How businesses can capitalise on the video-sharing democracy of the web
It’s been a long time coming, but finally, justice is being done. Thanks to broadband, social media sites and video sharing platforms, video is taking its rightful place at the forefront of business and brand communication. Is this a good thing?
Well yes, if it’s a video – or series of videos – that presents a clear, honest, persuasive and watchable picture of your business or brand. If it satisfies those criteria, then yes, video really does have the power to turn sceptics into advocates and consumers into customers. All in two, maybe three minutes.
Perhaps you remember how exclusive video used to be. It wasn’t so long ago when the only place you were likely to see a company’s video was at an AGM, a sales presentation, or maybe running mute on a loop in reception. Now it’s accessible to all – not only on your official website, but perhaps on any number of video hosting sites like youtube and buzznet, or thematic web tv channels like the brand-funded consumer site www.howto.tv and the education site www.teachers.tv.
Tap into a nation of video grazers
According to comScore, the leading internet market research agency – we’re watching 5 billion online videos a month in the UK alone. And there are now over 17 million of us accessing youtube from our computers and mobiles. The UK has over 3 million twitterers and 23 million facebookers who are constantly being offered embedded video and links to videos on other sites. This potentially makes the video content of your website rather important.
Evidently, UK marketing professionals generally understand the potential of web tv and social media – they’ve just been a little slow off the mark in exploiting it. According to research in December 2009 by Opinion Matters for the Internet Advertising Bureau, 86% of UK marketing managers rate social media as important to their business, 73% of their businesses have their own facebook page or group, and 53% have a youtube channel.
Of course, some marketing professionals have fully embraced these channels –among them, the team at HCA – the Healthcare Corporation of America, which owns and operates six leading private hospitals in London, including the Wellington and the Portland. The www.hcahospitals.co.uk homepage offers you a quick video overview of this group: three minutes of reassurance that you’ve come to the right place, with the option to share this with a colleague, friend or family member. Down the right-hand frame, there are further videos on particular specialisations, some of which – like CyberKnife radiosurgery – are cross-referenced on youtube and other video sites, with all their sharing options. This is an organisation that understands the value of web video in driving new business, and it’s played a big part in a sharp increase in referrals over the past year.
Video SEO
So the first rule of web tv has to be: do it well, or don’t do it at all. And just as important: enable people to find it. You could prompt them through a CRM email campaign, internet banners or even conventional advertising, but you’ll certainly need to do some video search engine optimisation and establish a presence on social media sites.
Video SEO is evolving fast, and video viewers are getting cleverer at using them, adding the word ‘video’ to their enquiries. Google now searches across the full range of web media – text, images and video – and sites with video are likely to feature higher on their results pages; they also favour videos on hosting sites like vimeo, youtube, myspace and facebook. Dedicated video search engines like Blinkx can also now look for keywords in, say, a spoken interview, and other engines will soon recognise faces and shapes on video.
Going viral
While corporate video has got a new lease of life through broadband, it’s the viral power of the internet that’s really exciting business and brand-owners. Alexandr Orlov, the irritating Russian ‘meerkat’ from www.comparethemarket.com, is a powerful case in point. The spark was started with TV advertising, but it’s been sustained through social media channels, where various executions, blooper reels, amateur pastiches and spoof interviews keep the buzz alive.
Unilever has been one of the other pioneers in this area, regularly winning awards for the extraordinary number of hits its viral campaigns attract. Its famous ‘Evolution’ film – in support of its Dove soap brand’s Campaign for Real Beauty – has had over 10 million views on youtube, but cost only £30,000 to make.
Unilever has also embraced web tv in its online recruitment activity. We’ve added a whole series of employee profiles on www.unilever.co.uk/careers – where here again video is giving value for money, saying far more about career opportunities through the moving image than through pages of webtext.
Brand stewardship on social media
One of the concerns brand-owners have about engaging in social media is the vulnerability of their brands to sabotage and criticism within these apparently unregulated contexts. Say your video is on youtube – how can you prevent an outburst of abuse? You have to trust the merits of your content, the justice of democracy and the intervention of the moderator.
But if the risk is still too unattractive, you can effectively control your social media site presence. Create a facebook site for your company or brand, and you’re effectively in charge. Facebook for business is a relatively new concept – it’s still principally a personal site – but it is gaining momentum as a marketing vehicle. It’s a great platform for referring fans to your video content. For instance, Vodafone UK’s facebook site has over 23,000 friends, but one of my favourites is Will it Blend? – an endlessly amusing propeller for Blendtec electric blenders, featuring quirky lab technician Tom Dickson testing the power of the machine to blend anything from golf balls to iPhones.
Checklist for successful web tv
So what tips would I offer a business planning a big push on web tv through social media? Remember you’re entering the public domain, where your content has to compete for quality and relevance with some 15 hours of new video material every minute on youtube alone. So don’t just throw content at it – give your target audience the respect they deserve as discerning, media-literate viewers, with plenty of other calls on their attention. Go for brevity and quality.
And give your video content the help it needs to be found – surround it with text that will be picked up by search engines. Include a keyword-rich description of the video in your metadata, and perhaps a transcript. Upload it to video-sharing sites, and enable onward sharing: this will boost SEO and help your video go viral. Encourage ratings and reviews, because search engines look for these too.
Finally, understand that social media and web tv isn’t all about socialising and time-filling. It’s developing important business purposes. Social media sites – and the easy video uploads they enable – have perhaps their most positive applications in medicine. We designed and maintain the not-for-profit online journal www.ecancermedicalscience.com – a digital forum and web tv channel for 5000 registered cancer specialists around the world, and rising. The ease of upload and speed of access to expertise is bringing real benefits to medical science. It’s a privilege to be part of it.
Charlie Grieve
MD
Brandcast Media