Using Video to Promote Your Business
by
Becky McCray from Small Biz Survival gave me the inspiration to extend the conversation she started over at her blog. Be sure to start there!
In Becky’s recent post about how to use video to promote your small business, she lists several example businesses and shows a few video ideas for each example to kick start the thinking process. I thought it was such a great post I wanted to make our readers aware of her post and also hoped to extend the conversation a bit.
Specifically, I wanted to mention some ideas for using video that would help any business or organization.
- Present - Present your ideas, products or services in such a way as to quickly help people understand them. Video can do in seconds what text and photos takes paragraphs and pages to do.
- Introduce - You and your team are the heart and soul of your business. Introduce yourselves to your customers and potential clients so that they understand who you are! Video introductions can be a great way to help build trust, initiate conversations and establish relationships with your viewers.
- Promote - Promotion of your products and services can be incredibly effective using video. Video is engaging, easy to consume, and relatively quick to digest.
- Announce - Grand openings, sales events, holiday specials, open houses… whatever
the occasion, video can help spread the word. Adding “forward to a
friend” buttons can even help the message go ‘viral’. - Invite - Adding video to your invitations, either by email, or through special messaging in your off-line promotions, can really add excitement to your events. Couple that with an online RSVP tool and you have yourself a powerful tool working 24/7 to bring people to your event!
- Recruit - Whether your a college, university or a business, you’re all looking to recruit the best and the brightest. Video can help capture the essence of what makes your campus or organization unique, and deliver that directly to your top candidates.
- Demonstrate - Are you an expert in your field? Provide your readers some video demonstrations explaining the things you understand but they don’t. Or, if your business provides a product or service, you can use video to demonstrate that product or service and show us all how it’s better, smarter, faster, cooler, cheaper, more efficient… Well, you get the idea. Show us all how it’s done, and we’ll be more apt to beat a path to your door.
Video has been a powerful tool for a long, long time… but it’s been limited by it’s distribution methods. Online video is an incredibly powerful new medium that will benefit us all. The businesses that take the time to understand its power and flexibility and then take action will most certainly make a lasting impact on consumers.
** Shameless self-promotion: call or email me to set up a time to kick around some ideas that might benefit your business. I’m always up for a good conversation about how we can help… chris (at) zeppelinmedia.com, or 515-965-9779.
(Oh, and Becky, if you’re ever in the Des Moines area, give me a shout! I’d love to talk shop for a while.)
Technorati Tags: video, web video, business video, video promotion
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Becky McCray says:
Oh, no! More of the Iowa Blog Mob! What is in the water up there???
Chris, this is a terrific post! You have put a marvelous organization to my rather scattered ideas. Thanks for continuing the conversation.
Jun 24th, 2007at 8:43 am
Chris Punke says:
I don’t know Becky, I think the water must be infested with Blog Bugs or something.
BTW - Thanks for the inspiration!
Jun 24th, 2007at 11:23 am
Drew McLellan says:
Chris,
This is an excellent list! A good reminder that an old tool with a new delivery model means the entire game has changed!
Drew
Jun 24th, 2007at 6:52 pm
Chris Punke says:
Thanks Drew!
I completely agree: old tool + new technology = world of opportunities.
Jun 25th, 2007at 8:40 am
Scott Townsend says:
Great post. Being in the service business, I can see how it would be useful to “show” customers how to use the different products we offer. But does everything have to be put on Youtube?
Jun 26th, 2007at 10:11 am
Chris Punke says:
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your feedback!
Although YouTube is a great product, it does have its limitations, mainly being branded as part of a community of often-silly, sometimes-offensive, and seldom-serious video. There are others, and they are all fairly easy to use, but…
…my PERSONAL preference for business video is to stay true to the business’ brand by creating custom video interfaces that either mesh into the existing customer site, or live inside their own branded player environment.
Hard to describe… Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.
BIG BUDGET:
Toyota Tundra (Fantastic example of the power of video over the web)
SMALL BUDGET:
Know it Hauls
Iowa Classic Sports
Simpson College (this one is just a test we put together, but should help you see the possibilities)
Jun 26th, 2007at 10:37 am
Karen Putz says:
Don’t forget to recommend captioning the videos for deaf and hard of hearing individuals!
Jul 16th, 2007at 5:42 pm
Chris Punke says:
Great point Karen! You are absolutely right! Not only to help out those with hearing impairments, but also for those who either don’t have sound on their computers or prefer to leave sound off… All around a good idea to try to incorporate captioning.
I’ll try to dig up some more information and a few good examples and post on that soon!
Thanks for bringing this up!
Jul 16th, 2007at 8:31 pm
Hestercr says:
thanks much, bro
Mar 23rd, 2008at 12:30 am
Bernard Bonomo says:
As a producer who specializes in Broadband Video Production, I think you’d be excited to see a great example of one of our videos that not only covers everything mentioned in the blog, but also incorporates closed captioning to help emphasize the message.. Visit beanovision.com and play the “welcome video” in the center of the screen.. Please let me know your thoughts and hope this helps. . Thanks
Apr 9th, 2008at 6:01 pm
rubber says:
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Jul 1st, 2008at 12:57 am