It wasn’t so long ago that what was known as ‘web video’ tended to be simple graphics messages, or single person presentations to camera with or without some extra enhancements. The image size you saw was quite small, by today’s standards. However, the advent of higher speed broadband and sophisticated servers, that allow more data to be delivered to our devices, means that today nothing is off limits, with even Hollywood movies being delivered on the web.
At one time, YouTube was only for Skateboarding Cats – but now household name companies not only use YouTube for announcements, promotions and product demonstrations, but they also reinforce their brand by producing short instructional ‘How To’ programmes. Ironically, just as I was writing this, an email came in from Machine Mart promoting their web videos on a range of products.
With YouTube offering the same opportunities for inserting meta data (i.e. Tags) as can be used within a website and being part of Google, there are lots of SEO benefits to having a video on your website and communicating with your audience of clients /customers. YouTube is also the second most popular search engine, so a video presence becomes even more important.
There are other platforms to host your video. Many professionals use Vimeo Pro, particularly where videos are embedded on web pages, as it offers a number of technical benefits. For some of my clients I use both, a subject for another time and one to discuss with your video producer, web designer and SEO specialist. Assuming that they know more than you do, of course. Sadly, some website designers I come across are not up to speed on the finer points of video embedding, particularly YouTube’s advanced coding options…so sound them out!
I am happy to answer questions and can be contacted here or by email david@dsvp.co.uk or visit my website: www.dsvp.co.uk