subject: Why You Need a Video Presence Online by:Ksenia Oustiougova [print this page] Everyone seems to be looking for fast, inexpensive, quality video marketing. According to Dr. Silvia Pfeiffer, Vquence's CEO and former CSIRO research scientist: "A video is 50 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results than any other content. It is therefore imperative for every product, brand, and marketing campaign to have a social video element." What do you need to do to join the frenzy?
First, change your website's main landing page from text to video (but don't forget to keep all other text as text and not images to still allow Google and other search engines to crawl it to get you more traffic):
- Information presented in text is correctly recalled by only 8% viewers, where as same information presented in a graphic animation is recalled by the whooping 65%.
- It takes your web site visitors only 0.3 seconds to decide whether to stay or leave (compared to 4 seconds 4 years ago). With video, it increases from 15 seconds up to 1 minute, if the video content is holding their attention.
- Keep your video to 1 minute long max, we do not recommend having a video longer than 2 minutes. People have short attention spans nowadays. Also, don't forget to let people know how long the video is, indicating it on the player - 20 minute long presentations will scare them off and cause them to leave. If you absolutely need to get information across in 20 minutes, consider making a 1 minute "teaser trailer" about it to get them to watch the whole thing.
Second, share your video on Social Networking Sites (and that is entirely free, although it does take up your time at the beginning):
- If you haven't done so yet, you've got to jump the wagon and join Twitter (we assume you are already on Facebook and LinkedIn).
- Follow us on Twitter for daily dozes of selected animated marketing videos, or simply for your inspiration.
- Post your video at least on YouTube and Vimeo (there are dozens more sites, but these tend to have the most focused audience). In 2008 search engines were responsible for 11.18% of all video referrals, followed by social networks with a 3.66% share of all referrals.
- Tag your videos with up to 20 keywords that your prospects are likely to search for.
Third, update your video to a new one at least once in 3-6 months (or, depending on your business, it might be every month or once every year):
- Market changes constantly, and you've got to continue the conversation with your prospects before they're bored again.
- Research shows that people forget about your brand if you haven't updated them with new information in 3 months.
- Depending on the size of your business, you might want to create "internal" videos to let everyone in your department know exactly what it is they are working on - and help boost the overall business and brand understanding with each product release.
We hope this article will be helpful to you in deciding whether or not your particular company needs an online video presence.
About the author
Ksenia Oustiougova is Founder and CEO of Lilipip (www.lilipip.com). Her passion is helping small businesses and start-ups tell their story to a large audience through online animated marketing videos. Visit her blog for more tips on moving your brand: http://www.lilipip.com/blog/ or, contact her at ksenia@lilipip.com.
