Video Marketing For Newbies
Table of Contents
10 Tips For Using Web 2.0 To Promote Your Business.
Helloworld Review (product preview)
Resources
Featured Article
By: Scott BambooOnline video publishing has indeed taken the Internet by storm in recent years, making the use of video for marketing, promotion, news and PR online a true key strategic component and a key business differentiator for internet marketers who want to communicate effectively about their product profile and benefits within the shortest possible of time.
Internet is full of information and the average attention span of a web user today is measured in seconds. When web users search for their information at a search engine, they will get thousands of search results; when they visit your website, they may only spend a few seconds and little efforts to scan through what you are selling or proposing and decide whether your content, style, look and approach are a good fit for what they were actually looking for. These first few seconds are crucial and if you can delivery clear and targeted message by offering a fast, highly visual way to get their further attention and engage their interest, you have done bingo.
Does this mean that you just need to simply put up 10-min video tutorial on your website or just slamming some video contents up on your web pages, you will instantly sell more products or services? If this is your way of marketing with video on the web and hoping to get high conversion rate of traffic-to-sales, you will more toward getting disappointments than good news.
In order to make your video to effectively market your products/services online and convey your product/service key traits and characteristics within a very short amount of time in a unique, memorable way. These are a few rules of thumb to follow:
1. Get Your Video Seen
If you want your video to be your effective marketing tool, it must be able to see by as many web users as possible. Hence, don't just keep and tight your video inside your web site borders. Let your video content be free and distributed to the majors video sharing websites such as YouTube and Google video so that not only others can watch and talk about it, but they can easily download it, redistribute it, if not even publish it directly on their own sites.
2. Small File & Load Fast
Statistics show that average web users spend their time waiting for a page to load is about 7 seconds. Web pages that take longer than 7 seconds to load, their visitors normally are on the verge of clicking away and visit other website. Hence, you need to make sure your video file is small enough, ideally less than 1 megabyte and load almost in real time to keep the interest your visitors. AVI is the most common video format, the file size can easily exist 10 megabytes for a short 2-3 minutes video; hence if you share your video in this format, you most probably will get "click away" from you visitors because of long loading time of your video file. Hence, you must get a video format conversion tool to convert your video to a more internet friendly format such as SWF format.
3. Let Them Know It's A Video, A Short Video
If the web users do not know that it is a video, they won't click it and play it; hence your video will get watch. So, you must let the web users know that the "box" is a video; the best way is to make it look like a video / VCR-like by having a play and stop button where the web users can click to play the video and stop it whenever they want to stop it.
Let the web users know also this is a short video. No one wants to sit through a 30 minute presentation on the history of your company; be focused on your products/services and deliver your messages preferable within 2 minutes.
In Summary
Effectively market with video on the web is not just slamming some video content up on your web pages, it more toward effective video communication through video publishing & sharing on the web.
Scott Bamboo is a internet marketer and a freelance writer on internet and home business related topics (about-internetmarketing.blogspot.com).
Top 10 Tips for Using Web 2.0 to Promote Your Business
by Kevin Stirtz
We hear a lot about Web 2.0 these days. It sounds neat and it's trendy to talk about blogging and social media. But does it really affect our businesses? Is Web 2.0 just for kids and tech-hipsters or is it something we business owners should use to help promote our businesses?
I can't tell you if Web 2.0 is right for your business but I can tell you it's something to be aware of. Ignoring it means ignoring a possible tool that could be valuable in helping you get more customers.
So, to help you get started in thinking about Web 2.0 for your business, here are some things for you to consider.
1. Have a plan.
Don't dive in just because it's cool or because you read an
article about it. Be clear about what you're trying to accomplish, how
much you're willing to invest and what time frame you are working on.
Like any aspect of your business - plan ahead.
2. Make sure your target audience is online.
Web 2.0 tools are fun but useless if the people who see your
stuff don't want what you offer. Or if they don't look to the Web for
information to help them buy what you sell, then your efforts will be
less effective. Like any marketing channel, it only works if your
prospective customers are there to see (or hear) your message and they
are receptive to it.
3. Create good content.
Web 2.0 is the social web but it's still content-driven.
Lousy content leads to lousy marketing, no matter how flashy it is.
Make your content relevant, interesting and real. Put yourself in your
customer's shoes and answer their questions with your content.
4. Don't sell.
Help, inform, educate but do not sell. Web 2.0 is all about
people connecting by helping each other. No salesman allowed! Think
education, not advertising. Deliver useful, nuts and bolts stuff or
honest opinions they can believe. That's how you build credibility and
trust that lead to new customer relationships.
5. Start with a free hosted blog.
www.Wordpress.com and
www.Blogger.com both have very useful and simple blogs you can setup
for free. Use them to start blogging and get a feel for how it works
and how people use Web 2.0. Dip your toe in the water before diving in.
6. Talk to kids
Chat with some kids (ages 8 to 18) and find out how they use
the web. They are the trend-setters. What they're doing now, the rest
of us will be doing soon. Learn what they do and why. This helps you
understand the web from a different perspective.
7. Do it yourself.
Web 2.0 is about being real. It's real people connecting with
each other. It's okay to hire a pro to advise you. But to keep it
genuine, make sure you or your employees create the content and do the
work. Otherwise people will know you're faking it.
8. Buy a camcorder and start shooting.
Go to Best Buy or Radio Shack and buy an inexpensive
camcorder, tripod and lapel microphone. Buy 20-30 tapes too. Then take
a weekend and shoot film. Practice, practice, practice. Get comfortable
being on camera so you're not nervous or dorky. Then, write a funny or
useful how-to sketch and film it. Use Microsoft MovieMaker to edit and
then upload to YouTube.com.
9. Buy an inexpensive audio recorder.
MusicBarn.com has a package that includes M-Audio's MobilePre
USB recording interface. Add a microphone and you have a high quality
setup to record podcasts and MP3 audio files whenever you want. Then
buy NGWave sound editing software to make it sound professional and
you're in business.
10. Surf 'till it Hurts.
Surf blogs, YouTube, Google
Videos, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati and other
social media websites. Get a feel for how they work and who goes there.
Become part of some social media communities. Make new friends online.
Immerse yourself in the Web 2.0 culture so you know how it works and if
it might fit your marketing plans.
Kevin Stirtz helps businesses get more customers without spending a fortune. He is an author, speaker, consultant and president of http://www.EasyFastWebSpace.com.
