Bill McRea

Video marketing has been growing steadily in popularity, but there are still those who are not taking advantage of this powerful marketing medium. If that includes you, 2012 may be the year you decide to take advantage of the tremendous benefits of video marketing, which includes attracting tons of targeted traffic, better engagement with your audience and a nice SEO boost.

So, we rounded up three of the big trends about video marketing for this coming year because we all like to prognosticate and make predictions for what the coming year might hold.

Trend #1: More of us will be watching move online videos in 2012

The SEM and SEO News blog reported on the ComScore study on the consumption of online video content in the U.S., for 184 million viewers in 2011 was 21.1 hours/viewer, which was up from 175 million viewers who watched 15.1 hours, so they forecast that in 2012 about 193 million Americans will be watching about 29.4 hours of online video this year.

Given the steady growth of this exciting medium, your messages are increasingly likely to be seen and interacted with by your audience. If your closest competitors are not using video it could be a key differentiator that will set your brand apart in the marketplace. If you are launching a new product or service, or looking to get more exposure for your existing products video marketing could be the solution.

Trend #2: HD will rule video marketing in 2012
The Omaha Video Solutions blog reports on how, “HD will become the standard.”
HD or high definition video is becoming the industry standard for video marketing. Viewers will be watching your videos on their iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices which are all HD compatible, so you want your videos to look as clean, sharp and high quality as possible.

Trend #3: Video will take the lead in marketing
Sookie Shuen, on the Jeff Bullas blog, predicts that, “Video is centre stage.” in 2012. If this is the year that you are going to take the plunge into video marketing take the time to come up with a plan for how video marketing will support the goals for your business. Next create the framework for how you will create and publish your videos. Do your research when it comes to purchasing equipment, or find a good video production company that can handle production for you.

One of the great things about video is that you can get started with just your mobile phone camera and some good light. Come up with a plan for what you want to say, keep it short and then take your camera out into some good light and start shooting away. Either take the time to edit them, or upload them raw to youtube.com and you’re well on your way. As you learn more about production, editing and marketing your results will improve, but the important thing is to get started and to have fun with it. Your enjoyment will come across in your videos and attract viewers.

Do you get that video marketing is not something that you can afford to avoid much longer now? The bottom line take away is this: you will not lose if you decide to add video marketing to your overall marketing mix in the coming year.

Video marketing is about to blow up, so come on over to http://mcreasite.com/blog to discover lots of ways you can use it to grow your online business today.

Facebook and Skype have teamed up to provide video chat for users of both platforms. Now instead of just text chatting with your friends, customers and clients, you can now video chat with them using Facebook. Rolled out around the same time Google+ launched offering, ‘Hangouts,’ which is a multi-user video chat feature, video chat for Facebook is now available for you to try with your friends, customers and colleagues.

In addition to being fun to chat with your pals on Facebook, video chatting provides an opportunity for those who are marketing their products or services on this popular social media platform.

Here are a few tips that you can try to make the most of Facebook’s new video chat feature:

To get started with Skype video calling on Facebook, you can look for the video call icon in the upper right-hand corner of the window, or if you are text chatting and want to switch to video, there is a little video icon in the top blue bar of the chat widget window. All you need is a laptop with a webcam and you are ready to go.

Get more details at: facebook.com/videocalling

For the moment, the Facebook video chat feature is a one-to-one video chat with no option for adding other friends into the call. If you try to initiate a video call to a friend and they are not available to chat, you can record a video message for them.

So, how will you use Facebook’s Skype video chat for your online business? You can use it to provide customer service with a personal touch. If your customers have questions about your products you can answer them live with video. Customers who are considering making a purchase can get their questions answered by a real, live person right before their eyes. Do you think that might be an effective way to handle some of your potential customers’ objections?

In addition to meeting with potential and current customers, Facebook’s video chat is a great way to network with colleagues. You can arrange a video chat with potential JV partners and meet in the closest approximation to face-to-face as is possible without traveling.

Skype video calling on Facebook just shows one more way to enhance communications between you and your customers and colleagues. Because almost everyone is already on Facebook it makes it convenient because you don’t have to log into yet another application and best of all, it’s free.

