As search engine marketers, we all know that content is king and that content is more than just text. Images, video and audio each represent a fantastic opportunity to drive traffic to our clients sites. As such, the latest Horowitz Associates report caught my attention.
According to the report, six out of ten high speed Internet users watch or download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis. Leading the way is news, user-generated and non-professional content, followed by movie previews, music videos, sports events and podcasts.
It's the user generated content figure that has me asking, is it time to experiment with video marketing? Should my future blog posts be in video and how long before clients buy into the creation of videos as a means to meet their marketing objectives? Inspired by my colleague Jennifer Osbournes post on podcasting, I thought it would be interesting to poll SEP experts and conduct some research for video marketing and share some appropriate benefits and tips.
Benefits of a Video Marketing / adding video to your website include:
* Viral: Increases the potential for your message to go viral through social networks.
* Cost: Depending on client objectives and/or target market, a quick search of the net can find companies
producing online ads from $500 or free if you decide to use your own camera! 🙂
* SERP's: Videos are now included in search engine results
* Technology: There is now a plethora web based help such as video publishing, editing and post-production services to assist.
* Analytics: Increases stickiness of site by increasing average time users are engaged
* Educate: Everyone loves 'How to' books, videos following this format educate the audience
* Branding: Not as many sites using video, therefore your seen as an expert in your field.
Tips for creating an online video:
* Offer videos in both low and high fidelity options. For dial up internet users, the lower fidelity videos take less time to load.
* Offer the videos in different types of video formats. Different people use different video players, which may not be able to play the format that you offer.
* Ensure that your website's brand is watermarked or displayed throughout the video. This assists with brand recognition and help people to find your business easily.
Top 15 Popular Video Sharing Sites:
Look beyond your website. Create a channel / account not only YouTube, Google & Yahoo video and MySpace, but the following:
#1 Metacafe
#2 Photobucket
#3 Videoshift
#4 iFilm
#5 Putfile
#6 Bolt
#7 Dailymotion
#8 vidilife
#9 Guba
#10 Grouper
#11 Veoh
#12 Rever
#13 Yikers
#14 Addicting Clips
#15 vSocial
Lastly, 48% of online adults this year said they have visited video websites, that's way up from 33% in the previous year. Add to that stat a Pew Internet study showing those with some college education or graduates, showing the largest growth for online video usage than any other group, the future of content may very well be in video....so look for my next blog post, filmed for free by my Daughters, in video. 🙂
source: http://www.jemof.com/th.html
I had kind of dismissed using videos as an online marketing tool. I guess its just a matter of people finding the right way to use them. I have seen a few SEO sites using videos instead of their blog, but they didn’t seem to be grabbing anyones attention. A good thing to usevideos for would probably be tutorials. People would find it much easier to leanr photoshop or setup PHP from a video and they would be mush quicker to produce compared to reams of text and loads of images.
@ David, thank you for the comment. I agree with your suggestion, how to/tutorial videos appear to be the most effective. I’ve seen many attempt vlogging however, for the most part, it seems a little lost. As imaginations improve and technology permits, video marketing will be a great addition to a company’s website.
More and more of our small business clients are utilizing Video content online to promote their brand and really broaden the reach of their marketing. Thanks for sharing some tips for some other sites to create and promote channels.
I’m seeing more and more of this. I know an SEO company in San Diego charging $30k for creating a professional video, then submitting it to the search engines for quick ranking benefits thanks to Universal search.
I think its a great way to grab visitors. Since these video’s are ranking extremely well and extremely fast, its the next evolution in the SEO toolbox. Create videos that will rank high for your client’s target keywords (works great locally). Put a specific tracking phone number on the video to test return.
@ Adam, thanks for the great info!
Video marketing made a huge difference to the success of our community site shalomcanada.com. We gained a 20+% increase in conversion from 7-% before and the number of new members jumped to hundreds on that same month.
Interesting Brian. Where/how did you place the videos?