There is little doubt that video enhances a brand experience, encouraging customer interaction and raising purchase intent. The emergence of YouTube and Vimeo has accelerated the adoption of widespread video consumption by many internet users. Most traditional video vendors – such as Blockbuster – have gone out of business due to the ride in online video interest.

71% of 16 to 24 year olds now regularly access the internet using smartphones, with the fastest growing demographic being female. With such rapid adoption of mobile Internet, anyone deploying online video without mobile in mind is ignoring mobile users at their own peril.

Now, there are always challenges to overcome. It’s true that online video is much easier to deploy than mobile video, thanks to the formats available. Flash is notoriously absent on Apple devices – meaning that video often fails to show at all. In addition, mobile devices have small screens, which are increasingly used to view ever improving HD quality video, compromising the user experience. This is less of a problem with tablets as the larger screen size makes video more feasible. The final problem is mobile connectivity – 3G connection and slow wi-fi make it more difficult to view videos on a smartphone than on a PC.

Even though these challenges exist, the benefits are much stronger. Mobile video offers consumers a fully-engaged experience with much deeper brand visibility than television or online as people carry their smartphones with them almost 24/7. It enables brands to ensure their products stand out from standard text or images, giving consumers more product information and making the purchasing cycle more interactive. This, in turn, will help to drive sales and foster loyalty. Including testimonials from previous buyers, videos of the product being used or exclusive interviews with designers are all ways to make a product stand out in a crowded marketplace.

According to online marketing specialists, there has never been a better time to utilize mobile video. For those familiar with whiteboard animation and scribe videos, think of how great your message would look in the hands of mobile users.

So why should you be considering using video advertising? Below we take a look at some of the reasons for using this form of marketing in the future to help make your businesses online presence much stronger.

Reason 1 – Videos enable you to create a multi-sensory experience for potential customers while including within it content they will find engaging. There is no other form of advertising you can use today that will trigger a greater emotional response in your potential target audience than video. So of course it results in you making a far greater impact from the outset on all your potential new customers.

Reason 2 – Using video is the best and most effective way to get not only your brand but also your face and voice over the internet. This will in turn help you to gain a reputation for being an expert in your particular field. When people are able to see and hear you, it helps to make you more real and this helps to humanize their whole experience and makes them feel more comfortable.

Reason 3 – Those who watch your videos will be able to get to know you better and of course this will help you to then gain their trust. Those that have trust and confidence in who you are will of course be more willing to do business with you. Also, if you are really sincere with regards to wanting to help or educate others, then your videos will convert very quickly in comparison to more conventional types of advertising. When it comes to videos you post online, they will continue to work for you 24/7. Providing you with opportunities to educate potential new customers even while sleeping.

Reason 4 – Video is the future. In fact, Netflix alone accounts for 33% of all US Internet traffic from 8-10pm, up from 20% just 2 years ago. On top of that, video is becoming a larger and larger portion of total web traffic and that trend is only rising.  Like Gretzky said, go where puck is going to be, and the puck is heading toward video.

Online video marketing can come in many forms – either you can take the low-production value route and invest in your own camera, or you can consult a professional who specializes in getting important messages across to viewers – such as TruScribe. You get added value to your online video once you realize that, much like an indexed online article, your video will be available for viewing for years to come. And what’s even more, social media and video practically go hand-in-hand; meaning that you won’t be the only one spreading your message – your friends can also get in on the promotion.

Not only are online videos increasingly popular on Google search pages, they also stand-out amongst all of the text. If you were a consumer searching for a specific product, would you keep scroll down a results page and reading each link description, or would you single-out the one video on the page? Odds are, whether you like it or not, you’ll notice the video far before you get through all of the text. In turn, the more people that notice the video are apt to click on it – giving you a little more juice with Google and increasing your web presence. In fact, studies show that people tend to look and click first at the videos on the page before text.

Source: SEOMOZ.org

The image above shows where the eyes of searchers were looking when they searched for ‘how to make a pizza.’  Notice the white hot areas of both videos as compared to the darker areas where the text is results are located.

When planning your video strategy, keep in mind that good, engaging video is more effective than a pieced-together slideshow.  Much like deep, rich content will draw a user into a webpage; good video will draw a viewer into your YouTube or other channel and hopefully your website. It is also important to use the video mediums of the internet to your full extent. Not only do you want to host video on your website, you also want to utilize other video sharing sites like YouTube and MetaCafe. Over 4 billion videos are viewed on YouTube per day – this is not something that you want to miss out on.

TruScribe specializes in getting your message across to potential customers. With cutting-edge techniques in whiteboard animation and video scribing, they know how to set your message free.

