Social marketing has, since its beginnings, been integrated with most forms of digital marketing that is currently used. Included in this integration is video marketing, as the sharing of videos has become a crucial aspect in gaining views and ultimately site traffic or purchases. The social act of sharing is usually not in the hands of the marketer, but of course there is much that can be done to encourage internet users to do so. Now, it appears that marketers have been doing just that, and it is especially true for mobile video. Mobile video sharing is up, and it is up by quite a bit.
According to eMarketer and the IAB, a majority of those who view videos on mobile devices are inclined to then share the videos that they have viewed. In the IAB’s survey of 200 mobile video viewers, about 92% said that they do indeed share video content with other internet users, which of course only leaves 8% of mobile video viewers that never share video content.
Of these 92% of mobile video viewers that also share video content, 56% stated that their most used method for sharing this video content was through Facebook posts, or other social media. Then, 44% said that the most popular method was to simply show others video on their own devices. After that, 37% stated that sending a video through a text message was a favorite way to share. For email sharing, about 33% said that they like to share video in this way.
What surprised me is that only 30% of video sharers said that they preferred to share video via YouTube, being that it is the most popular video streaming website on the web. However, what is possibly more surprising is that even with the immense traffic and popularity of Twitter, only 12% of video sharers preferred a Tweet as a sharing method.
Even more good news; these video sharers are sharing video content quite frequently. With 16% who share on a daily basis, another 33% who share video on a weekly basis, and another 16% who do so monthly, that makes up close to two thirds of video content sharers that are sharing videos with others on the web at least monthly.
In their article, eMarketer details which types of videos are seeing the most shares, and which are not.
“The most commonly shared type of mobile video, unsurprisingly, is the kind of short and funny clip designed to be passed around—66% of respondents said they shared videos of this type, followed by music videos (52%) and movie trailers (35%). Personal content also had a sizeable role to play in users’ sharing habits—31% said they share content created by themselves or someone known to them. Among the least popular items to share were longer, more complex pieces such as movies and TV shows, suggesting that mobile sharing, like mobile viewing, still skews toward bite-sized content.”
