Video Marketing is becoming more popular marketing method for promoting your brand, and should be incorporated more into your blogging routine. Its also a great piece of tool to vary your content. In a previous slide we mentioned that video content generated the most engagement from users, in a recent study from ‘Quicksprout’ it was proved that from using video marketing awareness of brand and product services raised by a staggering 74%, click through rate increased 2x-3x more when there is a video on the website/e-mail, 64% of website visitors are more likely to buy something and their was a 51% increase in subscriber-to lead conversation rates.

Businesses now have their own YouTube channels specifically for video where they can respond to customer questions and get customer suggestions so in future they can address what isn’t working and keep conversations relevant to what the customer wants. YouTube is also great to use if you want to include videos in your social media strategy as you can share to pretty much any social networking site just by simply sharing a link. You can also live stream events such as conferences directly on YouTube aswell.

Vine, a 6 second video app is now being used by businesses such as coca cola and Xbox. You can create simple videos that offer insightful snippets into your company or product/service. It is crucial to remember though if you are not targeting the 13 -25 year old demographic then you could be wasting your efforts. Instagram also has a similar video features although instead of 6 second videos you can have 15 second videos. With Instagram you can edit your videos easily and share them to more social media platforms than you would vine. You can have up to 20 minutes of HD video with Facebook. If you directly upload your video to Facebook rather than link it from YouTube there was slightly more engagement from Users.

Videos are easily embedded into your blogs ( WordPress now has VideoPress to help with Vlogs) and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and can be viewed and shared by anyone.

Here are some great tips for incorporating video into your marketing plan and content for video:

• Raise awareness of your brand/ service. Showcase your products
• Humanize your company voice by giving customers quick glimpses into your office or company life- show colleagues having fun or clips of events
• Have a catching title – You want to engage users attention at first glance. Why should they watch your video?
• Make annotations on your video once you’ve uploaded them! On YouTube once you have uploaded a video there is an option to annotate the clip at certain times in the video. This is a great tool that can allow you to link to your other videos or watch someone else’s video. Ask users to comment or share the video. You can also plug your website and social media sites.
• You can put your companies logo in the video- Take advantage of this! Try to incorporate your logo colours in the video if you don’t want to include the logo itself. This raises brand familiarity and awareness.
• If you or anybody else in your company doesn’t like appearing on camera, hire a interviewer or spokesperson to represent the business.
• Ask questions and respond to any questions asked. This shows the customer that you listen  and you care about what they have to say.
• Tell a story with your videos. Users engage more if there is an emotional or comical angle.
• Include case studies/ success stories and show the results. This increases trust and authority.
• Show Tutorials how to use your product.
• Keep your message consistent. Once you decide on a message or a value stick to it. You don’t want to confuse your viewer.
• Once you upload the video, give a clear description of what the video is about. Also include tags and # so your message will be spread further to targeted audiences.
• Mix it up! There are so many things you can do with video besides just filming yourself  like animation, slide shows, web conferences, hangouts, live stream, keynotes, stream flow, bandicam, GIFS etc.

All in all, video marketing is extremely beneficial for your business which can be used as a fun way to inform your audience of any updates. The fact that this medium has been proven to attract and generate the most engagement is why you should have it in your social media strategy.