News

Use Video to Show Your Coolness Factor and Go Viral!

Oct 29, 2009

Cindy Bagaus Writes…

I saw this great quote on MRPWebMedia.com in an article posted about whether video is a missing ingredient on websites…

"My mechanic told me, 'He couldn't repair my brakes, so he made my horn louder.'" - Comedian, Steven Wright

The point is that even if you use video to attract attention, your site must be well built, easy to navigate and designed to prompt action. That being said, there are many ways you can utilize video as part of your marketing strategy and leave your competition behind.

Besides the element of surprise, using video on your website adds character and warmth…a human voice or action that shows your site’s personality and/or educates visitors about your product or service. For a fun example of a company showing their coolness factor – and strengthening their site’s personality – go to www.frontierwebdev.com and tap the “a” or “j” key to see Andy and Jenna in action. Frontier Web Development’s use of video illustrates their mission of “Taking The Web in New Directions."

Below are several examples of how companies use video to their advantage:

Property owners can add a human touch with testimonials by building tenants or housing residents about amenities, location, views, service, management, etc.

Inform buyers about a product or service. For example, BMW offered a weekly vodcast series with 2-3 minute videos about what’s new at BMW.

Educate employees with training videos. IBM developed a 6-part series called “The Art of the Sale”, a cross between the popular Office TV show and a sales training video.

Entertain visitors who find your video so fun or helpful they just have to pass it along. Going viral is the goal!

I thought you might find the following highlights and excerpts interesting, from the book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott.

“Organizations that deliver products and services that lend themselves to video have been actively using the new medium to market and deliver messages. Many amateur and professional sports teams, musicians, and theater groups use video as a marketing and pr tool. And churches routinely shoot video of weekly services and offer it online for anybody to watch, drawing more people into their congregation. The idea of companies using video for Web marketing is still fairly new. Video follows blogs and podcasting on the adoption curve.”

Companies get their video content onto computer screens in several different ways:

* Post to sharing sites like YouTube. Organizations post video content on sharing sites and send people a link to the content (or hope that it goes viral).

* Vlogging, short for video blogging, refers to when people insert video content into a blog. The text part of the blog adds context to each video and aids search engines.

Vodcasting or Vidcasting - A vodcast is like a podcast but with video. A video series is tied to a syndication component with i-Tunes and RSS feeds.

Inviting your customer communities to submit videos. This technique is how some companies try to generate viral marketing interest. They sponsor contests where customers submit short videos. The best are usually showcased on the company site and sometimes prizes are awarded.

More helpful tips below from content posted on MRPWebMedia.com

The Four Communication Elements of Web-Commercials

If businesses are to be successful in getting people to do what they want them to do through the implementation of Web-commercials, they will need to learn that success ultimately depends on an understanding of the psychological influences behind the four communication elements that constitute effective Web-presentations: scenario, sight, sound, and score.

Scenario: The Brand Story

Every business has a brand story to tell, but often that story gets lost in the minutiae of product specifications, service details, and self-congratulating biz-speak. There is no point in spending time telling your audience that you have the highest quality, lowest price and best staff. Nobody cares, and if they do care, few will believe you, and if they do believe you, your competitor is saying the same thing. Have you presented anything that defines you, makes you different, or provides something memorable?

People remember stories, linear narratives that are constructed with a beginning, middle and end. This enables an audience to process the information and retain the essence of the message for future reference. In developing your brand story, less is always more. It's your brand story that creates the position you will hold in your audience's mind.

Sight: Visual Context and Reference

A moving picture conveys a depth of information that cannot be delivered with text, no matter how clever, or with a still image, no matter how skillfully composed: the nod of the head, the folding of the arms, the look in the eye, in fact, every subtle movement of the presenter communicates something. These subliminal subtleties make it vital to have a professional presenter who understands how to act in front of a camera. Business executives familiar with face to face selling, or even speaking in front of a large audience may think performing for the camera is easy, but it is not.

Audiences are experts at decoding video presentations; we have all learned from years of watching television how to detect deception and fear in a performance. Acting for a camera requires what Marshal McLuhan called a 'cool' personality. Howard Dean's bid for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination was disastrously stalled when a speech he gave in front of a large boisterous audience was captured by television cameras and broadcast on the small screen. When transferred to television, his attempt to speak above a thunderous crowd of supporters made him sound like a wild man, an unfortunate situation that would make one wonder about the integrity of network broadcasters who understand the medium and decided to misrepresent the circumstances for affect. In delivering a commercial message, it is imperative to have professionals who understand the psychology of small screen presentation.

Sound: Sonic Familiarity and Personality

If what people see on screen is important than what they hear is profound. The audio portion of a Web-presentation can be broken down into three separate elements: the on-screen actor's voice, the voice-over announcer's voice, and the music and sound effects.

The sound of the human voice provides focus, emphasis, familiarity and personality, all of which are necessary in the creation of a meaningful, memorable experience: the ultimate goal of any Web-commercial or presentation.

As much as the business focus of advertising is to motivate people to act immediately to buy, you are bound to have more people view your presentation than will respond to it. If your message is constructed only for immediacy, you are losing the vast majority of potential customers. The more memorable you make your presentation the more likely people will ultimately contact you when they are in need of your product or service.

It is the sound of the human voice with its quality of tone, cadence and delivery, combined with a finely crafted script that emphasizes rhythm, rhyme, and repetition that gets embedded in people's minds.

Score: Music, Emotion and Focus

One of the most important, but perpetually misused elements in Web-video is music. Often music is just slapped onto a finished video as an after-thought without any real meaningful purpose or design.

A musical score creates an appropriate emotional atmosphere providing audio cues that direct attention and re-enforce memory recall. When we watch a television show, movie or commercial we are rarely cognizant of the music, but the musical score has an enormous impact on the viewing experience: it not only creates the mood and sets the emotional context, it tells the audience what to pay attention to and how to react.