2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings

comScore, Inc released their December 2012 U.S. Online Video rankings.  Highlights:

• 38.7 Billion online content videos viewed
• 11.3 Billion video ad views
• 84.9 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
• The duration of the average online content video was 5.4 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 22.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

Remember this is for the month of December only.

The top sites for videos include:

• Google (YouTube) - 13.2 Billion videos viewed
• AOL - 692 Million videos viewed
• Facebook - 420 Million videos viewed
• Yahoo - 383 Million videos viewed

Creating video content is a great way to attract home owners to your company's products and services and it should be a part of every marketing plan.  While creating and publishing videos may seem challenging, with modern technology it is actually fairly straightword.  Here are a couple of tips:

Create a YouTube Channel for your Business
It is free to setup.  It will allow you to create a profile for your business and allow you store all of your videos.  When you load videos, you get to tag them, which means identifying keywords to your video which will again, if done correctly, improve your search engine ranking.  For example, when you search "hvac flat rate book" on Google, would you rather view one of many websites (our company is #1 overall by the way) or would you rather view the only video that appears - our company's video is #5 overall.

Use Smartphones to Record Short Videos
The quality of videos on Smartphones is absolutely acceptable for your business.  There is no need to buy expensive equipment or hire a production company.  Your techs can create a quick video showing the result of an installation and then captured feedback from the home owner.  The marketing return on that short 1 minute video would be significant.

Create Slide Shows/Animations
A video does not have to mean including real people or situations.  Turning a PowerPoint presentation into a slide show, with a simple voice over can be equally as effective and can be easily added to YouTube.

The bottomline is more and more people are viewing videos.  If you want to attract more home owners and customers, you will need to create video content to help educate them, build your online credibility and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Brian Starzec | HVAC Business Solutions, LLC | January 17, 2013