When producing corporate videos there is a lot we can learn from the film and documentary traditions. Think of your corporate video as a short film and imagine that the message you are trying to get across is a story you are trying to tell. (More and more we seeing television adverts that are more like short blockbuster movies). An understanding of storytelling and its link to emotions could help you produce corporate videos that provoke the responses you want from your audience.

This Chanel No. 5 advert was the most expensive advert in the world at the time and is structured like a miniature movie.

The length of your video

Generally, shorter and to the point is better. However, creating shorts is an art and isn’t as easy as it sounds. For this reason, you need a director who knows what they are doing and only shoots what is needed – otherwise you will end up spending more time and money on an editor who has to sort through reams of footage. You also need an editor who is in tune with the story you are trying to tell and the message you are trying to get across. They should have the skills to help you tell the story efficiently.

Focus Forward Short Films have some great examples of important and potentially very long stories being told in a meager 3 minutes. Take a look.

The importance of a good introduction

You supposedly have 9 seconds to capture the attention of your audience before they switch off and walk away. You therefore need to think creatively about how to keep your viewer engaged from the beginning. There is no formula for ‘the right way’ to introduce a corporate video – there are a number of ways you can make an immediate impression. Here are a couple of examples of videos that have particularly strong introductions.

The music, short close up shots of the horse and the slow motion element cleverly draw the viewer in – there is a sense of build up and an increasing intensity, despite the fact that there is no dialogue, it does have a structure that involves a climax.

This is a great example of the potential of animation. In terms of the introduction, it is quite a classic approach with an immediate introduction to a protagonist for the viewer to empathise with throughout.

The classic narrative structure

The classic narrative structure looks like this diagram:

using narrative structure in corporate videos

This is by no means the only way to structure a story (and therefore a video) but this structure does highlight the importance of building interest in the beginning, then with the introduction of some ‘obstacles’ or ‘crises’ and two thirds of the way through a climax point.

Here I have broken down the components of the classic narrative so that you can think about each one individually in relation to your video:

Protagonist: this is the main character who will be involved in the events throughout the story. This doesn’t have to be a human being either; it could be an animal, a car or place for example. Also, you can have more that one protagonist. If you choose to have a narrator the narrator could be the protagonist, but it doesn’t have to be. If you choose a different narrator, you need to think about what the relationship is between the narrator and the protagonist because this will affect the perspective.

The chances are that in a corporate video the protagonist will be your company.

Aims: The aims should be those of the protagonist. Aims can take many forms. They could be material aims e.g. your character is trying to get the car they have always wanted, or they could be psychological aims e.g. they are trying to get over some unrequited love. You need your viewer to understand the aims of your character to engage them in the story.

The aim of a corporate video can be almost as varied as a film. However, you need to clearly structure the video so that the viewer is clear on where you are taking them.

Obstacles: In order to create some tension or conflict, any good story has obstacles to the protagonist achieving their aims. Again, an obstacle could take a number of forms. It could be an antagonistic person or it could be a physical or political problem for example.

In a corporate video this could be the problem that your customer faces that you have the solution to.

Climax: This is the crisis point in the narrative and would usually fall at about two-thirds of the way through the story. You can include ‘dramatic irony’ which is a really useful device for engaging your audience: it involves, for example, your viewer having some information that your protagonist doesn’t have and which will make the difference between the protagonist achieving their aims or not.

Resolution: This is your conclusion and it is where you close the narrative (even if the story continues outside of your video). A good resolution should leave your viewer with plenty to think about.

Change, development and conflict

Whatever type of narrative structure you choose to use, it is essential that there is some change or development over time. ‘Conflict’ is recognised as a central driver in the development of any ‘story’. This doesn’t mean you need to go to war with your competitors. Conflict or tension could be created by comparing the old with the new, by setting one set of values against another.

In some contexts, any element of ‘conflict’ might seem completely inappropriate or misplaced. It might be that changes between people or between people and their environments are what provide some development in a story, rather than conflict as such.

