5 Reasons your business needs online video
Using online video as part of your marketing mix is the most effective means of engaging your audience and developing lasting relationships.
- Personalize the marketing experience. Videos like movies tell stories about people. This makes it easier for an audience to identify with them.
- Provide message context. Through the video’s setting, you provide a framework for consumers to understand your brand.
- Take advantage of online video’s growing audience. Roughly two out of three Internet users watch video online at least once per month in 2011 and this is projected to increase.
- Support search optimization. At the end of 2010, YouTube was the third largest website according to Experian Hitwise and the second largest search engine. Further, videos are a form of social media that appear in search results.
- Make content easy-to-consume. Watching videos are easier than reading articles and allow viewers to multi-task.
It’s never been easier to get started with video and, due in part to reduced technology costs, its never been more affordable.
You should also think very hard about how you are going to enable your audience to view your videos on mobile devices – as this really is the ultimate communications tool.
Failing to plan your ‘talking heads’ video can result in this!
If you just ‘turn up’ and expect to get good results from your video shoot… you better think again!
You need a strategy and a plan for the video to get the best possible outcome
5 Rules for Creating Great Content
Simple and effective and stay focused! Found this post today and wanted to share it with everyone.
The key points in creating great content are here and there is a link to the full article below
Here are some of the rules for creating content:
#1. Show, don’t just tell: Rather than focusing on why your product is great, show people. This can be accomplished through well-crafted case studies (also known as success stories). This type of content draws people in because everyone wants to achieve success. You can create case studies by focusing on a problem faced by a customer, how your product helped solve it, and what the results were.
#2. Stoke the campfire: Try creating content that gets a conversation started. Remember those childhood overnight camp outs? The best times are often had around the campfire. And content that is highly sharable will spark a flame that will care it to other places. This type of content could include new trends in your industry. You could highlight hot new research to your customers and prospects.
#3. Play to your strengths: Do you have a radio voice but can’t write at all? Perhaps you should be focusing on podcasts instead of white papers. Maybe you’re really good on camera? Focus on where your strengths are and produce content in your comfort zone.
#4. Speak human: The people you are targeting are not search engine spiders and are likely not as technically knowledgeable as your engineering team. Speak to people in a voice they understand. That means losing complicated jargon and instead adopting a conversational writing style.
#5. Reimagine: Have you got some great content that is sitting idle? How about repurposing it. For example a great presentation can be transcribed and turned into an ebook. A white paper can be the inspiration for multiple blog articles.
The Mobile Market is exploding – what are you doing about it?
The worldwide smartphone market is growing. And fast.
According to the latest projections by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the global smartphone market is expected to grow 49.2% in 2011.
The growth will be driven by an ever-widening pool of consumers and enterprise users turning in their feature phones for more sophisticated smartphones.
The IDC’s research finds that smartphone vendors will likely ship more than 450 million smartphones in 2011 compared to the 303.4 million units shipped in 2010.
“Overall market growth in 2010 was exceptional,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC. “Last year’s high market growth was due in part to pent-up demand from a challenging 2009, when many buyers held off on mobile phone purchases. The expected market growth for 2011, while still notable, will taper off somewhat from what we saw in 2010.”
The smartphone market will grow more than four times faster than the overall mobile phone market.
With regard to which smartphone maker will most likely come out on top, IDC says it’s Android.
“Android is poised to take over as the leading smartphone operating system in 2011 after racing into the number 2 position in 2010,” says Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team.
“For the vendors who made Android the cornerstone of their smartphone strategies, 2010 was the coming-out party. This year will see a coronation party as these same vendors broaden and deepen their portfolios to reach more customers, particularly first-time smartphone users.”
Not only is mobile growing exponentially, it is also the most effective means by which to communicate with your target audience. You should think about capturing your audience’s attention too! and by far the best way to do this is via multimedia and video.
Whether you are promoting your products to customers, consumers or business partners if you really want to differentiate yourself its essential to use mobile video. Show your customers what you do!
