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Creating Value With Streaming Video Content
Having a corporate or promotional video for your company is
often viewed as something of an expensive luxury - useful, but
rarely considered to be an essential marketing tool. Whilst many
businesses can understand the benefits of having a corporate
video, all too often they are put off by the perceived cost and
subsequently find it hard to justify commercially. Furthermore,
the process of making a video can at times, appear complex and
intimidating, with an array of technical terms and processes.
Streaming video provides a number of useful opportunities for
maximising the potential of an existing corporate video. And
compared to other distribution media such as DVD or CD-ROMs it
also offers a cost-effective solution for broadcasting a new
corporate presentation to a wider audience.
Although streaming video is certainly not a new concept and
has been around for some time, it's now easier than ever to add
streaming video content to your website. The technology required
to enable video streaming is widely available, it's relatively
inexpensive and with the dramatic growth in high speed, broadband
internet connections, a growing number of internet users can now
view high quality, streaming video on their computers.
In this article, leading corporate video & business
television producer, John Howarth, explains some of the ways in
which streaming video content can be made to work effectively for
your business and produce tangible results.
Provide Compelling Content
Try to provide content that creates a real interest for the
viewer. Instead of simply informing them of your key corporate
values - the typical narrative being 'how successful we are, the
great products & services we offer, our featured clients' -
why not turn the message into something that is actually useful
and engaging to watch.
Take for example a company that manufactures kitchen products.
Whilst you could produce a video to establish company values by
highlighting such areas as quality of craftsmanship and original
design of the product, this information is almost certainly
available more easily on the web pages. It could be far more
interesting for the viewer to provide them with a series of
recipes, which feature the products being used in context.
Another technique is to provide content that is not centrally
focused to your company's core products & services. For
example, your company sponsors a sports event or art exhibition.
How about showing some clips from the event, with company
branding around it? By using more recognisable and popular
content, you are creating a wider 'reach' for the video, with the
added possibility of gaining increased website traffic.
Re-Package Content
Lets say you already have a corporate video, it's around ten
minutes long and you currently distribute it on a video tape
format or DVD. The most obvious solution would be to have it
transferred to a streaming format in it's entirety and loaded up
onto your website. Whilst a ten minute corporate video sequence
may be useful as a backdrop display in a trade exhibition or
screened to a captive audience in a conference, it's often far
too long to use as a streaming video clip on your website. Who
really has the time to sit and watch a corporate video clip for
this length of time? It's often far more useful to break the
sequence down into a series of individual clips or re-edit into a
shorter, condensed version that has greater impact.
Following on from this, you might also want to distribute
streaming video clips around different areas on your website.
This way, the clips featured can be targeted to match - and
complement - the page content. For example, on a page detailing
company clients and case studies, the video clip could feature
customer testimonials; situated on a contact details page, the
video sequence could feature some generic shots of company
locations and building exterior shots.
Brand The Video
Whatever streaming video clips you use, try to ensure they are
branded with your corporate identity. This could be a small logo
in the top corner of the screen or a 'picture frame' wrapped
around the moving images. Taking it a step further, you may want
to add an introduction sequence with animated corporate logos at
the beginning and end of every sequence. Another option is to
create an HTML or Flash 'player' customised with your corporate
identity. The video clip would then play within this frame and
could be complemented by some animated product or service
information around it.
When reviewing website statistics, it is frequently pages
featuring streaming video content that are the most 'sticky' and
have the longest viewing times by site visitors. Use this factor
to your advantage - it's an ideal opportunity to get your core
brand values, products and services across to the site
visitor.
About The Author
John Howarth is creative director of Blue Tuna Limited, a
leading UK-based corporate communications & multi-media
production agency. Past projects include live streaming for
leading online bookmaker, Blue Square and the launch of the UK's
of the first club soccer channel, Boro TV for NTL.
www.bluetuna.tv
MORE RESOURCES:
MySpace will stream video to select phonesSmartBrief, DC - Dec 3, 2008In becoming the first online social-network community to offer mobile video streaming, MySpace will not sell ads at launch, saying the video streaming will ... |
Throw This Stock AwayMotley Fool - 8 hours ago... free online access, how much longer will it be before folks cancel their cable subscriptions and take advantage of free on-demand video streaming? ... |
Video-Streaming - Google News
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