Adding Video Blogging to Your Marketing Mix
Video marketing can be a powerful tool when done correctly and can serve as an effective marketing medium for businesses of all sizes. With the increase of platforms that allow for video it is a great engagement tool that can fit nearly any size budget.
Small business owners unsure about how to take advantage of the promotional benefits of online video can start with a short "video blog". These clips can be easy and fun to produce with a minimal investment in time and equipment. Social media sites are also offering a variety of ways to post live and pre-recorded videos that allow for increased engagement among fans.
Advantages of Video
Online video can offer a number of benefits for small business owners. For instance, sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and others allow you to reach a vast online audience with videos you can post for free. Creating videos allows you to demonstrate what your company does or highlight people more expressively than you can with a text-based blog post, an e-newsletter, or an online directory ad.
In addition, the keywords used to describe the video can provide a number of search engine optimization benefits for your company’s website. A video’s title and description will help viewers find it and including a website URL in the video description (and within the video itself) will help drive traffic to your company website.
Video can also be embedded directly on your website, which allows for customers to engage with the video as opposed to briefly skimming page text. Additionally, having video on a website can increase direct traffic, and also a website’s rankings on search engine results pages.
Consider these important facts: Statistics show video boosts conversion from visitor to buyer by 30%; shoppers who view product videos are over 140% more likely to add to cart; video search results appear in about 70% of the top 100 listings; email video increases the click-through rate by over 96% - all this while building trust with potential customers. Online video also provides additional engagement through the audience by being more likely to ‘like’, share, and comment on it.
Getting Started
While most people thinking about online video get hung up worrying about the equipment, a more important consideration is preparing interesting content people will want to watch.
As with a regular blog, it’s important to avoid talking about the company too much or trying to promote it directly. Instead, you can demonstrate expertise by answering the kinds of questions customers frequently ask or demonstrating key features provided by your products or services.
Viewers can also be given a "behind the scenes" look at the company, which will increase the connection with customers. For instance, if you operate a bakery, you can show viewers the kind of activity that takes place while they’re sleeping. Whatever your business provides, there’s a way to show viewers what you do or to introduce them to the people that do it.
Keeping It Simple
With small business video blogging, elaborate production values are far less important than getting started and uploading videos. Many devices come with built-in webcams and video editing software that offer "good enough" quality to produce a video quickly and easily.
If you don’t have (or don’t want to use) video editing software, YouTube, and other online video sites offer some basic editing tools.
Try to avoid reading a script as you’re shooting. Video blogs are most authentic when they have a fair amount of improvisation, so it’s more effective to sketch out a few bullet points and fire up the camera. You can always cut out the worst mistakes before you upload the finished clip.