Video is the hot topic these days. You’d think it was a new thing. But there’s nothing new about video – it’s been around almost as long as TV. What is new is that broadband has made online video viewing integral to the Internet experience.

In the last year alone we’ve seen an explosion of video viewing and sharing on social networking sites. Advertisers are shifting their marketing dollars to the Web and online ads are booming. Why? Because marketers know that the consumer is going online to see and hear more about the products they are thinking of buying. It’s one thing for a potential customer to see a static image accompanied by text and quite another to see a product in use and demonstrated, or to hear the story behind a company. Online Web videos can be linked and shared and are searchable, providing more possibilities for potential customers or clients to find you and what your company offers.

Using Video to Promote Photography

If you run a video production company, it’s a no-brainer that you’ll want to use video samples to promote your business. But video is also effective for promoting all types of businesses, including still photography.

You can import your still images into some type of non-linear editing system like Final Cut Pro, add a narrative track and/or music and create a video promo of your work for online viewing. This promo can also be uploaded to a mobile device giving you the ability to show your work to potential clients in a quick and interesting fashion, anywhere, anytime. Better than your typical “elevator speech” when someone asks “What do you do?”

Another very effective way to market and promote your photography business is to create a behind-the-scenes video. Everyone loves a story and this is a great way to tell people about your company as well as provide more information about yourself and how you work.

Chase Jarvis is one photographer who uses video in imaginative ways to provide more insight about his company. Business is all about relationships. Unless you do something that is so unique that you have virtually no competition, the decision whether you get the job, or not, is based on a number of factors. Besides price and availability, people want to know more about you and what you’ll be like to work with. Providing more insight about who you are with a behind-the-scenes video will set you apart from the pack.

Web Video Marketing

I not only promote my own company using online video, but a large part of my business is creating web videos for my clients. Like any other type of marketing and promotion, you need to start with a plan and a strategy. Make sure that your Web video marketing is consistent with your brand and how you promote yourself in other mediums, like print.

Start by answering some questions:

  • What is the message or story that you want to tell? Who are you? What do you do and how do you do it? Here’s your chance to provide more information about yourself – this is the closest way a customer can experience what you have to offer.
  • Who is your target audience? Where are they? How do you find them and how will they find you? Google’s Universal Search makes it possible for video to show up on search results pages, and video consistently gets top rankings in SEO.
  • Why are you using a motion sample to tell your story and is it the best way to communicate your message? If you don’t have a reason or a motivation to use video… then don’t. Simply combining still images with music is not going to make you stand out and may not even provide relevant information about what you do. Try shooting a testimonial interview with a client. Using the interview along with images from the shoot can make a very effective short video.
  • Will this be one broad stroke video or will it be a series? People love stories but stories online need to be short. If you’ve got a story that can’t be told in 2 minutes or less, break it up into webisodes. Have fun and give people something to look forward to in your next marketing promo.

Websites, Social Media, Blogs and Vlogs

When my company’s website recently underwent a redesign, we wanted to make video half of the experience – not just random video samples shown amongst our still images. We also wanted to integrate and link the website with my blog and other online portals and social media sites.

When I create a new entry for my blog or vlog (a blog that contains video), a link shows up as a tweet in my Twitter account which then automatically shows up on Facebook and LinkedIn where both link back to the website. I call it round trip marketing because the links work in both directions creating more of an online presence. All the information is trackable, which is a great way to test what is and isn’t effective in terms of promotion.

There has been remarkable growth in video viewing on social networking and video host sites. While YouTube still commands the lion’s share of online videos uploaded to the Web, Facebook is experiencing a rapid growth of video viewing: Over 1,500 percent in less than a year’s time.

What this means is that I can embed a video directly on Facebook rather than having to link to a host site – that’s one less click for a viewer to make. More importantly, your video promotion has the potential to go viral through sharing. What better way to promote a video production company than by showing video? Now it’s possible to show your video samples online and because video shows up in search results, it achieves high ranking in SEO or VSEO. In addition, there are companies out there that present your videos to your prospects as well as let you track their response. Wistia is one of them and I know that ADBASE is developing a video service that will work well with their database and Emailer.

Email Promotion versus Hard Copy

While I still use postcards to promote my still images, that approach doesn’t work as well for promoting video. Print pieces can only direct a potential client to a video sample by providing a URL reference to a website or host site. Sending a DVD through the mail with the hope that someone will view it is not very effective because it relies on the recipient to take further action and insert it into a player.

Here is an email promo that links directly to my company’s Motion section, and got a tremendous response. Email promos can be very effective because they provide a direct link to your video sample and with most email services, you can track who has clicked-through to your video.

There’s nothing new about video. What is new is the potential that video has in terms of promotion. Sure, you can say that video marketing isn’t all that different from broadcast commercials, but the distinction is that online video can be posted on social networking sites, searched, bookmarked, saved and shared.

And that is a powerful difference in reaching not only a wider audience, but also an audience that is already interested in what you have to offer.