Some of our larger clients have separated their website operations from their social media efforts. This is an outgrowth of the decision to make websites part of the IT department and social media part of marketing. They have inadvertently built an imaginary firewall between their websites and their social media presence.

As a result, few corporate clients push their corporate videos to their social media sites. This misses a big opportunity to expand the brand. Sharing the corporate video on Facebook or LinkedIn is a powerful way to build the brand.

Yes, there are challenges with implementing a corporate video on social media sites, but overcoming that challenge can produce big benefits. The good news is, you don’t need a corporate IT staff standing in the wings to implement your corporate video on Facebook.

Here’s a quick primer on the best practices for sharing video on Facebook and a couple of promotional tips to help drive your message more effectively.

1. Video Tab – A must-do. Use the Video Tab that’s part of the Facebook basic design. This tab allows you to upload videos directly through the Facebook interface. This is essentially a gallery page for your Facebook site. This should be the first place to park your corporate videos. One of the big benefits, your corporate or promotional video is now searchable in Facebook.

> To maximize the search-ability of your videos be sure to use descriptive names. We cringe when we see a corporate video with the name: video-sales01. That does nothing to aid in discovery of your corporate video and may even dissuade users from watching. Instead, try keyword-related titles for your corporate videos, such as: benefits-low-cost-insurance or trusted-healthcare-recruiters.

2. Pin to Top – The old adage applies here; you only get one shot at that first impression. Make it a good one. If you have a well-honed message crafted into a powerful corporate video, pin that video to the top of your Timeline. This allows your video to be the first (or second) thing users see when they land on your Facebook page.

If you have more than one video, rotate the video that gets pined to the top. This allows returning users to view different messages on subsequent visits.

3. Canvas Page (aks App Page) – Facebook doesn’t provide much in the way of interactive capabilities on the Timeline. However, one of the tools they do give you is the Canvas or App page. To access these pages you click on one of the little icons that sits near the top of the Timeline. This takes you automatically to the corresponding app page. The Canvas page can act as a mini-webpage built right into your Facebook site.

And, of course, you can use your corporate video on the Canvas page. But even better, you can make that corporate video interactive with buttons, forms, and links back to your website.

> Be respectful. This is one of the most important keys to managing an effective social media effort. Just because you have the ability to take users from your Canvas page to your website be sure to do it in a way that won’t frustrate users. Facebook users are normally on Facebook to connect with friends and update their own page. If you bounce them out of Facebook they may get annoyed. If you link from the App page to your site, either pull your website into the App page or open a new window for your site. Either way leaves the user with their Facebook page open.

There are some unique limitations that Facebook places on the Canvas page, such as the width of the page which is generally narrower than a typical website. Working to overcome these limitations can take a little effort. However, you will quickly find that producing interactive content on your Canvas page will increase user engagement and extend your brand.

And you don’t need a team of Internet experts on the payroll…you always have iSpeakVideo just a phone call away.

See the iSpeakVideo Facebook page for examples of how we manage corporate video on Facebook.

Our initial conversation with any new client, however, begins with the question, Why?

Why are you producing this video? What do you want to accomplish with this corporate video or video spokesperson? What’s the objective?

We can produce a great video but if the video doesn’t produce great results then the video wasn’t successful. So, how do we know if it was successful?

Look down the road six months. You’ve commissioned a great video. Now, six months later how will you know if it was successful? What’s the measurement of success for your corporate video?

Consider your video production as you would another business tool.  Producing an effective corporate video takes a lot of effort and creative talent. There’s a certain cost involved.  You want to make sure that cost has a positive return on investment (ROI).

Fortunately, online video historically has generated a positive ROI for businesses. The use of corporate videos or video spokespersons on your company’s website and integrated with your marketing and sales effort, can produce very positive results.

Producing positive results, however, starts with asking yourself the right question. Why?

If you need help analyzing the costs and benefits of a video production project, give us a call.

So, what happened? HTML5 happened.

In the early days of online video (about eight years ago) almost all video on the Internet was delivered using Flash from Adobe. The smart guys and gals at Adobe found a way to use the “Alpha-channel” in video image and make the video transparent so you could see through it.

The Alpha-channel is the fourth channel in an RGB image…RGB, of course, being red, green, and blue. The Alpha channel carries the transparency. It’ s a little more complicated involving green screen work and other video editing and encoding techniques, but you get the gist of it.

Flash ruled until now. HTML5 is the new standard for online video. Flash is still the big dog, but HTML5 video is growing rapidly. HTML5 is also used on most mobile devices in-lieu of Flash video.There are lots of benefits surrounding the use of HTML5 video, but transparency isn’t one of them.

The video formats used by HTML5 to display a video spokesperson do not permit a transparent background.

