Hey Mark McKay

Picture courtesy of http://www.chrisbrogan.com

What do you want people to do when they come to your website? Chances are you're looking to convert potential customers into paying customers.

Chris Brogen, internet marketer and co-author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book "Trust Agents", recently wrote a post stating that while visiting a website he observed "video on the page is the most visually motivating thing the site offers."

He points out that video in of itself is a call-to-action, which is true: when you embed a video on a page you are essentially saying "click me."

Your video can be any number of things: a commercial for your product, testimonials from your clients, tips on how your product will make your customers lives easier. No matter what it is, a video can help you convert potential customers into paying ones.

Chris adds one final piece of advice in his post which I think is important: "If you’re not already doing video for your site, I strongly recommend it. It doesn’t have to be amazing. It might still draw our attention if it’s just plain useful."

Do you have a video on your website? Send me an email and lets talk about how we can make a video for you and your company. For more tips on how to improve your conversion rate check out these 10 tips by Added Bytes.

My latest project is a video about why your press release needs a video for CNW's same-day video service.

Now, more than ever, it's important to make video and YouTube part of your PR strategy. Why? YouTube is serving 1 billion videos per day and it is the second largest search engine in the world. If these two reasons don't give you cause for a video, here's 3 more from PR Web's webinar "Using Video and Multimedia in Online News Releases."

• Video is the most effective content for a social media release, according to a a survey by Marketing Sherpa. The benefits are the timely indexing of media and "link juice" from YouTube.
• Online video drives business. A survey by the Kelsey Group found that 55% of people who watched a video took action.
• It is easier to explain complex concepts with a video. If a picture is worth a 1000 words then a video is worth a million.

Send me an email and lets talk about how we can make a video for you and your company. For more information on why you should have a video in your press release check out the Slideshare presentation from PR Web below!

A lot of time clients ask me to make them a video about their product. This type of video is great because you can instantly explain your product to anyone unfamiliar with it. These are perfect for people who want to find out about you and what you do, but what about all those potential customers who have never heard of you?

Reel SEO has a great article called "5 Ways Small Business Can Take Advantage of YouTube" written by Morgan Brown, the director of marketing for TurnHere. Morgan has some good tips on making videos for YouTube. Some of them are obvious like "pay attention to production value" and "give the viewers a follow-up action", but one of his points isn't quite so obvious and quite often overlooked - create content that meets a need.

By making a video that answers a question your customers may be searching for is a great way to hook them and get them interested in your product. Here's an example from my own life: I'm getting ready to redo the floor in my family room. My wife wants a laminate floor and neither one of us have any idea how to install it. So what did we do? We went on YouTube and searched "how to lay laminate flooring".

The video above is from Lowe's and is one of the first videos to come up in our search. It's a great piece of branded content that answers a common question asked by their clientele. I would never have searched for "Lowe's" on YouTube and to be honest before watching this video I wasn't really familiar with the company (they are American and have only recently opened stores in Canada). When I think about home building supplies I think Home Depot or Rona, but because of their video I now know them, went to their website, found out they just opened up a store near me and will probably go there when it comes time for us to do our floor --- all because they had a video that answered my question.

Think about how this could work for you and your company. What problems do you solve for your customers? Send me an email and let's talk about how we can work together to help you reach your audience through video.

I took a look at your video and while I'm not a lawyer my thinking is you are probably fine with this because the clips are quite brief and shown in the context of commentary, which is a key component of the fair use doctrine and defense.

 Daisy Whitney via email 

When I first started making my show I never really thought about the legal rammifications of incorporting other peoples videos into my work. Its been a while since I've put anything out, I've been busy with a new baby, new job, and new house, but now that things have started to settle I have been thinking of getting back in the game. My last series of shows I put out were all commissioned by MTV so I didn't have to worry about using clips in my work, but now that I no longer work there I am a little worried about what I can get away with - especially since I've seen first hand how YouTube's Content ID system works.

Reel SEO is one of my favorite blogs when it comes to all things video. The other day they had a post on fair use and what video producers need to know. As further reading they suggested to check out Daisy Whitney's eBook "Keeping You and Your Content Out of Court." I contacted Daisy and ordered her book and asked her to take a look at one of my shows. The quote above is from the email she sent me in reply.

While this is good news and everything looks cool, one of the things I learned from her eBook is that not everything is black and white, and just because you play by the rules in her book, doesn't mean you are free and clear of the copyright police. 

It's important for a lot of businesses to have a well-established presence on YouTube, especially considering its standing as the No. 2 search engine, said Clarke. "There's more search traffic happening within YouTube than the whole of Bing and Yahoo search and everything else put together," he said.

"If you are a business that has any kind of profile at all and you're not managing your presence on YouTube, you are making a big mistake because people are going in there and searching for information about you," said Clarke.

Businesses who haven't established a strong presence on YouTube will find the conversation go on without them, Clarke pointed out. "When people go on search, people are finding all the stuff, which in some cases, is going to be negative information about you," he said.