Firstly I should just say that this blog isn’t about making a video, these tips assume that you already have your corporate video made and ready to put online but now just need to get people watching it! Obviously the more interesting and well made your online video is, the more people there will be who will want to watch it. However, that isn’t the end of the story, your corporate video could look great and you could have spent thousands of pounds on it but if you don’t market it correctly no one will ever see it.

1) Size matters

The format and size of your video will determine whether people can view it on their computers so it’s important to get this right. Ideally try and offer a few different video formats (e.g Flash, Windows Media etc) so that if they can’t play one, they should be able to play another. It’s also a good idea to offer lower quality versions for users with lower bandwidth connections and HD versions for users with fast broadband, that way users on slow connections won’t have to wait to watch your video (which risks them getting bored and giving up) and users on a fast connection see the best quality available.

If you are only able to offer viewers one version of your online video think about who is going to be most likely to watch and what equipment they will have. If you think it will be mainly PC users on a slow corporate network with restricted downloads watching your video you may want to produce a small WMV file. This is because most PCs that run windows will already have Windows Media Player so the viewer won’t have to download any player software restricted by their network and the small file will load and play quickly. Alternatively if you think your core viewers will be Ipad users on a high-speed broadband line you might want to consider uploading a large file in a format suitable for HTML5.

Mentor Digital also offer dynamic bandwidth detection for it’s client videos through it’s own online video management system Mvideo.

2) Timing is everything

Research shows that the optimum length for online videos is 2-3 minutes and if your corporate video is longer than 5 minutes it may put people off playing it. However, sometimes your company may have more than 2-3 minutes of information to get across so at that point you should consider adding chapter points to your footage. This can be done within your online player without having to go back and change your video and viewers can then either watch the whole thing or jump straight to the section that interests them.

Take a look at this 30-minute video Mentor Digital produced for Law Firm Osborne Clarke, which allows the viewer to jump to chapter points.

3) Introduce yourself

As well as an SEO optimised title, it’s really important to add a text description to your corporate video, very few people will click to view a video if they don’t know what it’s about. You might think the title alone is enough, something like ‘Company Introduction’ for instance may seem fairly self-explanatory, but descriptions also appear in search engines so the more of your key terms you can put in the description the more likely it is that search engines are going to list your video and the more likely that people are going to be able to find it. However don’t give everything away in your description, give an overview of the video but leave the reader wanting more so that they will actually watch.

If the video isn’t sitting within your company website then make sure you use the description area to link to your website home page by putting your company URL at the beginning of your video description, and make sure you include Http//: before the www.

4) First impressions

A poster frame is a still image (usually from your video) that sits inside the online player area before the viewer presses play. You should ensure that the poster frame for your video is reflecting the right corporate image for your video and your company. The image you choose can encourage or discourage a viewer from watching your video so make sure it’s a good one of a decent quality that will make people want to see what your video is all about. If you can’t find a suitable high quality image from within your video then upload one, if in doubt use your company logo but make sure it fills the video area and is of a high quality.

See an example of a good poster frame that fits the theme of the website in this video Mentor Digital produced for SITA Trust.

5) Tag, you’re it.

If you are able to add tags to your video make sure you do, simply put, tagging your video with optimized key words will help it appear in search engines which in turn will help people find it, thus driving traffic to your video and your company website.

6) Home is where the traffic is

Don’t bury your corporate video on the subpages of your website where no one will find it, a good proportion of people don’t go beyond the home page of a website so make sure you put your video, or at least an obvious link to it, on your website home page so that people can easily find and watch it. If you’ve gone to the trouble of making a corporate video make sure you shout about it.

See an example of a well-placed home page video in this website Mentor Digital produced.

7) Link big

Following on from the point above, if you do link to your video page within other pages of your website, don’t just make it a text link, make your link a big interesting button, an image or a still frame from your video that plays in a pop out. Do as much as you can to draw attention to and engage interest with your corporate video.

See an example of a big link in this website and video Mentor Digital produced.

8 ) More is more

There are lots of websites such as YouTube and Vimeo that will host and play your videos online for free. Adding your video to sites like this is a great way to get it noticed and improve your search engine rankings. On these websites you can also add a link back to your own website so if people like what they see they know where to find you which improves traffic to your site in general.

In addition online video sites usually offer the viewer an ‘embed code’ which means other people can also put your corporate video on their own website, which again increases potential recipients of your message. If you don’t like the thought of other people having your video on their site then just change this option in the security settings of the website you’re publishing your video to.

Click here to see Mentor Digitals profile on Vimeo

9) Tweet and shout

Use whatever means you can to contact your audience and let them know about your video, email your mailing list, post about your video on Twitter, put the video in your blog and even update your Facebook status with a link to your video, just ensure all of your contacts know that it’s there. If your video is on a specialist subject then go on to related message boards and forums and post a link to your video. If you don’t shout about it, who will!

Click here to find Mentor Digital on Twitter

10) Vital statistics

Once you have your video online and have shouted about it until your blue in the face(book) check your statistics and see where the hits are coming from and target those areas in your future marketing. If you don’t have monitoring software already installed on your website have a look at Google Analytics, it’s free and easy to add to your webpage and it gives details about the country people are watching in, hit rates, return views and average viewing time.

Click here to go to Google Analytics

Mentor Digital is a full service digital media agency in Bristol, offering web design, video production and online marketing services.