Using Effective Video Marketing As Part Of Your Social Media Strategy

So, the other day I was thinking about just how easy it is to get people on the Internet to experience marketing in a variety of ways.

After all, it used to be that offline marketing efforts were pretty self-contained. I was trying to think of good examples of cross-media marketing in the past, and all I could remember were some silly experiments with putting 3D glasses in newspapers to get people to watch a Superbowl ad.

As I recall, I kept the glasses, but didn?t bother with the ad.? That probably says something about the effectiveness of their strategy.

However, unlike offline marketing, everything on the Internet ultimately links to everything else. So, there?s no reason to treat your various online marketing strategies as separate elements. Employ that fabled ?big picture? thinking here: find ways to engage leads in one medium and inspire them to investigate you through other mediums as well.

And how does this apply to video marketing? Basically, effective video marketing cannot be solely about making videos. That?s just one step in the process. After that, you should be looking into ways to tie them into your other online marketing efforts, such as you social media strategies.

The Social-Video Connection

Here?s a little factoid to dazzle your friends with: On Facebook, five hundred years of videos are watched every day. On top of that, an average of seven hundred videos are directly shared through Twitter every minute! Oh, and every one of those shares brings an average of six new views.

(Gee, and people wonder why the Internet hurts productivity?)

Over the top statistics aside, effective video marketing today requires engagement with social media. Videos cannot ?go viral? without it, so you should be looking for ways to directly harness that power for your own needs.

Effective Video Marketing Using Social Media

If you?re looking for some tips on how to get started on merging your video marketing and social media strategies, here are a five key suggestions:

1. Get a YouTube Channel: They?re free, they can be hotlinked or embedded directly on your website, and people can subscribe to you directly to see all your latest videos. Since YouTube supports direct integration with Facebook and Twitter, allowing visitors to immediately share your materials online. You can even cheat a little and ?like? your own YouTube videos to instantly post them to your Facebook.
2. Remember the Ten Second Rule: Generally speaking, you have less than ten seconds to engage a new viewer. You can?t wager on your viewers having the patience to stick with you through a preamble. You need to hit them over the head with a nice big WHAM moment as soon as they press ?play?.

3. Use plenty of links: Viewers should never wonder who you are or what your website is. You should have links to your main page at the top of the video description. You can even integrate pop-up messages within the video that help point them in the right direction, or just make a little joke on the side.

   

4. Get interactive! There are a bunch of clickable video apps which can be embedded within your video, giving it interactive elements. Internet users are easily distracted and enticing them to click on things is a remarkably good way of holding their interest. Just look at Farmville.
5. Vary up your content: Don?t solely post videos of someone talking directly into the camera. On the Internet, a lack of variety is a kiss of death. Use animations. Hire a local comedian to do a routine for you. Create a ?Choose Your Own Adventure? style series of YouTube games. Get creative, and keep people clicking!

To have really effective video marketing, you need to reach out and poke your customers where ever they lurk online. Get their attention and keep them clicking, and you?ve got them, even across multiple mediums.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/using-effective-video-marketing-as-part-of-your-social-media-strategy-0336165

r kelly r. kelly macular degeneration