Is Professional Content the Future of Online Video?
posted by Laurenc on February 27th, 2009Corporate Video Production: Is Professional Content the Future of Online Video?
As video marketing emerged on the scene years ago, many marketers turned to developing strategies for user generated video campaigns, where users submitted their own videos to corporations to represent their brands or products. Now however, user generated content (UGC) is decreasing in popularity and success, due to an emergence of professional video campagns, where companies are turning to newly developed video marketing firms to create, implement and manage their video marketing campaigns.
According to the report “Pro Online Video Views 1998–2012” from AccuStream iMedia Research, professionally produced online video grew nearly 25% last year, accounting for 41.6 billion views. “The sharp escalation of professional video content on the Web—mainly from TV networks—is creating a viable base for brand marketers,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. 
In another study by The Diffusion Group (TDG) in 2008, short and user-generated clips made up 60% of US video advertising revenues. But TDG analysts predicted that 70% of streaming video ad revenues will come from long-form videos in 2013.
According to LiveRail, this change in videos has not gone unnoticed, with 18-to-24-year-old social network users spending more time watching online video than ever before. In a Q4 2008 survey of more than 400 young adult social networkers, LiveRail found that 53% said that in an average month they spent more time watching online video than traditional TV. Nineteen percent of respondents said they watched each “about the same,” and only 28% said they watched more TV than online video.
So not only are more people watching online videos, but the types of videos they are watching are changing drastically. Gone are the poorly developed USG videos of the past, the new online videos are sleek and professional, with content playing a very important role.
For additional information on Corporate Video Production, check out our other articles listed below:
Optimizing Your YouTube Account
Video Marketing – 5 Steps for Success
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Optimizing Your YouTube Account
posted by Jeanannv on February 20th, 2009YouTube is legendary in social media, particularly in video distribution. Unfortunately, it is always the most bizarre vidoes that are highlighted in other forms of media. But, if you search the ranks, there are some amazing, professionally produced videos posted there. But, the vast majority of small businesses either don’t distribute videos or don’t optimize their profile.
YouTube is a site that carries a lot of link juice…so building out a profile, then building a following, can lead to increased search engine rankings.
Let’s take a look at this profile. The channel host, Rita Heikenfeld named it “Recipe Cook”. and you can see right below her name is her website.
She has done a great job of filling in her description. It is very easy to see the value that she provides to her followers. And, she captures all of the different places she writes and teaches about food.
Where this profile could improve is in the interests and hobbies section. I recommend using your keywords here. There are other opportunities to add tags to your page, but it is important to create repitition and consistency with every link back to your page.
In addition to editing your profile, you can also edit your channel information. This is the section where the description and tags should be all about your brand and the language you associate with it. Using your keywords and tag lines, as well as any descriptive copy that you usually use will help search engines make the connection that certain words=your website.
It only takes a few minutes to log on and optimize your account. Beyond that, you will need to regularly post videos and build relationships…just like any other social network.
And really, it is not just YouTube…you should be optimizing all of your social media profiles with keywords and backlinks…it is an easy way to increase your page rank.
The SEO Value of Videos
posted by Laurenc on February 18th, 2009Corporate Video Production: The SEO Value of Videos
We have all seen the increase in video marketing over the past few months, and heard all of the chatter about the value of video from marketing experts, but did you know that video marketing, or social videos, are also an extremely valuable SEO tool? Well, you do now! According to a study by Nate Elliott, now with Forrester Research, Google’s “Universal Search” feature—which incorporates results from news sites, videos and maps right into the body of a search results page—was introduced in May 2007, and already 1/4 of Google searches return videos in the results, videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages. To determine this information, Elliott’s study looked at 40 of the most popular keywords, and found:
“Of the keywords for which Google offers video results, we found an average of 16,000 videos vying to appear on results pages containing an average of 1.5 video results—giving each video about an 11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results. By comparison, there were an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results—giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results.”
One of the reasons for this is that there is simply much fewer videos on the web, than web pages, making their fight for front page results much easier.
