<![CDATA[ - Media News]]>Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:26:57 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[A Glimpse At  Marketers' Social Media Strategies]]>Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:41:14 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/a-glimpse-at-marketers-social-media-strategiesEven the big guys struggle to measure ROI.
Almost every company puts much money and effort behind social media strategy, with goals ranging from enhanced brand awareness to direct leads or sales. But while 97 percent of those surveyed said they use some form of social media marketing, only 37 percent reported being able to measure ROI—and this problem extends to even the largest marketers, 78 percent of whom said they struggle with this measurement.

5  Types  of  Content  Shared:

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]]><![CDATA[5 Things Your Agency Should Be Doing for You]]>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 02:07:18 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/5-things-your-agency-should-be-doing-for-youHere at DIGITAL EXPOSURE we thrive on providing our clients these 5 tenants for success.

1) The agency listens more than it speaks.
An agency is most often hired because of its expertise. However, expertise in a vacuum remains in the realm of theory and best practice. To be truly effective, an agency must immerse itself in the culture of the client and aim to understand exactly what that client's needs are—beyond the project itself. What that means for you, the client, is that your agency must listen to you. Its goal is to reach a level of understanding where the agency is free to explore the possibilities within a framework defined by the client.

To achieve a true level of understanding, the agency must involve the right people from the start. In the best circumstances, every agency employee working on the project—both behind the scenes and with the client—will be involved in the conversation.

With digital projects spanning many disciplines—design, technology, branding—team involvement is imperative in order to capture all the nuanced details. The problem with limiting interactions to, let's say an account manager, is that communication turns into a game of telephone—something invariably gets lost in translation, or more important, details are missed in the first place.

2) The agency questions everything.
A good agency will ask you questions before getting started on a project. A great agency will question everything throughout the project. Both client and agency must embrace these questions as a way to get on the same page. When agency employees don't know the reasons behind decisions, it is nearly impossible to do effective work.

To understand what really needs to be accomplished, an agency must first understand why. The question why paves the path to intention. I often tell my staff to keep asking why until there are no questions left. Only then can you construct a solution that has the desired outcome: Who will benefit from a specific feature? What effect will this benefit have? What business value will be derived from this effect?

3) The agency works with a startup mentality.
All successful startups share some of the same qualities. Startup employees can do their own jobs as well as the jobs of the people they work with. This interdisciplinary approach is absolutely necessary to a startup's success because it enables more effective cross-disciplinary collaboration. Established agencies, on the other hand, often tend to silo employees into departments, cultivating an "it's not my job" mentality. Startups make success everyone's job.

Startup employees are also hands-on, taking ownership of projects whether they succeed or fail. Everyone on the team—from the person at the front desk to the CEO—makes sure they know their customers well, and they aren't afraid to take risks to give them what they want. They know how to communicate, checking in frequently with colleagues, business partners and clients. Bottom line, all employees are tapped into the pulse of the business—they thrive and are driven by it.

4) Making mistakes—and admitting to them—is part of the agency's culture.
Iteration and failure are inherently part of the creative process. But there are countless agencies out there that pretend every idea generated in-house is a good one. Some will even argue the point once an idea has failed because they don't want to admit they were wrong.

If an agency has the client's best interest in mind, they will acknowledge failed attempts—even mistakes—throughout the project and in a post mortem, detailing what went right and what did not. For example, we put everything in writing and share it with our clients. We see this as a best practice. If we cannot put our signature to our failings, we surely cannot put it on our achievements.

It's not easy, though. It means everyone has to take their egos out of the equation. In the end, this creates transparency, cultivates creativity, enhances communication and builds mutual trust and respect.

5) The agency tells you how important your business is.
I was recently at lunch with a potential client. At the end of our meeting I told him how we—the agency—felt about working with him. I let him know how excited we were about the opportunity to collaborate with him on the project and why it was important to us as an agency.

He looked surprised and then said something that surprised me: None of the six other agencies he had spoken with actually said they wanted to work with him. Nor did they tell him how the collaboration aligned with their agency's business development strategy. While trying to prove that their agency was the right fit, it seems they overlooked a simple yet key element that clients are looking for: desire.