If video calling on Facebook eventually adds the group chat capabilities that Google+ already has with its Hangouts, you’ll be able to use Facebook video calling for business meetings, webinars and conference sessions.

Incorporating video chat into your overall video marketing strategy can generate impressive results for your business. For more tips about building and growing your Internet marketing business, visit, http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

You’ve seen those videos on youtube.com that have gotten hundreds of thousands of views—sometimes even millions of views, and you wonder what it takes to get that kind of exposure for your marketing videos. In this article I’m going to let you in on a little secret, and yes, this time it really is a secret that’s not really well known. Many of those “viral” videos didn’t get that way purely organically on their own just by being shared from person to person. There is a whole strategy behind making your videos go “viral” and we’re going to pull back the curtain on some of those strategies right now.

Let’s clarify what we mean by viral. What we really mean is that the video gets shared by thousands via email and/or social media attracting thousands of visitors and links back to your website. Lots of videos, such as the, “Charlie bit my finger” video, or the silly cat, dog and laughing baby videos, go viral, but they are not connected to a website or a brand, so they are not making anyone any money with those page views. What we are looking to create are viral videos that actually make money for you.

Internet marketer, and Video Boss creator, Andy Jenkins, recommends that if you want your videos to go viral you create videos that are:

• Short
• Focused
• Meaty
• Friendly

Your videos, Jenkins suggests, should cause transcendence in the mind of the viewer where they come to learn or understand or feel something differently than they did before viewing your video.

Marketing videos are not commercials, and if they come off like one, no one is going to share them with their friends or post them on their Facebook wall.

Now for the secret strategies behind making your videos go viral. You’ve got to promote the heck out of it. It’s really that simple. Those who think that they can create a cute, snappy video with links back to their site; post it on youtube.com and sit back and wait for the views to roll in is living in a fantasy world especially when you consider these statistics about youtube.com:

“24 hours of video are uploaded every minute on youtube.com. The average person spends 15 minutes a day watching youtube.com videos, and more video is uploaded to youtube.com in 60 days than all three of the major US TV networks created in 60 years.”

Source: website-monitoring.com

Dan Ackerman Greenberg, in a Techcruch.com guest article shared some inside information about how viral videos really end up getting so many views.

Ackerman shares a core strategy of getting your video on to the ‘Most Viewed’ page on youtube.com:

• Post your videos on relevant blogs in your niche

• Share your videos in forums in your niche

• Share on Facebook and get your Facebook friends to share it as well

• Send your videos to your email subscribers and ask them to share it

• Optimize the title of your videos

• Use tags to help your videos get found

Ackerman advocates opening up several youtube.com accounts and comment on your own videos, stirring up controversy and drama using your other personas to attract attention and encourage more page views.

So there you have a basic strategy for creating videos and making them viral to attract a flood of traffic to your website.

Video marketing is just one of the exciting aspects of Internet marketing that you will learn about when you visit, http://mcreasite.com/blog.

When you think of Video marketing online, youtube.com is where most people think to go first. It’s been around a long time and now that it’s owned by Google it’s one of the most popular video sharing sites on the Internet. But it’s not the only one. There are several viable alternatives to youtube.com  when it comes to video sharing sites for video marketing. Let’s take a look at seven of them in no particular order where you can host marketing videos and include a link back to your site.

1. Metacafe

Metacafe’s  content is carefully cultivated and reviewed by an 80,000 member viewer community.  With 38 million unique monthly visitors worldwide, your video hosted at Metacafe will get viewed.

2. Revver

Revver provides a way for video producers to generate revenue with their videos. They attach a contextual ad to the video and the more the video is viewed the more revenue it generates. All of the videos are rated similar to movies with a G, PG or PG13 rating system.

3. Daily Motion

DailyMotion is a video sharing site that puts a lot of emphasis on building community by incorprating some social media elements to their profiles such as the ability to create a contact list of other DailyMotion members and share your feedback with them about the videos that you watch.

4. Vimeo

Vimeo allows users to create channels for sharing videos among groups. They have a video school to help you improve your skills, and Vimeo has an app that lets you watch, upload, edit and manage your videos right from your smart phone.

