Viral Video Marketing

Mobile Video Marketing-How Hot Is It?

Stephanie Shea — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:42:00 GMT

So, let's say you’re a busy marketing executive who's smart, savvy, and always working to keep up on the latest trends. You overhear a conversation in the elevator about “mobile video marketing”. Not wanting to get behind the times, you hurry back to your office to start researching. What the heck is mobile video marketing, you wonder, and how hot is it?

First, it’s important to realize how hot mobile phones are. Around 89% of the total U.S. population has at least one. Second, if mobile phones are hot, then Internet-enabled, a.k.a. smartphones, are blazing. From January to March 2010 alone, 314.7 million phones were sold and 54.3 of those were smartphones. It is predicted that by 2013, more people will connect to the Internet via their mobile phone than with their PC.

With all technology there comes a pivotal point when it becomes evident that life as we know it has been forever changed. For the smartphone, that time is now. Not only is it here to stay, it’s evolving into a tiny handheld computer capable of almost anything its larger counterparts can do, and soon most people won’t want to live without them.

What does all this mean to you? One thing is for sure—the mobile market can’t be ignored. To learn the best way to reach this market, it’s best to see what’s been working and what hasn’t. Below are the three types of mobile media:

• SMS Text – Currently, this is the most widely used method of mobile marketing. SMS text is fast: users usually open, read and share these messages within a few minutes of receipt. Joy Liuzzo, Senior Director, Marketing and Mobile Research at InsightExpress, has researched data showing that nearly all age groups sign up for SMS alerts, which indicates consumer willingness to interact with companies via SMS.

• Internet Ads – According to ReelSEO Video Marketing, studies have shown that there’s a greater likelihood that smartphone users will take action after seeing a mobile ad than other types of ads. ReelSEO cites a recent Google study that reported approximately 71% of smartphone users searched for related content after viewing ads online and offline. However, the downside is that due to screen sizes, mobile Internet ads are hard to see and clutter the screen, which reduces their impact.

• Video – this medium is still relatively new, but early studies have shown its' rapid growth. Almost 24 million US mobile users will be watching videos on their devices at least once a month by the end of the year, as estimated by eMarketer. This represents an increase of nearly 30% more than estimated in 2009. Recently, companies have begun to reach their audiences with video that's embedded into an SMS message, making mobile video marketing one of the most versatile methods.

So, knowing a bit more about the mobile marketing landscape, a perceptive marketing executive like you can now draw a few conclusions about mobile video marketing. SMS text is fast and proven and the potential to multiply its’ impact by incorporating video is promising. Companies like MobileBeyond have experienced successful SMS-transferred mobile video campaigns with clients like Reebok, who reached a 50% CTR (click through rate).

Internet ads are also proven, but with mobile screen sizes, video has the visibility advantage. And video is gaining in popularity. It’s projected there will be 5.6 billion smartphones in the world by 2015, and video will comprise 66% of the content transferred between these phones. So, basically mobile video marketing can take the advantages of SMS text and Internet ads to create the best of all worlds with its versatility, visibility and growing popularity.

The mobile audience is more focused on what they watch, because usually they’re viewing during commutes or spare time. As a result, they’re more likely to notice ads and take action, whether it be completing surveys, requesting information, or purchasing products. Incorporating video into your mobile marketing strategy is a smart way to take advantage of technology that has already laid the groundwork for success.

When you think about it that way, mobile video marketing is pretty hot!

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

5 Ways To Use Video Marketing For Business

Julie Verville — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:30:00 GMT

If you haven't embraced video marketing for business, you're missing the boat! The ‘new’ social consumer seeks interaction with the businesses they frequent. If you are already creating videos- are they enhancing your consumer process? Are they boosting your bottom line?

Review the 5 methods listed below to see how you can enhance your current content marketing campaign.

1. Broadcast- Develop an Online Video Channel
Past sharing videos online, companies that are serious about integrating video marketing into their ongoing customer acquisition strategy develop a video channel, often with their own URL. For example, worship groups often post their services for online viewers, sports team offer live video feeds of the games or matches, companies that provide educational services may offer online classes (i.e. cooking/baking or arts and crafts) and organizations may choose to offer ‘How To’ videos or snippets from key leader presentations for viewers.

2. Host Consumer Video Contests
Videos don’t and shouldn’t need to all be created internally. In fact, some of the most popular online videos were created by every day, ordinary people with a passion for sharing an idea or creation. Host a consumer contest, inviting your network to submit a video for a PR campaign or new product idea. Review submissions and post the winners online.

3. Provide Bite Sized Sound Bites- Encourage Sharing and Interaction
When used in combination with social media, videos offer the ability to add the much needed visual component for your brand. Powerful videos are those that encompass bite sized sound bites, slideshare documents and video covering your PR campaign. Your message should have purpose, should be concise, should be targeted and should be tested.

Have you considered asking your network for feedback on a new logo, new ad campaign or new product launch? Ask for feedback prior to launching a new video for your marketing campaign. Brand conversation will occur only when people engage in conversation with your organization. And conversation will only occur when your viewers find interest and value in the post. Post to your company’s social media sites, encouraging followers and friends to leave comments, post ideas or share the information with their network.

4. Product Videos
According to both the April 2010 Internet Retailer and August 2009 Comscore Reports, product demonstration videos boost online sales as much as 64-85%. Video demonstrations enhance the consumer’s product expectations, also reducing product returns, which can be costly to any business. Product videos can encompass demonstrations, testimonials or reviews from customers, how-to or tutorials and traditional advertisements for a more direct approach.

5. Create Training Sessions- Educate and Inform
Videos don’t just encompass those crazy YouTube videos uploaded daily worldwide; they provide form and function for businesses looking to educate both their employee base and their customer/client base. Podcasts, webinars and product instruction guides used independently or in conjunction with a live presented via teleconference, offer an interactive platform for learning to occur.

Video marketing for business offers more than simply funny posts on YouTube. When leveraged properly, the increase online brand presence, offer unique ways to interact with and engage your current clients and customers and provide information and demonstrations needed to turn prospects into customers.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Video Marketing Content Writing

Brenna Crotty — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:59:00 GMT

No one wants to read a wall of boring, uninterrupted text. To quote from Alice in Wonderland, (who arguably as the shortest attention span and the largest imagination,) "How can one possibly pay attention to a book with no pictures?"

Fortunately for websites trying to sell products and services, the average online viewer watches 14.8 hours of video content per month. Studies also show that people are interested in video because of movement, color and human connection.

If you want to tap into this cheap and easy advertisement cache, though, your video marketing content writing has to hook your audience and convince them to visit your site.

Start off with a bang. While the average person is more likely to watch a video than read a blog, you can count on a significantly shorter attention span. With the printed word, a reader can scroll down until he find a section that catches his eye. WIth a video, though, you have between 10 and 30 seconds to grab your viewer's attention before they move on. Do it with a rhetorical question, a bold claim about your website, or with a randomly improbable song, explosion or cartoon. Make sure that all salient and exciting information about your website is in that initial time slot, or it may never get watched.
Pick your style. You have two choices when trying to hook your audience with video marketing content writing:

1.) Be direct. There's a gap in the market and you're there to fill it. Explain what product or service you're providing and the reason that everyone needs it. With this option you want to be as friendly and knowledgeable as possible. By using a video, you're establishing your voice and face to your service, and that's how it will be remembered. So be memorable.

