Video continues to be a powerful medium to work with online. YouTube recently eclipsed Yahoo as the 2nd largest search engine. Participating in video for the purpose of promoting your business is becoming more important each day.  Whether it’s increasing brand exposure or simply getting across a “how-to” to your customer base, video communicates your message in a unique and lasting way.

In a post about video optimization and analytics last year, we discussed ways to gain more exposure for your videos and find ways to measure the successes of your efforts with YouTube Insight. Here we’d like to dig a big deeper to show that within YouTube Insight you can find where your videos are embedded on other websites, and it’s these websites that present further opportunity for marketing your business and content.

Knowing where your videos have been embedded provides the opportunity to find new, targeted communities and then possibly join or work in those communities where people have adopted your content. This is basically following the lead of your fans, a true “go with the flow” organic approach.

How do we do find where our videos are embedded?

In YouTube Insight go to > Discovery > Source of Views > Embedded Player

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….and then you’ll be able to view the sites where your video has been embedded.

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Oftentimes there will be video sharing websites that have picked up your content, but from time to time you find niche sites and communities that have picked up your video content as well.  Click on those links and you’ll find pretty targeted sites/communities where your content may resonate well in the future and where it may be worth joining to discuss content and share yours in the future.

It’s important to note that sometimes YouTube Insight shows websites where your video may not necessarily be embedded, but where your video received exposure through the “related videos” feature of another embedded video.  Additionally, Insight does not show the actual URL where your video may have been embedded; it only shows the domain name.  Nonetheless, the Embedded Player feature in Insight will provide you with leads on targeted websites.

With the above example of a video about a BMW car, we were able to discover the following new websites:

  • E90post.com,
  • bmwfans.net,
  • bmwtuner.net,
  • e30club.ru

These are very targeted websites covering the area of BMW cars and for BMW enthusiasts to gather.  Prior to working with YouTube Insight, we did not know of these four targeted websites nor did we know that the users would potentially be  interested in this video content.  Now there is an opportunity to “follow the lead” of your content.

There is a lot you can do once you know the websites and communities where your content is shared and adopted. Here are a couple of proactive examples:

  • Find the page where your video is embedded and promote and tag that page in other social sites or link to it from a blog to increase exposure. Try using [site: domainname.com keyword] searches, which can help you locate your video since Insight only shows the domain and not the actual page where your video is.
  • Join the new found website and be transparent about who you are (representing your brand) and become a contributing, helpful and friendly community member so that more users within that community will begin to look back at your site or YouTube account for more video embed opportunities.
  • Reach out to the user who posted the original embed and offer them an opportunity at exclusive video looks in the future, where they may access your content before others to share first.  By befriending and empowering this user, you can begin to build real advocates for your video content.

There are many great software packages and websites to track your social and video campaigns and where your video has been picked up and embedded.  However, if you are running a small, targeted video campaign and you’re focused solely on YouTube as a channel, sometimes finding successes and other “rooms” to build awareness and impressions is as easy as digging through your YouTube Insights panel and checking out the “Embedded Player” feature in Discovery.  It can lead to a lot of great relationships and more exposure for your content.

Here’s a brief video recap of what’s discussed above :-)