News

In August 2008, Comscore US search rankings reported that YouTube had overtaken Yahoo in number of searches - making it the second largest search engine (vertical).

What does this mean?

Without wishing to state the obvious - you might want to think about video in your online marketing strategy.

Why?

Engagement

Audio-visual is what we humans do - it is to do with cognitive stimulation and the amphibian brain - i.e. look at the shiny noisy fast moving thing that might eat me or I might find tasty. We love TV and films, and online video is cut to suit our needs - on demand - when and where we want it.

Brand awareness

You can say so much more - entertain your customer, inform them or just convince them you've got what they want.

Like blogs, online video is more informal than its traditional ancestors. It does not have to have high production costs and a glossy finish - it is the content and creative ideas that count. We expect online video to be a little rougher around the edges - so don't feel the lack of gloss means you should not enter the arena - it's better to have a presence and start engaging your audience than to remain aloof and invisible.

Search visibility

Search engines want us to use video (they own most of the online video channels) and so have blended the video results from their vertical search channels into their main web results pages (what Google terms Universal Search). Whilst still representing less than 10% of standard search results, blended data in the results set is only set to grow. If Tim Berners-Lee and his cohort are right about the semantic web then the utility of video is only set to improve as meta data about each video file is gradually augmented through user generated tagging to provide user with context and topic data about each video's content.

Regardless of where search engines take the integration of video results into their main search results, as stated it should be noted that technically YouTube is the second biggest search engines on the Internet. Therefore, if you are not presenting your company's offering and brand voice in this space your company is missing a large chunk of search visibility.

Likewise the widespread distribution of online videos via blogs means you need to start thinking about social media as part of your search visibility strategy. If your brand message can occupy the top search results from your own website, from YouTube et al and from blogs discussing your videos in their posts then you're starting to really shape the search visibility space.

Conclusion

If you have not thought about online video as part of your brand communications and online marketing strategy now is the time to start looking into it. Those companies that get the power of social media and online video as a way to spread viral messages, to inform users, to make brand statements and to give their brand a personality are going reap the benefits. Less agile and less forward looking companies may struggle to appreciate the shift in marketing communications and how many users and customers wish to now engage with brands, but for those that get it the advantages are substantial and pervasive.