2.) Show something wild, funny, sexy or exciting that is somewhat related to your service or product. You can make a parody of a recent hit song and change the lyrics to reflect your website, or film it in the format of the latest and greatest in smart phone apps. You'll spend more money in production costs, but if you go viral then you'll get the attention of people who didn't even know they needed your services. Until now.
Tailor your content to viewership results. There are all kinds of online tools that pick up your viewership statistics and arrange them into neat little graphs. Your video marketing content writing should be updated and changed according to the feedback you get. Look at the demographic of people who watched your video. If it was primarily made up of teenage girls and you want to advertise to males ages 18 - 45, you may need to reevaluated your strategy. Also look at how much of the video was watched. If everyone is moving on after only five seconds or so, then change up your intro and make it more exciting.
Implement keywords. Video marketing content writing is all about research, so make sure your video tags are ones that are going to be searched for online by a large demographic. Try to think about the way people phrase inquiries in search engines and then use those and several variations in your tags. Make sure you cover the most ubiquitous questions and keywords in your video. If your website caters mostly to a local area, use the name of surrounding cities as tags; you'll be more likely to be one of the top hits when people search for services in your area.
Shamelessly plug your website. Whether you're directly addressing an inquiry or making an entertaining clip about your services, your audience needs to know who you are. Hopefully, your video is being sent out through multiple video servers instead of just being posted on your website. Have your website URL linked in the keywords and pasted at the bottom of the screen. Mention it during the video and urge people to visit it for more information. This will get you higher traffic and hopefully arouse people's curiosity about your products.

It doesn't matter what product or service you're selling, or even how entertaining you are if you don't have the correct video marketing content writing. Remember that you want as many people as possible to stumble onto your video, become excited or intrigued and find their way to your website. Anything else, even viral fame and appearances on the local news, won't get you the traffic and customers that you need.

5 Video Marketing Mistakes You Must Avoid

Marti Norberg — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:33:00 GMT

Video marketing is a technique used to promote a business, service or product through short videos. These videos are informative, educational and attractive, while at the same time highlighting the item being marketed. It can be a highly effective marketing tool--if you avoid the pitfalls.

Five video marketing mistakes to avoid:

ONE: Don’t forget that video marketing is just that – marketing! Your video should be entertaining, educational or thought-provoking; but most importantly it should market whatever it is you are selling.

Call to Action: Your video is designed to get your marketing message out to as many people as possible. But if your video doesn’t include a call to action, your message is incomplete. You need to clearly let your audience know what you want them to do. Your call to action can be at the end of your video, or it can be spread through out, but you need to be concise and specific. First provide the information in a helpful and genuine manner, then ask your audience to do something for you; make a comment, sign up for your newsletter, buy your product.
Tracking: Consider offering a special promotion within your video. Use a unique code to track when your viewers make a purchase or access additional information. These techniques will help you track the ROI against the cost of your video.
Branding: Incorporate your brand (name, logo, website information, etc.) into your video. You can add a watermark or a small box in one corner with your brand information. However, don’t let this overwhelm the video itself.

TWO: Don’t make your video too long! Statistics provided by YouTube indicate people will watch approximately 3.5 minutes of a video before they get bored and move on to something else. No matter how interesting your video is, your audience is unlikely to watch a long video. The best blogs and online articles tend to be short and to-the-point; your video should be the same. If you have a lot to share, make a series of short videos.

THREE: Don’t upload your video before it has been properly edited! A poorly or improperly edited video will be bad for your business and for your reputation. View your video several times yourself. Determine who your target market is, then show your video to friends, relatives or business associates within that target market. Don’t get into such a hurry to share your video with the world that you miss something important in editing.

FOUR: Don’t forget to be ready to share! Even the world’s greatest video will be ineffective is no one sees it.

Use YouTube: When you create a YouTube account you get a profile (called your channel), friends and followers (subscribers), ratings, favorites, playlists, comments, and a variety of other capabilities. Study the YouTube tutorials and learn all about these marketing methods – then use them for your video marketing!
Facebook: Share your video on your personal and/or business Facebook page. Encourage “friends” to comment on your video and to share it with others.
Twitter, LinkedIn, blog sites, websites, emails: Share your video whenever and wherever you can. And encourage your viewers to share your video.
Remember: Sharing is caring – caring about your business!

FIVE: Don't forget to be authentic in promoting your business and your product.

Boring: Don’t be boring! Unless a video is so terribly boring that it becomes funny, you will find people don’t share boring videos. If it is appropriate for your product or service, have fun and let that show in your video. You will find people like to share in the fun.
Be genuine: Let your personality and your belief in your company or product show in all video marketing projects. You will connect with more people, and connect in a positive way, if they believe you and like you.
Equipment: Don’t get caught up in the idea that you must purchase the most expensive equipment available in order to create a good video. The message is what is important, and your sincerity.
Instant results: Don’t expect instant results from your video marketing. Think of it like planting a flower garden. First you prepare the soil, then you plant the seeds, then you water them and watch and wait. Soon small green shoots will emerge and grow into beautiful flowers. Video marketing is similar, it takes time and patience; but if done correctly will provide beautiful results.

Video marketing is an exciting way to market your business. These tips should help make your experience easier and more profitable.

How To Integrate Video Into Your Social Media Marketing Plan

John Verity — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:18:00 GMT

Used to be when people met friends at work, at school or at the bar, they’d share jokes. “What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?” someone might ask, and everyone would scratch their heads and try to guess the answer.

Today, it’s not jokes that circulate so much as videos posted to the Web. Some are slicker and more entertaining than others, some are just plain dumb, but sharing interesting, often arresting videos is taking place at an unheard of scale and speed. Think millions of impressions per day. Indeed, it’s almost too easy, now, to email a link or post it to your Facebook page and like that, share that wacky video you just watched with 150 of your closest friends - each of whom may, in turn, pass it on to all of their pals, and so on.

It’s this fast-exploding tree of pass-alongs that can make video, done properly, a powerful element of almost any social media-based campaign.

Just ask Old Spice, which saw a YouTube video it posted last year rack up 20 million views in just three days. Which, in turn, triggered a series of follow-on videos that together massively reinvigorated this sagging brand of cologne and aftershave. Its main audience - our grandparents, essentially - had been shrinking for years. But the videos drew an entirely new, much younger audience and in the next three months, Old Spice saw sales spike by 55%!

That’s not something any old blog scribblings, Facebook page, or Twitter account is going to accomplish, for darn sure.

“Video is turning out to be a key element of every successful social media commerce campaign,” advises Larry Chase, editor of the Web Digest for Marketers. In addition to Old Spice’s genre-busting campaign, he points to a trio of quirky “V-Dub in the Haus” commercials posted by VW in 2006 to promote its GTI sports coupe.

