Social Media

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If you want to market your site with online video, you have a number of challenges beyond video production -- in particular, showing the video to your desired audience.

Video Sharing Services

To propel your video to viewers who have never been to your website, you'll probably want to put a copy on video sharing service. They make their money (hopefully) through advertising, so you don't pay a hosting fee. Find appropriate sites with my article, "Top 45 Video Sharing Sites Where You Can Publish Your Video" (www.wilsonweb.com/newmedia/wilson-video-sharing.htm). You certainly don't want to distribute your video through all 45 sites -- just a handful of the top sites and a niche site or two will be plenty. Check out TubeMogul (www.tubemogul.com) a (currently) free service that tracks 13 of the most popular sites. You can upload your video once to TubeMogul, which, in turn, will upload it to each of its partner video sharing sites that you select.

The big advantage of video sharing sites is that they potentially put your video in front of tens of thousands of potential customers. I had lunch last week with an Internet marketer who rediscovered my website through a video interview I posted on YouTube and which was also embedded on the interview subject's website. When you upload your video to a sharing site you are asked to list several keywords (called "tags" on these sites) that describe your content. These help your video be found by people searching for videos about these topics. Since Google has instituted universal search, which includes video, audio, blogs, and webpages in its search results, your video might just show up higher in Google's search results, since Google owns YouTube as well as Google Video and is quite aware of their content.

But free video sharing services aren't for everyone. When you submit a video to YouTube, for example, the results often look pretty ragged after they reduce the file size to a minimum and convert it to Flash Video (FLV) format. Though you can embed YouTube videos on your own site, they still try to draw people back to the main YouTube site to see additional "similar" videos. You also lose control of the display format and screen size of the video. For these reasons, many businesses avoid video sharing sites.

Video Hosting Services

Providing a fee-based video hosting service for business is a growth industry these days. Some, such as Brightcove (www.brightcove.com), offer both free and fee services while aiming at enterprise level clients. Bandwidth is one of the main cost determiners, since if a tens of thousands of people are downloading huge video files for viewing, it causes a big strain on servers and results in high Internet connection costs for the provider. Pricing varies widely. Two services, however, are priced in a way that small businesses should consider them carefully:

Instant Video Generator (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/vg.htm) provides use of a  free website video player, unlimited video storage space, and 3 gigabytes (GB) of video playback bandwidth for $39.95 per month ($13.33 per GB). Additional bandwidth is $3 per GB. They make it easy by support such as teleprompters for making on-the-fly videos. This service will be all some marketers need.

WebVideoZone (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webvideozone.htm) provides considerably more flexibility for marketers who have a bit more video experience. They offer what they call the web video "Big 3," that is: conversion to Flash 8 FLV format, web video hosting, and a flexible web video player. The player incorporates a number of tools marketers like, such as auto redirect after viewing the video (to a sales page, for example), wide screen options, analytics, auto start, delayed start, and clickable hotspots. The player can also be used to play videos hosted on your own site, if you like. The member's area also includes a number of helpful articles to get do-it-yourselfers up and running with online video. Hosting plans typically charge a set-up fee of $79 plus a monthly fee starting at $19.95 per month, which includes 30 GB of monthly bandwidth, depending on what level of service you need. Bandwidth costs vary from $0.20 to $0.67 per GB depending on the plan you select.

With both free and fee video hosting available to small businesses, the barriers to getting your sales or informational video online are getting lower all the time.