Many sellers on Amazon are interested in the prospect of building a lasting brand. Part of that process is engaging with customers, and what better way to do just that than by providing them with enriching video content?

In fact, it is likely Amazon brand owners would engage much more with customers if only the platform allowed it. However, as it stands, sellers are not allowed the real email addresses of their buyers, phone numbers of their buyers and cannot even include links to any website outside of Amazon in their communications (which all must take place within Amazon’s messaging system).

So, if Amazon doesn’t allow external links, how do you include video content?

The answer is simple; by keeping all links inside of Amazon.

Setting Up S3 Content

Below is the step-by-step process of uploading your media content (video, infographics, whatever media you like) onto Amazon’s S3 cloud, which will provide for you an Amazon link that will not get scrubbed from messaging system communications.

Step 1. Sign up for Amazon Web Services

Visit www.aws.amazon.com and sign up for a free account. You can use your seller account credentials.

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Step 2. Choose AWS Services

Next you need to look at the services available. You’ll first want to look under “storage” and choose S3.

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Step 3. S3 Bucket

After you’ve chosen to set up S3, next you need to create a file within the S3 storage cloud. This file is called a “bucket.”

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Step 4. Upload Content

When you’ve created the folder, or “bucket,” then you are ready to upload your content into it. You can upload images, audio files, video files or anything you’d like to host on Amazon’s cloud.

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Step 5. Set Permissions

After you have your video content in a bucket, you need to make it accessible to the public. You’ll do this by going to the “Properties” tab and clicking on “Permissions.” Then you’ll add a “Grantee.” Do this by clicking “Add More Permissions.” The Grantee should be “Everyone” and their permissions should be the ability to “Open/Download.” Then click “Save.”

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Step 6. Set Metadata

Next you want to go to the “Meta Data” tab, click “Add More Meta-Data” then input the “Key” as “Content-Type.” After that set the “Value” to “Video/mp4.”

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Step 7. Cloudfront Service

Next, go back to services and look under “Networking and Content Delivery” and click on “Cloudfront.” From here you will “Create a Distribution.”

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Step 8. Delivery Type

Next, you’ll set the Delivery Method to “Web” by clicking “Get Started.”

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Step 9. Origins Settings

All of the information set up by default will be fine, except for the “Origins” details. You’ll assign the “Origin Domain” to the bucket you created. This will be available through drop down options. Once you click on your bucket, the remaining origins details will auto-fill with path and ID information.

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Step 10. Grab Your Link

You’re all set up. When you click on your Cloudfront distribution, on the first tab you’ll see a domain name. That domain name followed by a forward slash ( / ) and the name of the file inside your bucket (intro-video.mp4) is the link you’ll use in your followup sequence.

Example: http://dcb26bvjh1v29.cloudfront.net/cool-intro-video.mp4 (Cloudfront Domain – forward slash – file name inside bucket).

You can put as many media files as you like in a bucket and link a Cloudfront distribution to that bucket. Then use that cloudfront domain to point to any file. This gives you the ability to host images, audio and video files and serve them to your customers through the Amazon messaging system.