Clearly, not everyone has the marketing budget of an Old Spice or VW, but those firms’ success with the medium offers key lessons for every would-be video marketing maven. First, and most obvious: To grab attention and give your blog or Facebook page a large helping of “link juice,” Chase says, a video must deliver something of value. Otherwise, it will be lost in the clutter.

This value may be simply a quick jolt of irresistible entertainment, as with Old Spice’s commercial, or it may be an informative demo of your product, or a look at the back story of your company or its people or its manufacturing process. Whatever it shows, the video must make your audience feel it was worth their time to have watched it.

This leads to the second lesson which is, to coin a phrase, Make it short and sweet. Shorter means easier to watch, of course, but that, in turn, demands more precise production. So, don’t futz around, get to the point and drive it home. The good news is that great video doesn’t necessarily require a great big budget. The key ingredients are simply creativity and sincerity. Indeed, feature movies - and many of YouTube’s greatest hits - have been shot on common cellphones. Shaky, low-res images have established their own aesthetic - though even that should be used sparingly, of course.

As with other content, keywords matter. Any video you post should be accompanied by a well-thought out collection of tags chosen to help your potential audience find your clip. Even in the world of moving images, SEO rules!

Finally, be ready for success. This means understanding that on YouTube, the bigger your audience, the more likely it is that 1) you’ll see lots of comments posted about your video and 2) you’ll see new videos created by others in response to yours. In fact, some of these responses may be remixes of your footage, though that can be discouraged with certain settings available on the YouTube site.

In the case of Old Spice, WDFM’s Chase points out, the firm’s ad agency kept its exploding audience engaged with more than 100 follow-on videos largely based on viewers’ input. “All this was planned for months in advance,” Chase says, with the main actor and studio time all booked and ready to go. “They didn’t know exactly what the new videos would say, but they were ready to move when the time came.”

And now, as your prize for reading this far, the answer to that riddle we posed up top: The Zen Buddhist said, “Make me one with everything.”

Ba-dum-bum.

5 Tips For Adding Video To Your Email Marketing Strategy

Tery Robertson — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:52:00 GMT

In today's competitive online world, businesses who use email marketing are discovering that it's becoming more and more difficult to stand out from the thousands of other websites who are all competing for the same customer dollars. Consumers are inundated with emails (both legitimate and spam) that constantly try to grab them by the throat and scream "buy me!" or "click here!" or "visit my website!".

It is because of this competition that companies who use email marketing, and are striving to be innovative and unique, might consider one of the newest trends in the industry: video marketing.

Done correctly, using video marketing in your email newletters can not only put your company in the foreground of the customer's mind--it can establish the Holy Grail that every marketer strives for: the customer who actually opens your emails.

Here's the important thing about email marketing...it's fairly simple to add people to your email list, however, to get people to actually OPEN your emails is another thing altogether. Marketers spend huge amounts of time and money split testing their subject lines, frequency, copy and other elements, just to raise the click-through rate a few percentage points. So the intelligent marketer who incorporates smart video marketing into their email campaign has the potential of rapidly leaping ahead of the competition. In fact, some marketers have reported up to a 50% increase in click-through rates after they've incorporated an email/video marketing approach.

Using video in your email campaign holds a very strong attraction for consumers. The Online Publishers Association reported that 69% of online users have watched a video and 24% watch one at least once a week. So when savvy online marketers integrate video marketing into their email, it can significantly raise the opening, response and click through rates.

And really, this makes sense. By integrating video marketing into your email programs, you can bring another layer of personalization that plain words on a computer can't reach. And let's admit, people buy from companies that they feel a loyalty toward. Integrating videos into your email campaign can create that warm "fuzzy" feeling.

So just how would you go about creating a video marketing campaign? Here are some ideas that can help you get on track using video in your email.

Make it entertaining. People use the Internet for a variety of reasons; however, one thing is universal. The more entertained they are, the higher the response rate. This doesn't mean that your videos have to be hilariously funny, but they should keep the viewer's attention. So a well produced video, with good sound and production value is important.
Make it informative. Never forget that you're a business and those viewers are your customers (or potential customers.) Therefore, don't be afraid to sell your idea, service or product. There's a balance that you'll need to create between hard sell and no sell. If it's appropriate, don't be afraid to use visual aids. PowerPoint presentations work very well as do product demonstrations and testimonials.
Keep it short. The attention span of an online viewer is short -- probably much shorter than you'd assume. Average videos are about 4 minutes, however studies have shown that most viewers leave before the video ends. And this makes sense, based on television commercials -- which normally are between 15 seconds and 60 seconds, but generally no more than 30 seconds. So when you're creating your video marketing emails, keep your video short -- probably no more than 2 minutes 30 seconds and easily much shorter.
Immediate call to action. Tell your customers (early and often) what you want them to do. "Click here for more information" or "Visit our website now by clicking the "go there" button" now" will get your viewer moving toward your website. And don't wait until the end of the video to create that call to action either because, as mentioned earlier, many viewers don't watch a video to the end.
Offer an incentive. You want your viewer to take immediate action and click through to your website, so make it worth their while. Free shipping, a 15% discount, Two for the price of one and other kinds of bonuses work well. Scroll your offer across the bottom of the video while creating that call to action.

By integrating video marketing into your sales campaigns, following the above simple steps and testing...testing...testing, you'll soon see that your click-through rates will rise and traffic to your sites will surge.

3 Ways To Share Your Awesome Video Marketing Content

Robert St. Louis — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:27:00 GMT

So you've created this amazing product, and you have created some video marketing content to advertise it. Now that you've accomplished this, how do you release your awesome video content to the public? There are several ways to advertise and make the public aware of what it is you're trying to sell.

1. One of the easiest ways to begin marketing yourself or your product is via email. Everyone has an email address, and if people find something helpful or humorous, they will forward that email to each of their friends and so on.

All you have to do is write the email, and attach your video marketing content to the email. When your friends, family, and colleagues read your email and watch your content, if it is a product they might be interested in they will forward it to their friends, family, and colleagues. It will allow your video to reach a broad audience in a relatively short period of time. If you are not sure how to attach a video file to an email, you can visit this link here: http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/email/video/attach.html and they will tell you step by step how to do it.

2. A second outlet for marketing your video would be a shared video site such as YouTube. These sites allow for just anyone to post their videos either for humorous, informational, or marketing content. Such a site would allow anyone to view your video marketing content in its entirety and then share that content via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9bjK-n1ssA&feature=related it will show you step by step how to upload your video to YouTube. Other shared video sites also offer their own tutorials.

3. Your third means of sharing your awesome marketing content is going to be through your own presentations. As you meet with potential customers and clients, engage them with the video.

Download your video marketing content onto your laptop computer. When you meet with potential clients you should show them your marketing video rather than simply explaining to them what you do. And as far as keeping a copy of the video on your computer, anyone that produces your video for you will have the capability to make you a DVD of your video. All you have to do is insert the DVD into your CD/DVD drive and click the play button.

