Guest post: 5 Reasons Why Every SMB Should Have Online Video in 2011 by Jackie Codair

It will come as no shock that now, more than ever, it is important for small and medium businesses to establish a strong web presence in order to stay afloat amidst the competition of big businesses. Just having a website, however, no longer amounts to a powerful web presence. Online video is an essential tool to set your small business apart in 2011.

1. Time Spent Surfing the Internet = Time Spent Watching TV Online video is a great investment to attract the attention of current and potential customers to your SMB. A study conducted by Forrester Research showed that for the first time, Americans are spending as much time on the Internet as they are watching TV. Most of these users are watching videos as they surf the Web. In November alone 172 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content, according to research conducted by comScore. As consumers spend more time online, businesses of every size must begin integrating interactive tools like online video on their websites to capture browsers’ attention.
2. Videos Increase Traffic Plain and simple: the inclusion of video content on your website drives traffic [PDF link]. Google, Bing, and other major search engines now include video as a part of their search results, so videos can drive traffic that might otherwise be directed elsewhere to your website.
3. Videos Convey A Message in a More Engaging Way than Text Many Internet users don’t want to spend too much time reading text on a company’s website. Videos are a great solution to this problem. Because there is tons of information packed into image and audio, videos allow viewers to learn all about your company or product without the hassle of reading lengthy text. As an added benefit, videos encourage the viewer to become engaged with the content and persuade them to spend more time on your company’s site.
4. Interactive Marketing Draws Business and Increases SEO Use interactive tools to attract customers to other areas of your site. Add clickable links in your videos to direct users to other pages where they can either buy your product or learn more about your company. You can also use videos to increase your SEO [PDF link]. First, add a comment section to your videos. Trackback URLs to these comments will help boost the ranking of your site by encouraging cross-linking between your site and other pages visited by your audience. You can also position calls-to-action so that users can share your videos, such as “Get Link” and “Email to a Friend”. The inclusion of these simple features will encourage cross-linking and leverage your audience for new content types. These additions to your videos are a fast and easy way to increase the generation of inbound links, which remains of the best methods for improving your ranking in video and search results.

   When debating how to integrate video, think twice before putting YouTube on your business’ website. While YouTube leads potential customers away from your site and potentially links your business to undesirable video content, you can have a high quality personalized OVP (online video platform) on your site for a low cost.

5. Increasing Importance of Mobile Marketing Videos aren’t only being watched on computers anymore. Many consumers are beginning to use their smart phones to browse the Internet. You want to be able to make sure video on your website plays every time, no matter where viewers are browsing from, whether it’s from their desktop computer or their iPad. In 2011, be sure that all of your videos are smart-phone compatible to further increase your website’s appeal and accessibility.

Leading online OVP’s, such as Brightcove, significantly cut start-up costs, reduce total cost of ownership and offer advanced functionality that makes it easy to fully customize the player experience so that it cleanly integrates with your branded destinations and sites.

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