5. Blip.tv

Blip.tv seems to attract webseries–webisodes and other kinds of video series. You can sign up for an advertiser account and split the revenues 50/50 with Blip.tv. You’ll find analytics and other useful tools on their user dashboard.

6. Veoh

Specializing in long form videos, Veoh does not restrict the size of your videos when you are uploading them. They do not have the vast audience of youtube, but they feature high quality content.

7. Viddler

Viddler promises to help you build your brand using video marketing with a bias toward larger corporations as opposed to home grown videos produced by individuals.

All of these alternatives to youtube.com are video sharing sites that offer free memebrships. They may not have an audience to rival the millions at youtube.com, but some sites emphasize the power of community, and cultivating quality content for a more satisfying user experience.

A good video sharing site should be intuitive enough for a newbie to understand, have helpful features and available support to answer questions and concerns.

Video marketing is a powerful way to get lots of exposure and targeted traffic to your website. Making short, engaging, entertaining and educational videos will attract prospective customers and help you to expand your brand online in a cost-effective manner.

So, there are just a few of the alternative video sharing sites that you can try instead of or in addition to youtube.com for attracting traffic and getting exposure using video marketing.

When it comes to building a buzz online about your business, video marketing is just one strategy. Visit http://mcreasite.com/blog to discover lots of additional ways to grow your online business.

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In the early days of the web in the 1990’s the landscape was a bit like the wild, wild west. Marketers were figuring out how everything worked as they went along. As the personal computer revolution grew in momentum and more and more people got computers and then Internet access at home, and at work and the audience began to grow, Internet marketing began to become more sophisticated, but the main through line for the medium seemed to be to meet and engage with users on the platforms that they used the most.

Towards the end of the 90’s we saw banner ads grow in popularity across the web. Back in the day when there was still the novelty factor, people actually clicked on banners, some of which enjoyed as high as 30% click-through rates.

Email, which got its start in the 1960’s in academic settings was adopted by the public and businesses in the late 1980s, and the early 90’s saw the beginnings of email marketing.

But everything changed in 2000 when Google launched its AdWords PPC program making pay-for-performance online advertising mainstream. PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising was very popular and very successful for Google. Today it still accounts for the largest portion of their revenues.

In 2005 video marketing explodes on the scene and youtube.com and hulu.com experiment with business models while video advertising revenues skyrocket.

Concurrently with the rise in online marketing, the mobile marketing bonanza begins to gather steam. As mobile phones become more sophisticated and able to access the Internet, people begin to access the Internet using their cell phones more than with desktop or laptop computers.

When the iPhone hit the market in January of 2007 it was a game changer. With its sleek touch screen technology, and over 200 patents connected with the design, the iPhone was poised to transform personal mobile technology along with having a huge influence on the culture. Other similar smart phone devices came on to the scene and even more recently with the release of the iPad in 2010, tablets are changing once again how people relate to and interact with technology, which in turns influences how marketers try to get the attention of these tech-savvy users.

Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said, “The post-PC era represents a change in consumer behavior. It’s not just the device. It’s the social behavior. It’s a social trend. The post-PC era represents a social shift and a technology shift.”

Here are some fascinating mobile marketing statistics:

•87% of Americans own a cell phone, 95% of them have text capabilities

•84% of cell phone users have their cell phone within reach 24/7

•90% of text messages are read. Email compares at about 20%

•23% of text coupons are forwarded to friends

•text messages are green

•text messages out number cell phone calls 2 to 1

•10 million digital coupons were redeemed in the first 6 months of 2009 a 25% increase over 2008

Technology experts have predicted that by 2013 most customers will be online using their mobile devices rather than a computer !

250+ million Americans carry mobile phones—over 80% of the nation’s population

Source: CTIA Wireless Association

As more and more people move from computers to tablets and mobile devices—what Steve Jobs calls “post-PC era” products, the popularity of these products are changing consumer habits. Marketers will need to keep up or get left behind.

For more information about mobile marketing and  online marketing, visit, http://mcreasite.com/blog to discover lots of tips and strategies for growing your business online.

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