What Is Video Syndication?
Video syndication involves sharing video content across various platforms, websites, or channels, extending beyond its initial location. Rather than hosting your video exclusively on one platform (like your website or YouTube channel), video syndication ensures your content is available across popular streaming services, social media networks, blogs, and third-party publisher sites.
For example, a brand might upload a video to YouTube, then syndicate it across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and video ad networks. This ensures the content reaches a broader audience, reduces dependency on a single platform, and drives engagement across multiple channels.
Who Uses Video Syndication?
Video syndication is common among:
- Content creators looking to increase their video views.
- Marketing agencies aiming to amplify brand visibility.
- Media outlets and publishers seeking diverse distribution channels for advertisements or promotional content.
How Does Video Syndication Work?
The process of video syndication involves strategically distributing your video to relevant platforms or networks. Here’s how it typically works:
1. Create High-Quality Content
The foundation of effective syndication is high-quality, engaging video content. Without good content, syndication won’t yield results. Aim for videos that are visually appealing, informative, and relevant to your target audience.
2. Choose Syndication Platforms
Identify the platforms that are most relevant to your audience. These could include social media channels (like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok), specialist video networks (such as Vimeo or DailyMotion), and third-party publishers like blogs or news sites.
3. Distribute Content
Upload or share your video across these platforms. This can be done manually or via syndication services that automate the distribution process. Some syndication services even optimize content for different platforms, adjusting dimensions, title tags, or descriptions to fit platform-specific rules.
4. Track Performance
Monitor the performance of your syndicated content across all platforms. Using tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, or syndication dashboards, you can measure engagement metrics (like views, clicks, shares, and conversions). Then, adjust your strategy based on the data.
Why Do You Need Video Syndication?
Expand Audience Reach
Your audience may not all be active on the same platform. Some might prefer Instagram’s short-form content, while others spend hours on YouTube or LinkedIn. Video syndication ensures you meet your viewers wherever they are, boosting your overall reach.
Enhance Brand Visibility
Distributing videos across multiple channels adds consistency to your online presence, helping build brand recognition. With viewers seeing your videos on various platforms, they’re more likely to remember and engage with your brand.
Diversify Traffic Sources
If you rely on a single platform like YouTube for views, the platform’s changes in algorithms can significantly impact your video’s performance. Syndication spreads your content across multiple platforms, reducing your dependency on just one channel or platform.
Generate Engagement
By syndicating videos, you increase the chances of engaging with different audience segments on different platforms. Each platform offers unique interaction opportunities, such as liking, commenting, sharing, or even conversions.
Advantages and Drawbacks of Video Syndication
Advantages of Video Syndication
- Greater Reach: By distributing videos across a variety of platforms, you expose your content to a diverse audience that may not have found your original source.
- Improved SEO: Syndicated content enhances your online visibility. More backlinks to your video can potentially improve your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, making it easier for new audiences to find your content online.
- Better Engagement Across Channels: Targeted syndication ensures you’re reaching audiences where they prefer spending time, leading to more meaningful engagement. For example, you can capture casual viewers on TikTok and acquire professional audiences via LinkedIn.
- Increased Revenue Opportunities: Brands often monetize syndicated videos through ad revenue or partnership opportunities across various platforms. The more views your video gains across channels, the more potential revenue streams emerge.
Drawbacks of Video Syndication
- Loss of Exclusivity: Posting your video across multiple platforms dilutes its exclusivity, which may make it harder to build a loyal audience on a single channel.
- Content Duplication Risks: Search engines might penalize syndicated videos if they deem them as duplicate content. To avoid this, syndication must be managed carefully with original titles and tags for each platform.
- Time-Intensive: While syndication amplifies reach, it requires considerable effort in terms of formatting videos to meet different platform requirements, optimizing for SEO, and monitoring performance.
- Cost for Syndication Tools: Automating syndication across platforms often comes with licensing fees for tools or services that streamline the process. Smaller brands or creators may run into budgetary constraints.
Last Thoughts
In an era where video content dominates digital marketing, video syndication has become a necessity for brands looking to maximize their reach and engagement. It allows companies to distribute content to a broader audience, drive engagement across multiple platforms, and diversify traffic sources.
However, while video syndication has clear advantages in terms of exposure, engagement, and monetization, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. It requires careful planning to avoid issues like duplicate content penalties, platform-specific formatting, and loss of exclusivity.
