Video has been an increasingly popular way to view online content! If you haven’t already gotten on the video bandwagon, you may already be at a disadvantage. Videos are found to appear in over 70% of the top 100 results in search and there are many other statistics out there supporting the importance of incorporating video into your content marketing strategy (which is why we’re breaking down this topic today). In this Daily Brown Bag, you’ll learn about the importance of Google Hangouts for small business videos and how to give your content marketing a boost with video.
Also available on YouTube.
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Hello, and welcome to The Daily Brown Bag. Today we’re going to be talking about Google Hangouts for small business videos. I’m Chad Hill, and I’m joined by Adam Stetzer.
Hey, good morning, Chad. Welcome to the Brown Bag. Today we’re talking about these tips for small businesses who want to add video to their content marketing strategy. We’ve been talking about content marketing for years, and the bar just keeps going up as people are realizing that content marketing and SEO are rapidly merging. You really need to have great content if you want to achieve top rankings. Let’s talk a little bit about how video can fit into your content marketing strategy.
With faster internet connectivity, Chad, there’s just a growing number of people watching video in general and particularly watching it from mobile. Here’s some data to set up this discussion of why video is so important to content marketing. ComScore’s latest data: 191 million people in the U.S. watched an online video/content via their desktop for the month of April. Google is where most of these videos are watched, thanks to YouTube obviously, their top video distribution property. People are also watching videos on Facebook, which came in second, based on the ComScore data, and also on Yahoo, which was third.
According to KISSmetrics, consumers are 64 to 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a video about that product or service. So that’s pretty compelling data on why you’d want to start to integrate video into your content marketing. And if you’re just looking for rankings -- you’re not thinking about the consumer behavior -- try this one on: videos appear in 70% of the top 100 results on the search engines. This makes a lot of sense, Chad, if we think about some of the signals we’ve suspected that Google has added into their search algorithm over the years. They’re looking at time on site; they’re looking at bounce back to the search page. They’re trying to get signals of low engagement, and we know video drives high engagement.
I know correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but it does really suggest that, with video on your page, you’re going to have people stay there longer, bounce backs to Google search will be lower, and that will be a signal of engagement and authenticity of user value, which might help you rank.
This has kind of led people in the marketing field -- the digital marketing field -- over 90% say that you should include video as part of your overall online marketing strategy. We talk to small businesses every day, Chad, and we know they’re often hesitant to incorporate video, to shoot them, and to get started. How do we encourage these small businesses to be more effective with their digital marketing?
Adam, that’s a great question, and it’s very relevant, obviously, because we’ve really found that videos in our marketing really helped us. They’re a great multimedia component.
I think that when we look at what people are most concerned about (typically) is that small businesses think that videos are:
- Too time-consuming.
- Too expensive -- people think of television production quality, crews, and whatnot.
- Small businesses just don’t really know where to start.
Use Google Hangouts for small business videos.
That’s what we’re doing here today. Hangouts is really great for recording these types of interviews. This could be with a customer, or -- as we’re doing it today -- this could be with two people at a company. The quality is really good; in fact, I was reading an article recently about how Google+ is kind of unwinding some of the things that they’ve done -- well, the Google+ initiative.
One of the interesting things that I read was that, back when they started Google+, Google ripped out a very expensive conferencing system in order to really make the people at Google (a very large company with many, many offices) be able to use this tool effectively for meetings and to make sure the quality was good enough to replace this very high-end system. So we’re all the beneficiaries here.
We have this free service essentially that would normally cost thousands and thousands of dollars. We want to talk a little bit today about how you can use it, and -- in some ways -- this has saved us hundreds of hours of production time by being able to do these live recordings. All this we’re doing today we’ll automatically be recorded to YouTube, which allows us to very quickly download that, add an intro to it, and get this up on our website.
Let’s take you through a couple of things you need to do when using Google Hangouts for small business videos.
