Are Shorter Videos Better?
One growing branch of online marketing is online video marketing. It seems to be picking up speed. But there are certain principles that video marketers should cling to if they want their marketing to be effective. One of those principles is to keep it short.
I’m talking about your videos.
High quality shorter videos seem to attract a great response from viewers and have the best potential for going viral.
The reason shorter videos work best is because people in today’s fast-paced global marketplace are crunched for time. A thirty second video will go much further than a one hour documentary. Especially if your goal is to attract attention and drive traffic for marketing purposes.
If you want to provide in-depth videos on a given topic, you are better off using short videos to attract attention to your business and website and using them to drive traffic to your longer pages. You might even put those long educational videos behind a paywall and charging admission. Then you know that someone interested in that kind of time commitment is willing to pay for it. When people put their wallets on the line, that’s a commitment.
Put your marketing budget into your short videos. They don’t provide any more SEO benefit than longer videos, but they are also don’t provide any less SEO benefit. But they do work for driving traffic.
Online video marketing isn’t rocket science. You can be effective with just a little forethought and some respect for your prospect’s time. Draw them in with short videos and close them with your on-page content.
Sex, Lies, And Video Marketing
There are three things that we know will always be true.
- Sex sells; dirty sex sells even more
- All marketers are liars (thanks Seth Godin)
- Video marketing is on the move toward the future
So what can we make of these three truths?
First, if you want to make your business popular, try one. Some marketers have been very adept at creating sexy marketing campaigns. Even when it wasn’t necessary. The sex caught people’s attention and the company was catapulted to notorious fame (think GoDaddy).
Of course, you can always stretch the truth a little bit. Exaggeration is not just a literary technique. It’s also a marketing principle.
But, better than sex and lies, video marketing has come of age. Savvy online marketers can produce high quality videos on a fraction of the budget that they used to be able to do. And you can distribute your high quality videos online to drive traffic to your website. You can do it all day long.
But I’d guess the best, most effective marketing strategy is to mix these three elements together. If you can create a high quality video that plays off sex and exaggeration (lies), then you can develop a buzz and watch your traffic soar. Is that what you really want, sex and lying notwithstanding?
Video Branding Tips From The Round Table
Is it possible to brand your business with videos? Of course, we believe it is. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your video branding strategy.
- Include you logo and business brand name in every video. Make it a standard practice to showcase your business logo and brand in the opening sequence of your video and in the closing frame at a minimum.
- Use a cornered logo often and when practical. In lieu of the above suggestion, add your logo to the corner of your video screen so that it is visible throughout your videos.
- Create a YouTube channel. Distribution is a key element to video branding. Create a YouTube channel and distribute your videos on a regular basis through that channel.
- Establish a voice for your videos. If you use the same voice over artist for every video, you’ll establish that voice for your company and it can work as a branding element.
- Establish a visual style. Small elements such as video transitions and effects can be used to brand your videos. The key is consistency across all your videos.
Video branding is all about establishing top-of-mind awareness for your brand through videos. It can be done with simple elements and a consistent approach.
What A Video Press Release Can Do For Your Business
The Internet has changed forever how public relations is done. And that includes how press releases are written and distributed. One powerful emerging trend is the video press release.
There are multiple applications for the video press release. One very popular application is to use the video to accompany a written press release through online distribution. This method is powerful because it incorporates the traditional elements of press release writing with search engine optimization, social media promotion, and video or multimedia enhancement.
Another way to make video press releases work for you is to publish them on your own website. If you do a lot of public relations work, then you can have a page of your website set aside for press releases – and that includes video releases.
Of course, video press releases can also be distributed online as standalone public relations pieces. YouTube, Vimeo, and many other video promotion websites will take your video press release and make it available to their website visitors.
A multi-pronged approach is always best online. The more widely you distribute your content – whether it be SEO content, social content, or videos – the more likely you are to drive targeted traffic to your website. And you are likely to reach different segments of your market by making your videos more widely available.
Video press releases are powerful because they engage people on various levels – by sight, through audio, and visually. They are apt to spark an emotional response, a necessary component in any PR campaign.
Do You Need A Video Script?
When you decide to market yourself using videos, whether you plan to upload to YouTube and Vimeo or place them on your own website, you’ll need to start somewhere. I recommend that you plan your video from beginning to end before you start shooting. And that includes writing a script.
Why do you need a video script? Two reasons:
- A script will help you keep your video on track. If you don’t veer from the script, then your end product will look pretty close to what you had in mind when you started. That’s exactly what you want.
