You see, video has always been a popular medium to educate, entertain, and inform people, not to mention video’s use in advertising and marketing. With advancements in technology, the viability of video as part of any organization’s marketing mix is more of a reality today than it was even a year or two ago. So, here are three advantages for using online video in your organization: it’s now more affordable, more accessible, and more impressive.

More Affordable

Putting video on your website or social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook is free. Now you don’t have to dedicate as much of your budget to buying broadcasting or advertising time on your local cable networks or buying hard media like DVDs and Blu-ray discs, which can add up very quickly.

More Accessible

The advancement of technology has made the dissemination and accessibility of information easier than ever before. When you have a library of online videos, your target audience can view your videos on-demand from their computers and/or mobile devices. Your videos can be seen quite literally at anytime, anywhere.

More Impressive

Let’s face it, people like watching videos. By putting videos on your website you will standout from your competitors and in your industry. When those videos are produced professionally, you will impress everyone that visits your site, which will increase your conversion rates from site visitors.

Transcript:

There’s been a lot of buzz in the marketing industry about online video, and that buzz gets louder and louder.

Bug for several years it seemed like online video was reserved only for the “big boys.”

The trend, however, shows online video becoming a key component for many organizations, including small and medium-size businesses and non-profit organizations.

For example, did you know that in the fourth quarter of two thousand eight, only five percent of small businesses surveyed were using online video? In the fourth quarter of two thousand nine that number jumped to nineteen percent – a four-fold increase in one year. Now that’s an eye-opener.

However, one of the concerns for smaller organizations is budget. How can they work online video into their marketing budget when video costs so much, especially in a tough economy.

The answer is INTRO|vid, a professional online video starting at less than three hundred dollars.

INTRO|vid stands for “introductory video,” a three-minute video where you tell people who you are and what your company does.

Trends show people prefer to watch online video rather than read through a whole bunch of text. So what better way to introduce you and your organization than through online video?

This is how it works: You give us a call and we schedule a time for you to come in to one of our studios for a thirty-minute recording session. We will ask you questions like:

“What differentiates you from others in your industry?”

“How did you get started?”

“Why should people choose you?”

and “What do you like to do outside of work?”

When the recording session is done we get to work on editing. And then in two to three business days you receive your INTRO|vid. You can upload your INTRO|vid to your website, your facebook page, your YouTube channel, or any other video sharing site and introduce you and your organization to your online audience.

To learn more or to get your INTRO|vid, give us a call or visit our website. Or you can go ahead and click this button right over here. Right there. And just click that button and it’ll take you to the place where you need to go to learn all you need to know about INTRO|vid and to place your order for your INTRO|vid.

So, go ahead. When you want.

Let’s see how the stock market did today. Oh, the stock market went… That’s a… Surprise. Surprise.

Go ahead. Take your time.

I’m thirsty.

Still there, huh?

Go ahead. I’ll just wait here.

Anytime. Just click the button.

Come on. You can do it.

Online Video For Small Businesses Continues To Grow

The trend for small businesses using online video is growing, according to research at reelseo.com. Take, for instance, the growth in small businesses making their websites “video capable.” In the fourth quarter of 2008, only 5% of small businesses surveyed said that their websites were “video capable.” By the fourth quarter of 2009, that number had jumped to 19% – almost four times as many in one year!

Making the website “video capable” is the fastest growing website feature small businesses are implementing.

Online Video Solutions

With more and more people spending their time on the Internet, small and medium-sized businesses and non-profit organizations need to enhance and maintain their web presence without breaking the bank. Professional web video is now an important part of any organization’s web strategy. Ugly Chair Productions understands the value of online video and the tight budgets by which smaller organizations operate. So, we have developed a line of affordable online video products to address the needs of companies from Richmond, VA to Washington, D.C.

Regardless of the state the economy is in, marketing is extremely important for any organization, of any size. And with the increase in the use of video by businesses on sites like YouTube, the second largest search engine behind Google, small businesses need to standout in the online crowd, whether that is in their industry, regionally, or both. That is why we have launched the first product in a line of affordable online video solutions for small, medium-sized businesses and non-profit organizations. It is called INTRO|vid – a three minute introductory video for less than $300.

Abraham Erickson, President of Ugly Chair Productions, LLC, had this to say about INTRO|vid and the new line of video solutions:

“INTRO|vid is just the beginning. With INTRO|vid, organizations can take their first steps to enhancing their web presence with professional online video at an affordable rate. Their new online videos will increase brand awareness and traffic to their website, increase web conversions, and increase brand loyalty and establish themselves as a trusted source in their industry.”

To learn more about INTRO|vid and to see samples, click here.