We live in a visual society and your video content is much more likely to keep their attention for a longer period of time than if they are simply listening to you explain what it is that you and your company have to offer.

Creating the video marketing tools and putting the content out there is simple to accomplish. You are the crafter and designer of every facet of the video. You want everything to be perfect because this video is a representation of you and your company.

You are proud of all the hard work you have put into this project. Now what you must do is make the commitment to putting that video out there so that you can reap the benefits of your awesome advertising content.

Publishing your video marketing content is easier than it has ever been before. With the conveniences of the internet and the simplicity of email there is no reason that your marketing content will not reach an audience far larger than you hoped for. You just have to strive to put it out there for viewers to watch. These three venues will allow your video to receive both the airtime your want and the viewers that your quality video deserves.

Go Viral! 5 Steps To Video Marketing That Creates Buzz

Julie Verville — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:40:00 GMT

Ready to generate viral buzz? Web videos are on fire! How hot? According to YouTube’s recent fact sheet, 2 billion videos are being watched daily. While many of these videos are generating millions of hits, most were not strategically created to generate a specific marketing outcome for an underlying business. What if you could harness the power of viral videos to drive traffic, and better yet, revenues for your business?

With strategic thought and planning, you can create a video that will generate buzz. And buzz is what’s needed to go viral. Follow these 5 steps to create a video marketing campaign with major buzz.

1. Choose Which Viral Video Type to Launch

While there are numerous types of videos you could create, there are four common types that end up viral, including:

The Accident- Shot by non-professionals and uploaded without the notion of going viral. Since you cannot control the outcome, this doesn’t fall under the ideal viral video strategy.
The Imitation- This video type involves recreating a successful accidental video. We all know that imitation is one of the best forms of flattery. Businesses have been imitating or copying others within their industries for decades. While never as popular as the original inspiration, this type of video has tremendous viral potential.
The “WTF”- When viewers aren’t sure what they just watched, viral videos are created. Sometimes imagery is all that’s needed to captivate an audience.
Obvious Advertising- Highlighting products and services in an entertaining way is popular with web video viewers.

2. Create Targeted Content

Videos have the power to act as social currency. They start conversations. Viewers pass them on to their friends, family and contacts. In order to achieve this outcome, your video’s content must target your audience. Choose 1-2 triggers that pack a punch. A trigger hits your audience’s sweet spot. What will they find meaningful, relevant or entertaining?

Keep in mind; a viral video must elicit a reaction from your viewers. Common triggers include content that is random, surprising, sexy, comical, shocking and even spectacular. Once you have identified key focus triggers, you can begin to design a video with a huge payoff.

3. Be Portable

Allow downloads, commentary, embedded links and URL shorteners which as bit.ly to create Twitter friendly posts and easy to forward videos. Placing controls on your content works directly against the premise of viral video marketing. Your goal should be to create a marketing piece that goes beyond yourself, the creator.

4. Inspire Action- Ask for What you Want

To go viral, your viewers must forward the content. If you want viewers to pass your content forward, why not ask them to do so? Why this seems like common sense to many, few business owners include a call to action within their video’s message, tag lines or commentary.

Consider including one of the following phrases as your call to action:

"Follow this person..."
"Check out...."
"Please vote..."

If you are more comfortable with a less direct approach, make sure that your content motivates viewers to forward the content. Just remember to avoid a completely advertorial message. Viewers are okay with promoting brand names, as long as the content meets one of the targeted content criteria.

5. Delivery and Tracking- Execution is Key!

Even amazing videos can become buried when launched onto YouTube. For a bang, build a multi-faceted approach for viral dissemination. YouTube’s Auto Tweeting functionality, TubeMogul, Hey Spread and Twitvid are great delivery starting points. In addition, post your clips to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, StumbleUpon and your company’s blog. Send your video content to top bloggers to cast a wider audience net. For a targeted video launch, leverage paid services such as Facebook social ads, Unruly Media or StumbleUpon.

Without follow up, how will you grade your campaign’s success? To track the response that your video marketing campaign is generating, leverage Google Alerts, Technorati, Pubsub, IceRocket and Twitter’s search function.

Follow these 5 easy steps to creating a viral video that generates a loud buzz for your business!

A Great Video Marketing Plan Helps You Sell Smarter

Robert St. Louis — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:22:00 GMT

So you have this great product that you want to sell. You have been working hard to make it, and now you want to make a living selling it to other people.

Having a great product is the first step to a successful business, but product alone won't get it done. What you need to put your business over the top is a great video marketing plan.

When you look at the sites that people check every day the two that top all others are FaceBook and YouTube. A great video marketing plan can appear as a Youtube video and can then be linked to people's Facebook page. If you have a fun video pushing your product that everyone wants to see, you can "go viral" very quickly in this environment.

So what actually goes into creating your plan? Well, first you have to define the product that you are trying to sell. Once you have that, the next step is determining how you are going to successfully market that product to the world. Are we going to go with a fun video? Will we make it a serious video? Are we appealing to our public's emotions? Are we appealing to their desire for quality? These are all questions that someone writing a great video marketing plan will have to ask themselves.

Let's imagine that you are trying to sell toothpicks. How many people are going to pay attention to what brand of toothpick they buy? Your job as a video marketer is to sit down and develop a plan to tell the public why your brand of toothpick is better than anyone else's. People don't usually comparison shop on such a common and cheap product. You sit down and begin to develop a great video marketing plan to sell your toothpicks.

Perhaps you design a campaign in which a group of ninjas attack a formal dinner. You see the wife making the appetizers and she is going to bring out a tray of melon chunks without toothpicks. Next thing you know a group of ninjas attack the kitchen and stick your toothpicks into the melon, thus saving the day. Depending on how it is done, it is a commercial that can make people laugh and the next time they need a box of toothpicks they are going to remember those ninjas.

One of the most effective commercials in 2011 was the Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler. In the commercial the viewer sees the new luxury Chrysler 200 driving down the streets of Detroit past some of its most important landmarks. The people who wrote this marketing plan chose to appeal to the public's emotions. The ad made reference to the city's economic free-fall. After describing the brief negative situations that have made the city tough, they turned around and spun that hardship and hard work into a positive and created what has become Chrysler's new tagline: "Imported From Detroit."

The goal of a great video marketing plan is to present your product in such a way as to make the public remember your name in a positive way. Just as a great plan can make a sale, a random campaign without a clear plan will send your potential customers running in the opposite direction.

Whatever your product, whatever your goal, you need to have a great video marketing plan and you need to be able to sell it. Video marketing can be expensive, it can take time, but in the end it helps you sell smarter, not harder. And that makes it worth the effort.

How Can I Incorporate Video Marketing Into My Blog?

Karen Neal — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:51:00 GMT

Utilizing your blog to cultivate customers is a proven approach that has been successful for some time – and using blog marketing continues to grow. As businesses become more blog-savvy, adding a video marketing blog is a logical step to taking your marketing to the next level.

