Tim Lorang is now retired and not accepting new clients.

olde_typewriter1.jpg

Tim Lorang Blog

How to use video on your websites.

Posted by Timothy Lorang on Fri, Oct 22, 2010 @ 04:42 AM

TV 1955 brizzle born bred resized 600Many businesses and organizations feel that they should be using video on the internet but they don’t know how or why. Unless their business is making or distributing video it is not often clear why they should post videos. If you are a business, or any organization that wants to attract visitors to your website, the “why” should be obvious. You want to to attract visitors, increase sales, or increase awareness. In short online videos can increase conversion rates and increase your ROI. For more details there is a great blog on REEL SEO about how affective video can be for increasing conversions and sales: Video Sell Products. (http://www.reelseo.com/videos-sell-products-watch/)

A quick look at most videos on the internet will tell you that outside of commercials most videos really don’t seem to be selling. The message is not an obvious “buy this” message. Similar to other forms of online or social media marketing the “hard sell” is a turn off for most people and they will often ignore these types of videos. So if research shows that videos sell products how do they do that? How are the videos used? What types of videos can be used and when and where should they be used?

Another excellent blog from REEL SEO goes into this in great detail: The Three Types of Online Video For Business (http://www.reelseo.com/types-online-video-business/). Briefly they identify three general areas or ways videos are used by businesses.

1.      Offsite or Viral Video: These are the videos you often see on YouTube or posted on peoples Facebook pages. Their job is to raise awareness and get people to visit the web site.

2.      Homepage or Conversion Video: These generally are seen on the web home page and make the case on why someone should buy the product or sign up at the web site. These videos make the sale.

3.      On the Website or Educational Video: These are the training and support videos a company provides to help their clients and customers use their products.

Not every video on the web neatly fits into these three categories but the majority of online videos generally support one of these broad goals. The question that people should be asking is not whether they should be using video or what type of video they should use but rather what do I want to accomplish? Do I want to attract new customers? Do I want to generate leads? Do I want to make people aware of my cause? Do I want to increase donations? Do I want to make more sales and convert new customers? Do I want to retain the customers that I have? Do I want to support and train my current customers? In most cases a video will do all of those things. No single video will do all of those things and different types of videos will do better at some tasks than others.

So first ask the question: What do I want to accomplish? Then determine what type of video you need and how you are going to use it.

Topics: Online Marketing, Video