The Next Big Thing on Your Website

Did you ever wonder if you could use video to improve your company website and give visitors something a little more interesting to view?  I’ve wondered that myself.  In fact, I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on if and how we should use video on our site.  The first part of my quest has been to discover what videos I can make to improve the visitors’ experience.  Here’s what I’ve come up with.

1. Vlogging - You know what blogging is, and hopefully you have one.  Well, the next step is to sit yourself in front of a camera and blog out loud.  You can even use sound, music, and effects to spice it up.
2. Employees - Give your employees the camera and a chance to show their personality and what they add to your company.
3. Customers - Let your customers give video testimonials.  There’s a lot more merit in a praise that has audio and video.
4. Products and Services - Take video of your product or service in action to give your potential customers a visual of how you work.
5. Tutorials - Post some how-to videos on things that relate to your business.  You can demonstrate how to use a product that you sell, or just how to do things that may interest your customers.
6. Your Company - Take the time to do a professional “about” video.  You know that stagnant “about us” page on your website?  Make it a little more interesting with a short video.  Here’s a sample of an about video from Five Technology Web Design.

Now that you know some ways to use video on your website, you need to know how to do it.  The basics that you need are a web or video camera and a computer.  Camera prices have dropped significantly and you can get one for under $100.  Obviously, the quality will be better with a digital video camera than with a web cam, but either one will work.  If you just take raw video and post it on your site, you won’t need much else than what comes with the camera to capture the video on your computer.  If you want to make the video(s) a little more professional, you’ll need a decent video camera, some lighting, and some editing software on your computer.  Thanks to Duct Tape Marketing I discovered some video tutorials here on how to create great looking videos .

The bottom line is that this is not a new technology, but it is gaining popularity and is now cheap enough that all of us small business owners should give it a try.  Your videos will need to be interesting to keep your audience coming back to your site.  Some of your best videos you may even want to post on YouTube to gain traffic and interest.  Since we don’t have any video on our site yet, I’m trying right along with you.  When you give video a try, please let me know, I’d love to check it out.  Go grab your camera and let that winning personality shine…It won’t be long before everybody’s doing it.

Dan
YouTube here I come!

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