It goes without saying that your business website(s) should include video, but you may be stuck on what kind of video to produce. Here are some “thought starters.”

Step #1: Who is your target audience?

You don’t write your website content for everyone – you write for a specific, targeted audience. In the same way, you don’t want to make video for everyone.  Start by defining the specific audience you need your video to connect with.

Step #2: What’s your message?

Each of your videos should have a single message. On the pages your visitors land on first, you may need a video that outlines ‘what the product or service is,’ or ‘we are experts at what we do’ or ‘three ways our product/service saves you money.’ On pages people land on next, you might want to establish credibility. Testimonial case studies are ideal for creating credibility because they let your prospects look at your product through the eyes of a satisfied customer.

Another way to create credibility is to videotape a seminar or presentation, and then break it up into short chunks that demonstrate your expertise. In most cases you won’t want to post the whole seminar, because your website visitors expect short, pertinent videos.

Is it important for your website visitors to understand that your company is passionate about excellent customer service? A video featuring the people who will provide that service can do that for you. Are product details important? Create brief product demo videos.

Step #3:  Where is your target audience?

Video is sticky – it keeps people on your website when they otherwise might “bounce” before they have a chance to understand if you’re a good match for them. It’s a very good idea to use video where people first enter your site, to keep them engaged.

It’s also important NOT to tuck the rest of your videos out of the way, where they’ll be difficult to find. Place them on the pages that are most visited, or relevant to the content of a specific page, to give the largest number of visitors the opportunity to watch them.

Step #4 Spread Your Videos Around

Even though you may be creating videos specifically for your website, you’ll be missing a big opportunity if you ONLY use them on your website.

• Consider placing them on YouTube, Vimeo, or one of the up and coming video sharing sites and properly optimizing them to make them easy to find on search engines. Arguably, YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet – but Google also loves YouTube videos and will routinely place them on the first page of a Google search. Google ranks YouTube video 53 times higher than a similar text page, according to a Forrester research study. Full disclosure: Google owns YouTube, so it’s in their interest to keep optimization consistent between the two properties.
• LinkedIn is HUGE: Be sure to put a link to your videos on key employee’s profiles and post regular updates pointing to your videos—wherever they reside.
• Have a Twitter account? Tweet about them to get people to go to your site and watch them.
• On Facebook? Put them there as well.
• Send links to specific prospects and customers. Give them to your sales people to use in their sales presentations

Video is the most effective tool you have for engaging your prospects and customers. These steps should get you thinking about how your company can leverage video to engage your prospects and customers on your website, and elsewhere on the web.