Creating the video for your blog requires a few relatively simple steps:

1. Decide what you wish to promote or sell within the video

2. Keep the time of the video somewhat short – 2 minutes or less is a good benchmark to aim for

3. There are variety of video editing products available – or hire a professional firm to assemble and edit the video for you

4. ALWAYS incorporate a link to your product or service in order to drive sales

5. Rinse and repeat – you should plan to have a new video marketing blog post every 7 to 10 days at a minimum, but do not “overdo” either

Once the video is created, most blog sites have very simple tools available to post your video. You can include a brief written summary of the video as well as additional links to drive more customer sales to your products or services. To drive click-through traffic you can include reference ads as well.

Promoting the video is extremely important to attract those visitors - for some good tips on how to promote your blog check this link.

Keeping the information fresh is always a challenge. You should consider a variety of sources for new ideas and approaches for your video blogs. For some tips on fresh ways to create a marketing video review this article . Keep in mind that your primary purpose is to market your product or service, but take a different avenue periodically.

One critical step is to MEASURE the effectiveness of your video marketing blog. For each entry, monitor the hit rate, click through, sales results, unique viewer counts, and other statistics. Keep track of the trends to determine your video “life cycle” (which can be different for every type of product or industry) and what approaches are effective. Abandon the video templates that do not work, and use the effective video templates more often.

For example, your video blog may include some interviews and testimonials of customers who use your products. Another set of videos may just have product demonstrations and technical details. Which of these approaches give you the most return for your investment resources? Is there another way to sell your product or service? Always give the new ideas a try, then measure.

Finally, putting all of your ideas and implementations into a plan will help you stay organized and on target. Check here for ideas on creating a video marketing plan .

Using video marketing in your blog is a new, fresh way to increase your web presence and sell your goods. Give it a try and see what happens!

5 Reasons Why Video Marketing Content SELLS

Amber Radosevich — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:34:00 GMT

Learning how to develop and market your own brand is the most important skill set that you can acquire as a webmaster – and there is certainly no ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to creating a marketing plan.

For this reason, it’s vital to your success that you become familiar will all the marketing techniques out there – and that’s exactly where video marketing content development comes into play.

Here are the top five reasons why you should consider incorporating video marketing into your strategy today.

1. Video marketing helps you keep your strategy varied.
If you want to be successful you will have to learn how to constantly adapt your business and marketing strategies so that you stay on top of all the changing trends. If you find a technique that works well, then by all means stick with it as your primary method!

However, don’t ever fall into the trap of ceasing to experiment with different methods on a regular basis. Continually trying new things means you will never be left hanging when search engine algorithms change because you know how to market yourself successfully without them. Just like Brian Clark advocates in his post on CopyBlogger, it's important to learn how to attract traffic to your brand without relying on search engines at all.

2. Visual content provides a fresh way to reach your audience. Videos are the perfect medium to deliver information to your visitors in a concise, and easy to understand way – especially when your focus is on how-to tutorials. Many people pick up new information better when they watch someone present it to them rather than just reading the instructions.

By focusing on video marketing content development you are in turn giving yourself a greater chance of being recognized as the industry expert in your niche – and that’s what ultimately draws the targeted traffic to your site.

3. Videos help your readers get involved with your site.
Visual content helps engage your readers in your content, and more importantly, it keeps them on your website for a longer period of time. The longer you can keep visitors on your site the higher the chance that they will subscribe to your feed, purchase your products, or follow your recommended links.

4. Video marketing can help attract large volumes of new visitors. There are tons of video upload sites out there in addition to the popular YouTube, and it’s completely free to join most of them. The more places that you get your video uploaded the greater the chance you have of it being picked up by social media and going viral.

Videos are easy to share, so if someone likes your product then there’s a good chance that it will be passed along to their friends as well.

5. Video marketing content development helps build quality backlinks.
Videos have the potential to show up in the search engine results – especially ones that are uploaded to YouTube. As Grant Crowell explains it in his post on ReelSEO, YouTube is "owned by Google, so all of its videos are indexed." What does this mean to you? Two words – quality backlinks. And the quality of the backlinks that your website nets are much more significant to your ranking than the quantity.

It’s important to remember that while video marketing can be very effective, it should be used to supplement quality content – not as a sole means of providing content. The most successful websites out there use a combination of video, articles, quality SEO, and pictures to reach their audience – and by successful I mean the ones that rank the highest, have a quality base of subscribers, and actively engage their audience so that people keep coming back to hear what they have to say.

The best part about video marketing content development is that it allows you to be original with what you have to say – you don’t have to just film yourself talking to a camera. For instance, you can demonstrate a product, create a narrated slideshow presentation, or compile customer testimonials into a movie montage.

There is no reason to ignore the power of a good video, even if you are shy about getting in front of a camera – just get creative! After all, your unique brand of creativity is what makes your website stand out from the rest.

Video Marketing Services That Rock Your Brand

Tim George — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:43:00 GMT

Video marketing services empower businesses to communicate their message in one deliverable on multiple platforms: text, audio, and video while reaching a vast audience with minimal expense in the shortest amount of time. It really takes a lot less time or money they most think possible and definitely is producing more response than any other marketing method on the Internet.

Video marketing has become an integral part of many successful marketing campaigns for a few simple reasons: it’s comparatively inexpensive, small businesses can pull it off as successfully as the corporate giants, and it works. Smart companies aren’t just making videos about their products and services. Instead they are making videos that “put a face on the company” and give passionate customers an opportunity to tell the businesses’ story for them.

Some businesses manage launching successful video marketing campaigns on their own. You Tube is free as are most sources of social media and the cost of a high-quality HD camera is only few hundred dollars. As a result it is within the reach of the smallest Mom & Pop business to produce video that looks and sounds as good as what major companies were spending millions on just a few years ago.

In my experience I have worked with several companies that saw the value of video marketing but failed to make it work because they needed some outside help. Social media is evolving so fast many businesses don’t have personnel with the time to stay on top of what's working best today. This is where the help of a good video marketing service comes in.

Here are some of the things these services have to offer:

Professional video creation
Online video promotion - YouTube, MySpace and Facebook
Search Engine Optimization – ensuring your video Ad ranks well with major search engines
Tracking analytics – so you can know who is seeing your video, how they found it, and your success in channeling them to your business web site.

Video marketing services can range from very low cost submission services that help you promote your video to the various social media and search engine channels to complete services in that take care of everything from producing your video to all it take to ensure it ends up ranked on page one of a Google search. Some video marketing services to consider include:

Tube Blaster Pro – A onetime $60 fee allows unlimited YouTube uploads and provides resources for promoting your video to lists you provide.

Traffic Geyser – This has been a top video syndication platform for some time. $200 per month allows you to upload one professionally optimized HD video that is then automatically shared with the top 25 video sharing sites. The value added feature to this service is that a text version of the video is created through Traffic Geyser’s internal transcription service which is then distributed to over 30 directories.

Pixel Pipe - If you can handle creating high quality video and creating your own YouTube Channel, this service is free and handles automatic submission to hundreds of social media destinations in a few simple steps.

Do You Really Need A Video Marketing Content Plan?

