Even though we have seen the popularity of YouTube and other online video channels grow massively, Internet users viewed 14.8 billion online videos in January 2009 alone*, many businesses still neglect this channel in their online marketing efforts.
I have always enjoyed video production, in fact I dream of one day producing a Tarantino style short film, but at this level there are many layers of complication. Expensive HD Video cameras, sound equipment, complex editing suites running on powerful computers, scripts, actors, release forms, the list goes on, but for small businesses video promotion can be quite simple.
A Flip HD camcorder costs around £150 and if you have an Apple Mac all the software you need for editing is already included, even with a PC £70will buy you a decent editing software that will upload the finished video direct to YouTube. You can even use a cheap webcam for presentation style videos. With this low an investment and a bit of thought you can now create something unique to your business and bring your products or services alive online.
Here is an example of a video presentation I made using a £15 webcam. This took virtually no planning or editing, in all no more than 30 minutes to produce plus the time it took to upload to YoutTube.
The following was filmed with the Flip HD and produced much higher quality video, the beginning and end were trimmed with titles, credits and intro music added using the free software included on a Mac laptop. Again it took around 30 minutes plus upload time to complete.
If you have an iPhone you have even more opportunity to produce video content and as long as the subject matter is of interest to the audience the equipment used becomes secondary. A video demonstration of your product or presentation of your services is going to be far more interesting than a couple of paragraphs of text.
In addition there are many other benefits to producing video content for your business, which I will cover in a future post.
*Figures issued by Comscore 2009