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Posts Tagged ‘video’
Monday, December 6th, 2010
Should you have auto play media on your business websites? For example, music or video.
First, I think most people in business object to landing on a website with music automatically playing. This can be for one of several reasons.
- They don’t like your particular brand or style of music
- They could be listening to something else and your music is an interruption
- The music could annoy others within the same hearing vicinity as the person who just landed on your website
Auto play music is generally considered an interruption or an annoyance, particularly if your website visitor is in a professional setting. What if he or she is in the middle of a webinar and goes to your website to place an order only to find that your music interrupts their webinar?
While music does have its advantages (there are pros, in other words), I believe the disadvantages make auto play music less desirable for a professional website. But what about auto play video?
Video is less objectionable. After all, a well done video can be an interactive element that draws people into your site and gets them to stay longer. If someone does not want to see or hear your video, they can click the pause button and go on browsing or reading your content. The video, with its moving images, is more of a welcome entertainment factor that could also inform and, if done well, could keep your visitors on your site longer.
Auto play media should be considered according to your audience, your website marketing strategy, and the promised benefits to you if that media is favorable to your audience. Weigh the pros and cons before deciding.
Tags: media, music, video, website development
Posted in website development | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 16th, 2010
If you have been reluctant to use video on your small business website because of particular technical limitations related to embedding, sizing, SEO and video hosting then you’ll likely be excited to know that HTML 5 will change all of that. In its current incarnation, Web video is limited for most website uses. YouTube, and other video sharing sites, have paved the way for video popularity on the Web, but until now it has been rather impractical for most website owners to use video on their websites.
Most Web browsers require a plugin before a site visitor can view a video. Site visitors either need to download Shockwave, Flash or another browser plugin just to view a video and due to concerns for Web security many of them are reluctant to do so. That means there is a huge segment of your website traffic that you are not able to reach. HTML 5 will change that.
With HTML 5, webmasters will be able to upload a video to their server and display it on their website in the same manner as they can currently do with a photo. All it will take is a simple HTML tag that will tell browsers where your video is located and the styling elements involved. Anyone will be able to view the video in their Web browser.
The HTML 5 Poster Attribute
One unique aspect of the video tag in HTML 5 is the poster attribute. This attribute allows you to use an image placeholder that shows where a video will be displayed while it loads. The possibilities here are endless. You can show your branding logo, a Google AdSense ad, an in-house ad for an event you want to promote or sell the space to an advertiser. Whatever the case, your site visitors won’t be looking at an ugly black and white box or a spinning kaleidoscope as the video loads. You’ll have their undivided attention; you might as well put it to good use.
If you’re as anxious to see HTML 5 as I am then hold onto your breeches. There’s no release as of yet but it’s in been in development for a couple of years now so you can look for it real soon.
Tags: HTML 5, video, website development
Posted in website development | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
Making the video to promote your website is the easy part of video marketing. Once you have the video or videos, what should you do to make sure they get the best distribution? There are literally tens of thousands of videos on websites like YouTube, so what are the chances of someone finding yours?
Getting links to your video is always a good idea, this will help it appear higher in the search engines. You can do this by linking to it from your website or blog and via article marketing. If you`ve made some good videos that are viral, then other people will start to link to them as well.
Using a good title for your video will help people find it when doing searches. Be sure to add tags that include your keywords, whenever you are given the opportunity. This is an area that is very important since it helps not only people, but search engines find your videos.
Video marketing draws a lot of attention, often far more than text marketing, but it doesn`t mean that you can just upload a video and sit back. Be proactive!
Tags: search engines, video, Video Marketing, viral
Posted in Video Marketing | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
For a long time, almost all the information online was just text. Now, we have photos, audio, videos . . . everything you need to promote your business. Internet marketing is a growing method of promotion and it`s something that is relatively easy to do.
If you`re confused about internet marketing or aren`t sure how to get started, then I`d like to recommend a good resource that I`ve put together on my site. There is a series of videos that show you how to go about starting your internet marketing.
There`s no need to be in the dark and if you find that reading just isn`t doing the trick, then you might find that video tutorials will help you out a lot more. Most people learn better this way, so it`s a good way not only to start learning more, but also to promote your own business.
