Videos are becoming one of the most popular ways to communicate online.They are used in several ways:
1. Information: This type of video are designed mainly to give people details on how to do something. A stockbroker might want to create this kind of video to show people how the markets work and is only ever going to be a very BASIC plug to promote the brokers themselves.
2. Sales: This video type is one step up from the Informational video in that it is a blatant attempt to get the viewer to buy something. It will have to include as many pure BENEFITS as possible to make it clear what the company can DO for the viewer.
3. Education: These videos are meant for training purposes and are often used by companies to help train new staff. However, these can also be used to direct people TO YOUR WEBSITE by putting a visual link so that people can choose to visit your website should they wish to investigate your company further.
4. Instruction: Used mainly as ‘How To’ videos, these are purely meant for showing the viewer step-by-step ways to make something or to do something. A DVD player manufacturer might include one of these in their packaging to make it easier for the new owner to set-up and use their machine.
Making videos to be found by the search-engines is called Video SEO……………….clever huh!?
Using videos in your internet marketing efforts has some drawbacks over text, because search engines can’t currently SEE what they contain………..but Google and Yahoo ARE working on that! They are currently working on sound/speech recognition systems so that they can pick-out keywords from the soundtrack, but who knows what the likes of Google and Yahoo (and the next giant search-engine which we haven’t even heard about yet) will be able to do in another five years.
Until the search engines CAN figure-out what the content of a video is all about, you need to do other things to let people know that your video exists and what it’s content is about.
In part 2, I’ll go into more detail about what you can do to help make your videos more search-engine friendly.
Luke.