Here is a comic example of conflict as a driving force in a narrative for a Weetabix advert:

An ending with a resolution

A good ending is one that gives the viewer some closure but also something to think about or something to do (a call to action or a conversion in your case!).

The Weetabix advert above was on YouTube and in the video description viewers were encouraged to watch the advert and then enter a competition.

Structuring devices

Here are some other structuring devices to be aware of when planning the content of your video:

Chronology: this would be using the passage of time to tell your story. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you are just moving forward through time. There are other ways to use time e.g. looking at the past, using memory or flash back, or being slightly more abstract and mixing up the past with the present.

Thematic: organising your video in terms of themes is useful if you need to get messages across about a number of themes. For example, you may have three different types of products that you need to feature in your video and it might be simplest and clearest for the viewer to spend a minute on each.

Essay or journey: for example, you open with a question, you take the viewer on a journey to find the answer and then you come to some kind of conclusion or resolution.

Comparison or juxtaposition: The Mitsubishi advert above compares their vehicle to a horse. Juxtaposition is about placing two abstract things next to each other and stimulating some kind of thought or creativity. It is an extremely useful tool.

This video is a good example of juxtaposition with computer style animation juxtaposed with melancholy music.

Multi-story structure: this is quite common in modern television documentary and is a good tool for keeping people engaged, especially in a world of short attention spans! It is more difficult to pull this technique in a short piece but it is not impossible. An example might be that you follow a couple of different members of staff looking at their experience of working for your business and your video would move from one story to the other.

Being aware of the rules you are breaking

You have a lot of options when making a corporate video. These options will be narrowed by what is appropriate to your goals. There are no strict rules and there is nothing to say you have to create a corporate video incorporating all or even any of these elements. Having an awareness of them is just as important so that you can draw ideas from the traditions or at least know what rules you are breaking.

It is important to include clickable links in both your YouTube channel description and also the individual descriptions for each of your videos.

It is easy to create clickable links in your video descriptions and this is one of the best methods of getting traffic from YouTube. Just make sure you put the ‘http://’ at the start of your website URL.

2) Use the YouTube Annotations feature

(http://www.youtube.com/t/annotations_about)
This feature allows you to link to related YouTube videos and channels from your YouTube video. It also gives you other opportunities to make your video interactive e.g. you could create video’s with multiple possibilities (viewers would click to choose where the video goes next). This is useful in terms of getting viewers to see your other video content on YouTube, but it doesn’t allow you to link to external websites.

(http://youtu.be/UxnopxbOdic – this is a great video showing how to use annotations but the embed function has been disabled…

3) Add links to your YouTube videos

LinkedTube (http://www.linkedtube.com/) has made it possible to place links to your own website or blog on your YouTube video. For example, you could have a clickable link on a video about your products that takes the customer straight to your shopping cart. See the LinkedTube demonstration video for easy how-to instructions.

4) Grow subscriptions to your YouTube channel

Putting some time into growing subscriptions to your YouTube channel will organically increase the number of viewers who take the next step and visit your website. Increasing subscriptions is a job in itself. See the video below from Gideon Shalwick about how to get more views on YouTube (which should help draw more people to your website). Note how Gideon uses graphics to display his own web address permanently throughout his video.

5) Include carefully planned calls to action in your videos

If your videos are designed to create particular responses from your audience, you are more likely to get those responses. It may be that you incorporate some form of incentive for an immediate click through to your website. Maybe a special offer if your viewers quote a reference from your video. Have goals for your videos and be creative about how you achieve those goals.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) made known that in January, online video reached 80 percent of the total Internet audience in the UK – this equates to 34 million people.

Areas of online video growth

The size of the UK video audience has not increased in the past 6 months but in January 8.4 billion videos were watched by 34.2 million people for a total of 58.8 billion minutes. Despite there being no growth in the size of the audience itself, there have been other significant areas of growth. There has been an increase of 28 percent in the number of videos seen and a growth of 42 percent in the amount of time spent watching videos online.

