Humans are visually oriented by nature. And with most online forms of content being text, video marketing on the Web offers immense possibilities.

However most Internet users are now accustomed to seeing videos on the web, and possess a set of expectations when it comes to viewing. If a video doesn’t do it its job in the first few seconds, it is destined to fail. Here we outline a few ideas to help you on your way to better video marketing.

Relevancy

Achieving success in any Internet marketing endeavor requires a sense of empathy and perspective of the consumer. With video marketing, the most significant word to keep in mind is relevancy. A presentation that offers relevancy to the product or service and the audience establishes the base for your video.

Many video marketers fail because they focus too much on the product or service, and not enough on the interests of the audience. From a marketer’s perspective, a video might be interesting, captivating, and on-target. However, it is important that the marketer takes into consideration the extent of knowledge or background of the audience. This may take some research and exploration as to whom the target audience exactly is.

The overall goal is to produce relevant videos that the audience will benefit from. Put yourself in the shoes of a viewer, and then start planning the pieces of your video.

The Investment

A lot of video marketers are under the belief that projects of this nature require a hefty investment. Fancy equipment to make videos attractive and more desirable is misperceived requisite.

The most basic video equipment can be used to start your video marketing efforts. Heck, you can even use a digital camera that has video features. The real investment comes down to time and editing. Sometimes good video editing software comes in handy when branding your videos with logos and calls to action. But even without such software on hand, there are ways to get the job done, such as visiting your local library computer lab.

While planning and filming your videos, remember that most people have short attention spans, even with high quality filming. Online videos, especially those that are geared for marketing, should last only a few minutes. Some may be shorter or longer, depending on the topic, product or services, and level of engagement. 

Expand You Exposure

Savvy video marketers understand that it takes a lot of effort to succeed in video marketing, and making videos work to your advantage doesn't stop with just a single video. YouTube can feature as many as 12 related videos from your account, so take advantage of it!

Regularity in uploading new marketing videos increases your exposure and should be maintained like you would your blog content. This enables you to spread out your video topics into short, highly specific productions. Additionally, more videos enable you to distribute your links more efficiently, enhancing your overall SEO efforts.

Video marketing on the web is becoming a critical aspect to almost any business marketing plan. Not only are videos a great way to showcase your organization and the products or services it offers, but videos are popping up the search results, making them a significant tool for search engine optimization.

On the heels of the much improved analytics for Facebook advertising called Facebook Insights, YouTube has launched YouTube Analytics, replacing an Insights tool that allows users to view data through their channels. What improvements are to be expected from the new YouTube Analytics? Here's a peek:

New Look, More Efficiency

The new YouTube analytics page offers all the essential data in one screenshot. Previously featured in YouTube Insights, a summary of videos, views, demographics, and video popularity are still displayed, but with YouTube Analytics, the dashboard also displays overall channel performance, engagement, plus data about how viewers found your video. More detailed information is available if you click the report option.

Detailed Data & Information

Starting from the overview page, you have access to various reports from the left navigation. Over all, the reports provide better understanding of how the audience responds to your content. A data filter for content, location and dates allows you to get specific details depending on the chosen category. Charts are able to display daily, weekly and monthly data and allows for comparison of two metrics in a single chart. Additionally, you have the option to toggle from Line Chart view and Map view. Hovering over the map if it is available in your report, allows you to get more detailed information about the area.

Viewer Interest Percentages

YouTube sets the number of views at 300 for new videos and 600 for older ones for statistical significance. The Audience Retention report was formerly known as Hot Spots in YouTube Insights. The report indicates viewer interest on your video and how long before they decide to move on. It is based on absolute and relative retention with absolute retention showing up as a percentage from the start of the video. The graph will most likely fluctuate as viewers stop, fast forward or replay the video. If the viewer decides to replay your video, the graph goes up but if he decides to fast forward or stop playing it, the graph goes down. Your video's ability to retain viewers during playback as it compares with other videos of similar length is shown in the Relative Audience Retention report.  A high percentage means more people are viewing your videos over others at the same moment during playback. 

