Creating Videos as Part of Everyday Local Business Operations

Per Hub Spot, according to a new white paper from comScore, an average of 179 million Americans watched online videos each month in 2010. In addition, Americans spent approximately 12% more hours viewing online video in 2010 compared to 2009 due to more video ad streams and increased content consumption.

Stats like these indicate that online video content is a viable way for which to market a business, but many companies find it difficult to capture video for their organization, or they believe it’s costly and takes a lot of time to do so. However, this isn’t the case. In fact, when done right, video is cost-effective way to:

• · Market a business for increased leads and sales.
• · Create brand awareness and loyalty. · Boost local search engine rankings
• · Create recent and current tips and newsworthy content valuable to consumers
• · Generate customer and employee involvement.· Present an individual or business as an expert in their field.

The key to utilizing online video efficiently for optimal results is to incorporate the creation of videos into the everyday operations of a business by making it as easy, fun, and worthwhile as possible. To encourage the creation of videos for your business, consider the following:

• · Provide a flip camera or office camera for employees to use to capture several different types of videos at their disposal, including:o Interviews.o Before and after on-the-job videos.
•  Client testimonials.o Employees working on-the-job.o How-to tips and information.o Events.
• · Create a video schedule, and assign a video to a different employee each week to keep the content current and frequent.
• · Make it fun by creating employee incentives for the best video of the month, the video with the most hits, etc.
• · Provide a script for your employees and customers to make the filming go as smoothly as possible.
• · Repurpose current content, such as presentations, blogs and articles, and use it to create a new video.

Once you have your videos created, you want to post and repost them throughout the Internet to create inbound links and promotions. YouTube is the most popular social online video site, so start there. When you post on YouTube, be sure to include GEO modifiers to boost your local search engine rankings starting with your location address and business name at a minimum. You can then take your YouTube link and repost it on Facebook, your business blog, your company website, Twitter, etc.

By doing so, you will be creating a viable process to boost search engine optimization and search engine rankings to drive more traffic to your business. And more traffic = more leads = more conversions. So start yesterday and create a fun, easy and efficient process to build a video library to effectively promote and market your business!

Author Bio: Chris Marentis is an experienced marketer with over 25 starting and growing successful businesses. He is currently CEO at local internet marketing company, SureFire Social, involved in local web marketing.