Get maximum reach with your video.

By Mark E Goodman www.e-conversation.com “ .

A guide to using different types of video to promote your business -

How to use YouTube, BlipTV and cable TV to increase the brand awareness of your organization

Many businesses are considering adding video to their customer communications plans. While video is easier to produce than ever, how do you get the greatest impact out of your content creation?

The content creation plan for a small business used to be pretty simple. When you rolled out a new product, you did a brochure and maybe a press release. If you did some advertising, perhaps you ran a small ad. You trained your sales force and then got going.

What has changed in the last 10 years? First, your brochure went on line. Then, you decided rather than running ads, you would have buyers come to you using pay per click and search engine optimization. More and more, your buyers did not want to see a sales person, but wanted to find the answers to their questions on line.

How has that changed how you create content? What impact does that have when you create video?

When searching on line, your users want to find the answer to their individual question. The typical searcher is typing in four or five words. In a “decision engine” perhaps even asking a question. So rather than a white paper or article, you need to create an “answer bit”

Also, realize that your buyers want to find the content in the media that they are comfortable with. Some buyers want to find it in a blog. Others are YouTube viewers or are searchers using Google or Bing. Buyers are looking for recommendations of other content as they search. Other pieces of content can be recommended through comments, but also the search engines recommend content on their own.

To maximize the reach of your content, you can represent it in various media, if you plan for it in advance. I have created this model in my work with SCORE Chicago. Since, SCORE provides assistance to people running or starting business, our product is advice and education. Our goal is to attract people to our counseling and workshops.

The content creation process is based on the “interview” model. The visible content creation starts with a live Cable TV show. This is a 25 minute show that runs once a week. Then the show is posted in its entirety on BLIP.TV. http://blip.tv/file/2465442 The show is then edited into clips and put on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuNqA_hr_GU The clips are also turned into blog postings in the blog of a local business magazines. Ask Score: What makes a good sales person? We also reference the content in our email campaign. Content is also embedded on our website. http://www.scorechicago.org/item_list.asp?subcat=351&subtitle=Marketing+and+Selling

The key to the content reuse is designing the interview up front, so that you execute the reuse.

The questions are created so that they can easily be cut into segments. Additionally, the dialogue during the interview focuses on topical issues that can be reconfigured into a blog posting. Lastly, we monitor the length and complexity of the answers to insure that the clip will play well in the YouTube environment. Each question is its own answer bit. An answer has to be complete enough to answer a question, but not so complex as to lose the viewer.

Doing our initial show as a live Cable TV show has two advantages. First, since we are using a broadcast TV studio, our audio and video is first rate. Secondly, and somewhat unforeseen, the live call in nature of the program creates topical content that is both current and very real.

Doing the weekly show has allowed us to create continual content. Both users and search engines appreciate the creation of continual content. The more users and viewers that you have in you channel or blog, the more Web 2.0 referrers will route people to you. Once we reached a certain volume level on our YouTube channel, we started to get more people finding us. It was not a linear increase, more of a quantum leap.

Additionally, each medium feeds off each other. The blog posting references the YouTube and Blip.TV clips. YouTube leads to Blip.TV. Website postings lead to YouTube. All of the media lead to buyers.

Since we began our program, our volumes in any month have increased between 25% and 100%. This is against all of our key metrics.

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Mark Goodman has a varied work experience. He was an educational television producer/director and a film buyer for a national theatre chain.

Following that experience, Mark spent many years working for Motorola. He was one of the first business people in the cell phone group, rising to positions in distribution, marketing, and business management. Mark also developed and implemented internet strategies. Then he went on to manage service, parts and major account business opportunities. Subsequent to his experience at Motorola, Mark worked in sales management for a Silicon Valley company.

He currently has a consulting business focused around using video and social media to create an e-conversation. www.e-conversation.com He is also a volunteer for SCORE Chicago, where he serves as Workshop Chair. Mark has an MBA and an MA in Radio/TV/Film