- It will save you a lot of time.
Because the script is what keeps you on track, you will save a lot of time in the long run. There won’t be any running around in circles trying to figure out what to do next. You’ll have a script to follow. It will also cut down on chasing rabbit trails. Creative people often get an idea right in the middle of a project. You can always point to your script and say, “That doesn’t fit into the plan.”
Of course, if a really good idea does present itself in the middle of your video project, you can always scratch the script and start over. But be sure that, No. 1, the idea really is a good one, and No. 2, that you don’t try to incorporate it into the ongoing project you’ve started. You must either finish the one you’re working on and make your mid-stride idea a new project, or scratch the video project you’re working on and make your mid-stride idea a new project.
So how do you know when to scrap a video project? There are several ways to look at that. If it’s too costly to gain any real ROI from it, then it doesn’t need to go forward. If you’ve veered from your script and the project is getting out of control, you may need to start the planning process over so you can get back on track. If the video is really not fitting into your overall marketing plan, then you don’t want it going public.
Good marketing videos start with a plan. Your plan must include a well-written script that everyone can follow, and the end result should be known by the whole team before you start shooting.
How Many Ways Can You Go Viral?
Viral marketing is a concept that is hard to pin down. Just what is it?
In a word, viral marketing is any type of marketing that catches on and gets people talking about you. When an idea spreads, either spontaneously or as a part of a planned effort, then it is said to have gone viral. That can happen in a variety of media.
Videos, for instance, can go viral in a number of ways but one very popular way that they often catch on and take a life of their own is through the popular video channel YouTube. Articles can go viral through one of many e-zine directories or on a content website. Photos can go viral at places like Flickr and DeviantArt.
What medium are you using? It helps to know what you have to offer in order to present it to the right people in hopes that it might go viral. Your blog can viral if you get it in front of the right eyes. One blog post can go viral if the right people see it and share it. The key is to get it in front of the right people.
So how do you do that?
One mistake that marketers often make is to present their material to all of their friends hoping that their friends will share it and then their friends will share it and so on and so on. But a better way to ensure that your content goes viral is to present it to half a dozen influencers. These are people on social networks like Facebook and Twitter who have thousands of followers. A single tweet or Facebook update can often lead to thousands of hits to your website in minutes if the right influencer likes it.
But simply submitting your link or content to an influencer isn’t enough. You should study the influencers you want to target and learn what they like. Develop a relationship with them. Interact with them and get to know them as a person, let them get to know you.
People, even influencers, respond better to people they know than to random strangers. Get to know the right people and your content will stand a better chance at going viral.
Do You Have A Video Sitemap?
One of the most important developments the search engines ever came out with was the sitemap. It allowed all of the search engines to better crawl websites and find content for indexing. Now, Google is offering video sitemaps and I’m betting it’s going to be every bit as revolutionary as the original HTML and XML sitemaps.
A sitemap is very important for crawlability and getting indexed and ultimately for achieving high SERP rankings. It tells the search engines how many pages you have on your site and which pages are important for crawling and, more importantly, what changes you’ve made to your website since it was last crawled. A video sitemap will do the same for your video content.
You might as well face the music. Video marketing is here. And it’s only going to grow bigger. The only question you need to answer is, Are you getting on the bandwagon now or later?
How To Kill A Viral Marketing Campaign
Viral marketing is much more sophisticated than it used to be. It is rare that someone mass submits hundreds of articles in one day to thousands of article directories and expects to get a flood of new traffic to their website that converts. Sure, it happens. But it’s rare.
Today, viral marketing is more about the Wow Factor. You’ve got to the wow the audience before you get them to your site. If you don’t wow them until they get their then it’s too late. So what are the tools for producing the wow effect that will get new visitors to your site?
- Articles
- Social bookmarking websites
- Social sites like Facebook and Twitter
- Videos
- Blogs
In the old days of viral marketing, the product was mostly content. Today it is largely social. Look at the list – social bookmarking, social networking, videos (think YouTube, a social network that is also the No. 2 search engine), and blogs (a medium that is half social and half SEO tool). See the theme?
So the question is, how do you kill a viral marketing campaign? Take it out of its social context. Be anti-social.
Viral marketing is social media marketing on steroids. It is, in a word, the maximum effective use of the combination of social media and SEO. Want to kill it? Just break one of those two legs of the viral marketing stool and your campaign will fall on its face.