These statistics support the theory that internet users are becoming more engaged with online video content over time and that this will only increase and develop further. Video content is becoming one of the most important ways to reach an audience and the potential for advertising is immense.

Top 3 online video sites

Google Sites ranked as the leading online video destination with a staggering 29.9 million unique viewers. YouTube videos account for a massive 99.5 percent of all videos watched on Google Sites. VEVO ranked second with 11.7 million unique viewers and Facebook third with 8.3 million unique viewers.

Online video viewer demographics

A demographic analysis of the data showed that males were more engaged with video content than females. Males accounted for 74.7 percent of time spent watching online videos and females just 25.3 percent. Interestingly, when it came to exposure to online video adverts, the gender split was far more even; males were exposed to video adverts for 56.4 percent of all time and females for 43.6 percent of the time.

64.1 percent of the online video audience was exposed to a video advert of which the 15-24 years age group represented the largest segment; 4.6 million people in this age group were exposed to video adverts. The statistics show that people in this age bracket also engaged most and in fact they accounted for more than a quarter of the time spent engaging with video content and with video adverts.

The power of online video and its potential for advertising can’t go ignored in the face of these figures. It will be interesting to see comparative results for the same time next year.

When someone subscribes to your YouTube channel, they will see all updates to your channel on a personalised feed. Subscribers represent a stable audience base with an active interest in your videos. This type of engagement enables viewers to feel part of a community in which they can interact with like-minded people and the makers of the videos themselves.

Subscribers are likely to be genuinely interested in your content. They are more likely to recommend you to others as a result.

Here are some tips to help you grow YouTube subscriptions to your channel

1 Don’t do ‘subs for subs’

This means don’t subscribe to lots of random channels for the sake of subscribing so that you get a reciprocal YouTube subscription. The value of subscribers using this method is minimal in comparison to attracting genuinely interested parties more organically.

2 Be original

If you are producing original and unique video content you are more likely to stimulate interest. If your titles and content are the same as everyone else’s, you will more difficult to find.

3 Upload new content regularly

Regularly doesn’t have to mean frequently or every week for example. But for a channel to be successful, you need to be producing content. This new content will not only draw in new subscribers, it will also keep existing subscribers interested and engaged.

4 Reply to comments and messages

It is important that you interact with other YouTube users to help your channel grow. It can be time consuming but if you don’t make the effort you won’t be be able to compete with other channels. Try to reply to comments and messages from people – even if just to say thank you.

5 Put thought into your titles and descriptions

Well thought through titles and descriptions, with some consideration to SEO, will help draw interested parties to your channel.

6 Have an organised and professional looking channel

Make sure that you have a picture, your company logo maybe, and ensure that you include contact details in your channel description.

7 Get your name out there

Interact where relevant e.g. by leaving comments on other people’s videos that might attract the same target audience as your own business. It is important to be professional and positive in these interactions. You should also utilise social networking opportunities but don’t spam people.

8 Collaborations

If you have opportunities to do collaborative projects with other businesses you will open the door to their subscribers too. Collaborations are a great way to introduce yourself to people who are likely to have a predisposed interest in what you have to say.

How subscriptions work:

What is the key to crafting headlines and video titles so that that they provoke a particular emotional response from your audience? It is a skill in itself and so we have pulled together some handy advice to help you on your way.

1) Learning from the smutty tabloids

There is no time for snobbery when considering the art of headline writing. Tabloids have very carefully crafted headlines and they use terminology that will appeal to their audience and direct emotions for a particular response. If you want to improve your headline writing, start by looking around you and learning from the pros. Take a look at these great examples at Direct Creative’s Blog.

2) Two heads are better than one

The tabloids usually have professional writers who are dedicated to writing headlines alone. If you have been too close to the video from planning through to post-production, it may be difficult for you to see the wood for the trees. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should pay for a professional, but it can help to have an outsider to take a look at your video and give some ideas and opinions.

3) Stay away from puns

An online video is very different to a hard copy newspaper. With a newspaper, your readers are already holding you in their hands; they have bought your paper for a reason and they therefore have a predisposed inclination to continue reading. The Internet is a whole different ball game. You have seconds to grab the audience’s attention before they wander off into the limitless abyss of the world wide web.

