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Saturday, December 8, 2012

What Makes an Excellent Video?

The purpose of your video is to encourage prospects and customers to watch, remember, and share, which means that quality counts.

Whether you are shooting your own, using customer submitted pieces, or hiring a professional, here are the main things to look out for:

Lighting - Video cameras need good quality light to produce appealing images. Overheads cast unattractive shadows, so your best bet is either professional lighting equipment or equivalent substitutes, such as strong lamps aimed at the subject. Alternatively, choose natural light, depending on the topic of your production. Audio - Beware of video that has inaudible or overbearing sound, and ensure that background noise does not muffle or distort the message. Ideally, use USB microphones plugged into the computer or those designed to attach to the camera, as these effective options ensure only the sounds you want are included. Content - "Practice, practice, practice" if you or a staff member will appear in the video. More rehearsal guarantees more comfort with the material, minimizing awkwardness, stiff delivery, and the impression that you are reading from a script. Length - Studies show that you will lose 10% of your audience after 10 seconds, and another 40% after 30 seconds, so keep it short and sweet. Put the important information up front, and keep your viewer engaged by getting to the point right away. If you have more to say, consider a series of short videos, rather than one long one. Placement - A quality overview clip in your marketing email will raise your click-through rates. Bring customers to your website and keep them there, with your video series sprinkled liberally throughout. For example, include your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) video near the text version of your FAQs. Also, put your "How-To" videos next to your product description. Selection - Ensure your video content reaches your intended market by testing it on your customers. Offer several versions and provide the opportunity to select and share their favorite, guaranteeing something for everyone. Relevance - Most important of all, make sure your video is relevant to your message, whether it's product promotion or information distribution. Nothing is more frustrating to online visitors than clicking on content that doesn't live up to its promise.

As you consider your video content, keep the following points in mind as studied by the Jun Group in 2011:

People like comedy. Videos intended to be funny (40% of videos studied) resulted in three times as many follow-up hits on the sponsoring businesses website. Celebrity doesn't sell. Though 10% of the videos studied included appearances by television and movie stars, they actually resulted in 12% less Facebook "likes" than the 90% non-celebrity pieces. KISS - Keep It Short and Sweet. With videos of 16 - 60 seconds making up 90% of content, you would think that length brings success, but not so. Videos of 15 seconds or less resulted in 153% more click through.

To increase the likelihood that your visitor or email recipient will view your video, include a play button right on the screen or automatically transport the viewer to the linked viewing website.

Keep costs down by offering video through playback sites that already possess infrastructure.

You can avoid the expense of storing files locally on your web server, and you can pass along the cost of transcoding videos for playback by uploading to a video host such as YouTube or Flickr.

Approach video marketing as an adventure - an opportunity to get a step ahead of the competition and reach a wider audience.

Video marketing is on the rise and isn't expected to go away any time soon.

Now that you have a better understanding about how Video Marketing can help boost your sales, it's time to get started with your video marketing campaign.

What Is Stopping You From Making Your Marketing Videos? Well Fear Not, There Is A Solution Discover: What Is Video Marketing? What Is Viral Marketing? How It Works and What Makes It Effective Small Business Internet Marketing For Increased Sales

The Power Of YouTube: Online Traffic From Videos

The online world has great content for the young and the old. There is a wide spectrum of topics everyone can learn from, no matter where you live in the world. The internet has been called the world wide web because the expanse it reaches. There are many ways to reach your target audience online though. There are forums, blog postings, advertising sites (depending on what you are trying to promote or sell). There is eBay and Amazon, two huge online stores that sell products at discount prices to its visitors.

However, rivaling content on blogs, forums, and other article marketing sites is that of video content, which can also reach a large audience. YouTube has enabled video rookies and also experienced entrepreneurs to tap into a much larger viewing audience online. Even top rate businesses now are using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn to capture large audiences of targeted customers. If the big boys do it, you must follow their game plan for success.

YouTube is a site where big businesses have shot promotional videos to get their products and brand names online. Companies know that teenagers and young adults are powerful buying groups that will buy their products. With YouTube you can use videos to leverage the ability to reach millions and billions of customers with no or low-cost ads. They can reach the largest audience possible in the shortest amount of time.