Our code used with a video spokesperson will automatically determine what video a user needs based upon which browser they are using at the moment. The iSpeakVideo code then delivers the right kind of video. If the browser will support Flash playback, that’s what the user will see – transparent background and all.

If the user’s browser won’t display Flash video then we will deliver the HTML5 format they require (there are several choices here, but the code does all the work).

So what do you do about the lack of transparency?

HTML5 video requires a background. Most often simply using a white background behind the video spokesperson looks good and integrates nicely on the website. However, we can also replace the white background with any color or even another image.

Although its popular to anchor the video spokesperson (aka virtual spokesperson) on the bottom of the browser in a transparent overlay, you can also place the video spokesperson any place on the page. This permits for more creative uses where the difference between the Flash video spokesperson with a transparent background and the HTML5 video spokesperson is less visible.

If you need some ideas on how to include your video spokesperson on your website give our experienced Internet Marketing Consultants a call or check out the samples on our site.

Your Website. Of course the first place you want to use the corporate video is on your own website. This seems like a no-brainer. It is. The key is how you use it on your website.  Don’t use the Youtube code to place the video on your site. You will have better results from an SEO perspective if you actually embed the video on your website rather than linking off to Youtube. You also get more control over the video experience which is critical. Our code can help you with this.

Make it Interactive. Placing the corporate video on your site allows you to control the playback experience and this is critical. With the proper code you can add interactive functions to the video. For example, you can add buttons to take users to other places on your site or even collect data from users or even present an order form to the user right in the frame of the video. This extends the marketing power of the corporate video to enhance user engagement and increase conversions. It becomes a more active tool rather than just a passive video.

VSEO – Video Search Engine Optimization. This is critical. Okay, I said that before, but it’s true again. It’s all critical. Placing the video directly on your website rather than using Youtube also allows you to use certain VSEO techniques to increase your search ranking. Applying VSEO to your corporate video will help the search engines find your video and your website. Isn’t that what it is all about.

Get the Word Out. Everywhere you go share your corporate video. Use the corporate video in your emails; provide a link at the bottom of your emails to the video on your site. Place the video on your Facebook page.  Send out Tweets with links back to your video. Share in your blog posts. Everywhere you go, share the video. If you are doing a lot of blogging, posting, and sharing. It’s a good idea to create a separate page on your site to host your video. This allows you to more easily track the traffic that is coming to your site as a result of the video

Youtube. Now its time for Youtube. Yes, place your corporate video on Youtube, Vimeo, and every other place you can think of to share it. This is where you want to use a second, specially branded version of your corporate video. On your website, the branding of your corporate video will take a different shape as you make the video interactive. On sites like Youtube, your video isn’t interactive so you need to insure that users can easily find you or call you if they want to follow up. This is what it’s all about, right? Driving traffic to your website or making your phone ring.

There you go. This should help you use your corporate video as part of your marketing campaign. If you have any questions, our experienced Internet Marketing Consultants are happy to help. See our corporate video for a little more information. (See we’re sharing our corporate video everywhere.)

Hopefully before you completed the corporate video, you coordinated with your video production company to insure you had the following:

16×9 Video. This is often referred to as high-definition video. That’s not quite true, but it’s important to have your video in a widescreen format versus a 4×3 format. Most older televisions – like the one my mother refused to give up – are more of a square shape. New televisions use the widescreen format; so should your corporate video.

High-Definition. Not all video is equal in quality. Many consumer video formats shoot 16×9 video but they are highly compressed which lowers quality. Before you start your video production be sure your video production company is using a true high-definition video format. Avoid HDV which a compressed format often used by lower cost video production companies.

Studio Quality Sound. This is something that we see frequently. In fact, we have companies that come to us in hopes that we can repair the lousy quality sound of their video project. Bad sound turns off viewers faster than any other element. Make sure that your corporate video production house is using studio quality gear. Listen to samples of their work does it sound tinny?

Branding. Before you begin your marketing project, your corporate video should be properly branded. Your corporate video will act like a video business card for you. If it’s not properly branded it’s like handing out a blank card. You would be surprised how many corporate videos do not include all the proper branding information or includes the information in the wrong place or format.

Call To Action. Its pretty amazing how most – yes most – corporate videos miss the all important Call To Action (CTA). What is it you want the viewer to do after watching the video? And the CTA is going to be different depending upon where the user finds your video. So you really need at least two versions of your corporate video to be effective.

So, you have your newly minted corporate video with all the important elements in place and now you’re ready to use it to increase traffic, engage users, and close more sales. How?

How do you use your corporate video to market your product or company?  Check out Part Two.

Not any more.

