Short attentions spans, scan readers, and multiple screens opened to different messages? Your marketing messages live in a crowded field. It’s more important than ever to find quick and nimble ways to connect with your customers that make it easy for them to consume your message. That’s what video delivers.

Video has become a powerful way to inform, entertain and educate and videos channels like YouTube – the second largest search engine on the planet after Google – provide answers to questions in a visual format. Type in keywords or a search terms like “how to” and someone is delivering an answer. Not all are good answers or complete answers, but it’s easy to keep searching – right?

There’s your opportunity. Can you provide an interesting and complete answer to a customer’s question? You can also include your brand and links to your website – bonus!

You can create video that tells your businesses’ story. This video does not have to be epic or highly produced, but good video does need to follow some rules:

  • Focus on decent lighting on your subject and be aware of your sound. If you don’t use a microphone, try to do your video capture in a small room without a lot of hard surfaces to minimize the echo effect. Good audio is essential to making your video watchable.
  • Create a simple script to keep you on topic and make the most efficient use of time.
  • Get to the point quickly. Don’t waste the viewer’s time with long introductions or animations. Save your branding for the end (and the video description and tags).
  • Keep the final edited video relatively short. I try to keep it around 3 minutes. If the subject is lengthy, consider a series of short videos that would link to each other.
  • Invest in video editing software to clean up and enhance your product. Best are Final Cut, Adobe Premiere and Avid; simpler and lower cost is Sony Vegas. Even Windows Movie Maker 2012 (free) can produce simple videos with a soundtrack, captions and credits.
  • You need to host your video somewhere so upload to YouTube, Vimeo or other hosting sites. Don’t forget to write a detailed description, a solid headline with a keyword that someone might use in a search, and tags that best describe what the video is about. The keywords and tags will help searchers (customers) find your video in search results. You’d be surprised how many good videos have little or no description.
  • Include your website URL in your video description (www.mywebsite.com) at the very beginning. This hyperlink will show up in the short view so that it can be clicked on immediately if the viewer wants to know more about your business.

The key is molding raw video into something meaningful and useful. When you’ve created good video you have created evergreen content – permanent, eye-catching and sharable messaging about your business. Video is an easy introduction to your products and services that can be delivered in an email, anchored on your website or linked to your social media channels.


LORRIELorrie Cesarz

Owner of MrElshMedia, Lorrie is a storytelling video designer, who creates web content that works with content marketing strategy.

Lorrie has worked in human resources and provided business and marketing support for Savage and Associates, The Thompson Corporation and the American Red Cross before starting her own business 3 years ago.

Lorrie graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She has assisted as a media advisor for Honor Flight Northwest Ohio, Stage Door Canteen Northwest Ohio, Toledo Area Red Cross Communications Committee and Sylvania Schools. She is a member of St. Joseph Parish in Sylvania and supports Catholic charities.