By David Murdico

Centering a social media campaign around online video is an effective online marketing strategy for small to medium sized (SMBs) and local businesses. Companies are starting to use video but very few are realizing video’s true value as the initial focal point of a targeted social media marketing campaign or, the spark. Likewise, many businesses are embracing social media but not getting as much out of the experience as they could. With a social video approach, video serves as the center of conversation from which layers of additional conversation evolve across social networking channels, blogs and forums often extending into traditional publications and beyond. This conversation goes from being about the video to being about the business behind the video, to the products and services offered by the business, the people behind the business and so on. As with any successful marketing effort, this requires proper planning and execution. I’ll explain how we attack the process from start to finish and give you some fresh ideas that will help you get your business get noticed online.

Many people think step one is “go shoot a video” but it’s not. That’s the cart leading the horse. Video is a tool of social media, not the other way around. Too many campaigns fall flat or flat out fail because they start with a video and end with a plan of what to do with the video. That’s retrofitting and as you know, retrofitting can be more costly than doing something the right way the first time. We start off by establishing objectives that can be measured against hard goals like “more site traffic” and “increased sales” as well as soft goals like “more blog mentions, retweets and  interviews.” Next, we identify our client’s target audience. Who is their ideal customer and where are they online, right now? Then, we establish what the video will be about, what will be the bigger conversation surrounding that video and where and how that conversation will happen. The time to figure all that out is not after you have posted the video. If content is King, then social media is the King’s evolutionary distribution team. The video itself is not and should not be enough to tell or sell the entire story. This is where a lot of marketers go wrong, packing too much into one video or making it into a commercial. The video or video series should be the epicenter of the online conversation, allowing it room to grow.

Video and social media are truly earning their stripes this year as they prove their value to small businesses medium and large businesses alike.

Online video drives traffic and commands attention like no other advertising medium ever has. Businesses of all sizes are having to work harder to be noticed by their customers and video advertising is being embraced by smart, forward thinking business people that are looking to stand out online.