5-top tips on producing an online promotional video

5-top tips for online promotional video

Here are my top five top tips for creating online promotional video content for your business which will help you to engage with customers and generate new business. Having video on your business website has become a vital part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). All else being equal, a website that includes video content will rank higher than one without video.

I would of course recommend engaging a professional production company to produce your online promotional video. But I’m equally aware that some companies and organisations might prefer to start off by producing their own content in-house – if only as a proof of concept. The following five tips should help these organisations in the process and enable them to start harnessing the power of video on their website.

1 – Short, sweet and on message

Online promotional video - Clock
Time waits for no man

Don’t take liberties with your audience’s time. Decide what you want your online promotional video to achieve and don’t waste a second of your film deviating from it. Our attention spans have become extremely short and you will lose an audience the moment you stop engaging them. There is no minimum time an online promotional video should run for so if you can get your message over in a few seconds then do.

2 – Viral qualities

There’s a lot of talk about video content going viral and reaching millions of viewers in a very short period of time. Whilst this often happens with funny or current news clips on YouTube, gathering viral momentum for an online promotional video is extremely challenging.

Online promotional video viral
Making your online promotional video go viral

However, you can certainly increase your chances of your video content going viral within a target market sector. The simplest way to make your target audience to want to share your online promotional video it will have to be full of valuable information and of sector-wide relevance or interest. Only add humour to your video if you are confident that it will not offend anyone – and only if it’s actually funny and not just to you!

3 – Hosting on YouTube

Whilst there are plenty of places you can host your online promotional video these days the one that is going to help you most in achieving better SEO is YouTube – because it is part of Google and used by them in search returns. When you upload your file make sure you give it an SEO-friendly name. Think if what your intended audience is searching for on Google use that within the title and also within the additional description. Also, always use YouTube’s tagging facility to its maximum capacity with both long and short word descriptions of your content and the audience it’s aimed at. But beware! Don’t be tempted to include copyright music on your online promotional video as YouTube will detect it and will often remove content altogether.

4 – Spread the word

Once you have your online promotional video up on YouTube you need to spread the word about it. The first stage of this is to embed the YouTube version on the main splash page of your site – and enable it to play within that webpage. You should then share the news about your video through all your online social and business networking channels and post copies there if you can.

Social Networking Online promotional video
Sharing is good!

Finally, make sure you tell all your existing clients, suppliers, colleagues and friends about it and ask them what they think and to ‘Like’ it if they do.

5 – Do it!

If you have read this far then you’ve already realised that producing an online promotional video would be a great idea for your business. However, the problem with great ideas is that they’re useless unless you put them into action. If you are still determined to produce the film yourself then start by writing out your script and then set about planning the shooting and editing stage. If you are a complete video-novice there are plenty of free online resources that will cover the basics of how to shoot and edit video. One of the best of these can be found on www.videoskills.net

If you want to produce an online promotional video, but don’t have the time or inclination to learn the basic skills, then maybe it’s time to bring in the professionals who can do it all for you. You might be surprised at just how cost-effective this is. If you are at this stage then please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation consultation.