There is a lot of varied video content on YouTube such as funny home videos. At the other spectrum, there are business videos trying to promote to a wider audience online than they can anywhere else. It is foolish for people to ignore the internet's power. There is no other tool on earth that will allow people to grow a business or reach as many people for low cost, in such a short amount of time. YouTube is so powerful. Video content is usually very appealing on the eyes and easy to watch too. You can watch a 3 minute video or promotional ad and get the message very easily and quickly. The message is fast, easy, and in an appealing format for anybody to understand.

In summary, YouTube is one of the quickest, most appealing and powerful media to reach a large audience with any message you are sending. This power is incredible and the audience is so large too. I would definitely include videos from YouTube to promote any business or any venture you partake.

What Is Video SEO?

Video SEO is the use of optimisation methodologies to improve the visibility of your videos and screencasts in Google, YouTube and other search engines. The value of video SEO (VSEO) comes from the fact that it has the potential to entice and retain a more targeted audience, increase brand awareness and spark users into action. Whether that action be buying the product or service, subscribing to a newsletter or signing up for a special offer.

It is rapidly becoming a hugely important part of any online marketing campaign as it can dramatically raise traffic to your site. Its rise to prominence is thought to be because "Generation Y" (people aged between 11 - 27) now outnumber the "Baby Boomers" by 81 million to 71 million. "Generation Y" have a tendency to watch more videos online.

Another reason for VSEOs rise in importance is the size of videos. Not too long ago they where big bulky things that required an internet connection few had and special players. Nowadays they are small enough and versatile enough to play on all Smartphone devices. This compliments the rise in "Generation Y" perfectly, as this is when Smartphone technology is really taking off.

Although YouTube is the biggest video sharing site, seen as a must use for any advertising/SEO campaign, there are other more specialized sites about that will make it easier to get your content seen, after all with the amount of content on YouTube it's very hard to stand out. Other sites, like Vimeo, Viddler and Photobucket have smaller communities making it slightly easier to stand out. YouTube being the largest video sharing site also comes with another huge bonus to getting your content seen; it's the 2nd most used search engine in the world after Google. The fact that Google search now shows videos at the top of page of results is just another opportunity to get your content right to the top of the search page.

Video SEO has been shown to really raise your contents visibility as videos typically show up in 41% of all searches and have a 41% higher click rate. Research shows that companies who use VSEO will see a 150% rise on conversion rates over those that don't. The benefits and importance of Video SEO extend far beyond the few points illustrated in this article; it is guaranteed to be one of the most fundamental aspects of SEO in the very near future.

Using YouTube As A Marketing Tool

Having a business in the physical world is no longer enough. Most co-operations around the world understand the need to expand their business and what better venue than the internet is available to them? In an age of science and technology, the use of the internet for business has risen to a significant extent.

YouTube is a website where you can share your videos online for free and people can also watch them, without spending a dime. As watching videos is getting very popular with people from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, companies are using them as a great marketing tool that gives them a unique opportunity to endorse their products. Nearly a billion people watch YouTube every day. Imagine in a world of 7 billion, a billion people viewing one particular website, in itself spells how successful the website actually is. Using YouTube as a marketing tool is neither difficult nor it takes much time. It doesn't need any professional video making equipment. Nicely made videos attract more views which, in turn, is beneficial for marketing campaigns. It is a great tool to impart training and product description.

How to use YouTube for marketing

1.You can showcase your products and services. You can give demonstration about the product.

2. You can directly put the link of your website in the video. It is very helpful when you market a number of affiliated products as this helps to get good traffic.

3. You can post the interview of the people who use your products.

4. You can put a business logo in the video so that people remember your brand easily.

Strategy to use YouTube as a marketing tool

1. Quality of video content should be good so that it can attract a large number of viewers. There are a large number of people who go by quality of the video. Videos related to entertainment or demonstration should be high class video material.

2. Large video library help to provide more choice and content to the viewers thus attracting more views. It helps to give multiple results of own videos if someone searches the related topic.

3. Create YouTube Annotation and Links-Annotations are areas of text or hotspots that are created after uploading the video. It can show simple texts or click-able elements. Using a subscribe hotlink as annotation gives good results.

