Video is Worth a Thousand Pictures to Your Website
Marketers found this out in the 1950s and 1960s as they flocked to TV advertising often replacing all or part of their print budgets. Being able to tell a story with site, sound and motion proved its superiority.
This fact is surfacing on the Web as technology now enables everyone, and I do mean everyone, to add videos to their Web site — professional and personal sites. The recent comScore online video data reflects this ubiquity. Here are just a few of the key points reported for the month of Dec. ‘09:
- Very high penetration –
- 86% of the total U.S. online population viewed video content
- Individual usage grew significantly –
- 95% increase in number of videos by the average viewer (95.7 vs. 186.9 videos per person)
This data is encouraging as it says that Web visitors have made online videos a part of the norm. This also suggests that marketers can and should capitalize on this new way to communicate on their Web sites and online in general.
In addition to improved messaging, on-site videos can help improve your search engine rankings, particularly if you initially install them on YouTube.
A number of our clients share our vision for using videos on their Web sites to more effectively tell their story. One of our clients recently purchased 3 inexpensive video cams and sent them to groups within his organization to start capturing content that can be used on their Web site.
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when building your video strategy:
- Use and script videos to reinforce your site’s core messages.
- Insert a video player (YouTube or other) on your home page and link it to a lower level page that has relevant content.
- Keep videos short. (comScore reports the average length increasing to about 4 minutes. We strive for even shorter lengths – Google typically uses 1-2 minute videos for their own products and services – Less is more!)
And remember, adding video to your Web site can become a very valuable part of your search engine optimization (SEO) effort. By adding tags to the video, search engines (and Google for sure if you use their YouTube) will enhance your chances of high rank.