YouTube’s Official Reason For Providing Auto-Captioning To All

The official reason why YouTube opened up auto-captioning to everybody is accessibility, particularly for deaf people. Now deaf people, too, can more fully enjoy the content on YouTube. If your business markets to the deaf community, then auto-captioning is a God-sent. The auto-captioning feature will save you a lot of time by creating the transcript for you. Although the transcript won’t be perfect, you’ll be amazed at how much time this feature will save you (Read my post: Limits of Auto-Caption on YouTube). But what if you don’t market to the deaf community, should you even bother with using auto-captioning on YouTube? YES! And let me explain why.

Video Search Engine Optimization

One of the problems with video and audio content on the Internet is that the content could never be indexed for search engine optimization. In the past, YouTube and Google could only index the title of the video, the keywords or tags, and the description. As time went on, they allowed the YouTube user to add additional metadata like the location of where the video was shot. Other information indexed included rankings and comments made by viewers. But the Google “spiders” still could not index the actual content of the video. Why? Because the spiders can only index text, whether that is text on a website or the metadata of content. But what is closed-captioning other than text?

When the auto-captioning feature on YouTube is used, a transcript is created and becomes a part of the metadata of the video. That text then appears as closed-captions on the bottom of the video for the viewers. Since the transcript generated by auto-captioning is now a part of the metadata, the spiders can now index the content of the video. Finally, a way to truly utilize SEO for video. But there is more you can do with the auto-caption transcript.

If you intend on embedding your video from YouTube on your company’s website, you can download the transcript from YouTube and post it on the same page as the video. This will provide another opportunity for the spiders to index your content, increasing your company’s ranking on the SEO ladder.

First, auto-caption is limited to only transcribing English. Although YouTube is working on other sophisticated algorithms to process other languages, English is the only language that can be transcribed. So, if you plan on making a video in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, or any of the other dozens and dozens of languages out there, auto-captioning cannot process those languages now. Just English.

Second, in order for auto-caption to provide an accurate transcription of your video, your audio source needs to be really, really clean. If the video has too much background noise (i.e., ambient noise or music that overpowers the speaker’s voice) or if the audio recording is shoddy from the beginning, auto-captioning can’t provide a clean transcript (all though it will try really hard). But there is a way to fix the errors made during the auto-captioning process.

In order to fix any errors in the transcription, you can download the transcript with or without the time-code (I recommend with the time-code) and make the edits to the transcription. Once the edits are complete, just upload the saved file into the video on YouTube and the edits are made to the closed-captioning at the the bottom of the video.

Making these edits to the transcript will greatly improve the ranking of your video on YouTube and the search engines (Read my post: YouTube Auto-Captioning and Video SEO). Needless to say, if you are planning on using auto-captioning on your YouTube videos, make sure your on-screen subject or voiceover talent speaks clearly and not too fast. And then make any edits to the transcript that you need. It’s that simple.

We have produced many video projects that are testimonials. In fact, that is probably our top requested video project. A testimonial is a story; it is your customer’s experience working with you and their feelings on the product or service you provided. As a successful business, you want to share your customer’s success stories with others. When a potential client sees one of your customer’s success stories, it validates you as a trusted source to do business with. They are more likely to do business with you after seeing your client’s story. That has been the experience of our clients, and it has also been our experience.

Just this week, we produced four testimonial videos for Ugly Chair Productions. We, too, know how great it feels to hear the success story of one of your clients. When you are there listening to your customer’s responses to the questions, seeing the emotions on their face as they talk about the overall process, customer service, quality of the product, and the value they felt as one of your customers, you want those words and emotions captured; and then you want to share it with as many people as you can. Professional video captures those testimonials.

To view photos from the production of Ugly Chair’s testimonial videos, please click here.

Let’s face it, when you visit a website (especially for the first time) and you see that you have the option to view a video or read a PDF, which are you going to choose? More than likely you will opt to press the play button on the video first. If that video was professionally produced and gives you enough information about what that company does, you will spend more time surfing their site learning about them than you would have otherwise. The same is true with visitors to your website.

That was the goal with one of our clients, The EDGE – to get website visitors to press play first. When someone visits their website, they need to see how a high-adventure course will strengthen their organization’s team. And they need to see that in a compelling way; text can only go so far. But if you can see it and hear it, it’ll make all the difference, and video was the answer. We accomplished that goal with a voiceover describing how the EDGE will benefit an organization, while combining shots from classroom and course exercises. We also creatively gave the video the same “look and feel” as the website, maintaining the strength of the brand. When you watch the video, you get a great understanding of what the EDGE does right up front.

By adding professional video to your website you, too, will be able to get the right information to your visitors in a compelling way. If the option is available, your visitors will choose to watch a video first before reading all the information on your website.

To see The EDGE video in action, visit edgeatmason.com.