Last night, I was the guest for the second time on Small Biz Chat. The topic was, “How To Use Video To Build Your Brand Online. Kudos to Small Biz Lady Melinda Emerson and her team for making the experience fun and educational for everyone. Hundreds of tips and helpful links were shared by dozens of people.
You can read Melinda's blog post summary here. You can read the entire PDF transcript of the chat at this link. If you don't have time for that at the moment, here are 10 super easy tips for using video to build your brand online, starting right now!
- Embrace your inner journalist. No matter what business you're in, you are also in the publishing business. Read the newspapers, blogs and magazines your customers read to get ideas for video topics that will interest them.
- Read video blog comments. Reading and “comment blogging” on videos at other people's blogs is a great way to learn, share and assess the potential popularity of topics you could use in your own videos. Favorable comments from people who are most like your customers is a good indication of a promising video topic for you.
- Be fun, have fun, share fun. Be as fun and entertaining as you can on your videos. When you make people smile, you're more than halfway to success when it comes to earning a positive return on your video investment.
- Tell a story. If you tell a story, any story, people will be interested and they will share it with others. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories appeal to everyone. Tell me a story and I'll be in the palm of your hand.
- Take your video camera everywhere. Take a video camera everywhere you go so that you are never without the ability to record something interesting that you can share with others. Farmer's markets, craft shows, trade shows, the new ice cream shop in town. Stories are all around you. Just start looking for them and you'll see them.
- Make the ask. The story doesn't always have to be about you. In fact, it must not always be about you. Don't be shy about asking people if you can interview them about something interesting they can share.
- Use text. Use text around the video for people who cannot or will not watch your video when they get to your site. By incorporating textual information, they can still get the information even if they can't see the video. Text also enhances search engine optimization.
- Stream from outside. Don't stream video hosted at your own site. Stream it from YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo or similar site to make sure you maximize easy streaming worldwide, as well as load time at your site.
- Go mobile. Make sure your video is visible on mobile devices. Ask friends and business colleagues to test the video streaming from your site to make sure they can see the video. If they can't make adjustments as necessary to maximize the visibility of your video.
- Tell it! Tell people about your video! Invite them to use embed code to share, spread the excitement. Don't be shy about sharing your video. Remember, if it doesn't spread, it's dead.
Question: Are you having fun with video? What easy tips did I miss?