For this reason, when writing online video titles, avoid clever jokes and puns. Being too smart is not going to turn a page view into a click of a ‘play’ button; people need to know immediately what you are offering to show them.

4) Don’t forget the basics

It sounds obvious but you would be surprised how many people make the mistake. Make sure that the spelling and grammar in your title is accurate. A faux pas in those terms can put readers off instantly – they are likely to assume your content is amateur and unprofessional.

5) Think about search engines

A thoughtfully crafted title is a great way to ensure that your video benefits from some natural exposure via search engines. When writing your title, consider what you might type into a search engine when looking for your video. Also, take the time to look around at what video content already exists online in your field of interest. Experimenting with the predictive text options in YouTube and Google is a good way to work out what the popular search terms are. See our post on the Basics of Video SEO for more in-depth guidance.

Videos appearing as rich snippets in the universal search results often have a practical focus with title’s that include the following words:
• tutorial
• review
• test
• what is
• how to
• demonstration
• explanation
• video

6) Testing the appeal of your video titles on personality types

Most personality theorists have identified four main personality types. Be aware of them when writing your titles and ask yourself the question ‘which personality type would be drawn in by this title?’ If your answer is none, then you have a problem. The four types can be summarised as humanistic, spontaneous, competitive and methodical. If you are a Sex and the City fan you can think in terms of the four main characters (who are apparently based on the four personality types), like Cosmo does! Or take the advice of copyblogger and think of more appropriate personas that might represent your actual target audience.

7) Hone your skills with Twitter

Twitter is a great way to practice getting your message across in 140 characters.
Also, you can use Twitter to practice and experiment with different headlines; add a link to your headline and measure the success of your efforts. This will really inform your approach. By using Twitter and looking at what other people are doing, you will learn quickly how to get your message across clearly, concisely and creatively.

So we still haven’t told you how exactly your headlines can make you a millionaire. The point is more that you are never going to be a millionaire with poor headlines. Good luck!

FHBZS24U2TAX

You can’t praise Apple without praising Steve Jobs. His passion, drive and vision are responsible for the range of products that have reached and changed the lives of millions of people. There were key principles behind his success and we are going to look at how those principles can be applied to your video production strategy.

1) Do what you love

Have you ever noticed how the projects you enjoy working on the most, are the ones that you are most passionate about? Jobs was driven by a passion for making computers available to everyday people. It is difficult to achieve anything without passion.

So when undertaking a video production project, be sure to find something in what you are trying to sell that means something to you. It will make a difference to your approach and the outcomes you achieve.

2) Put a dent in the universe

Put simply, have a higher purpose. Otherwise what is the point of being here?

Applied to video production, this could be related to having a video marketing strategy that helps you to get to the core of your businesses existence – why are you doing what you are doing? If you are going to invest in producing video, make sure that it is tied in to a wider strategy so that you know what you are trying to achieve, why you are trying to achieve it, and how you will know when you have got there.

3) Kick start your brain

Jobs believed that creativity is about connecting things. This doesn’t mean stealing ideas, it means looking at what already exists, making links where they haven’t been made before and therefore creating something new. A basic Apple example would be the introduction of the built-in iSight camera on Mac computers in 2005. This made video chatting easier for people, as well as making it possible for people to record video of themselves in an instant.

Applied to video production, think about how you will sell your product to your viewer. How you present your product to your viewer by connecting the product to their lives is what will turn a watch of your video into a conversion.

4) Sell dreams not products

Jobs said he created Apple products to help people fulfill their dreams. In this sense, people who buy Apple products are not considered consumers, they are respected as people with aspirations.

Applied to video production, this means looking at your viewers with different eyes. Don’t see them purely as consumers, think of them as people with goals. It is then your role to show them how your product can help them reach those goals. In other words, identify the problem and show them how you are providing a solution.

