1 Lavalier Lapel Clip-on Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone.

1.  Editing Software – Your Main Digital Marketing Tools

Digital Marketing Tool - Adobe PremiereMy personal preference is Adobe Premier BUT that’s only because I’m a PC guy. Adobe is AMAZING for longer videos, producing high quality video.   In addition, Adobe has a fantastic app that will allow you to edit on your phone.  Final Cut Pro is what most readers will want. The ability to rapidly edit and export is so much better than Adobe. Short version – if you’re shooting a tv show or commercial – Adobe is the way to go, if you’re doing a weekly vlog – Final Cut Pro.

Bonus Digital Marketing Tool:   Apps For Video Digital Marketing

I mentioned adobe has a great app for editing, however, there is one app out there that is my definition of the gold standard for editing on a phone, that’s Filmicpro.  For $10 you can edit videos on your phone in ways that would normally bog a computer down.  You can control resolution, aspect ratio, the audio, frame rate, image quality, lighting, and coloring/hue. From there it allows you to share it on most social media platforms.

2.  A Video Host

When people think about digital marketing tools, they usually don’t think about this, but where are you going to store these videos. Youtube is by far the easiest and usually best choice. Vimeo is a great option if you’re trying to give a certain personality to the video (churches use this a lot.  Which is ironic since there is a better chance of stumbling onto adult content on vimeo vs youtube). If you aren’t going that route then you need a dedicated media host, it’s likely your hosting package isn’t going to cut it when you’re uploading 100 GB worth of media. I recommend Wistia, it was built to give you analytics on everything video. Wistia particularly helps you if want to know what specific part of your video was the best in terms of engagement.

3. Tubebuddy

digital marketing tools - tubebuddyHands down, one of my favorite digital marketing tools.  If you are doing video marketing, chances are you will need to use Youtube.  Even if you host your content on another platform, Youtube is too big to ignore.  It’s the 2nd largest search engine on the planet!  Tubebuddy is one of the most useful tools for a marketer on youtube to know what the heck is going on. It gives you analytics and yes you can get geeky but it also gives you a ton of options for the less nerdy. Picking thumbnails and creating your own – adding tags you never thought of. The free account gives you so much – you’ll end up wanting to pay for the premium version.

4.  CMS (Content Management System)

A CMS isn’t a digital marketing tool, it’s a platform to actually market this video.  For the uninitiated, a CMS is simply a word for the “system” that controls your web presence.  Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, …  even Tumblr are all types of CMSs.  You have to think – how will people find you?  It’s not just about your domain name, it’s the digital marekting tool you’ll use the most often.  Wordpress is a easy recommendation because of all the plugins available. This works very well in conjunction with Youtube and is easy to set up.

5. Canva (or Gravit)

Digital Marketing ToolsCanva is pretty amazing at cranking out images with great text and design. You’ll want to create a custom thumbnail for youtube and others and Canva gives you so many awesome options and it’s free.  Canva is a great all around tool to have in your marketing tool kit.  From shareable images on instagram to creating your facebook covers, this tool delivers.   One key note, there’s no vector based editing, so if you want some great curves you’ll have to look at:

Gravit

Gravit is an amazing online tool and reminds me of a lite version of Adobe Illustrator.  No where near as feature rich but it gets the job done.  All the things you wish you could do with Canva you can do with Gravit.

What’s even better is that both of these tools are free!  While I’m at it another great resource is Unsplash, where I got the featured image.  (Credit Photo by Lilly Rum on Unsplash)

6.  Vine (ok, not really a part of the digital marketing tools list)

Snippet Videos – longer than gifs but not a full video are part of your digital marketing tools and tactics.  Vine I think was the very first to do the small snippet videos that are very popular on Instagram and Snapchat. Musical.ly and the Itunes App Nutshell (not to be confused with the Nutshell CRM) is another one that is great for this.

(Curious how this was embedded?  It’s one of our 7 Must Have WordPress Plugins!)

This digital marketing tactis is where you basically make an interesting video to promote your brand but I suggest using it to promote your videos. This could be an outtake video or just part of the best content. So, serioulsy don’t use vine but embrace the 10 to 30 second spots. If they are good you can use it as a youtube ad.  You will use these snippet videos on Facebook, Twitter, and instagram to promote your content.

7. Upwork

My suggestion here is to hire a virtual assistant to watch the video and to ask them to transcribe it but in a conversational way so that you can reuse it in your aforementioned blog (wordpress). You can do this yourself as well.  This is great for show notes or downloadable things in the future.  In general, small bite-sized tasks can and should be off-loaded to Odesk or similar services.   While we’re talking about these services, it’s worth a word of caution about Fiverr.  I like the concept and there’s some great fiverr sellers, however, in general you don’t want to use this service for SEO, linkbuilding and the like.

8. Libsyn

I love to repurpose content (it’s an essential digital marketing tactic- so take the audio from the video and launch a podcast. Libsyn is likely the largest host for podcasts on the planet.  It stores your data and allows you to feed it to itunes and other services like soundcloud and stitcher.  If you’re going to make videos with talking parts, you should repurpose it for a podcast.

9. Facebook Live (and LinkedIn too!)

I highly recommend recording some live video of… well you recording. Live video is quickly becoming a major digital marketing tool! This is a marketing blog so the idea is to market your product (which is content).  When we launched the 4rd Marketing Podcast I did live videos for Facebook and LinkedIn.  Currently I get roughly 20 or people interacting with my posts on my personal content (not much right! – maybe I need some new friends).  When I did the live video this jumped to 300 people on both.  I’m still getting likes and comments on my linkedin video!

Digital Marketing Tools and Tactics Roundup

For some of you more advanced digital marketers these may seem basic, but I am surprised at the number of video bloggers that totally nail this part of the a job that frankly, we as digital marketers should be the master of.

What do you think?  What tool should I add to this list?

Joshua Jarvis

Joshua Jarvis

Joshua has started and sold several businesses over 15 years. Recently he left a 15-year career in real estate as a business owner to pursue my dream of writing and helping business owners grow their own dream.

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