Chris Sandoval — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:22:00 GMT

Are search engine optimization, higher conversion rates and customer engagement important to your business? Of course they are! And fortunately for you, all of these can all be bolstered with the aid of an effective video marketing content plan.

This plan will help you determine what kind of content you need to be creating, who it should be directed to and how you can monitor what content is most effective at creating new customers.

Getting Customers Engaged
The main advantage of video marketing is how effectively it grabs the attention of viewers. Here’s just a few stats that show how strongly it can work:

Site visitors who view video are 64% more likely to make a purchase than those who don’t
Including video in your email marketing has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96%
Cisco estimates that video will jump from 30% of all Internet traffic to 90% by 2013

Your video marketing content plan will help you craft the message you want to convey to your potential customers and how to produce it within your budget. The amount of money spent on the video is far less important than the value that the content provides consumers.

Your video marketing content plan can also be easily monitored so that you can see what works and what doesn’t. Factors like conversion rates, increased traffic and view rates can all be tracked and analyzed so that you can adjust your strategy and keep increasing sales.

The Edge In Organic SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) can be an expensive and intimidating venture. If you are in a field that is already dense with competitors, it could take months or even years for an SEO campaign to get you the type of results you want. But major search engines such as Google and Bing recently revamped how their results work to favor web pages that incorporate video near the top of their page.

According to Forrester Research, having video at the top of your page will increase the odds of it appearing on a front page Google result by 53 times. Your video marketing content plan will help you exploit this huge potential edge over competitors that anyone with a webcam can take advantage of.

And, of course, search engines don’t consider how much money was spent on the video; a video that was made with a webcam in twenty minutes can help your SEO just as much as a video with a $20,000 budget.

B2B Video
Video marketing isn’t just for business-to-consumer (B2C) messaging either. Many companies incorporate business-to-business (B2B) communication in their video marketing content plan. Whereas typical B2C messaging focuses on product information, these types of B2B messages are meant more to strengthen the relationship between companies. They can be used to provide a more behind-the-scenes look than you would typically show customers so that they understand more about how your operations work.

A few examples of this type of content include:

Video versions of white papers and reports
Q & A’s with a company executive
Early looks at products in development
Case studies

With production within the reach of any business owner with a webcam and a computer and results that can be witnessed overnight, now is the time to create your video marketing content plan. By waiting any longer, you're missing out on a great new addition to your marketing arsenal.

5 Tips For Optimizing Your Content For Video Marketing

Willie Pena — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:20:00 GMT

The explosion of affordable high-definition video cameras, coupled with editing software that allow even beginners to assemble a movie, is glutting the online video space. A lot of what has been produced to date is completely weird and unprofessional, but examining the brief history of online video demonstrates that if you get enough attention to your content, you can make a fortune even with something quite stupid (“Chocolate Rain” anyone?)

The traffic generated by some of these strange little web videos has, of course, led to a keen interest in leveraging content for video marketing by web marketers. One goal is to have a company’s videos pop up when a user performs a search related to their product, but the problem is that audio and images within videos themselves are not currently indexable by search engines. This renders the content less effective unless certain actions are taken to make the content known to the online world.

Here are my 5 top tips to optimize your content for video marketing:

1. Optimize for search using the title, tags and descriptions fields. Common sense dictates that the text associated with and surrounding the actual video makes use of keywords and rich descriptions of what the heck the video is all about, doesn’t it? Well, explore some video content online and you will see that too many people disregard this; apparently some marketers think the content will stand on its own. Folly!

Description fields or summaries should be professionally written, complete with links to your website. Generously tag your videos with terms found in YouTube’s Keyword Tool. Use keywords in the title of the video and in the name of the actual video file. If you host the video yourself (not the preferred method; see tip #5), keeping one video per web page is better than sticking 10 videos on each. Short “how-to” videos and similar might benefit from having important audio transcribed and placed on the same page as the video, like this one starring yours truly. In this way you boost your keywords, and visitors can still get the information they came for if the video doesn’t load for whatever reason.

2. Leverage social media. Facebook easily allows you to share your videos in status updates and is my favorite way to get the word out immediately when I put a new spot up. In addition to Facebook, I liberally use Twitter, StumbleUpon and Digg for my content whether it’s a video or blog post. These can get you instant traffic as opposed to waiting to be crawled by the search engines.

3. Create a video site map. A video site map submitted to a search engine, such as through Google’s Webmaster Console, allows it to better locate and verify your video content. Not only does this make your video appear in Google Videos results but also in normal search results pages as they increasingly become hybrids that show webpages, video, live news and Twitter updates. Title, description, URL, thumbnail image and duration are the important fields that should be filled out for every video you need indexed. For more information, check out ReelSEO.com’s thorough Google Video Sitemap webinar featuring presentations from Google staff members.

4. Make high-quality stuff. Quality applies to both the content itself and the resolution of the final video. YouTube accepts large, high-definition video files without much trouble, so pixelated messes are now inexcusable. More and more people are connecting their home theaters to the Internet for content, so make sure your content will look and sound good on a 52” plasma. Hint: make Flash files (.flv) using H.264 compression for an excellent balance between small file size and gorgeous video.

The same rules for written content marketing apply to content for video marketing: engage, entertain, inform and involve your viewers to make them want to participate with you rather than click away.

5. Host on video sites rather than your own webpage. Google considers the number of views a video receives on YouTube in its ranking algorithm, so this is the top dog in the video food chain right now. AOL Video, Myspace, Vimeo and Google Video are also places where you want your content, as you can attract some of the millions of viewers who are just browsing on these sites. Another excellent reason to host your content for video marketing videos elsewhere is that your own bandwidth is spared, making it cheaper to run your website.

Follow my tips above for more traffic and moolah!

10 Ways To Make Video Marketing Work For You

Karen Neal — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:32:00 GMT

Oh the horror!

You just figured out email marketing. You’ve got a web presence. You do web based advertising, print media, and maybe even some radio and TV ads. You have your CRM system up and running and turning prospects into customers. Just when you thought all the bases were covered, here comes video marketing.

Video marketing is the next big thing. And it will be around to stay for quite some time. So you buy yourself a webcam, set up a YouTube channel, and do a webcast like Charlie Sheen, right? Not so fast there, Lady Gaga. Some pros have already tackled this for you and have some really good advice. You can leverage this new media as yet another marketing tool in your arsenal for business success.

1. Know your purpose. Having millions of viewers on YouTube seems like a great goal, but it is not a rational business goal. You want to direct traffic to your website and get people to buy. Obviously having lots of views will help, but if no one clicks to get to your site, it really doesn’t matter how many views you have.

2. Know your audience. How about some demographics? According to the Search Engine Journal, YouTube has

a. about 60 million unique viewers a month

b. predominately gen y viewers (born mid-1970’s to early 2000’s)

c. viewer household incomes that vary greatly (from zero to 100k+)

d. language optimization to handle 18 different languages

3. Know your tools. There are some good software products available to help you put together a very nice YouTube video without breaking the bank. Some of these products include Camstudio, Camtasia, or Screenflow (for Mac). These tools help you capture screen shots from your computer, incorporate pictures and videos, and insert links and text notes into your video. While you could spend a lot of money with an ad agency, many businesses can start with one of these products then decide where to go from there.

