Remember that song, “Video Killed the Radio Star?” Well, video is reaching equal status on the web. If you don’t use video – you might be dead - or at least risk becoming less relevant to your audience. Good news, though - there are lots of ways to add videos to your site, ranging from free to very expensive.
As further evidence to the video trend, a recent article on CNET news showed that online video viewing has jumped 34 percent from a year ago. From the article:
“The data also showed that 77 percent of all U.S. Internet users had viewed online videos in 2008, and that the average online video viewer watched 273 minutes of video.”
Clearly video is something that your site visitors are looking for. How will you add video (or increase your use of video) in 2009?
The majority of your site visitors are likely coming from outside your community. They usually are looking for visitor, recreation or relocation information. Why not engage them with videos and then steer them to your members in appropriate categories? You may already have visitor, relocation or business videos that you can convert to digital and upload. If not, contact members in the video production industry to have them convert your existing videos or produce new ones.
Google Video and YouTube are two of the most popular free services. These services are a great way to experiment with video on your site. They will usually let you upload a video to their site and then embed the video on yours. There are many chambers that are using Google and YouTube to host their videos – most of them are probably embedding the videos somewhere on their own sites, too. Do a Google Video search for “chamber of commerce” to find some.
Other ideas for video: Record your events and post at least a portion of them for members to view. Create spoofs of popular videos or commercials to promote your programs and events. Have a contest among members to see who can create the best testimonial video. Adding a bit of humor to your video can make them more memorable and more likely to be shared with others.
And if you don’t have one already, go buy a Flip Video camera. They make it VERY EASY to record short videos and testimonials from events or around your office and save them to your computer, email them or upload them to the web for use on your blog or main site. (You are blogging, too, aren’t you?)
You may be able to generate non-dues revenue by adding video to your site as well. Members could pay to be a “featured video” or have a video case study on your site. Also, remember that there are many different visitors to your site. Be sure to add a mix of videos for the different audiences. Members are likely to look for videos from you talking about business issues or recaps from events, but these videos may “turn off” visitors looking for visitor information.
If you start using video extensively, you’ll probably want the additional options and robust services you’ll get from a paid video hosting provider such as VideoHost or MultiCast’s Vidego service. See how the Greenville (SC) Chamber of Commerce and the Lodi (CA) Chamber of Commerce use video on their sites.
Are you already using video on your site? Or do you know of a chamber of commerce that’s getting good results with web videos? If so, please let me know in the comments below and include the URLs of the page(s) on those sites.
And if you don’t have one already, go buy a Flip Video camera. They make it VERY EASY to record short videos and testimonials from events or around your office and save them to your computer, email them or upload them to the web for use on your blog or main site. (You are blogging, too, aren’t you?)
You may be able to generate non-dues revenue by adding video to your site as well. Members could pay to be a “featured video” or have a video case study on your site. Also, remember that there are many different visitors to your site. Be sure to add a mix of videos for the different audiences. Members are likely to look for videos from you talking about business issues or recaps from events, but these videos may “turn off” visitors looking for visitor information.
If you start using video extensively, you’ll probably want the additional options and robust services you’ll get from a paid video hosting provider such as VideoHost or MultiCast’s Vidego service. See how the Greenville (SC) Chamber of Commerce and the Lodi (CA) Chamber of Commerce use video on their sites.
Are you already using video on your site? Or do you know of a chamber of commerce that’s getting good results with web videos? If so, please let me know in the comments below and include the URLs of the page(s) on those sites.