5) Say no to 1000 things

Jobs said that he was as proud for what he hadn’t done as what he had done. This was evident in the simple, clean, uncluttered product design that Apple is so famous for; it eliminates the unnecessary so that the necessary can speak.

Applied to video production, this means knowing what it is that you want to say in your video and saying it. This will mean different things to different people, but if you have a product that speaks for itself, you don’t need a video that bombards the viewer with fancy graphics for example… unless graphics is what you are trying to sell, of course.

6) Create insanely great experiences

The Apple Store is the world’s best retailer for a reason. Their set up means that they make emotional connections with people, both customers and employees. Not only can you try out their products in the shop, but you can also be supported in the process by ‘experts’ and even ‘geniuses’. These techniques create a customer service experience that matches the quality of the product. The stores are built around showing people what they can achieve with Apple products and not just the products themselves.

Applied to video production, the possibilities are becoming greater than ever before. Other than creating videos that are perfect for your audience in terms of using the right images, graphics and presenters on screen, there are also more creative ways available for enhancing your customers experience of your video. Interactive video is a good example of the technology available. See the video below launched by Sesame Street in 2011 for an idea of some of the possibilities.

7) Master the message

Jobs turned product launches into an art form. He has shown that it doesn’t matter how good your product is if you don’t know how to get people interested and excited by it.

Maybe this has inspired you to appear in your own video so that you can tell your viewers directly what it is about your product that you love and why they should love it too. If not you, then you need to choose a presenter that masters the message as though it were their own and who is suited to your target market.

We are going to leave you with an old video of Jobs talking about Apple’s marketing strategy being about values. Still as applicable today as it was then.

This is a follow on from our previous post where we highlighted some of the top sites to learn about video marketing.

James Wedmore (http://www.jameswedmore.com/) is an innovate video marketer who has developed this blog to explain the most effective ways to make sales and increase exposure using online videos. JamesWedmore.com features a series of videos and articles regarding outsourcing your videos, increasing the amount of views your videos get and other free information that can help you take advantage of the potential of video marketing.

Gideon Shalwick (http://gideonshalwick.com/): his tagline is ‘showing you how to turn video views into cash’ and as a successful video marketer who has helped a number of businesses to develop through using the video medium, he isn’t blagging. There are some in-depth interviews on his website that will teach you a lot in a short space of time. There are also some videos on there including his lecture ‘How to become rich and famous on YouTube’.

Mark R Robertson (http://www.reelseo.com/author/reelseomark/) is the founder and publisher of ReelSEO. He is an online video marketing consultant and a video SEO expert. Mark is a main contributor to ReelSEO and writes about topics relating to video marketing, video SEO and social networking. You can follow Mark on Twitter where he is very active and you will be constantly informed about wider video marketing issues as well as what is new at ReelSEO.com.

Perry Lawrence is founder of the blog AskMrvideo.com (http://askmrvideoblog.com/). He has produced video for some big name companies and has a lot of knowledge to share. He does this in the form of short, snappy articles that are quick to read and full of useful tips. He also has a YouTube channel with practical ‘how to’ video tutorials and advice on the best video production equipment.

Mark Apsolon (http://www.markapsolon.com/) is an accomplished video producer and as a business person, he has managed to use his creative talents in the fields of video marketing and video advertising. His website hosts a range of video tutorials in which he shares ideas and practical tips for making and sharing great video content online.

Kevin “Nalts” Nalty (http://www.kevinnalts.com/) is both a career marketer and a Youtube celeb. He has has incredible success with his Youtube channels and products and he has also held senior marketing positions in large corporations. It is this mix of skills that position him as one of the thought leaders on video marketing. He has a good book called “Beyond Viral” that is well worth a read.

As well as the people in this list it is also worth looking to Youtube as many of the highest viewed Youtube channels will give you ideas on what you could be doing for your business. Look at the way these channels work towards getting subscribers and then implement their ideas.

So, how can you best react to this? Well you have 2 choices really; 1) bury your head in the sand or 2) start to learn video marketing – obviously we are strong proponents of the latter and are keen to help you make a success of your video marketing; whatever form it may take.