An agency must express its desire to work with you at the start and throughout the relationship. At the end of the day if an agency head or account manager doesn't actually say their firm wants to be in a relationship with your organization and doesn't profess to be happy working with you, you're probably not getting their best work. And that's when it's time to make a decision: Do you stay with an agency that isn't delivering its best work or look elsewhere? To me, that's a question that's easy to answer.


By George Eid, founder and global creative director, AREA 17

]]><![CDATA[TV & Digital Media $]]>Mon, 28 Jul 2014 02:46:26 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/tv-digital-mediaIt's obvious by now that something has gone wrong in the television advertising world—upfront dollar volume fell by 6.1 percent to $18.125 billion, including a 4.7 percent hit for cable, which dipped for the first time in four years to $9.675 billion. So, where are those dollars going?

More than one source has suggested that we're finally seeing the advent of digital advertising: With so much inventory on the market, it just makes sense that some TV dollars are shifting to digital video, where it's easy to buy cheaply and in bulk for an ad to run next week. But even digital video sellers caution against making such a blanket assertion.

Jason Krebs, head of sales at Maker Studios, has seen a "noticiable uptick" in marketer spending but isn't entirely sure where the dollars are coming from.

"You can never tell where the money is coming from specifically unless the client verbally tells you, 'I have taken this money from my TV spend,'" and of course, nobody says that out loud," Krebs said.

Krebs suggested that the shift may not be from a TV budget to a digital budget, but rather toward an overall video spend that includes everything on the market, given that many of the ads are the same on TV as online.

"Advertisers say, 'Now we have a general video budget and we address it across screens where we see fit,'" Krebs said. "More and more people are video planners and buyers and from what we see that’s healthy, because as a Disney company we have many different platforms and work across all of them."

Scatter prices may not go up

What's interesting about the overall spending shift is that it seems to be away not necessarily from TV advertising in general but from upfront buying specifically. The implied threat to buyers who bow out of the upfront bazaar is that scatter prices will be higher once hits are established. During the upfront, buyers purchase inventory on new broadcast shows mostly on the strength of their gut feelings and their faith in the network to promote new material.

But if everyone holds back cash from the ufpront at once—as appears to have happened this time around—there's not nearly as much scarcity when time comes to move the inventory in the fall.

And with a dismal hit rate among broadcast networks and a rapid turnaround for new, high-end analytics on both television and digital platforms, the opportunity to place your ad dollars where you can know beyond a gut check that you're reaching customers—well, that may be worth taking that step back from the upfront market.

Ad budgets down?

One thing that most in both digital and TV worlds have noticed is that those dollars from last year aren't all out there yet—not in either market. There wasn't as much cash committed during the upfront, and while the NewFronts boosted the profile of some companies, the digital advertising market (which is a fraction of the size of TV) didn't explode overnight.

As one buyer put it, "I think it’s more like they’re either a, going to a bottom line, b, going to digital or c, being held for flexibility to do anything with."

Traditionally, clients give media agencies a certain amount of money and say, "Spend it, or else." In a lot of ways, consolidation has been good for those buyers, because they can go to Linda Yaccarino at NBCUniversal, for example, and buy multiple broadcast networks and dozens of cable channels at once. But given the fluctuation in TV ratings, marketers may be considering if it's worthwhile to spend.

"I think it’s just coming down to more real time decisions," the buyer said. "Clients get away with it in digital and want to try to think about it more in TV."


By Sam Thielman

]]><![CDATA[Brain  Triggers  that  Boost  Your  Social  Media Marketing]]>Fri, 07 Feb 2014 17:17:59 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/brain-triggers-that-boost-your-social-media-marketing#1: Inspire Curiosity
Want your readers to share your killer content? Open that email? Read your blog?
  • Tell them not to
  • Tempt them with a tidbit
  • Ask them a topical question that leads to the only answer: your product
Inspiring curiosity lights up the pleasure centers of our brains.


#2: Good News Travels Faster
Social media has generated new rules of engagement. Neuroscientists and psychologists are finding that online readers share positive, feel-good posts over tales of destruction and woe, and that includes the sharing of customer service experiences.


The same finding applies to online video. When senior research associate Karen Nelson-Field of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing studied video sharing habits, she found that a strong positive reaction is 30 percent more likely to get a share than negative responses like anger or shock.

Of special note to marketers: posts that exhilarate also make viewers better remember your brand.


