Video is becoming an increasingly important part of a lot of companies’ web strategy. For most users on the web, video is more accessible than ever. The best part is that it’s never been easier for you to effectively put video on the Web. But how do you do it where it serves you well? Here are a few things to give you some direction going forward:
An Outside-the-Box Purpose
If you’re a small business, and you hire out to have a video professionally done for your company, sometimes a 2–3 minutes “overview” video is all you can afford. But more often than not, that’s taking the easy way out. Now that video is far easier to make and incorporate into a site, finding a specific purpose could make video on your site a far more valuable tool.
Example: ThisIsNext.org. This site is one of the most beautiful sites on the web for a number of reasons; but its video stands out for a number of reasons. For starters, it was professionally done and the video player is top notch. But the video has a specific purpose: to tease and advertise a conference. It makes it that much more potent than just a 2 minute video that overviews what the conference will do. It’s also displayed attractively and prominently on the home page, without getting in the way of the rest of the content.
Why Pay for Hosting?
If you’re having trouble justifying the financial investment necessary to put up a video (or videos) on your site, well take a load off. Consider YouTube your 2009 Stimulus Web Package. Uploading your video to YouTube, Google Video, or a number of other video sites and then embedding the video to your site from there is quick, easy, and takes away hosting costs and concerns on your end. This is becoming so popular that a lot of major companies are doing this more and more. Plus, it’s great advertising. If you put your video first on YouTube, that’s where a lot of people are spending their time anyway. You’ve now doubled your points of connection with your audience, AND saved money. What’s not to love?
Example: Guitar Hero. During March Madness, Activision put out their latest game, Guitar Hero: Metallica. They next created a commercial featuring famous college coaches. How did they promote it? Well, on their official website, they put the commercial up front and center on the landing page and used YouTube to do it. By making this choice, even if half a million people viewed it (there’ve been over 700,000 views to date), there’s no bandwidth cost to Activision. Further, at 700,000 views, the video ranks among the most popular on YouTube in Entertainment and Sports, meaning more people will see it there and it will continue to gain grassroots momentum.
Don’t Hate the Player.
If you don’t go the YouTube or Google Video route, you have an elephant-in-the-room issue on your hands. How do you get your video to look good on the web? Well, the simple fact is there are so many great custom video players on the web, that it’s not hard. You could start by going to KickApps, where a number of great custom video players are free. Flowplayer is also a great, quick video player you can use, that even lends the opportunity to embed advertising should you decide to go that route (not advising that you do, but wanted to throw all the options out there on the table.)
If you’re going to host your video, it’s imperative you make sure it plays well and looks good. Think about you or your spouse’s (or your future spouse’s) bridal portrait. You wouldn’t get an 18x24” photo, get it matted and then go to Wal-Mart and grab a cheap $10 frame for it. That’s the one picture in your house you’d spend to get a really nice frame. Okay, so think of your video player as the frame of a video you’ve likely invested good money and time in. You’d want that frame to be nice. You wouldn’t want it to be a distraction, but rather point to the quality of the piece in the middle.
Example: Layers Magazine. Great little tutorial for lay-designers to get their mind around creating a good custom video player. It’s a little dated; but it exposes how easy a custom video player is to create and leaves just about any web developer with knowledge of flash without excuse if the opportunity to create a custom video player arises.
Once you get the custom video player capabilities down, you don’t need to go overboard with style. Remember, it’s the video that’s important. Have everything point to it.
Bottom Line
The more popular video becomes on the Web, the more everything is going to look the same, and the harder it will be for your video to stand out. If you’re a small-medium size business, and you’re thinking about utilizing video for the web, just remember that plopping down some cash and asking a multimedia studio to “make it happen” may end with disappointment. Think it through, from beginning to end, before you start. Hopefully, the common-sense ideas shared here will get you on the right track.
Great site! I am loving it!! Will come back again — taking your feeds also, Thanks.