Many businesses may feel a touch hesitant to dive in to this very different medium so we thought that it would be helpful to point you in the direction of some good resources on the web which will help you learn more about what video marketing is, ways to implement it and tools to use for your video’s success.

ReelSeo.com is an online training resource for the video industry that will help you to stay updated with the latest video marketing trends and news. They provide advice that you can apply to your video production and video marketing campaigns right away in the form of articles, videos and training material. ReelSeo has strived to become a resource full of experts where individuals can submit information as well as gain knowledge on the most effective video marketing tools and strategies.

Flimp.net is a lead generation network that specializes in video email marketing, video lead generation, mobile video marketing and video search engine optimization. Flimp prides in their one of a kind video analytics which tracks users’ activity based on their email address regardless of whether the video is deployed via email, embedded on a community website, or on a standalone web page.

Wistia.com is an online video hosting resource that also offers some pretty interesting features to enhance your video marketing efforts. They make it simple for you to learn and implement tracking features such as heat mapping, analytics, SEO, and email marketing into your video marketing campaigns. You can get started with Wistia in with 5 simple steps.

AskMrVideoBlog.com is a valuable resource for gaining innovative video marketing tips. This website is operated Perry Lawrence, a professional video blogger whose success has coined him the name, “Mr Video Blog”. You can hone your marketing techniques from the video SEO news or his video marketing tips.

James Wedmore is another innovate video marketer who has developed a video marketing blog to help bring light to some of the most effective ways to make sales and increase exposure using online videos.  JamesWedmore.com is full of information regarding outsourcing your videos, increasing the amount of views your videos get, and various other free information to help your business unleash the power of video marketing.

Gideon Shalwick is a successful video marketer who has helped a number of businesses to develop through using the video medium. He has solid advice and good examples to back up his theories. There are some in-depth interviews on the site that will teach you a lot in a short space of time.

Video University is a site dedicated to educating visitors on the technologies and techniques behind successful video production. This is more technical than the other sites listed above and will give practical theory and advice on the production rather than the marketing side.

Web Video Chefs focus on practical tips for those creating video for the web. The advice ranges from video production to video marketing. The content is not too technical so easy to learn from and to implement into your strategy.

There are a lot of sites that deserve a place on this list but we wanted to keep it quite short so that it is not overwhelming as a starting point. If you have found a site that you think deserves a place on the list then please leave it in the comments with a short explanation of the sites content.

NO SPAM PLEASE!

If you don’t know what your objectives are in the first place, you aren’t going to know what success looks like! So it is essential that your video marking strategy includes a statement (or a list of bullet points) to clarify what it is you want to achieve. In fact, it is beneficial to do this for each individual video you produce.

We are going to look at the two most likely objectives you might have for your videos and your website (be aware of how interrelated these two things are). We will then suggest some tools that will help you judge the performance of your website and your videos. Easy!

Goal 1: improve website usage and the number of views of your video

You want to improve your website ‘usage’. This means that you want to see an increase in:

• the number of visits you get to your site (the number of times people have visited your site on separate occasions, including return visitors)
• the number of unique visitors (the number of different individuals who have visited your site)
• the number of pageviews (the number of times any of your pages have been looked at in total)
• the amount of time those visitors stay on your site
• the number of visitors watching your video

Videos can improve how users engage with your website; your website can improve how users engage with your videos. It goes both ways. You might want visitors to be engaged with your home page for longer. E.g. by placing an interesting and relevant video on your home page, you are likely to see an increase in the amount of time visitors stay on the home page (because they are watching the video). By the same token, if you work hard to drive traffic more towards your website, more people will see your video.

How to judge performance:

Anyone can use Google Analytics to measure the performance of their website. Sign up for a Google account if you don’t have one already, and then you will be able to create a free Google Analytics account. Analytics can tell you the following, and more:
- pageviews
- unique visitors
- geographical location of visitors
- best performing pages on your website
- how visitors found your site (e.g. via links or via search engines)
- which search terms visitors used to find your website
- how long visitors are staying in your website

Goal 2: increase conversion rate

Your ‘conversion rate’ is the percentage of visitors to your website who interact with your site in the way you want them to e.g. buy something, make an enquiry… or watch your video!