#3: Tell Tales
Stories are in a class of triggers all their own. They activate the subconscious, emotional area of the brain, which is where we decide to buy or not to buy.

Because stories stimulate areas in our brains that are connected with our senses, they have the magical quality of creating bodily responses, as if what we read is happening in real time.

Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, who wrote “How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market,” says the subconscious brain is where 95 percent of cognition occurs. So by all means, move us by telling a riveting buzzworthy story that motivates the desired action.


#4: Something New
Don’t forget to brand your video well. Nelson-Field’s study also showed that when comparing the average social video to a 30-second TV ad, social videos had significantly less branding, about a third.

As long as your video makes an emotional impact, branding won’t get in the way of sharing, even if it’s overt.

by Jordan Kasteler
]]><![CDATA[A  lesson  in  youtube's  recent moves]]>Tue, 22 Oct 2013 19:04:00 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/a-lesson-in-youtubes-recent-movesErika Morphy of Forbes recently asked our opinion on YouTube’s redesign. In answering her questions, it occurred to me that there’s always been confusion around how a retailer can best use YouTube, and how that overlaps with their other video marketing efforts. 


So below are some thoughts on how YouTube fits into a broader video marketing strategy for a retailer or major brand.

  • YouTube’s goals are probably not in harmony with your goals. This is the number one thing to keep in mind. 
  • YouTube is designed – and now redesigned – to get viewers on YouTube and keep them there, discovering and consuming content. That’s great for assembling an audience for advertising purposes, but when they go from watching your video to a recommended cat video (or, worse, another retailer’s video), you lose. 
  • Because your goal is to move consumers from consideration to purchase. That means keeping them focused on your content, not that cat video, and ultimately moving them to a location (such as your site) where they can buy.

Does that mean you should avoid YouTube? No. There are plenty of tools YouTube provides to keep your audience engaged in a way that makes sense for retailers.
  • A customized channel is always the start. Annotations can drive traffic between your videos – you’re not taking the visitors off YouTube to purchase, but helping them learn more about the products you offer by navigating between them. Those are valid uses that help you build engagement while staying in sync with YouTube’s goals, even if they’re not the same as yours. In short…

You’d be foolish to leave YouTube out of your video strategy. You’d be equally foolish to place it at the center. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. It is a destination where consumers come to watch video, and it does a great job of making video social. YouTube’s place in a video strategy is as a high-traffic outpost to facilitate discovery, moving consumers into the consideration phase and helping them decide to purchase.

A YouTube player embedded on your site is free…so is a puppy. Remember YouTube’s get-them-on-YouTube-and-keep-them-there goal? 
  • That’s why it’s so easy, when you embed a YouTube player on your site, for it to siphon off traffic. All a user has to do is to click the YouTube logo in the lower right and bam, they’re on YouTube. 
  • Let’s say you can develop around this and design so that YouTube’s branding enhances, rather than detracts from, your site goals. Both can be done but are not easy, meaning that YouTube is about as free as a free puppy. There’s lots of care and feeding involved.

Free puppies grow up. The little puppy shown above is now 120 pounds and small children try to ride him like a horse. Your video program will scale up too. If you’re a retailer you may have thousands or tens of thousands of products and corresponding product pages…with video to manage. 
  • YouTube remains a great outpost to get that video content seen by more consumers. It’s probably not engineered as the best console to manage that content on your site, a critical location, at that scale.
So just as before, a wise retailer uses YouTube purposefully as a part of a video strategy to gain additional video views and consideration. 


YouTube wasn’t a substitute for a video strategy before, and these new changes don’t alter that at all. Are you using YouTube successfully? If so, what’s working for you? Let me know in the comments.

]]><![CDATA[Video  is  the  knight  to  the  content]]>Mon, 23 Sep 2013 18:57:58 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/video-is-the-knight-to-the-contentIf content marketing is king, then video is its trusted knight. According to this CopyPress research recently featured in eMarketer, 52% of marketing professionals worldwide call out video as the type of content with the highest ROI. 

Video as a content strategy generates greater returns than pictures, infographics, and even whitepapers.

Though the majority of marketers see the value of video, many struggle with the details of putting together a video strategy. The pervasive perception seems to be that video is both difficult and costly to create. But it doesn’t have to be.