But how do you optimize your videos for high search rankings, and once they are up there, how do you make sure users actually watch the videos, and pass them on to their friends? In order to create optimized, engaging videos (and potentially even viral videos) you want to make sure you complete the following:
- Optimize keywords by including them in titles, tags, and file names.
- Host your videos on YouTube, which shows up by far most often in Google results than other video platforms.
- Make sure to add new content frequently, because freshness matters to your users.
- Create the video so that it begins and ends with a black screen & the URL of the originating website. If you’re using video to bring traffic to your website, you’ve got to tell people what your website is!
- Place the URL of your website at the bottom of the entire video. This is a great idea because is if people clip it or make mashups – you are still getting credit for your work and visitors to your site.
- Keep it simple. Videos do not have to be over-budgeted monstrosities, all they have to do is be engaging.
- Lastly, use humor in your videos. Humor is a great way to keep your viewers engaged through the entire video.
With 12 billion videos viewed online each month, and videos maintaining unbeatable search engine rankings, if you’re not using videos to market your product or service, you’re missing out on the newest and most effective social media and advertising strategy to date. Social American offers low-cost, high-quality video production to create engaging media for your company, and through strategic video placement, you gain more exposure, customers and profits. Web video syndication is among the tools you’ll receive from Social American, helping you harness the power of social media marketing for your business, forever, while our team guides you every step of the way.
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Video Marketing – 5 Steps for Success
posted by Laurenc on February 17th, 2009Corporate Video Production: Video Marketing – 5 Steps for Success
Online Videos have been named the primary focus of marketers in 2009, as it allows brand marketers to create and send out a message on multiple levels via visual imagery, the spoken word, music and visual text. In this exciting world of new media and social media, video can and will play an extremely important role in shaping the future of online marketing. We are already begining to see the shirt occur – No longer are people relying on their television for entertainemet. People are now reaching ot to the web, and services such as YouTube, Hulu, and TV.com for entertainment, and I predict that their success is only going to grow.
In order to be successful at video marketing, you must understand the rules of the game, and know your playing field well. There is nothing more upsetting that spending your time (and money) developing a video campaign, only to not promote it properly and receive a disappointingly low number of views or clicks. To help you understand how to create an engaging video or video campaign, here is a list of 5 Steps to follow for success, from Maria Andros, touted as the Video Marketing Queen.
1. The Welcome
Everyone loves to be welcomed and the more you can smile and be authentic the better. Let them know that you are happy they stopped by and say something like “Hello and welcome to this video.” (A great tip when you’re filming is to make sure you smile and pretend like you are talking to your best friend or family member).
2. Share Your Story
Before you get into your opportunity, you first need to build a background of relatedness. Share something about you, where you’re from perhaps, you want to establish credibility here by sharing anything that will make you sound like an authority and why I should listen to you.
3. What’s in it for Me?
In your videos you also want to make it all about your viewers. It’s important to build a sense of relatedness first and once you do you want to provide value. You can teach your viewers something; a “how to” video usually converts really well. In this part of the formula you also want to really bring out the problem that your prospect is facing and to offer a solution:
For example if you are a dating coach you can say, “I know what it’s like to not be confident with women. I used to be like that, I was shy, I was awkward and I would just avoid women period to not risk getting rejected … Until I discovered…”
Marketing is simply being able to explain someone’s problem better than they can explain it themselves and then offering a “solution. Here you can share the solution that you found and then go into your product more in detail.
4.Your Irresistible Offer or “Hook”
Here is where you can offer your prospect something for free whether it’s a free report, a free audio class, a free video report and share with them what you are going to teach them if they come visit your website.
5. Call to Action
This is often what is missing in most videos that I see online, there is no call to action. As kids we are taught to follow the leader almost like Simon says so you want to let your prospects know what to do next. This can be simply telling them to go to your website, to give you a phonecall, to add you on twitter, it’s completely up to you.
By following the 5-Steps above, you can develop successful, engaging videos to help build your busieness’ success. Stay tuned for more video marketing tips coming up later int he week!!