It is possible to control, or at least strongly influence, your conversion rate. Generally speaking, by improving engagement on your website (e.g. the amount of time a visitor stays on your website as well as their level of interaction) you will boost your conversion rate. If you are looking for tips on how to increase your site conversion rate using online video, be sure to read our article.

It is important to be aware of other factors that will contribute to your conversion rate. The usability of your website will seriously affect your conversion rate. If your site is poorly designed and organised, customers will struggle to find what they want or need and are likely to give up quickly and look elsewhere for what they are after. Other factors include customer service and the level of trust customers have towards your product and brand.

How to judge performance:

Using Google Analytics to track conversions

Again, Google Analytics is a great tool to help you measure the success of your websites/videos, this time in relation to your conversion rate. See the following video which explains how you can set up a conversion in Google Analytics.

Other ways to measure performance

Measuring the performance of your videos on YouTube with Insight

YouTube has a built in facility called Insight which is effectively an extension of Google Analytics, which means that you can measure the success of your videos that are hosted on your YouTube channel. Insight can tell you:

- how many times your videos have been watched
- the popularity of your videos over time
- the gender balance of your viewers
- the age of your viewers
- the geographical location of your visitors
- how visitors are discovering and watching your videos
- the ability of your video to retain your viewers’ attention

Using Google Optimiser to test the performance of different aspects of your website

Google Optimiser is a tool that enables you to test different versions of different aspects of your website, and it will tell you what is working best to achieve the results you want. For example, you can try two different layouts of your website and Google Optimiser will send some of your visitors to version 1, and some of your visitors to version 2. It will then tell you which version resulted in the most conversions. Try putting a video on a page in version 1 and not in version 2 and see how the video helps you to achieve your goals. Take a tour with this video to see how you can utilise this service.

Crazy Egg heat mapping
Crazy Egg is an eye tracking tool for websites that allows you to see exactly how users interact with your website using heatmap image technology. If you put a video on your web page and there is a lot of activity around the video then it shows that users are focusing on that area of your web page. Or if your video is too far down the page and users are not getting to it before they click away to another page you will also be able to see this. Crazy Egg costs just $9 per month so well worth the outlay.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is about maximising your websites potential to be found in search engines when users search particular terms. If you manage to achieve high search engine rankings on competitive and high volume keywords which are relevant to your business, you will increase the drive of traffic towards your site. Rankings on search engines are not simply an indicator of the performance of your website, they are an indication of how successful your SEO – both onsite and offsite link building is.

There are a range of ‘video SEO optimisation factors’ which are useful to be aware of if you want to maximise your presence on search engines. When deciding what to call one of your videos, think about what search terms a customer might type into a search engine when they are looking for the service that you provide. Write down the results and try to include the keywords from this process in the title of your video. Search engines use predictive text when you type into the search bar. You can use this to research what the more popular search terms are. Again, use the results of this research to influence the titles you give to your video content. For a more detailed breakdown of SEO optimisation factors for video, see our post on basic video SEO.

You should now be well-equipped to measure and analyse the success of your online video marketing. Good luck!

Finally a bit of trivia on the name of this post. Name the film?

Flying blind

A screencast is a digital video recording of computer screen output. Where a ‘screenshot’ is a picture of a computer screen, a ‘screencast’ is a video of a computer screen – showing the changes to the screen over a period of time.

There are a range of other possibilities for using screencasting which include capturing presentations (Powerpoint, Keynote), tutorials and as a training tool.

Software for screencasting

Camtasia and ScreenFlow are two platforms with similar capabilities. Not only do they they allow you to record anything that is on your computer screen, they also allow you to edit and share your video creations. Editing capabilities include the option to intercut your screencast with images, video and presentation slides from other sources. You can also ‘splice’ sections of your screencast and move them around to put them in the order you want.

