Explosion in Online Video

Mary Bowling | 21 July 2006 |

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The internet is exploding with online videos. They’re interesting, engaging and entertaining, and are rapidly adding a whole new dimension to the ‘net. Most text is read once and then the reader moves on to something else. However, videos that can capture attention are nearly perfect viral internet marketing tools - they are watched over and over again, e-mailed to lists of friends, raved about in blogs, and shared on social networking sites, like Yelp and MySpace. Savvy marketers, such as Hilton Head Rentals and Golf are quickly figuring out how to use videos to drive attention and traffic to their websites, and to help make sales once visitors arrive there. How can you join them - and should you?

As the availability of broadband service grows, its cost has dropped into the range that a large number of internet users can afford. Without this widespread adoption of high speed service, the use of video online would stagnate. But there is now enough bandwidth available, and enough users willing to pay for it, that videos are appearing everywhere. It’s estimated that there are now more than a 100,000,000 - yes, one hundred million - broadband users in the US. Many are already watching newsclips, sports highlights, music videos, snippets of TV shows, comedy skits, bloopers and more regularly on their PCs.

As yet, there is really no standard format for online video, so it doesn’t matter what you use to create yours. The videos currently play in small windows, so clips from mobile phones, digital cameras and digital video recorders can all get the job done. Anything that has been put on a DVD works as well. If editing is necessary, there are several programs easy enough for amateurs to use, such as Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP users and Final Cut Pro for Mac’s. Depending upon your interest and talent, and how you intend to use your movies, you may want to consider professional production.

Once your own travel industry video is created, you must get it on online by uploading it to your own hospitality website or to one of the many free and/or fee video sites, like Google Video, Our Media and YouTube. If the video is hosted on your own site, it’ll eat up server space, but you’ll have complete control of it. If it lives on another website, you can link to it from your site, but reliability of access may be compromised.

Online video is here, and it’s here to stay. You can ride on the edge of the wave or frantically swim to catch up later. We’ll post more articles about online video over the next several weeks; please check back for them.

Mary Bowling - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.