This will be a long article so I am going to just right into the meat and potatoes.

First you need a webcam or camcorder, and then you need to record a video.  Afterward, the video needs editing and/or transcoding to play on the web.  Then you need to upload the video to a video hosting and streaming site, create a video player, and in most cases design a webpage for your video.  Only after you have completed this process can you actually start to use your video for marketing and promotional purposes.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Video Email Companies
Video Sharing Communities
Online Video Platforms
Video Hosting & The Cloud – Bare Bone Style
Content Delivery Networks
Conclusion

Introduction

The workflows you need to use for producing and publishing video to the web vary greatly and are determined by several factors – mainly your budget (both time and money) and skill level.  Recording your videos with a webcam in software that automatically encodes and publishes them to the web is the quickest and easiest way to leverage web video in your marketing.  Basically, the software does all the heavy lifting for you.  When using this route, you cannot really edit your videos or add any special effects like you can in editing software.   YouTube and other video sharing communities have a feature that will enable you to record video straight from your webcam.  However, when you want to send video messages to a individual or a group of people, video email companies have a more suitable workflow than the video sharing communities.  Once you are sending video emails in your marketing and automating them in your follow-up marketing, you may want to continue down the rabbit hole that is video production and publishing.

I will start at the top of the rabbit hole (easiest category to use) and move toward the more complex setups.

Video Email Companies

Costs: low (Free to $150/month).  Skill Level: low (start, stop, send).  Equipment Needed: webcam.

This is our company’s category; we make it easy to create and leverage web video in your marketing.  We have video email and web video marketing software that automatically records, encodes, and uploads your video to the web, plus it creates a webpage and a set of exit links on that page that can easily be customized to your needs – you don’t need to know how to code or program anything.  When using a webcam and our software, all you have to do is hit start, stop, and send.   We have basic video analytics like a notification when your video is viewed and total views per video.  You can upload video that was recorded on a camcorder and our system will automatically transcode the video for the web.   We also give all our our customers unlimited storage and bandwidth, so you don’t have to worry about overages if one of your videos goes viral.  The downside is that we only have one video size and player: 320×240.  We are looking at supporting different player sizes in the future.  Our service isn’t right for everyone (e.g. mid-size and enterprise companies).

Companies that provide video email marketing software aim for the small business world: online marketers, sales and marketing professionals, and entrepreneurs.   Some companies in this space are also geared toward sending video emails for personal use.  You have companies like Eyejot, TalkFusion (appears to have an MLM business model), SightSpeed, Instant Video Generator, and ComF5 (a merge of several companies into one pretty impressive product array).  ComF5 actually overlaps some other categories like webcasting, email marketing, and SMS marketing, and they have a model that is or is very similar to a MLM which they call a reseller program (you recruit people to buy their service, or you recruit other resellers).  To the best of my knowledge, none of these companies have unlimited storage and bandwidth, and focus on one-on-one training via screenshare with their members like we do at jiveSYSTEMS.

Video Sharing Communities

Costs: low to moderate (free to $150/month).  Skill Level: low to moderate (some editing experience required, longer production process). Equipment Needed: webcam, camcorder, and editing software (if you really want to utilize the service).

Sites like: YouTube, Vimeo, and Viddler.  On the surface these seem like the ideal solution because the are economical, easy to use, and have decent analytics.  When you dig deeper, or even start using them, the picture changes quickly. For instance, YouTube limits you to 10 minutes per video and their video player contains their logo, which hyperlinks back to their site.  The result is you dilute qualified traffic on your site and drive them to your video on YouTube where it is easy for them to get distracted or worse see a video from one of your competitors in the related videos section.  Vimeo doesn’t even allow videos for commercial purposes and are notoriously strict about their policies.  Viddler has a business offering, which is worth checking out, it is affordable and comes with many cool bells and whistles.   A business Viddler account will cost you around $100 per month for most of the people that read this blog. You will still need to edit and render your videos when using a video sharing community.  If you can edit and render your videos and want to use video for commercial purposes, Viddler should be on your list of solutions to review.