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Social Television? TV.com Takes it up a Notch
posted by Jeanannv on January 21st, 2009I won’t deny it, I love watching videos online, particularly when they are my favorite TV shows. But, online TV has struggled to find its way, both with programming and monetizing. Not long ago, I wrote a post about Hulu.com where I talked about their ability to collect viewer data like never before. And I remain a loyal Hulu watcher. But now, there’s another love in my life…TV.com.
Owned by CBS Interactive, TV.com is much more than just a place to watch shows. This, my friends, is social television. Check out the community features CBS built into their site. This is only a portion of their social networking
features; blogs, forums, reviews, boards, customer service via feedback categories. All created to engage viewers and build connections within niche markets that already have followings.
At the time I took this snapshot, there were 4,917,128 member submissions to the site. That is 5 million points of contact with CBS Interactive and its brands.
Clearly, they have done their homework and have built out a site that has social media tools that appeal to their target markets. Check out the folder directly above this entitled “TV.com Ideas”. There are nearly 13,000 submissions. Thirteen thousand submissions from consumers who willingly take their time to provide this site with a ton of free market research.
And while we don’t all have the financial resources of CBS, we can learn a couple of things here…first of all, this is what happens when you market the right product, using the right tools to reach the right people. Utilizing online marketing strategy to promote your business has to start and end with a solid marketing plan. Slapping a few social media tools on your site is no substitution for proper research and tactical development. Second, CBS is engaging their consumers in a way that appeals to them. They understand that by adding value to their site and producing content that their viewers tell them they want, they can have stellar success.
The good news is that these principles can be applied on a smaller scale with excellent results. And when you find the right combination, it can build community around your product or service the way no other marketing channel can.
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Brand Advertising with Corporate Videos
posted by Jeanannv on January 9th, 2009Corporate video production is a natural tool for brand advertising. Brand marketing videos are affordable to create and have the potential to go viral in ways that other marketing tools do not. I mean, when is the last time you saw a viral newsletter? The key is making sure the content is engaging and representative of your brand.
Understanding the purpose of your video is the starting point. Is it for the promotion of a product? Creating general brand awareness? There are hundreds of uses for corporate videos, but it is important to clearly define the purpose of each effort. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a stack of videos that don’t fill a role in your marketing strategy.
Here are a few tips for making sure the final product fits your brand…and a couple of things that will help with engagement.
- Pull out your brand book…re-read your creed/manifesto/vision
- Understand the role this marketing channel has in your overall strategy
- Understand the purpose of the video before you start production
- Work with a company that really understands your vision
- Keep it short, three minutes is a very long time in the world of video
- Using text and stills can create an impact, just like live recording can…use what fits your campaign best
- Make sure the video is keyword optimized and distributed for maximum impact
- Unless it is proprietary, make it easy to embed on other sites
- Tell a story, end with a call to action…build in an answer to the “why should I care” question
- Don’t spend the whole time talking about how great your company is…always strive to add value for the viewer
Use these guidelines to get you started on adding web video to your marketing plan. It is a great way to build brand awareness and strengthen customer relationships. Videos are affordable and engage the senses on multiple levels, creating greater opportunity for impact, building perceived value and generating effective, multi-dimensional campaigns.
Snagging Viewers with Your Corporate Videos
posted by Jeanannv on December 22nd, 2008It is no secret that getting a video to go viral can result in an insane amount of traffic and exposure. But what does that mean for your business? It’s one thing if you have billions of dollars and can produce something flashy. It’s another thing if you have a small business in need of exposure. One great way to build traffic is to interview an expert in your field.
I present Exhibit A: Valleyzen.com Reports: Barack Obama on Social Media
This video is important for a few reasons.
- It is obviously produced with a hand held camera, no major dollars invested here.
- The subject of the interview will bring in droves of traffic.
- The content of the video is appropriate to the audience (this is a YouTube channel about social media)
- It is relevant and engaging
- It contributes to the collective body of knowledge (Obama successfully used social media in his campaign)
These essential strategies are critical if you want people to view your videos. Whether you produce them yourself, our hire someone to produce a video for you, it is a great way to reach out to new markets.
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