The new algorithm takes into account the view-through rate of a video as a large determining factor for search position and suggested videos. This shift signals a move toward rewarding viewer engagement with a video and away from keyword and tag-stuffing.

What does this mean for businesses? Let’s say you put in tags and keywords about video marketing but your video is about how to article marketing. Because your tags have nothing to do with what the video is about, people will watch for a short time and then stop. YouTube will remember this lack of relevancy and engagement.

What happens next is that when your video shows up for a related search, it will be lower in the rankings. And as your view-through rate remains low, so does your rankings.

So what can you do to stay at the top? Make sure you use relevant tags and text when you post videos and don’t be afraid to go back to older videos to make sure everything is properly done.

And above all, make sure you have an engaging, message driven video much like a scribe video.

As this niche industry grows we’re already seeing lots of individuals/freelancers who can draw dive into whiteboard videos. I was telling Jim a few months back that we’d be seeing video companies add these to their services or spin off smaller departments, and we’re starting to see that as well.

What’s great about this is that every person that enters the category is going to bring their own perspectives and experiences into this craft. And in so doing create a new layer, a new technique, a new style, and there will become more and more variety in what kind of whiteboard animation is available to the consumer. Will it all be equally engaging and effective?

Right now, all of these techniques and styles are balled up together. You can search for “whiteboard animation” or “video scribing” and you’ll find some of the same websites and creators of these whiteboard videos. But I do think that very soon you will start to see more people working to differentiate themselves in the market.

Which is always good for the people who want to get these videos for their business.

Have you have already noticed a difference in the various whiteboard videos you’ve seen on the web?
Comment below.

YouTube is currently ranked 4^th in the world in terms of traffic. And according to Compete.com, it is the second largest search engine on the web – ahead of both Yahoo and Bing. How can a video channel be considered a search engine though? You might be surprised to know that the world leader in search, Google, has owned YouTube since 2006 and has sky-rocketed the video site to historic new heights.

If you spend your time tirelessly optimizing your content on Google search results, you may be missing the boat completely if you are not utilizing video. YouTube videos that show up in search engine results grab many more eyeballs and generate more clicks than traditional content articles. Because of this, videos are being shared more often through social media and Google +1 features. Ideally, if you spend time optimizing your keywords for video, you can climb the rankings at a much faster pace.

Currently, 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute – that’s one hour of video content every second. Also, forecasts by Cisco show that at least 90% of online traffic will be video-related by 2015. That only gives you three years to ramp-up your marketing game because video is definitely where the web is headed – the numbers say it all.

So, don’t you think it may be time to dust off that YouTube username and password? Think about this: As others try to establish their brand online, you will have a presence with top-ranked search results. Once you have a popular video ranked on Google there will be no stopping you – mainly because the top listing in Google’s organic search results get an average of 46% of the clicks. You know what the number two result gets – just 25%. And just imagine that your top-ranked result has a YouTube thumbnail attached to it…what percentage of clicks do you think you’ll get then?

1. A message
2. A voice-over
3. A hand quickly drawing images and text
4. The images are black on a white background with a color thrown in.
5. The canvas moves to a new white space so more things can be drawn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O94kYyzqvTc

This whiteboard video was created for Susan Weinschenk of Human Factors International. She had recently written the book, Neuro Web Design – What Makes them Click and was looking for ways to promote her book. But after some discussion we decided to start by creating a video for HFI instead.

HFI’s success with their first scribe video on YouTube, combined with new requests for more scribe videos from others, spurred us to launch TruScribe. TruScribe’s sole focus is to give your voice a video. To take your message in audio format and scribe along side it.

We didn’t start this style, but we’re going to become the best at it so our clients are the most successful online delivering their message.

There are so many great reasons to get your message scribed. First off, you never hear of podcasts and blog posts going viral. The most convincing to us though is retention rate. Your speech, audio book, podcast or teleseminar, alone, is only going to achieve an average retention rate of 10% for your audience. When you add images and illustration to your oral delivery, you increase the retention potential to 65%. That makes scribe videos 6.5x as likely to delivery your message into the memory of your audience than your audio format alone. And we’ve only started reading the research.

Other things we’re going to be assisting our clients with in the near future:
1. How to record great audio for your scribe video
2. How to build and run an amazing launch campaign

If you’re even considering a scribe video for your message, do it soon. With the nature of the internet today this could come and go. As effective as scribe videos are in conveying a message, our audiences could lose interest if the YouTube channels overflow with this video style. Then they may not click or act as often.

Get your scribe video now because your message is too important!