Working With Influencers on Brand Video Content

By Nyerr Parham

Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it before. Video is huge and you need to be using it for your company.

You likely already know that YouTube is the worlds #2 search engine – behind Google, of course, but ahead of Bing and Yahoo. As we discuss in our Marketing Through Trust eBook, generating quality search results for your brand, and for non-branded, but relevant, search terms, is pretty important.  It makes perfect sense that some of your search engine results should be videos, and not all written content.

But what if you don’t have the resources to produce your own videos?  That’s actually pretty easy: work with influencers who can create video on your behalf.

Types of Influencer Video for Brands
A few years ago, there was a rush by brands, particularly fashion and beauty brands, to get bloggers to shop at their stores and create “haul” videos, showing off all the products they got for the camera. While these types of videos are great for product-oriented consumer brands, they may not work well for your brand. Here are a few other types of video you can ask an influencer to create for you.

Video product walkthroughs
Particularly good for apps, electronics, complex toys and other products with multiple use steps, product walkthroughs can be really helpful for customers and search results alike.  Influencers who already do video product walkthroughs in your category will have an audience built-in; as long as they disclose their relationship with you, you’ll benefit from their audience and their endorsement.

Storytelling videos
Influencers who are already telling great stories through their videos can also tell stories about your brand or product. Just as you would ask an influencer to write a lifestyle sponsored post (vs. a straight-up product review), you can ask them to create a lifestyle/story-filled video about a topic adjacent to your product.  They should, of course, mention your product (and make sure it’s also in the written video description and keywords, of course).  For example: If you sell luggage, ask your influencer to create a video of a fun or exotic travel experience, showing the suitcase traveling along the way.

How-to videos
You may already have how-to videos in your arsenal, but having influencers create more can only benefit your brand. If you’re a food brand, ask influencers to create video of recipes using your product. If you’re a software brand, ask them to screen capture video showing how they use your software to solve a business problem.  YouTube is frequently searched specifically for the term “how-to” so this is an important category to cover in your video efforts.

Your YouTube or theirs?
One question you may be asking yourself is: should I be trying to get these videos on my brand’s YouTube channel, or is it okay if they’re on the influencer’s channel?  I suggest that the answer is: put them wherever the biggest audience is. If the biggest audience is on the influencer’s channel, that’s where you’ll get the greatest exposure and likely the greatest benefit from search engine discovery. You can then embed the videos from their channel into your company blog and still have that content available to your brand audience.

An important note about compensation and disclosure
Some influencers and bloggers will require compensation for creating video on behalf of a brand, and others will only want to have the product to use in the video.  Be sure you’re aware of the norms for the influencer/blogger category you’re working in, and budget appropriately. Also, ethical influencers will always disclose their relationship with a brand, even if they’ve only been given product to review – and it’s up to you, the brand, to be sure that they do.

So stop stressing over video – simply make it part of your influencer strategy.  And when you do – please share links to your influencer’s videos in the comments.