It all depends on how you think about video. If video is viewed as a project, a one-time effort that’s just another piece of the marketing or merchandising puzzle, things can get complicated. Creating and implementing video requires tools and expertise, including equipment and staff for shooting as well as for technical implementations, involving significant costs. 

The management of all this falls on an internal stakeholder. Keeping track of everything and everyone involved, from equipment to deciding what to shoot and when, is not easy. And all this is just for creating video – how will everything be managed after the initial implementation? Who will keep track of results, and what do you do when products change?

However, when video is viewed as a program,  the efficiencies (and therefore reduced stress and costs for you) begin. 

Video is not a one-shot effort, but an investment at the core of your marketing strategy. To make the most of this, bring in an experienced partner to help with all the details of a solid video strategy and execution. We here at DIGITAL EXPOSURE can help.

With this train of thought, it’s more important for the stakeholder to define goals and set the overall direction than to manage day-to-day tasks, leaving plenty of time to manage and optimize results. Shifting the responsibilities from yourself to your partner grants you access to expertise and equipment from the earliest stages of production to measuring and calculating results.

Crafting and implementing video is no walk in the park, but teaming up with a specialist can certainly generate that coveted ROI with less stress and greater impact.

]]><![CDATA[10  lessons  digital  marketing]]>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 18:52:06 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/ten-lessons-digital-marketing10 LESSONS FROM SILVERPOP’S DIGITAL MARKETING UNIVERSITY NYC:
  • Video data adds depth and helps segment by engagement level. The ability to segment based on video engagement preferences can radically boost relevance and gives insights into how a prospect prefers to learn.
  • We’re farmers, not hunters. If reach and relevance matter, relationships are everything. An email campaign can’t be measured as a transactional effort. Instead, set meaningful criteria for interest and lead score, than evaluate campaigns on how they impact score over time as you nurture your list towards maturity. In any relationship consideration for the customer is key. 
  • Consider this: how many recipients opt-out because they’re temporarily overloaded, on vacation, or otherwise preoccupied? A sensitive (and sensible) thing to do is to give them an option to “snooze” campaigns temporarily, so they can give themselves a break without opting out.
  • By 2015, CMOs will buy more technology than CIOs. Easier-to-use self-serve tools let the CMO choose the right tool for the job.
  • 56% of sites hide email Opt-Ins at the bottom of the site. Move it to the top to increase list sign-ups as much as 516%.
  • 42% of email opens are on mobile,. Are you thinking mobile?
  • Want to reduce deletes & unsubscribes? Make your pre-header useful across platforms. “If you have trouble reading this message” pre-headers lead to 70% increase in deletes and 15% increase in opt-outs.
  • No one cares about Tuesday morning anymore. Different segments have different preferences, and there is no “Tuesday morning rule” for maximum opens. At the least, segment your list and test different times for different segments. 
  • Video in email can boost opens 20% and increase CTR 2-3x. It can be as simple as any other campaign to execute, or can dazzle recipients in the inbox.
]]><![CDATA[3  things  to  do  now  to  get  more  from  video]]>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:45:55 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/3-things-to-do-now-to-get-more-from-videoIf you’re a manufacturer or brand, no one knows your products better than you do. It’s clear that video is an important asset for your business, but do your videos position you as the authoritative source for your products, maximize customer engagement, and contribute to increased sales?

1. Go to Market With a Plan – Creating a video strategy can take your video’s effectiveness to the next level. Among attendees of our webinar, 80% felt that their video plan had room for improvement or lacked a plan altogether. Going from a “let’s try it out” approach to video to a strategy with carefully planned video goals generates improved results and continual optimization.

2. Diversify Video Content – How do your customers interact with content? Shoppers in different stages of the buying journey come in contact with your brand in different ways. Consider content types (highly branded and visually engaging vs. highly detailed and informational) and cover your customer’s shopping journey with video. In addition, make your video content available to your retail partners to maximize the impact of video anywhere your products are sold.

3. Optimize for SEO – Video’s impact on SEO continues to grow – in this eye-tracking study, video results capture significant attention. Make sure search engines can find your videos to boost results (check out the recording for specifics). While having your videos on social sites like YouTube is beneficial, it’s important to map videos to your domain. This drives traffic back to your own website where you control the messaging and a shopper can make a purchase.