4. Know your focus. This is part of Marketing 101, but it cannot be ignored. Stay focused on the products or services you wish to sell. While you need to keep your video entertaining, do not ignore the need to direct viewers to your products.

5. Know that the big boys are there. Recently Ford Motor Company announced that they will place more emphasis on social media and video marketing instead of Super Bowl commercials. What do they know that you don’t? They simply know that they need to be where the viewers are – and that is online.

6. Know there are associations for this. Joining groups like the Web Video Marketing Council can help you keep up with the latest trends and techniques. Also this gives you a chance to share ideas with your peers – and get a few tips as well.

7. Know how to leverage what you already have. Use that SEO experience for something besides Google and Bing. Incorporate relevant keywords into your video and postings to insure they come up when searched. Make sure you have your website URL imbedded in the video and prominently displayed for users to click (remember you WANT them to go to your site and buy). Promote your video in your email marketing, on Twitter, on Facebook and Tumblr. Leave no stone unturned.

8. Know to keep it fresh. There is about a 15 day window for each marketing video you post. This can vary depending on the relevance and trends, but in most cases 15 days is a good plan. Plan to roll out new content on a routine schedule. Keep those viewers coming back.

9. Know how to share. Encourage viewers to share your video. Offer incentives to share. Also post the videos and participate in bulletin boards and forums to encourage even more traffic.

10.Know how to make friends. Add friends from social media sites whenever possible. Gather a repository of viewers and communicate with them. Make it as personal as you can without overwhelming yourself. Then encourage those friends to spread the word about your company.

Video marketing is expected to grow exponentially in the coming months and years. With the incorporation of mobile devices that can handle streaming videos, the opportunities are endless. And with the right approach, you can have yet another arrow in your marketing quiver.

Why You Need A Video Marketing Plan Right Now!

Chris Sandoval — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:04:00 GMT

As online videos have become more accessible to viewers, the concept of video marketing has risen in popularity. Video marketing helps you capitalize on the ease with which consumers can view videos anywhere: at their personal computers, on their phones or even on their TVs. They help you express the advantages of your product or service in a simple way that requires very little effort on the part of the viewer.

Imagine two websites both selling the same top-of-the-line dryer. ne lists all the perks of the dryer in a long list and has paragraph after paragraph detailing the technology behind these benefits. The other site has a video on the home page with a simple caption reading “Click here to learn all about our top-of-the-line dryer in just 60 seconds!”

Consumers visiting your website will be more apt to click on the video than they are to read all of that text. They will be educated by the video with all of the most pertinent facts and your call to action at the end will encourage them to contact your company rather than a competitors.

The beauty of developing a video marketing plan is that you are making it easier for the viewer to be exposed to the information you are trying to communicate. They can just sit back and have it fed to them rather than making them work for it. It may sound silly to associate reading with work but by simplifying the amount of effort the viewer has to exert to be exposed to your sales pitch, the more likely they are to absorb it.

The more concise and straight forward you are, the more enticed they will be by your product or service and the more compelling you make the video, the more likely they are to retain interest.

Some businesses may be turned off to the idea of video because they believe that the cost to produce one is simply out of their budget range. This is doubtful because anyone with a webcam, computer and Internet connection can make, upload and host videos for free. The video does not have to be a lavish production for it to be effective. It could simply be a single shot of a person sitting in front of their computer succinctly describing the benefits their company has to offer.

Or perhaps the idea of coming up with content and an idea for your video marketing plan are holding you back. You can easily re-use content you already have available to generate a simple script. Again, the point of the video is essentially to get your sales pitch across in the easiest way possible.

And, if you want to do something a little more outside the box than a simple recitation of product benefits but can’t think of anything, ask for ideas from co-workers or friends. You can have some fun with it but remember to not stray too far from your message as the point is to increase sales and revenue.

But it is also important to note that a video marketing plan consists of more than “Let’s make a video and put it online.” There is strategy involved that includes the production of future videos and creating a voice for your company that is in line with what your company represents. By creating a series of videos, you may be better able to educate consumers on your product or service. A new weekly video can also get people to come back to your site so they can keep up to date with new information.

Videos are also a great way to extend your brand name to become more recognizable. For example, a mattress company out in Florida gained popularity (and thus revenue) due to a series of web ads that featured them cutting mattresses with a chainsaw. When people were looking for mattresses, they remembered the video and name and sought them out.

Your videos don’t have to be as drastic but some sort of consistency will help you build your brand. If the components of your video marketing plan are wildly different, there will be no sense of association with your company and people will forget who they are looking at.

Video content is so widely accessible now that it is inadvisable to move ahead with a marketing strategy that does not include a video marketing plan. The sooner you get started implementing one, the sooner you will realize the immediate advantages that marketing videos have to offer.

5 Steps to Killer Marketing Videos

Beth Hrusch — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:22:00 GMT

Video marketing is rapidly becoming the tool of choice for many online marketers. Businesses large and small are dabbling in it, with varied success. But, regardless of the finesse with which it is executed, one thing is true across the board--video marketing packs a big punch for a relatively small investment.

Video has the power to make your company, your brand and your product come alive for consumers. It puts a face on your business and gives it personality. Videos can make you more relatable and your brand more recognizable. People love getting their information in video form.

We like to say that people like shiny things, shiny things are pretty. That being the case, if you are a business (of any size) looking for a fresh approach to marketing that appeals to the masses, consider these 5 tips for getting good results with video marketing:

1. Give it personality
With video marketing, you have the ability to create personas, or personalities. These help you to present a certain image to the public. TV does this and you can, too. One suggestion--find someone on your team or recruit family, friends and colleagues. Your choices should be people who are comfortable in front of a camera, can speak well and have good working knowledge of your business and what you are selling.

Side note here—I’ve sat through more than one video where it was actually painful to watch the poor guy in front of the camera struggling to get the words out, probably too shy to have been pressed into service for the video and clearly not enjoying the experience. I was so distracted by the discomfort that I couldn’t concentrate on the message. Don’t be that guy, and don’t be that company. Please! It’s painful for everyone.

2. Plan out the venues
Where will you be shooting your videos? Consider places that are accessible to everyone involved and make it easy for yourself. If it’s less hassle and expense to shoot them at the office, do that. If you want an outdoor setting, there’s no need to stray far. Go out to the back or a nearby park. Streamline the process as much as possible to keep costs down.

Remember, your choice of venue will affect such things as lighting and sound. Come prepared with the right equipment for the venue.