Today, video production may not even use video at all. Watching something move on your computer monitor or the plasma screen in the family room might involve video – true video as we used to know it – but more likely that moving picture you are watching is more correctly referred to as motion graphics. But we still call it video for ease of reference.

Video production today usually involves adding motion to graphics, text, and images. This is as much about graphic design as it is video production. The art of designing individual graphics and then making those graphics move on the screen is central to most professional video production efforts today.

Take the usual corporate video.  Yes, there may be actual video shot of a spokesperson in that corporate video. The dynamic, engaging quality of the video, however, comes from the motion graphics – those stock images, graphics, and text that fly around on the screen.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing that can replace a talented virtual spokesperson for delivering your message. The nuance of the performance enhances the message and connects with audiences in a way that no graphic can.

The power of the moving image is that it keeps the user engaged and further extends the messaging by supporting the video spokesperson.

It’s important you, as a client, understand the difference between video production as we traditionally know it – shooting images with a video camera – and the production of a commercial piece or corporate video that includes true video and other motion elements.

There can be a huge difference in costs. For example, we recently completed a thirty-second commercial designed for broadcast and cable television. We didn’t shoot a single piece of video (in the traditional sense there was no video production). It was a beautiful, moving piece. It contained nothing but stock video elements, voice-over of a professional video spokesperson, and some very simple graphics (the client’s logo).

We completed this commercial project for less than $8,000. The client didn’t have the budget to support a true video production. That would have easily run $35,000-plus.

Likewise, we’ve completed numerous commercial projects and hundreds of corporate videos where the end product included no video production other than the video spokesperson.

To create a dynamic corporate video or engaging commercial for these projects, we relied upon the artistic use of motion graphics. Again saving clients thousands of dollars.  A corporate video that relies on motion graphics, like the one we feature on our homepage, can be produced for less than $3,000. Compare that to a video using full video production and a cost of more than $10,000.

Yes, today’s “video production” is more complicated than our early efforts from 1976. But today’s commercial and corporate videos are far more engaging and creative thanks to the amazing technology at our fingertips. You can use these technologies to deliver great messages are a reasonable cost.

We frequently see the impatience surface when launching campaigns for website SEO and Video SEO.

Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) is a tricky business. Results, as we’ve shown with our own account, can be measurable and favorably impact a company’s bottomline. But any VSEO or SEO campaign requires a certain amount of strategizing followed by preparation followed by the hard work of building the search engine ranking page by page.

We’ve seen clients working with other VSEO-SEO companies get ahead of themselves. In the rush for results, the clients will skip the important ground work. They end up with an VSEO campaign that largely resembles: Ready, Fire, Aim.

The most critical first step is to identify what keywords make sense in the context of the overall business strategy. It is this “context” that many SEO companies miss.

It is not enough to simply pick a list of keywords that relate to your business and begin creating an SEO campaign or VSEO campaign. Picking a list is not a strategy.

One of our clients came to us with a list of 200+ keywords. Most of the keywords were broad matches that did relate to their industry but not necessarily to their business.

For example, if we were building a campaign around “pain management” certain keywords might relate generally (“aspirin” and “Excedrin”) but these keywords may have little relevance to our specific objective of building a business providing pain management advice to doctors.

The first step – the most critical step – in the process of creating any VSEO campaign or SEO strategy is to make sure you select keywords that relate to your overall business strategy. Ask yourself questions like:

• What markets are most important to your business?
• What keywords relate to those products/services that generate the highest margins for your business?
• What keywords might be important lead generators for your business?
• Are there keywords that currently earn you a high search engine ranking?
• Does your advertising (online and offline) drive traffic to particular keywords?

Once you begin to ask yourself these kinds of business-oriented questions you will start to look at your video search engine optimization in a different light. Armed with this information and insight, you can begin to create a list of targeted keywords to use in a VSEO campaign or with your SEO strategy.

The challenge is finding a VSEO/SEO company that works first from a business perspective. A perspective where they put your business first. Compensation for most search engine optimization companies is largely based on the number of keywords they put on list.

Until you get the right keywords on your list, your VSEO/SEO strategy will likely continue to be Ready, Fire, Aim.

Like most technologies, the basic video spokesperson has undergone a transformation. The Flash website spokesperson is slowly giving way to the HTML5 video spokesperson that can play on mobile devices. (Thankfully, our proprietary code seamlessly delivers spokesperson videos in both Flash and HTML5.)

The real change taking place now is in the interactive capabilities of the new video spokesperson technology.  In these interactive functions businesses are finding new, more powerful ways to use the video spokesperson.

The video spokesperson is a great tool for introducing your company to website visitors, explaining special product features, and answering frequently asked questions (FAQs). But those presentations tend to be one-way conversations.

With an interactive video spokesperson you can extend the conversation. Now the video spokesperson can interact with the website visitor giving the visitor some control over the conversation.