The information that can be gathered through this is at what point in your video your viewers get bored. This allows you to pinpoint the exact moments viewers lose interest as YouTube allows embedding of the video in the report. This means you have the necessary data to start improving your content on the moments when your audience starts to lose interest.

Monetary Estimates

The Estimated Earnings tab allows analysis for earnings based on YouTube presence. The Total Estimated Earnings report shows net earnings realized through Google advertisements. AFV Earnings display revenues through Adsense for Video while YouTube Earnings provides data for earnings made via Doubleclick advertising and other YouTube affiliates.

Marketers engaged in video advertising will be able to get better insights as to video performance and make improvements using the data made available by YouTube Analytics. Allowing for informed decisions to be made, the improved YouTube Analytics allows for optimization of video marketing for your target audience. YouTube's goal for launching YouTube Analytics is for video marketers to "earn more money" which, hopefully these improvements will help materialize.  

Learn more about the analytics features of Youtube by watching this video: Youtube Analytics Tutorial

Following the trend of its social media counter-parts Facebook and Google+, Twitter has recently announced the launch of branded, business-specific pages on its site.

The new Twitter business pages are an effort to provide a more concrete and tangible fan-base in which brands can have more interaction with their consumers.

What's New About Twitter Pages for Brands?

The new Twitter pages for brands offer a rich and sophisticated user experience. The new pages offer more interaction for users and have become much more presentable from a marketing point of view. In essence, the new Twitter brand pages have become an ideal platform to lure customers.

We have found a number of benefits of the new Twitter pages. Some these include:

• Large, Customizable header images - probably the first thing you would notice about the new Twitter brand pages. This enables brands to a logo or image, as well as a tagline or any other visuals that format to the new 835 x 90 header space.

• You can move a Tweet to the very top of your profile page’s timeline to emphasize your most engaging and vital content.

• Also nice for business are the rich media (photos and videos) links embedded in Tweets. Instead of sending a visitor away upon clicking the tweeted link, a sub-window will expand to show that media within your page.

• The look and feel of the new Twitter brand pages has been optimized for mobile with a consistent across many popular smartphone platforms.
• Twitter brand pages are available to the global public and do not require visitors to log-in to a Twitter account to see your company's page.

Marketing Advantages of Twitter

From a marketing standpoint, this is a great leap by Twitter. Earlier, brands preferred Facebook over Twitter, as it allowed more customization and interaction. The move by Twitter now integrates such features into the new Twitter brand pages.

Brand pages for several large companies like American Express, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, Intel, and Nike have all been customized and offer a more unique, customized feel. These new branded pages provide an elegant platform for consumer interaction and promotional presentation. In short, Twitters new pages hint at the future of advertising and marketing from more social platforms.

It's no secret that using blogging platforms for link building is an effective search engine optimization strategy.

One of the best of these platforms is Tumblr, a free micro-blogging site that allows you to post almost anything. Aside from text-based content, you can also post videos, audio files, links, and images to your own tumblr blog.

This posting flexibility is what makes Tumblr the platform of choice for a lot of bloggers and publishers. You can post a one-sentence blog post containing a backlink, or a 1000-word article with several backlinks.

5 Reasons to Use Tumblr for Link Building

1. Google loves Tumblr because the site is popular and SEO-friendly. A lot of Tumblr blogs rank very highly in the search engines. Additionally, there are features such as "liking" and "reblogging," which are very powerful for SEO purposes.

2. All the links you publish on your blog or any "reblogged" posts you make are DoFollow. This means that every link you create in your Tumblr blog passes on solid link juice.

3. You have full control and flexibility over what you publish. There is no limit to the amount of words that a blog post can contain.

4. Tumblr does not moderate your content as long as you stay within the site's Terms of Service. Once you hit the publish button, your blog post goes live instantly. You don't have to wait for somebody to review or approve your post.

5. Ease of use. The user interface of Tumblr is clean, uncluttered, and very easy to use. Whether you want to publish an article, a photo, or a video, all you need to do is click on the appropriate button on the dashboard.

Tumblr offers the potential to deliver high-quality backlinks, and these links are often free and easy to generate. So what are you waiting for? Start link-building with Tumblr today!