]]><![CDATA[Why Your YouTube Strategy isn't working]]>Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:54:32 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/november-26th-2012YouTube can be a great tool for video marketing, but too often marketers make the mistake of putting it at the center of their video strategy.

Using YouTube the wrong way may cost your company credibility, lost traffic and sales. Using it the right way, as a key piece in your holistic, multichannel video strategy, can achieve great results for your business.

Many retailers struggle in deciding between whether to host videos on their site or whether to upload them on a social sharing site like YouTube. My suggestion is this: use both, but for different purposes.

You have different goals when hosting videos on-site as opposed to YouTube. On your web site, you’re trying to convince shoppers to make a purchase. On YouTube, the goal is to create awareness and have viewers connect with your brand in a way that resonates.

click read more to continue article  ––––>
Why YouTube-Centered Strategies Don’t Work

Here are some of the biggest mistakes brands and retailers make when they put YouTube at the core of their video marketing efforts:

  • Amateurish quality: What makes YouTube so great is that anyone with a flipcam and an Internet connection can achieve stardom with a hit video. Some retailers make the mistake of incorporating some of the amateur qualities of popular YouTube videos in the hopes of seeming authentic and cool. The results are usually poor lighting and sound, and not much of an impact on sales.
  • Not the right metrics: YouTube does offer some very valuable view analytics to tell you why your videos are popular and where viewers come from. You can even look at your top referring sites to see if YouTube videos are helping drive traffic to your site. What it doesn’t tell you is this: “Are people who are watching my videos buying my stuff?” It doesn’t give you the in-depth metrics that allow you to improve your video merchandising efforts.
  • Control of traffic: You plan your site navigation to make each click take the visitor one step closer to purchase. That may not fit with YouTube’s objective of “more eyes on YouTube.” The embedded YouTube player can, with one click, take viewers away to YouTube, siphoning off a percentage of your traffic.
  • Branding concerns: If you’re embedding the YouTube player on your site, you may be compromising branding. Every element that makes its way on to your page is scrutinized for brand compliance, and the YouTube player shouldn’t get a free pass. If you don’t address that, the YouTube logo and branding is on every product page. Consumers are more likely to associate those brand elements with fun, amateur videos than with trusted product information.

So Where Does YouTube Fit?
Does all that make YouTube sound like a bad idea? It’s not. YouTube’s not a substitute for a video strategy, and it’s not the best option for your site-based video merchandising. But YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, and it’s where most of the video views on the Web occur. That makes YouTube your single biggest strategic asset for discovery.

Think of your site as the hub of your video program, where you merchandise video in a way designed to drive sales. Think of YouTube as a powerful outpost that captures the attention of searchers interested in your product categories and leads them back to your site. Yes – you can harness YouTube, instead of YouTube harnessing you.

Tailor The Content
As discussed earlier, you should host videos on your own site in addition to YouTube and other social sharing sites. The content for each type of video will have to be different.

On your site, you might have full product videos that are designed to be as informative as possible, so that the consumer feels more confident in a purchase and may be less likely to return an item. In a November 2011 survey conducted by the e-tailing group in partnership with Invodo, 51 percent of consumers said they are more confident in potential purchases and less likely to return an item after they watch a video.

On YouTube, short videos announcing promotions in an educational or humorous way might be an effective way to drive some buzz. Alternatively, YouTube is a good platform for snippets of interviews or musical content that drive brand awareness, and are easily shareable among consumers. But whereas on-site video is presented in a context that encourages action (such as adding a product to your cart), on YouTube you need to take the extra step to incorporate a clear call to action that ties to the content, like perhaps an overlay calling viewers to visit a vanity url.

Use The Secret Link
YouTube prefers to keep viewers on YouTube, so it can be hard to find ways to drive viewers to your site. Here’s an easy one that many retailers and brands miss: put a text link as the very first element in the video description. That puts a clickable link right below the video as it plays. Thanks for the traffic, YouTube!

Use Professional Production Quality
Some of YouTube’s most popular viral videos were shot by ordinary people recording something funny with average- to poor sound and video quality. Their authentic nature is a big reason why they spread so fast. But don’t come to the conclusion that this type of style and quality, produced in-house (think: intern holding a flipcam) will necessarily help you sell things.

Multiple research studies, including the e-tailing group/Invodostudy mentioned earlier, have found that consumers feel more confident in a purchase when they watch a product video that uses professional-grade sound and lighting, where the shopper can explore the key features of a product just as they could in a store.

