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Community Corner

Video Blogging: 4 Good Reasons to Do It

Online Marketing and Optimized Website Designer Extraordinaire shares her tips for Vlogging.

 

 

I’m getting ready to release my first video. Actually the 30-some-odd minutes of  uncut video is sitting in my computer waiting to be edited down to a fraction of the current length, all in the name of  “watchability.” I talk a lot, what can I say. And it all seems so valuable. It’s not, trust me, I just need to take myself down a notch.

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Why, you may be asking, is she adding yet another layer of content to her existing marketing? Enough, already! I’ll tell you why: because it’s important. New content, in various formats, is what drives interest, which drives web traffic, which drives search engine crawlers, which drives sales, and video is one of the most effective formats available today. 

I was just talking to a client Monday, a publisher of Humor Magazine, who told me that as strong as his ad sales are for his magazine, when he posts a link to his website that houses a video, traffic to his website spikes so drastically that he is now considering bringing the entire magazine online and foregoing the printed hard copy format.

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Think about it. When you visit a website that contains a video on the home page, what is the first thing your little finger does? It hits the play button on the video, that’s what. Why? Two reasons:

  1. Everyone loves video. It’s like checking out road kill, or bottle necking while driving, or secretly following The Housewives of Atlanta. No one wants to admit it, but following a visual satisfies our natural curiosity. Think Snookie.
  2. Connection. People connect with you more if they can visualize and relate to you

There’s this crazy trend on Youtube that’s only getting more viral, called the “Haul” video. Your teenage girl can get you there, or check it out above.

Do these girls have a lot goin’ on? I’ll leave it up to you to decide, but I will tell you this: check out the number of hits this popular “hauler” has on Youtube. That’s right, you read it correctly: 1,351,396. Yup. This girl, like more than a few other “haulers,” is “viral.” She’s viral because she’s honed in on a target market that is looking for her videos and her “haul,” a target demographic of teenage girls who are looking and anticipating her amazing and articulate words of wisdom about her buying results at Forever 21. Smart. Optimized. And now paid and sponsored by Forever 21. Did I mention that she’s 16?

We, of a certain generation, remember Crazy Eddie, of the now bankrupt “Crazy Eddie” appliance chain store fame. What made Crazy Eddie so memorable? What branded him? His goofy, manic, hyper-kinetic delivery that made all who watched him laugh and create buzz around his commercials. It sure wasn’t the store inventory, or management, or great deals… it was (speedy) Eddie himself. We anticipated his commercials with baited breath… back in the 80s… Check him out in the other embedded Youtube video. ‘Crazy Eddie,’ although eons before Youtube was setting the groundwork for great viral video.

So here’s four good reasons why it’s important to add video marketing, or “vlogging” to your marketing, in a nutshell:

  1. Everyone loves a video. If placed strategically on your homepage, it will be the first thing people click on when they come to your website, so make sure you have a lot of content rich value in there.
  2. Once you’ve created a video, optimizing it for the search engines is a no brainer. Creating a Youtube channel and uploading it to Youtube is easy–peasy. And Youtube is the No. 2 largest search engine after Google. It’s great SEO. You’re out there!
  3. Connection: Marketing is all about creating relationships and connection. It’s much easier to form a relationship through video than any other medium. It’s a human touch that is now easily accessible with these new tools we have available to us.
  4. It’s easy! A simple built-in or detachable webcam is all you need. No need to get fancy with expensive HD cameras. Those “haul” videos? Created by teenage girls sitting in front of their webcams with their messy pink bedrooms in the background. It makes it real and relatable. Anyone can do it. And they don’t have to be long. As a matter of fact they should be short — real short, along the lines of 3-4 minutes, no longer. We all have short attention spans these days.

So get out there and try it. It’s a no cost way to attract more people to your website, store or business, and give them valuable content rich info. Mine is coming, if I can only figure out what to edit out.

Suzen Pettit, a longtime Brookfield resident and marketer extraordinaire, is principal at Omaginarium and Omagine Health, a marketing firm specializing in growing small businesses and medical practices by creating search engine optimized websites, internet marketing, social media marketing, affordable SEO, blogging and email marketing. She’ll teach you the ropes to grow your business online.

Contact Suzen at 203-733-8578 or email her at Suzen@omaginarium.com.

 

 

 

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