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Evaluation & decision.
Many of the tools developed for the earlier stages will find utility again here. Your prospect’s
chief decision-maker isn’t going to repeat the research his people did; she will assume its
accuracy, and instead look for less tangible aspects that convey your company’s status as a
reliable and desirable business partner. And that brings much of your image/branding and
thought-leadership material back into play ...such as the video of your exec wowing the
assembled multitude at NetWidget09, or your video showing how your load-management
software is the key to a greener planet. Coming soon – searchable video.
You may be thinking, “Gee, if I put up all this video in lieu of ‘real’ (i.e., text) content, won’t
that put my search-engine rankings at risk?” Well, one easy answer is that your video
material should really be an adjunct to your existing content, not “in lieu of”. Longer term,
search is coming to video. Google Audio Indexing, or “GAudi” for short, automatically
converts the audio tracks of videos to text so they can be searched. Results from a user
searching on a keyword are ranked based on the spoken content of the video, its metadata
and its freshness. At present, Google is concentrating on videos uploaded to YouTube's
Politician channels; but there’s little doubt that they’re headed toward making this a much
more general capability in time. RESOURCE CONSIDERATIONS
We mentioned earlier that the only remaining cost of online video is production, and that is
dropping; but that’s not to say it’s insignificant. Most smaller companies – which typically
don’t have an internal studio capability – will need to work with an external house for video
development; which means that they’ll need to prioritize the possible candidates for video
treatment, and not let their zeal outrun their budget or proof of effectiveness. In general,
starting with outsourced video production and slowly ramping internal video production
capabilities will allow you to monitor ROI and carefully evaluate the success of your online
video initiatives. As your video deployment increases, you may want to consider an online video platform
(OVP), which provides all the capability you need for managing, publishing, distributing and
tracking online video. The online video platform you select should have the following
capabilities: - Upload and manage online video content easily
- Create and publish video players customized to the specific needs of your site
- Enable viral sharing and distribution to build community around your content
- Provide analytics that allow you to monitor and optimize video initiatives
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