Optimize Correctly For Social Media
With 60 hours of video uploaded to YouTube per minute, 1 trillion views per year, and 3 billion hours of video watched each month, virtually all retailers are best served having a presence there.  Make sure your content is optimized so that it’s easy for people to find and share your videos on social sites.

Social sharing can be very powerful because consumers are often more willing to look at videos shared by family or friends as opposed to directly from brands or advertisers.

Also, make sure that if you’re sharing videos on YouTube, Facebook and other social sites, that the content is unique, which makes them friendlier to search engines.

Choose The Right Metrics
There are plenty of metrics to choose from, some of which will be more relevant to you depending on your objectives. By partnering with an online video platform to host the videos on your site, you can look at metrics like how long people viewed a video, how it impacted the time they spent on a page, and whether people completed watching the full video. You can also look at conversion metrics, such as comparing checkout conversion rates between video viewers and non-viewers, and conversion rates by specific product.

One of the most important metrics you can use is video ratings and comments, which can tell you specific questions a viewer had about a product after watching a video, and how you might improve that video the next time. At the end of the day, attracting thousands of views on a particular video can be a good measure of success…but being able to see what those viewers did on your site after they watched your video is more likely an even better one.

A Change In Mentality
If you’ve been exclusively using YouTube to host your videos and are frustrated with the results, the path to a successful video marketing effort begins with a change of mentality. Think of YouTube and other social video sharing sites as channels that can syndicate your video content and get many more views than you would achieve by hosting content solely on your own servers.

Remember that successful videos help consumers move down the purchase funnel. If your videos are based on YouTube, many of your prospective sales will never proceed down the funnel.  Using videos both on-site and on sharing sites in ways they are best designed will yield the best results.
]]><![CDATA[THE VALUE OF VIDEO]]>Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:13:22 GMThttp://www.exposeyourmedia.com/media-news/the-value-of-videoVideo is easier than text. 
Steve Jobs had a vision that Apple products should be so easy to use that an instruction manual would not be needed. This vision has created an expectation that consumers shouldn't have to work so hard, and that reading an instruction manual is work. You can cater to this learning style by providing clarity with informative videos about your business or its products. Enhancing the pre-sales experience can help deflect calls that would normally be made to your customer service representatives.

Video shows more than static images. 
You can show your customers up-close images about how a baby stroller works, but only video can show clearly how that baby stroller folds up, or how the seat reclines. Video can be the solution that helps solve a problem of consumers returning items they didn't understand because a static image didn't tell the whole story.

Video can reduce repeat calls and post-sale support costs. 
Oracle's "Best Practices for Improving First-Contact Resolution in the Contact Center" report (April 2012) estimates that, industrywide, about 35 percent of calls to contact centers are repeat calls. Customers tend to call a contact center more than once when they find a product too complex to understand. Offering them a video that shows how to assemble a product, or helps them better understand a product prior to purchasing it, will reduce those repeat calls.

Video can convey trust and transparency. 
Research consistently shows that consumers will filter out a one-sided message, such as a TV commercial. On the Web especially, they are looking for content that has a trustworthy, authoritative tone. Offering video content from an expert (rather than a celebrity) is more likely to create a strong connection with your customers.

Video enables a higher quality experience. 
When a customer has to slog through an endless set of voice options just to "get a human," it's a frustrating experience that may reflect poorly on your business. The same goes for when a cellphone call to a customer support center drops, or if there is a long wait on hold to reach someone. Offering video tutorials on how to pay a bill or manage accounts online, for example, keeps your customers more informed and makes it less likely they will suffer any of the inconveniences of a bad customer service experience.

The Web has become a video medium. 
In 2013, 90 percent of Internet traffic will be in video format, according to Cisco projections, and 163 million viewers will stream more than 26 billion videos. The way people are sharing and disseminating information on the Web is becoming more and more video-driven. If your business offers compelling video content, your customer is getting the following message: "This business understands my needs and wants to proactively make my experience a good one." As a result, you'll increase your chances of developing a positive relationship with that customer.

The proliferation of video is fundamentally changing the way your company will conduct business with its customers. The sooner your business embraces video as an essential part of your service strategy, the better positioned you'll be for the oncoming video wave.

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