The average person spends around nine years of their life watching television. Western societies, and increasingly the rest of the world, are becoming addicted to screens. From the humble television set, to smart phones, lap tops, and desktop computers, we tend to fall for anything that can provide a dynamic display of sound and moving image. That’s indisputable. But why is all this relevant to the promotion of your company or new product? That will require some further explanation.
Because we are so attracted to audio-visual content, website video components and social media sites such as YouTube and Google Video, make video one of the key tools for any online marketing strategy. Embedded videos that include plugins are easy to share on blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Video is also very SEO friendly.
To guarantee that your video is as effective an element of your online marketing strategy as it can be, we’ve put together a handy check list:
1. Is your title attention grabbing? The title of your video is its main method of gaining initial attention. As with blog posts, the title of your video must include the keywords most likely to be entered in searches related to the industry or product you are promoting.
2. Is your content quality? When preparing a video for use in your online marketing campaign, it’s important to choose a topic that will be interesting to your potential viewers. Highly entertaining videos with comic elements tend to go far, but if that’s not an appropriate style for your company, you may wish to opt for a ‘How to’ style video that will offer valuable information to your viewers and give them trust in your expertise.
3. Is your video the right length? The best video for online marketing purposes is the shortest one. You may feel that you have a great deal of quality content worthy of sharing, but best to break it down into smaller bite-sized pieces. Any longer than three minutes and you’re likely to begin losing your viewer’s attention.
4. Is your company clearly identified? It’s easy to get carried away with the exciting world of video online marketing, but make sure you don’t forget the main purpose of the video in the first place which is promoting your company and increasing traffic to your website. Always include a text box in, or below, your video that clearly displays a link to your website or product and a brief description of the video content. Your company logo should also be displayed on-screen throughout the video presentation.
5. Is your distribution wide enough? As well as posting your video on your own website, for it to be a profitable aspect of your online marketing activities, make sure that you distribute it across all social media sites that accept video. YouTube is the most well-known video sharing site, but there are many new players such as iFilm, PhotoBucket, Vimeo, Buzznet and DailyMotion that should also be approached.
Finally, and most importantly, be sure to employ a professional video production company to assist you in completing your video. No matter how interesting your content is, if your video is dimly lit and your shots shaky and poor-framed, it will be nothing but take your online marketing campaign backwards.
