Of late, many folks I’ve come across tell me that their most-visited site besides Facebook or Twitter, is Youtube – not much of a surprise there. So, what could make a simple video-sharing site such a favorite draw with internet users? The most popular and evident reason for this, besides others, is that it enables one to post their videos for the entire world to see.
It’s like starring in your own little movie that entitles you to your five minutes of fame. Users on the site search through millions of such video content for information and entertainment. This in itself is a highly potent combination wherein both “information” and “entertainment” combine to create high levels of audience engagement.
Consequently, it is this opportunity to grab the audience’s attention that prompts several entrepreneurs to create videos for marketing their products and services.
Small-time businesses and start-up companies benefit hugely by creating compressed 5 to10 minute videos that range from describing their products and services, providing information about their company or business, to demonstrating solutions to a problem that they can handle effectively.
“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.”
– Chris Sandoval
courtesy interactmedia.com
However, creating a video alone does not ensure it’s reach to a widespread audience. This is where video marketing comes into the picture. So what exactly is video marketing? It is the process of not only uploading your video to a video-sharing site like youtube or vimeo but also leveraging its proper distribution across the internet in order to build a rapport with a wider audience.
Studies have shown that there is much better retention in the viewer when using audio-visual techniques to pass on information. Also audiences stay on a site longer when a video is embedded showcasing the gist of the information provided as opposed to text.
The smart way to proceed after uploading your video to a sharing site is by suitably tagging it with keywords relating to the content, after supplementing it with a good title and description.
This is vital as it can guarantee a good ranking for your video in youtube search results as well universal search results. Google does a good job of streaming traffic to your video provided the tagging is done comprehensively.
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn can be used to post videos in order to reach users and take advantage of news feeds which pick and highlight content based on the ones with the most number of likes and comments. Using videos with blogs is a common practice these days wherein bloggers feel they get a better emotional connect with their audience through the use of rich media content.
Some interesting numbers :
# About 46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video.
# Video is now the sixth most popular content marketing tactic,as 70% of B2B marketers use some form of online video with their overall strategies.
Overall, a lot of emphasis should therefore be placed on making the video content highly interesting and rich. Good quality of video paired with the use of simple, easy-to-understand narrative, straightforward sequencing sans complicated jumps and shifts, all combine to create an audio-visual appeal that warranties that the viewer stays hooked.
Also, splitting heavy content into small 5-10 minute portion sized videos is a good practice along with the use of non-monotonous visuals.
The richness of the content comes from the information that is being shared, which could be a unique, never-before-seen-or-heard-of kind of thing or something very funny that makes the viewer go for reruns of the same content.
All said and done, it is small wonder that video marketing is fast becoming a true value-oriented means to gaining wider reach within the internet community.