Video: A powerful tool for your event marketing

By Joan Stewart

People of all ages are falling in love with Internet video.

That’s why video is such a powerful tool in your publicity toolbox. The other big benefit is that the search engines often reward websites and blogs that use video by giving them higher rankings on the organic search list—that is, the non-paid listings that appear on the left side of the screen within seconds after you type a phrase into a search engine.  

So if you’re using video to publicize your event, the search engines will reward you.

These statistics should convince you that it’s time to dive head-first into video:

• YouTube, the most popular video-sharing site, is almost double the size of Google in daily page views.
  
• Almost 123 million people in the U.S. (70 percent of the U.S. internet audience) viewed 7.2 billion videos online in January 2008.
  
• On average, each video streamer viewed 59 streams—that’s nearly two videos per day—and they viewed 151 minutes of video online during the month.
  
• The average viewing time was 2.6 minutes.
  
• Google, which purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, was the top streaming video property in January 2008. YouTube.com alone accounted for 992 million video streams initiated.
  
• Internet marketers who use video to sell products and services report that sales increase considerably, sometimes as high as 500 percent, compared to when they don’t use it.

So how do you get in on the fun and profit?

9 ways to use video to market your events

1. Create short video interviews of no more than two and a half minutes, and demonstrate how to use something that ties into your event. If you’re sponsoring a trade show, for example, create a short video showing attendees how to use the trade show newspaper that comes out every day. 
   
   
2. Create a video that introduces people to organizers, volunteers, donors and others involved with your event.
   
   
3. Create a short video related to the topic of your press release for the event, upload the video to your website, and then include the link in your online press release.
   
   
4. Take people on a video tour of your bricks-and-mortar store or company. Assign somebody to work the camera while you walk from department to department, explaining what happens there.
   
   
5. Identify your customers’ or attendees’ most frequent problems related to the event. Create one short video devoted to each problem, and provide solutions.
   
   
6. Use video to show people what they can expect once they get to your event. Sponsoring a golf outing? Show golfers what the clubhouse looks like.
   
   
7. Take a camcorder to your events and shoot video of attendees talking about what they think of the event. You can use these short clips as testimonials at your website.  
   
   
8. Use video for your online pressroom. Create one that welcomes journalists and explains how you can help them. Create another that introduces journalists to people involved in your event. Create a third that answers the questions people ask most frequently about the event.
   
   
9. All the uses above are for “talking head” videos. But you can also create a video of something that’s displayed on your computer screen, using Camtasia Studio, a software program from TechSmith. You can create and edit video using just this one program. For example, I’m creating a video that takes visitors on a tour of my website at PublicityHound.com. You can take your visitors on a tour of your website and show them where to find information about your event, how to sign up for it and where to find things like driving directions. 

You’ll probably think of dozens more uses, but these are plenty of ideas to get you started.

Webcams—The lowest quality camera is the webcam, like the Logitech webcam, which can be placed on top of your computer monitor so you can sit in front of the monitor and record yourself. Webcams have built-in microphones. The problem with webcams is that the video often doesn’t match the audio. For that reason, webcams are a poor choice.  

Flip Video—The next step up is a camcorder that connects directly to a USB port. The Flip Video camera is a simple digital camcorder that captures video in 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second. It uses two AA batteries. It lacks a memory card extension slot but can be connected to a computer with its pop-out USB connector, which eliminates the need for a cable.

It’s so easy to use a 6-year-old could handle it because it lacks most of the features of more advanced cameras. Depending on memory size, the current “Ultra” model camera retails for about $150 for 30 minutes (1 GB of flash memory) of video or $180 for 60 minutes (2 GB). This is the camera I used when I got started.

Flip cameras have built-in microphones, and video quality is good enough, but not perfect.

A camcorder—This is the recommended camera for best-quality video and sound. Buy a camera with a hard drive, so you can move video files between your camera and your computer without having to rely on tape, which is more time-consuming. Look for a camcorder with an external microphone jack so the microphone can be clipped onto the lapel of the person in the video.

Make sure your camcorder has a hole on the bottom so you can attach it to a tripod. There are more than 700 makes and models of camcorders on the market, and not all of them have this feature. 

I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio to edit video I create with my Flip Camera.

There’s a bit of a learning curve, but I shortened it considerably when I bought the software from Mike Stewart (no relation), who provides several excellent video tutorials you can download. They will walk you step-by-step through the entire process, including how to insert music into the opening and closing of your video.

Listen to the 70-minute teleseminar I conducted with Mike called “How to Create Videos for Your Website to Pull Traffic, Impress Visitors, Make the Phone Ring and Close the Sale.”  

Now that you know how several uses for video and what equipment to buy, start practicing. The good news for Publicity Hounds is that these don’t need to be full-feature videos. We’re only talking about two and a half minutes here. Anything more and viewers start to get restless.     

Now, start practicing! The faster you start, the faster you’ll start pulling traffic into your website or blog, and people to your events.