Tips On How To Give Your Content Marketing a Boost with Video:
1. You need a good quality webcam.
That doesn’t really cost that much money. You can get a typical LogiTech webcam for around $10 -- an HD quality one. That’s all you really need.
2. Have good lighting.
You need to think a little bit about lighting (you can Wistia’s lighting tips here) and you want to make sure you’re not backlit.
3. Get a backdrop so that your videos look professional.
Ideally, you want to have something behind you that’s interesting to look at. You don’t want a messy office behind you. What we’ve chosen to do -- you can see behind us right now -- is we have two tradeshow booths. And these tradeshow booths are things we use when we go to tradeshows, but when we’re in the office and we want to record one of these videos, we can put it up and it gives us a nice, professional background.
4.Use Google hangouts -- specifically Hangouts on Air.
You want to get your Google Hangouts set up, so that’s again sometimes kind of hard to find.
- The best way to get to the service is to goto plus.google.com
- Then pick Hangouts from the menu
- Scroll down that page -- follow the options to start a Hangout on Air.
The critical thing: you need to start a Hangout on Air because that’s what allows you to have this interactive dialogue and then have it recorded and posted to YouTube so that you can then put it on your website.
5. Invest in a good mic.
One final component here is that you do need a good microphone. Either, in our cases what we have is a USB cardioid mic (you can search on Amazon), or if you want to just use something like a headset, make sure it’s a good quality microphone. It really does make a big difference.
6. Like when writing a regular blog, have a set time scheduled for your videos.
Once that’s all set up, you now get into the content of, again, using Hangouts for small business videos. What you want to do is ideate and come up with a topic. Just like you would for a blog post.
7. We recommend setting aside about 30 minutes for each video session.
You want to do a little bit of background research, so you have some prepared bullets. Adam took you through some of those where we always want to lead in with some statistics. I’m also, of course, looking at an outline of this particular presentation right now so that I know what points I want to hit. That needs to go in upfront.
You probably want to spend a few minutes thinking about the flow of the video. How are you going to start? How are you going to transition from one person to the other? Once you get into the meat of the matter, it goes pretty easily because it is just a conversation as Adam and I have set up here today.
8. Have your videos transcribed.
Once the video has been recorded, it goes to YouTube. You want to download that and get it transcribed. We use a service called Speechpad. There are a bunch of other transcription services out there. You upload the video, and it comes back to you with the transcription, which is very important for SEO services because you do want the words on the page on your website. Again, by having this conversation right now, we are essentially creating a 1,000 or 1,500 word blog post, which is very, very useful and powerful.
9. Post your videos on your own site.
When you have it all produced, ready to roll, make sure you do post it on your website, because again, you want this to, as Adam said, 70% of the top 100 listings have videos embedded. So you want to make sure that this content you’re creating is going on your website.
10. Follow the same quality guidelines you would for other content.
- Once you have the right tools, set up a routine and get over your stage fright, video is like writing a blog.
- Like other content, do your keyword research.
- Promote it via your email marketing, social media, etc.
Once it does go up on the website, you want to make sure you promote it just like you would anything else.
You want to Tweet it, you want to share it on Facebook. If you have an email newsletter that goes out, you want to notify people of your videos, and then, ultimately, you want to track it in the rankings and see: how does it do over time?, and what other people may be willing to link to it or refer to it, so it improves its organic results. Again, this is quite a list here. We’ll make sure we publish it, but we’re excited again to share how you can use Hangouts for small business videos.
Tips & Takeaways: Enhancing Your Content Marketing With Video
So in terms of enhancing your digital marketing, there are a lot of statistics that say you should do this with videos to make it stronger. The answer that Chad just gave you is: use Hangouts. It’s free; it’s easy.
The last piece of advice we always have is: just get out there and do it. Don’t over-think this. Get started. Get the ball rolling, and you’ll be happy you did.
We really appreciate you joining us for our video today, and, as always, we would ask you to subscribe and share this with anyone you think would find it interesting.
