YouTube Power

Online video is growing by leaps and bounds. Take a peek at these statistics:

  • In January 2011, 8.5 billion videos were streamed on YouTube
  • 82% of U.S. Internet users watched online video
  • Americans watched an average of 200 online videos (and 14 hours) per month

MiniMatters can help you take advantage of this burgeoning audience.

Web Video: Now Is The Time

2012 is a great moment for Web video and interactive media marketing.  Opportunities abound for using it to promote your mission, sell products and services, and expand your community.

Just a few developments in the past few years:

  • Broadband speeds have increased to a point that most people in the U.S. will have a smooth user experience with short videos
  • Online video players are familiar and easy to use
  • Web video is watched, commented upon and shared regularly by a broad audience - men, women, young and old
  • Web video has proven effective in driving viewers to take concrete actions
  • Web video has proven especially effective in entertaining, informing, and inspiring viewers

Good Web Video

Good Web video comes first from a mindset of

  1. Understanding the customer experience so explicitly
  2. That you can influence the right customer behavior
  3. Which will lead to win-win outcomes for the company and its customers.

The effectiveness of your video will also depend on:

  1. The story you tell
  2. The quality of the video production
  3. The degree to which your video is suited for the Web - understanding image quality, load time, and dimension will affect how people actually see your video.
  4. How the video gets delivered - by posting the Web video on your website, embedding it in the context of an electronic newsletter, attaching it to an email, or posting it on a third-party site such as YouTube or Facebook
  5. The analytics you are able to obtain about your video
  6. How well you or your staff can manage Web video

MiniMatters has expertise in all these areas and can help you use this medium effectively and dynamically.

Video Drives Action

People who watch online videos are highly likely to take action after watching them.

Of viewers who saw a local online video ad, 47% visited the advertiser's Web site, 19% asked for more information, 18% visited the advertiser's store, and 17% made a purchase, according to The Kelsey Group's March 2008 User Viewer Study.

Internet Video Grows

April 2009 vs. December 2006.  Video watching among online adults doubled.

So says a survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

In April 2009, 62% of online adults reported watching videos on video-sharing sites, compared to just 33% in December 2006.

Similarly, 19% of all internet users said they used video-sharing sites to watch on a typical day in April 2009, compared to just 8% of Internet users in December 2006.

Good Reads about Online Communities and Web Video

Here are a few interesting and thought provoking books we've read lately.

Here Comes Everyone:  The Power of Organizing without Organizations

by Clay Shirky. Penguin Press, 2008. Using lots of examples, Shirky illustrates how the interactive features of the web have enabled people to organize themselves almost instantly around single causes, events, or needs.  In one part, he explores the genesis of Wikipedia, which started as a for-profit venture and ended up as a free, collaborative website.  Other examples include using the web for mass mobilization, ranging from inane flashmobs at a Macy's Department Store to more significant political protests in eastern Europe.  In all the examples, Shirky shows how web communication tools enable cheap, easy, and fast group conversation and group action.  Overall, a good read for appreciating the very accessible tools that are now at our fingertips.