With interactive buttons timed to the video spokesperson’s presentation, you can present the visitor with additional options and information. In the midst of the presentation, the user can click on a button to consider more information about that particular product or service. The visitor can drill down on a particular topic.

In effect, you can lead the visitor to other areas on your site that are important to both you and the visitor.

The interactive functions are not limited to just simple buttons. You can integrate contact and order forms right on the screen. The video spokesperson can be used as an order desk open 24/7.

The information presented by the video spokesperson can be pulled from a product database conditioned on specific choices made by the visitor. A once static presentation now becomes a two-way conversation with information tailored to the visitor’s particular interests.

This interactive use of the video spokesperson has two dramatic impacts on your business. The first is user engagement. Users will consume more of your message with the use of an interactive video spokesperson. This extended engagement means visitors remain on your site longer giving your virtual spokesperson a greater opportunity to sell.

Secondly, by guiding the visitor to key pages on your site, you can lead them through the sales process. Issues like “shopping cart abandonment” are greatly reduced. Not only will sales increase but, almost as important, customer satisfaction improves as well.

Changes in technology have the ability to make the old, new again. (I’m sure you don’t look at your phone the same way you did a decade ago.) And so it is with the video spokesperson. We are just now beginning to experience exciting new ways of using the video spokesperson to interact online.

The remaining elements of the promotional video work together with the script to produce a corporate video that resonates with the target audience.

2. Imagery. The corporate video above all else is a visual medium. The great ones can be summed up with a single image. For a terrific example see the corporate video here. In this video there is a single image that captures the aspirational essence conveyed by the video as a whole. This is exceptional. Not all corporate videos achieve this level of imagery. But that’s the target.

With imagery (graphics, text, and logos) more is less. It is easy to overwhelm the viewer with too many images, moving too quickly. Keep it simple. Simple, but evocative. That’s the art; being able to intercut simple images in a way that evokes an emotion or theme.

In this case, with a great corporate video, the imagery should convey the essence. The imagery (largely) carries the emotional beat of the promotional video.

3. Audio. This is one of the most important elements for a successful corporate video. Bad audio will sink an otherwise great corporate video faster than you can say, “Titanic.”

When users are confronted with bad audio, they stop watching. It’s a trade secret that many corporate video production companies seem not to understand.

When we’re asked to resuscitate a video that was produced by another video production company, the number one complaint is usually inferior audio.

Recording good audio is a science. Acoustics, microphone dynamics, and recording technology all come together to produce award-winning results or an audio disaster. (We recently had a client that came to iSpeakVideo with thirty minutes of video recorded by another company and edited into half a dozen corporate videos. The picture was fine; not great but passable. The audio was a wreck. It was also not salvageable. They scraped their project.)

Great audio is not just about the technology. It’s also about the performance. A professional spokesperson or voice-actor carries much of the message in their performance.

There are subtleties in their inflection and tone that an audience reacts to on a subconscious level. The emotional level.

There you have it. The three key elements that create a successful corporate video.

The message, the imagery, and the audio. Together these three amigos can provide your company with a dynamic sales piece to convert that anonymous traffic on your website to customer, clients, and patients.

Let us now what you think about our primary corporate video.

But a great corporate video takes the facts to another level. A truly remarkable corporate video provides an emotional connection to the facts. We say the video “resonates” with the audience. The effective corporate video marries the value proposition with imagery and text that drives the user to the inescapable conclusion that this is the only product or service for them.

So, how do you insure your corporate video production hits the bullseye dead center?

Corporate videos – aka multi-media videos or web videos – are not inexpensive. We’ve seen clients come to us to “save” their corporate video after the project was completed by another video production company. You don’t want to spend $2,000 on a low-cost corporate video, only to have to rush the patient to the doctor to be resuscitated.

Get it right the first time. The powerful corporate video has three key elements. They work together. They are inseparable. Here’s the secret formula for a great corporate video.

1. The Message. Like a great Hollywood movie, the great corporate video starts with the script. Don’t worry about the other elements until you’ve crafted a great script. And the script is all about your message.

Boil your message down to two or three key points. What are the facts you want to convey? What makes your company, process, or service unique? Why should I buy from you? What’s the compelling value proposition?

Be concise. You should be able to explain each point in ten words or less. The successful corporate video delivers your message succinctly. Be focused.

Remember our engineer? “Just the facts.” Your points are the facts. The meat and potatoes. You also need to find the essence of our corporate message. This is the part of your corporate video that resonates.

I can give you many facts about America. The size. The population. Average income. The essence is “land of the free, home of the brave.”

Your corporate video must capture the essence of your company. What is your essence? What defines your company?

Your message should capture the essence of your company.