Answering Objections to Video

Until recently, video as a content strategy probably hasn't seemed like the best investment for many businesses for some pretty good reasons. First, producing a video can be very expensive and time consuming. You've got to assemble a creative team and equipment, come up with a good idea, shoot the thing, edit it, format it for online use, and then figure out how to get the file on your website. Of course, this isn't all necessarily true anymore. While creating a broadcast-quality promotional video still might require all of that investment, creating a casual but effective video on the fly can be done very simply. In fact, I've noticed that many casual and lo-fi videos appeal to people online because they just seem more authentic.


Second, tracking video hasn't always been the most straighforward thing to do. Sure, you could easily track how many visitors came to the page on which the video was embedded, but aside from building some custom tracker or guessing based upon the page's bounce rate, actually evaluating the video's performance was pretty difficult. Today, that's no longer the case. Google has added some really powerful tools to Google Analytics, among them being a video event tracker. Using this functionality in combination with a custom video player on your site, you could now potentially determine when viewers stopped watching a video, and where they went afterward, with much greater precision.


Lastly, video files themselves have not always had much positive impact on search engine optimization. Because the content itself couldn't be indexed, most sites might have been better off using text to communicate what the video attempted to, provided that was even possible. However, now that there are so many popular platforms on which to support your video (YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc.), they have value as promotional outposts for your company. Putting your video content on any of these sites will increase your visibility, allow for user comments and interaction, and potentially drive more traffic to your site.   next >