Titles and tags in clips: how to manage them
To be able to sell your clips on stock footage platforms, you’ll need to carry out a series of tasks to be better than your competitors and to be more successful.
This means that it is not enough to create a good product and choose subjects that interest the public: you also need to be visible.
To succeed in this goal, it is essential to ensure that your clips are indexed so they can be found by potential buyers when they search through stock.
Headlines, tags and thumbnails: what are they?
The titles are the textual description of what is shown in the video. Depending on the platform, titles may have a maximum character length: it is very important to make the most of all the available characters by entering one or more keywords that allow the video to be found. But that’s not all: the title must be exhaustive and appropriately describe what it represents. Titles are also evaluated by the platform onto which the clips are loaded: repetitions or incorrectly written texts could be a reason for the platform to recall them.
The difference between commercial video and editorial video titles
Commercially-licensed videos are clips that the buyer may use for commercial purposes, i.e. for the sale of products, advertising, etc.
On the other hand, editorially-licensed videos cannot be used for sales, but can be posted on information blogs, sites, etc.
When creating a title for an editorially-licensed video, there are some differences in setting it up, so that those browsing the platform can understand at a glance that it is for a different purpose: in particular, for editorial videos the date and place of recording must be entered.
The importance of tags
Stock footage platforms have an internal search engine that allows users to search the topics that interest them.
Just as with search engines such as Google, those of sales platforms also work through the use of keywords. Consequently, when a clip is uploaded to the platform, it must be assigned one or more keywords using tags, so that the clip can be found.
If the keyword is missing or incorrect, the clip becomes almost untraceable, with obvious consequences.
However, attributing a tag is much less trivial than you might think: the keyword must not only describe what is shown in the scene, but also has the function of expressing all the concepts that the clip can represent.
Generally, in fact, those performing a search on platforms often use keywords related to concepts rather than descriptions: if only descriptive tags have been attributed to a clip, the risk is that it will not be found and the potential client will be lost.
Thumbnails: what they are and how to use them
When a video is uploaded to a platform, it is shown to the potential customer via a preview, called a thumbnail.
When you upload a clip, you will be able to choose which frame from your video to show to the public: if that single image is able to effectively convey the essence of the video and capture the visitor’s attention, then they are more likely to linger, watch the whole clip, and eventually buy it. Otherwise they’ll move on.
This shows that even the choice of thumbnail should be carefully considered: together with the title and tags, it may or may not decide the success of a clip.
How clip indexing works on platforms
Exactly as with Google’s Serp, indexing is also important on stock footage platforms in order to have better chances to be visible and, therefore, to sell.
If your clip is not well positioned, it is highly unlikely to sell.
Many people wonder what the criteria are for indexing a clip. There are two basic factors that determine its positioning on the pages:
The number of sales;
The number of clips or times it is added to cart.
As a result, the more interesting a clip is to the audience, the higher it will rise in terms of indexing. For this to happen, it is therefore essential to add titles, tags and thumbnails effectively: only then will it be possible to start gaining consensus and climbing the index.
Learning how to insert titles and tags
Adding titles, tags and thumbnails is a delicate operation that may or may not determine if a clip sells or not. If a very good product has been created but does not sell, it is worth understanding if errors were made at this stage and what they were.
In our video course, we will talk about titles, tags, keywords and thumbnails:
what the tools to generate tags are;
what the most useful keywords for sales are;
how to copy titles and tags on all platforms without having to repeat the work several times.