3. Create a schedule
Plan out your videos – and their posting dates—in advance. Setting up your video production on a schedule will allow you to have everything, including access to shooting locations, ready when you need them. Some things to consider:

Schedules of the participants
Availability of venues
Hardware and software needed for each video
Upcoming events that you may want to cover with a video

4. Encourage feedback
Get helpful feedback from everyone involved with your video marketing campaign, as well as fans and customers. Their opinions can only help you improve the quality of your videos and their suggestions could add value to your efforts over time. Your social media accounts will provide a great way for people to leave comments. Which brings us to…

5. Utilize social media
Your social media accounts could end up being one of your best marketing tools when it comes to videos. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook all offer ways to share video with people, and their capabilities are increasing all the time. For example, you can embed your video on your LinkedIn profile page or Twitter page or link to your video in your recent news feature.

Video marketing offers an opportunity for businesses of all sizes to get deep and wide exposure for their products and services. Make it part of your content marketing strategy this year to supercharge your marketing efforts. Check out what other successful video marketers are doing and get ideas from them. Hubspot has made some creative videos over the years. Video marketing experts ReelSeo offer lots of helpful information about how to make videos work for you.

Is it time for your business to get into the video business? Try it and see!

Why (Video) Content is King - 6 Simple Video Creation Tips

Beth Hrusch — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:49:00 GMT

Did you know that YouTube is the 3^rd most visited website in the world, with over 85 million viewers tuning in on a regular basis and over 160 million viewers in 2010?

What’s not to love? YouTube offers free videos that people can create and submit for little cost, and there’s nothing people love more than free videos, pretty much.

The fact is, video has become a popular way of getting information. Sure, you’ll always have the guys who think there’s nothing funnier than filming their buddy falling off his skateboard, breaking bones while they’re off-camera laughing in delight. That’s cool, of course. But, videos really earn their keep when they contain useful information that leads to online exposure and increased sales. Video is a great marketing tool, and businesses are jumping into it.

Video marketing is growing rapidly. In fact, the recent Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas demonstrated that technology companies have video on their minds in a big way. How would you feel, for example, if the video you just posted on YouTube could be pulled into people’s homes through Internet-enabled TVs? It’s coming, along with portable viewing devices that offer on-demand video for anyone on-the-go.

Would it be worth your while to produce a video then?

Anyone with access to the Internet, a webcam and a computer can create and upload videos for free. Free as in no more hosting service or bandwidth charges. Seriously, anyone can do it. If you’re looking for a fresh new way to market your business and get more visits to your site, start giving some thought to creating videos on a schedule. Here are some tips:

Re-use existing content. Don’t sweat it if you don’t have someone available to create new content specifically for your videos. That’s great if you can get it. But, if hiring a writer is not in the budget just repurpose existing content, such as white papers, ebooks or articles. Even website content can be turned into video content.
Be creative. Okay. You don’t have a creative bone in your body. No problem. Tap into creative resources. Get ideas from friends and colleagues. Check out what your competition is putting out there. Believe it or not, some companies are getting their employees to act out skits that illustrate their topic (Hubspot became known for this). Creative videos score more visits on YouTube, so it’s worth the pain and suffering.
Use SEO. Make sure that you use your industry-specific keywords when categorizing your video, and throw them into your script, as well. When people are looking for your services they will type in these words, and you want your video at the top of the list (or near, at least).
Be clear, concise and compelling. The same rules apply to video content as any other type of content. Videos that clearly define the subject up front, stay on topic and don’t ramble aimlessly are less likely to be clicked away from. Why should people watch this video? Why should they care? Tell them how you can benefit them, answers their questions and solve their problems.
Demonstrate knowledge. Using your video to give away free information strengthens your authority and credibility with online viewers. Don’t shy away from letting people know what you know. It will only help you when it comes time for them to decide who to purchase from. The combination of both audio and visual demonstration of your knowledge puts a recognizable face on your product or service, and this motivates consumers.
Edit and review. It’s amazing how much you miss on the first try. You don’t have to fuss over it, but please, for the love of Pete, do your part to reduce the crap that Internet viewers have to wade through by editing out mistakes. Have others review and critique. Another set of eyes is invaluable when producing a video because it helps you assess the effectiveness of your efforts. It also catches errors.

Yes, video content is king, and not just because people have short attention spans and like shiny things. Video marketing has a bright future. More and more technology is being developed for its use, and more and more consumers are using video to make their purchasing decisions.

So that leaves only one question—is this the year that your company gets on board?

Zerys - SEO Content Marketplace Software Demo

Steve Lazuka — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 13:30:00 GMT

This is a quick summary of the entire process from start to finish.

What is Content Marketing? A Brief Video Summary

Steve Lazuka — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:16:00 GMT

Here's a new video the team here at Interact Media put together to help explain all the various aspects of Content Marketing.

We hope you like it, but either way, please do us a favor and leave us some feedback!

Watch in HD on YouTube

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Introduction - What is Content Marketing?

Today, more and more people are using search engines and social media to search for content and socialize on the web.

In order for your business to succeed in this new age, you need to draw these people to your website ... but how?

Pay-per-click ads and other forms of marketing are becoming more expensive, and less effective.

Today, there's a better way.

With Content Marketing, you can build a permanent source of:

Traffic
Leads
and Sales

... and best of all, you can do it for a fraction of the cost of Pay per click.

What is Content Marketing?

It's centered around the

Creation
Publishing
and Promotion... of content

... all done on a regular basis

... and carefully monitored to track and measure results

How does it work?

It all starts with creating content... lots of content... but not just any old content...

In order to draw people to your website, you need to create unique, interesting content that helps people solve their problems and answers their questions

In other words, your content needs to be REMARKABLE - to catch people's attention.

And finally, your content must also be properly keyword-optimized to rank highly in the search engines.

Once you've created remarkable content, your next step involves publishing that content to

Your Website
and Other popular sites out on the web

Content for your website can be in the form of

articles
blog posts
white papers
e-books
how-to videos
and more...

... all placed on carefully designed and tested landing pages

Each page of remarkable content you add is another opportunity to draw more people into your site from search engines and social media sites.

and as an added bonus, adding all this great content to your site on a regular basis will:

build your site into a trusted authority in your industry
keep your visitors coming back often and staying longer
and increase your conversion rates!

Now that YOUR SITE is alive and growing each month with fresh, remarkable content, it's time to publish additional content on other popular sites out on the web

This means submitting your content to

article directories
Information hubs
Video sharing sites
Blogs
and other high-trafficked sites

and since the content you publish to these sites contain links back to your own website, you get:

more traffic
and higher link popularity

Over time, this causes the content you placed on your own site to rank higher in the search engines!

Content marketing also involves promoting all your new content using

social networking
and bookmarking sites

This is where you go out and spread the word about all that new content you've created and published.

... and since your content is so remarkable, people tell others about it... and before you know it, lots of people are coming to your site to check it out.

And now comes the part where all that time spent creating great content finally pays off.

Once people find your content, and land on your website, you turn them into qualified leads using carefully tested landing pages with call-to-action links or contact forms.

To summarize, by creating, publishing, and promoting remarkable, search engine optimized content, on a regular basis, Content Marketing can help you:

Develop your site into a trusted authority in your field
Increase your site's conversion rates
Rank higher in the search engines for competitive keywords
Build a permanent source of targeted links and traffic
Generate lots of qualified leads and sales from your website