Scott Samson says, “When it comes to video marketing, your goal is not to inform, entertain, or create awareness. Your goal is to make someone involved in a buying decision want to learn more. Your call to action should lead to more detailed content, a software download, a live demo — anything that helps educate the buyer. You’ll find it a lot easier to shape a user-friendly and engaging video if you keep these tips in mind. 1. Understand how the viewer arrived at your video To get to your video, the viewer clicked on a link to your website, video channel, Facebook page — somewhere... [...]

Hope Horner says, “Finally! You can now make real money using Facebook videos. This mega-platform is clearly taking video seriously as an advertising resource — as it should. Historically, Facebook videos have been free of advertisements; but then came last year’s announcement that pre-roll ads would play before videos within Facebook’s Audience Network. And that started brands exploring new ways to leverage video on the platform. What’s become popular over the last year, for example, is in-article ads appearing between paragraphs of text on mobile; they begin playing silently... [...]

Jay Baer says, “As an author, it breaks my heart, but we are entering the “no-read” era.1 Every year, I think there is no possible way online video consumption can climb again, but it does. And finally, content marketers are catching up to the consumption trend. Video for content marketing used to be a sometimes thing. An occasional deviation from tried-and-true blog posts. But now, for many companies, video IS the new blogging. New research from Vidyard (a great partner of ours at Convince & Convert) called the 2017 Video in Business Benchmark Report to put math around this shift. According... [...]

Amanda Zantal-Wiener says, “There’s something to be said for a truly remarkable experience. Whether it’s a great party, the trip of a lifetime, or a particularly hilarious comedy show, having lived through it makes us want to talk about it. We share these experiences. We tell our friends about them, post the pictures and videos we’ve captured on social media, and — when they’re really good — try to relive them. It seems that we’re starting to prefer living those experiences over having material possessions. No wonder that 360° video is becoming... [...]

Brandon Verblow says, “Up until now, paid services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO have dominated US online video viewing, particularly for long-form, TV-style content. Uptake of ad-supported, TV-style online video has been slower; traditional TV providers control much of this content, and they’ve been cautious about making their programming available outside the lucrative TV bundle. Even if many viewers want to cut the cord, they may not follow through as they realize they cannot get all the content they want. YouTube, of course, has a massive ad-supported online video business that... [...]

Hope Horner says, “Video marketing pays. Just ask software giant Adobe. After a recent $540 million acquisition, the company now has two major video production products: Spark and TubeMogul. Adobe is one of a number of big new players in the video production game, and the company isn’t just swinging for the fences with this acquisition but investing in advertising tools that target individual users and the SMB market. Its competitors are, too. According to the market research firm eMarketer, U.S. spending on mobile and desktop video advertising is skyrocketing and was on track to hit... [...]

Michelle Held says, “In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Michelle Held discusses how to use YouTube end screens, annotations and cards to drive traffic. From gaining subscribers to selling online to getting users to watch other videos — there are a number of ways each of these three YouTube resources can help drive engagement and grow your brand. Although it’s important to understand your audience, weigh your options and decide which is best to use for your videos. Held recommends to always use a card,which is the information box that appears in the righthand corner... [...]

Neil Patel says, “Whatever business you’re in, you’ve probably wondered how you can get your content to go viral. You see it all the time with other companies’ content. They start small, and all of a sudden they’re huge because of a couple viral videos. Videos are more likely to be viewed than other content (in fact, Sizmek research (formerly MediaMind) found people were 27 times more likely to click on a video ad than a regular banner ad and that can lead to a huge growth in followers and revenue. Sometimes luck decides which videos go viral, but you can do plenty of things to get... [...]

Gordon Tredgold says, “Video marketing used to be an expensive and lengthy business, but with the advances in professional video production equipment, smartphone technology and the ease of use of platforms such YouTube, almost anyone can become a video marketer. As a result, this has led to an astonishing 87 percent of online marketers currently using video content in their marketing according to Outbrain. Faster, easier and cheaper does not always mean superior, but there are a few simple steps that you can take to ensure you create quality videos.According to Juan Rutz and Martin Borer... [...]

Tom More says, “While an image in the past used to have quite the impact on target audiences (remember Facebook’s old news feed?), nowadays marketers are well aware of the fact that a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. In fact, a video is more powerful than the written word or the photograph that an executive from Facebook has actually predicted the social platform will probably be “all video” in five years. This dramatic shift means great things for businesses, big and small. It means the more videos businesses post, the more clicks, and traffic they will receive. YouTube... [...]