The growth of mobile – video containing some amazing stats!
hot technology for property professionals
interview with mark whitehouse – CEO of SolutionChannels –
10 Ways You can Use QR Codes Now
Little black and white squares, containing seemingly random patterns, are popping up everywhere.
They are QR Codes (short for Quick Response Codes) and, although they’ve been around since the mid-1990s, they have only recently attracted a huge amount of attention within the business world, and for good reason.
Back in the mid-1990s, Toyota developed a new ID tag for car parts, to replace the barcode. The QR Code was born and was found to be faster to read and less prone to error.
Now, with consumers sporting hand-held barcode readers in the form of app’ed up smartphones, QR Codes are being used by businesses to attract and retain customers.
According to recently released figures from Mobio, during July to December of last year, QR code scanning grew a massive 1200%
Furthermore, the creation and placement of QR Codes is simple and cost-effective, if not free, while monitoring response, ROI, and campaign management is easy.
So, how can you use these little black and white boxes to further your business activities?
1. Multimedia and Video - One of the most innovative ways to use QR Codes is to connect your target audience to multimedia and video assets. Imagine being able to deliver a video directly to your customer’s mobiles and smart-phones! As I think we all know, a video is the most effective way of getting your message across – and certainly far more engaging for the audience than a PDF. SolutionChannels provides a comprehensive service to deliver video to any web-enabled mobile device without the need of a specialist application.
2. Coupons - QR Codes are a fantastic way to get promotional coupons into the hands of consumers and can be placed on products, shelves, point-of-sale or even on signage outside the store. QR Codes can also be placed alongside products to provide additional information. For instance, wine sellers might place a QR Code alongside various varieties advising which foods they best accompany.
3. Competitions - QR Codes can instantly enter a consumer into a competition, or take them to a web page where they can register for prizes.
4. Games/Entertainment – QR Codes can be used to entertain consumers, perhaps on public transport or in waiting rooms. Branded games or game demos can be distributed via QR Codes, as can free music and video downloads.
5. Business cards and company literature – QR Codes can reduce the cost of in-store literature by allowing contact details and catalogs to be instantly accessed with a click. How about a QR code on the back of your business card to connect contacts to your corporate video?
6. Advertising - wherever a black and white code can be printed, or adhered to, can be turned into advertising space. It could be a temporary tattoo given out at festivals or exhibitions, on your stand at a TRADE SHOW, a t-shirt, printed ad, cinema trailer, drinks mat, napkins, till receipt, sports strip, race car, a pet’s collar, vehicle livery, or even be built into the very fabric of a building, such a this QR Code hotel.
7. Be open when you’re shut - use QR Codes in your store window so consumers can more effectively window-shop and browse your inventory, even when your physical store is shut for business.
8. Take real estate signage to new levels by adding QR Codes linking to video tours and images from the property’s interior, or information on the local area. Estate Agents are beginning to realize the potential for engaging with buyers.
9. Charity donations – non-profits are increasingly using QR Codes to enable quick and easy giving to those in need – for example to make donations to the recent Japanese earthquake disaster.
10. Connect consumers to your social spaces – use QR Codes to direct consumers to your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social activity.
As you can see, QR Code use is limited only by your imagination.
What’s the quirkiest use of a QR Code you’ve seen?
Networking Event & Charity Auction – Windsor 25th March 2011
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Addressing the Mobile Audience – How are you going to keep up?
Here is a great post from Accenture that I want to share with you.
http://www.smartgorillas.com/?p=3204
Whilst companies try to address the needs of their increasingly mobile audience, they shouldn’t have to worry about which mobile device, mobile operating system or mobile network their audience is using. The simple objective is to reach the audience with their multimedia communications regardless of the mobile type being used.
SolutionChannels provides a unique solution to the issue of mobile multimedia (and video) with the simplest user experience.
Register with us and receive a free white paper
Constant Connectivity: The Way We Work Today!
What is work in 2011? The Internet and the devices we have created to access it have removed all physical, temporal, and spatial boundaries from work.
In fact, work can pretty much happen in any setting, anytime, anywhere a work-related thought crosses your mind.
Check out this article from CIO Insight…
