Do it already! If you’re not posting online images and videos for your local business, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to capture the attention of your target market. Studies and statistics continue to prove that images capture the attention of online users significantly more than text, especially when they show up in search results. And more and more people are watching online videos for both personal and business use; don’t you want them to be viewing yours? Webmasters and Bloggers even use viral videos to drive traffic to their blogs.
To make images and videos work for your local business, I’ve provided five tips below.
1. Have a plan
What types of images and videos will you capture? Where will you place them? What’s the goal of your images and videos? Do your homework and create a marketing game plan to get the most out of your images and videos. You can use before and after pics, graphs, professional images, and more in regards to images, and you can capture all sorts of videos, including how-to, interviews, testimonials, employees on-the-job, and more.
2. Post them everywhere appropriate
Once you have images and videos, post them on your webpage and social media networks as a start. Facebook gets a lot of hits for images and videos. YouTube is also significant for video posting given that it’s the number one used video streaming site online.
3. Use GEO-modifiers
Local search is huge, so be sure to include your contact address (zip, city, etc.) when you post images and videos, and if you can, include such information in the URLs for each image or video.
4. Don’t forget about Pinterest
We could have included this in #2 above, but I felt it was worth it to mention it in its own section. After only a few months, Pinterest has quickly climbed to the number 3 slot as one of the most popular social media networking sites. Pinterest allows you to ‘Pin’ images throughout the web and is a great way to create back links to your local business website. Do your homework to see if it could work to help indirectly (you’re not supposed to directly promote businesses on Pinterest) promote your local business to gain leads and traffic.
5. Spread the word
Once you’ve loaded images and videos, be sure to post the links throughout all of your online pages and networks, including email campaigns. Post the links on your Facebook page for business, Tweet about it on Twitter, post them on your local business blog, etc.
To keep up with and stay ahead of your competition online, use these tips to incorporate a variety of videos and images into your local business’ online marketing strategy with ease. You’ll be sure to generate more leads, traffic and repeat visitors if you do (which equates to increased conversions and profits for your local business!).
Do you use images and videos for your local business? Do you have any recommendations and suggestions for posting images and videos for optimal results? We’d love to hear about it below.
This article is written by Chris. He writes from real world experience building businesses and closing sales. His company Surefire Social specializes in local business marketing. If you wish to write for HBB, kindly check this.
On May 13, 2012 by Chris Marentis in Business | Short Link: http://hbb.me/Y7Gblv
Having videos for your marketing is a good idea. It’s really true that many internet users nowadays love to watch video than reading article. Maybe this could help me a lot.
Having a plan for posting videos and pics online is a very good idea. I’ve been testing out pinterest but it didnt give me much in return. I always post my pics – and i have to say: use good quality images! There are several images sites out there, for instance depositphotos, which will give you a free trial and you can download several top notch pics you can use later on. I always post my images on flickr then copy the code and use them for my wp posts and it seems like these images are picked up by Google pretty fast.
It’s been a month since I joined Pinterest. I haven’t got much traffic their yet. But I heard that it really do bring a lot of traffic on specific niches. And my niche doesn’t fall for that one.
Well, I haven’t tried images and videos for business purpose.. though it seems an interesting way for your business promotion and getting lot more exposure.
We don’t need to describe about this thing because as we all know well what is the importance of video and image optimization. This is that kind of option from where we can get better result for our business and always we should try to target our local area.
Images and video are better way of explaining things to the readers. People are interested more in images than sticking to words. The tips are very useful. The images or video will give more exposure to the business. People will understand the concept of business and this will be beneficial for the business growth.
Hey Great stuff Chris!. Nothing more effective in attracting readers’ attention than posting quality pictures. I know because I would do the same when blogging.
Great tips for posting videos and also images. You are right, Pinterest is all the hype now… but sadly I have not embarked on any plans to leverage on its popularity!
Nice one.sharing your video in bookmarking and social networking site would go a long in pooling attention to your website.
Great post, I use pinterest and it’s really one of the biggest source of traffic for my blog.
I would recommend creating your own pictures and sharing them on social media sites or photo sharing sites like flickr. After some time, people will use your images and provide source back to you, which will increase your traffic and backlinks.
hope this helps, thanks for sharing
Pinterest Accepts Video Sharing too ? I thought its just Image sharing, just like Web Version of Instagram.
Yes, you can share videos too.
The tips are great. Some new information some already tried and tested things. Overall good advice. Will definitely try some of them out. I agree that one must have a proper idea what they are trying to portray to the people. I am sure the right kind of images and videos can help in improving the profile. But promoting the site is also very important for it success.
Adding Geo modifiers
great idea I never thought of this
By the way did you know, Video sharing website Vimeo is blocked in India. these guys dont even know what to block.
By the way did you know, Video sharing website Vimeo is blocked in India. these guys dont even know what to block. What the heck
Having a plan & spreading your useful videos is a great idea to make your videos go viral. Good post.