4. Using YouTube promoted video ad overlay-You can endorse other videos of your library by this method. It takes the viewer directly from YouTube to your website. Here, you can use images and shortened web links.

5. Posting video response -It gives your YouTube videos and channel, greater exposure.

6. Create Playlists-It gets your video content on top section of YouTube video pages that are labelled "Related Videos" or "Suggestions". This enables you to use more popular videos in the playlist to drive views to your newer but less popular content.

7. YouTube Close Caption-Use natural language instead of modest keyword optimization as it increases search visibility.

Try using these tips and see the difference in your campaign.

Video Marketing to Improve Conversions Part 1

Video Marketing is not only an opportunity for today, it is also an opportunity for the future. Many people are currently trialling it, but are not being too successful. The reason for this is that they are probably not focussing on conversion rates and getting people back to their websites.

It is important that we measure the amount of video views. Also we need to measure the amount of people that actually come from the videos viewed, back to your website.

In part 1 and 2 of this article I will cover the steps that need completing in order for you to improve your conversions. The first topics we will look at are the video sites worth uploading your video to as well as editing a video. By having a good video out there you will get people back to your site and improve your conversions.

Video sites

YouTube is the main site to upload your video, but there are also many others. It is not worth relying on just the one site because you never know what will happen in the future. The more people that view your video, the higher YouTube will push it in the rankings.

You may have a list of subscribers who would like to see your video. When they arrive at your video they will have a chance to vote for it. The more votes you have the higher the video will rank.

You should incorporate your keyword phrase in your YouTube title and description. Add your website link to the beginning and end of the video. You can also add it to the description. Then simply spread the word about your video to friends or your subscribers.

Here are some other video sites worth uploading your video to:

DailyMotion Blip.TV Metacafe Vimeo

By submitting to YouTube and these other video sites you can get a lot of traffic back to your website. It is possible that the visitors will either become customers or improve your conversions by investing in your product or service.

Editing your video

Windows Movie Maker comes with PC's that run Windows. It is quite powerful and the version in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is simplified to make it easy for beginners to edit videos. You can bring still photos and existing videos into your production. You can also bring audio in or create your own audio.

Ensure your video is of a high quality and take care to edit out any shaky camera work. You will not improve conversions with videos which either do not engage the viewer or are poorly made.

Video Marketing - A New Era in Online Marketing

Marketing strategies are the most important part of a business nowadays. With growing popularity of the internet, marketing a commodity has become one of the toughest jobs. Among the various methods tried in marketing, the one gradually rising to prominence is video marketing. Video marketing is the process of using videos to promote your products, services, or websites.

Online videos are great for establishing expert status in your niche as well as connecting with your local customers. Online videos have become biggest thing in internet marketing by becoming a mode of direct communication between you and your client. Everyone is online and many people spend a lot of time on watching videos while surfing internet and most of them click on the link given or download a free report, In this way video marketing will help increase traffic to your website and you will get amazing results by video marketing. Videos are the best way to convey your message and video marketing is gaining enormous success on the Internet presently.

Web surfers differ in terms of their educational background, reading ability, vocabulary, patience and comprehension skills etc. so, many of them would not like to trudge along long lanes of words and will be in a hunt to short and direct information. If you deploy video-clippings as part of your Internet marketing strategy, you can reach the emotional layer of a much larger audience base quickly. Today people are accessing internet not only from desktops but also from other devices like laptops, palmtops, iPads and cell phones etc. so if you load a video to your website you can expect it to be viewed by anyone, anytime. Spruce up your web page by replacing your written content with a video where the presenter narrates the same story you wrote on the page earlier. The presenter with a nice backdrop in sync with the product/service you are marketing can easily attach the audience with your product/service emotionally.

Video marketing is latest trend in era of innovative marketing strategies. Images, video and audio each represent a fantastic opportunity to drive traffic to websites. Video marketing cannot be substituted with other marketing strategies however it adds great value to existing marketing techniques. Now potential customers are not restricted to read text and static web pages, they can interact with you and the content you publish. Entering in video marketing gives a new dimension to business with face to face interaction with customers online and influencing their buying decisions. Video sharing websites like YouTube, Metacafe, and Photobucket can generate a significant traffic to your website.