Get started with internet marketing and watch your business grow.
Tags: audio, internet marketing, video, video tutorials
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, October 17th, 2008
Did you know that 65% of media sites use video these days? And more than 50% of them use outside video sources . . . which means this could be a great video marketing opportunity for small businesses.
Media sites are always on the lookout for new and interesting content and the fact is that video holds people`s attention and keeps them interested for longer than a written article, so it`s only natural that these websites would want to bring in as much outside video as possible.
As a small business owner, you can enjoy the benefit of having your viral videos featured on a major media website, if you plan it right. You`ll need video marketing that really is top of the line and worth placing in front of viewers. Preferably, your videos will be newsworthy, without being a hard sell, since they aren`t going to publish a blatant ad. This could be a great way to get your name in front of a wider audience!
Video marketing is definitely a growing method of gaining publicity, so it`s worth working on and going for those bigger media sites.
Tags: media sites, small business, video, Video Marketing
Posted in Video Marketing | No Comments »
Monday, October 6th, 2008
Did you know that more people now watch video online than they read? It`s so easy to watch a video and after decades of watching television and movies, your clients are already accustomed to gleaning their information from video, so why not use video marketing as a method of reaching them?
Getting Started
As long as you have a camera that you can upload video with to the computer, you`re good to go. Most PCs now come with built in video editing software, which you can use. All you really need is a title for your video and the ability to cut and splice if you need to.
Videos can be uploaded onto YouTube, Metacafe or any number of hosting sites if you don`t want the hassle of hosting on your own website. All of these offer a simple code that can be cut and pasted onto your webpage to make the video visible to visitors.
Video marketing adds a whole other dimension to your business. It will let people see you as a real person and can be an excellent way to reach out to your target market.
Tags: video, Video Marketing
Posted in Video Marketing | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
There’s an interesting article today in SiteProNews about video search engine optimization. While Randy Zlobec makes some great points, I was a bit disappointed that he left out the most important part of video optimization, especially if you host your videos on your own site. He does cover some very important territory, however:
- Meta tags
- Submitting to more than just Google and YouTube
- Embedding on your own site
- Stay away from pop-up players
- Use a video search tool on your site
- Use some kind of analytics to determine which videos are most popular and how long visitors stay on your videos page
- Ensure your videos are high enough quality for TV
- Don’t use ActiveX controls
- Create a sitemap for your videos
All of these are important for video optimization and I wouldn’t leave any of them out, but Zlobec did leave out one very important item that should be the first thing you think of, namely, text content on your videos page that is descriptive and contains your important keywords. Aside from visitor usability, this is the most important thing.
While Google has announced that it can now crawl Flash files, there still is no evidence that all videos will be crawled. Even then, when Google crawls Flash it is only looking for text and links, two elements that are likely not to be the most prominent in those files. And other search engines won’t even do that, which means that your videos will have to be optimized using elements not within the video itself. Content on the page has always been the most important aspect of search engine optimization – and it still is. Optimize your videos will valuable text content that uses your most important keywords – that is, the most important keywords for that video.
Tags: marketing, search engine optimization, video
Posted in SEO for Small Business, Video Marketing, search engines | No Comments »
Monday, May 5th, 2008
Greg Sterling of Screenwerk is telling us that local video marketing will be a big thing within two years. I think he’s right.
I think his suggestion to YouTube to open up a local video channel is a good idea. He quotes HitWise as saying that YouTube already has 73% of the market. While Yahoo! and Google Video are both used to some degree, there is a huge margin between the market share enjoyed by these three video marketing channels. Second place running, MySpaceTV, has only a 9.21% market share, down from 17.73% one year ago. It looks like Google acquiring YouTube has paid off.
Making a video is relatively simple. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. You can hire a young college or high school student who knows how to operate a video camera and editing software and pay them to create marketing videos for you and upload them to YouTube and the other video sharing websites. Marketing online through video is a lot less expensive than off line marketing used to be.
Tags: local marketing, online marketing, video, YouTube
Posted in Video Marketing | No Comments »
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