Robert Beadle's Social Media Marketing Blog

Early Tuesday morning, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Combining SEO and Video to Drive Awareness and Lead Generation Online.”

The event was hosted by Business Wire and featured:
Tim Bradbury, President New Media, American City Business Journals
Joe Chernov, Global Director of Communications & Social Media, Eloqua
Judy Gern, Director of Conversion Marketing, Constant Contact
David Meerman Scott, Marketing Strategist and Author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR
Dave Toole, Founder & CEO, MEDIAmobz
Moderated by: Cliff Pollan, Founder, President & CEO, VisibleGains

The panelists highlighted some very interesting ideas, which companies must consider when building video into their business.  Here are some bullet points from my notes of the discussion:

• Video has many uses:
  • Public Relations
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Customer Support
  • News and interviews
  • Education
  • Customer reviews and testimonials
  • “Crowd Sourcing” (customer-created videos, i.e. video contest)
  • Social Responsibility
• If a video is embedded in a news release, Eloqua saw a 500% increase in views.
• The market determines which videos go “viral,” not the producer.
• Today, people are expecting video to be a built-in part of your marketing campaign.
• Do NOT put gateways (e-mail registration forms) in front of your videos and other content.
• Professional video production vs. casual video production: the decision depends on what you want your brand to represent and whether polish or authenticity is more important to your customers.  The medium becomes the message.

The Future of Web Video:

• Real-time video streaming will increase in use and popularity.
• Video will be more pervasive for small businesses.
• There will be more tools built into videos to encourage viewer interaction.
• There will be more software programs and Web sites designed to organize a video campaign.  (Facebook may be leading the charge on this front).
• Google will eventually assign more weight to Web pages which feature video content.