I made a random YouTube video some years back that now has millions of views. Thousands of people are asking for a download link.
I was thinking about hosting the file (and maybe a webpage) on my site to drive more traffic to my domain. Since it has nothing to do with my site (social media marketing software), do you think it will help or hurt my SEO ranking?
It's not likely to actively hurt you (unless you were doing some kind of sneaky re-direct/cloak back to the site's main content).
But any links you were to get to that page you decide to build around the video aren't likely to lift your rankings all that much for the keywords you're trying to rank the rest of their site for. Same goes for whatever traffic you'd get at that domain: would any of those same people be interested in social media marketing software? Traffic for traffic's sake is probably counterproductive unless it's qualified.
Are you able to just host the video on a separate domain or a personal domain (yourname.com) that's divorced from the product you're building? If so, that's what I would do.
Cool, thanks for the answer Blair! Exactly what I was looking for.
No problem Ryan! Good luck! :)