ScreenFlow allows you record your video, your microphone and computer audio at the same time as capturing what is happening on your screen. This could be useful if you wanted to provide some form of narration to explain what is happening on the screen. In Camtasia, you can record voiceover later with the Voice Narration option.

Sharing your screencast videos

Both Camtasia and ScreenFlow allow you to export your screencast creations into high quality videos that are compatible with PC’s, Macs and mobile phones.

With ScreenFlow, your finished video will be in the form of a QuickTime or Windows Media movie. It will then be ready for your website/blog or you can publish it directly to your VIMEO or YouTube account and share it with the world!

Video: How to Create a Video Using ScreenFlow and Upload to YouTube

Both Camtasia and Screenflow cost $99 for a lifetime license.

Ways to share your videos so that they spread

YouTube

Anyone can set up an account with YouTube. It is a video sharing site and once you have an account you can start uploading videos. After uploading a video, YouTube will automatically generate a URL for your video which means you can share the link with anyone who you would like to see your video.

Even more fun than a URL is the ‘embed code’ which YouTube also generates of your video. An ‘embed code’ does what it says it does. You can take this piece of code and literally embed your video on your website.

Your Blog/Website

As with any other content that a business produces it is good to have it featured on your own domain as that way YOU will fully benefit from all of the social activity and sharing that occurs, if it does in fact occur. With the video content on your own blog or website you will benefit from popularity in 3 ways:
1) People share your content with their friends which raises awareness of your website
2) People link to your content from their blogs
3) People will sign up to your RSS feed or your email newsletter (yes, you should have both of these).

Oneload

Oneload is an online video distribution service for anyone who wants to publish their videos to multiple platforms and save time in the process.

Oneload enables you to send your video content to multiple video and social networking sites. Rather than uploading your video one by one to each of your accounts, Oneload will do it all for you.

Oneload is unfortunately not free for businesses to use for promoting their own commercial content but it is free for non commercial use.

See table below of sites that Oneload has partnerships with and can provide analytical information for:

The cherry on the cake with Oneload is their analytics tool. Video distributed via Oneload will be tracked by the Oneload analytics tool, giving you the ability to evaluate the progress and success of your video. How many times has it been viewed? Where has it been viewed the most? Oneload can tell you the answers to these questions, informing your future video marketing strategy.

More useful ways to share your content

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to manage your social media conversation on multiple platforms in one place. Currently you can monitor conversations on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Also, if you pay their high fees for a Platinum account then you can manage Google+ too although i have heard that there are plans to bring this to all of their clients.
Hootsuite can be used to quickly and easily post your video to these social networks with a customised message.

AddThis

AddThis is designed to help you integrate sharing tools on your existing website. You will have seen websites that have little buttons with the Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon and Reddit buttons to name a few. The presence of these sharing tools on your website will help users on your website to spread your content and drive traffic towards your site. Once you have added the AddThis ‘web widget’ to your website, visitors can easily bookmark an item using a variety of different social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter; this means they are spreading your content for you.

AddThis also provides analytics that will tell you how your audience is interacting with your site. It can tell you what content is causing visitors to share your content on different social networking sites.

Finally and most importantly, for you to distribute your content easily Addthis have a bookmarklet – this is a browser app that you can install on your browser and which sits at the top of your screen (or side or bottom) and allows you to quickly submit web pages to numerous social bookmarking sites like Didd, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious.

These sites can drive large amounts of traffic to your website if your articles get picked up within the community and get shared around.

It is important to spend time getting to know others in the network with similar interests to you and to share their content in return for them supporting you. Remember, these are social networks and as with all social networks, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Shareaholic

Shareaholic is another tool that can help you share your content to numerous places quickly and easily. Two clicks to each social network site in fact! See this short video for a snappy explanation for how to sign up and start sharing:

SHAREAHOLIC – SHARE YOUR URL’S VIDEO

These tools will enable you to spread your content with speed and efficiency. If you have a great video to share and you cover all of these bases consistently, you can’t go wrong.