Online Video Platforms (OVP)

Costs: moderate to high.  Skill Level: moderate, leaning towards high (editing experience required, much longer production process). Equipment Needed: webcam, camcorder, editing software, lights, and more (if you really want to utilize the service).

These companies have built software around either a CDN, VDN and/or Cloud Hosting: BrightCove, Ooyala, Kaltura, VMIX, Twistage, Flipz, and many more.  This space is very competitive and is geared toward both smaller businesses as well as enterprise level clients.  These services streamline the workflow and add different sets of trimmings to appeal to different market segments, e.g., pre- and post-roll adds (those annoying videos you see on mega-corporation sites before and after the video you actually want to watch).

OVPs are an awesome solution, one that you pay through the nose for!  Bear in mind that an OVP still requires you to know how to edit your videos and they are not geared toward sending video emails.  You will need to embed your video into a web or blog page.  BrightCove is the leader in the space, and for good reason.  They also appear to be the most expensive in regards to bandwidth charges (think of them as cell phone minutes).   A relatively new company in this space is Wistia, they have an impressive service focused around detailed analytics w/heatmapping – ideal for figuring out the what people are listening and responding to in your videos, and they have affordable entry-level pricing packages.  If you need an OVP to put high quality videos on your landing pages or website, it comes down to BrightCove or Wistia.

Video Hosting & The Cloud – Bare Bone Style

Costs: low to moderate.  Skill Level: very high (programming, coding, graphics, and editing experience required). Equipment Needed: webcam, camcorder, and editing software, lights, and more (if you really want to utilize the service).

Next up you have video hosting on your server.  This can be tricky, cumbersome, and will quickly become cost prohibitive, but if you have only a couple of small videos for a low traffic website, stick them on your current host or server and use something like JW Player or FlowPlayer (the video player that makes the video file viewable).  Next you have cloud hosting: Amazon S3 (which can be used via EzS3, which makes it easier to interface with Amazon’s S3 capabilities) and Streamhoster.  You also have the option to store your videos in the cloud: RackSpace Cloud or Liquid Web (Storm On-Demand). You need a fair amount of technical knowledge when using any of these solutions, especially when using a regular server.  Storing videos in the cloud is usually the most cost effective solution for the DIYer, but BitGravity’s starter package is mighty close to that level of cost effectiveness.  If you are a small company that expects to get massive amounts of traffic, hosting your videos in the cloud is probably the best option for most of your videos.  The downside is the user interface and workflow to actually get your videos uploaded and published to the web – the same issue you have with CDNs.  Also, just like with CDNs, the analytics portion of these solutions are weak.  For most of your videos you definitely want analytics to refine your message and increase your conversions.

If you have an IT person on staff and expect your videos to get thousands of views per month, bare bone style is the most economical option.

Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

Costs: low to moderate.  Skill Level: very high (programming, coding, graphics, and editing experience required). Equipment Needed: webcam, camcorder, and editing software, lights, and more (if you really want to utilize the service).

I am going to group Video Delivery Networks into this category for the purposes of this article.

These companies have servers all over the world and are used by enterprise level companies for delivery all types of content, including web video.  Companies like: Akami, Limelight, CDNetworks, EdgeCast, thePlatform, MoveNetworks, BitGravity, and a few more.  BitGravity is really the only solution that is cost effective for a small business at $295/month for their starter package, which has a massive quota of storage and bandwidth.  On the downside, BitGravity doesn’t have detailed analytics for your videos.  When using one of these services, you really should have a video production studio and a dedicated person to manage everything, above an IT team.

Conclusion

Leveraging video email and web video to promote your business is a science and an art.  Selecting a hosting solution is only part of the process.  Plus, making your video message meaningful, relevant, and timely is the key to generating sales.

Most smaller businesses will ultimately want to go with a combination of two or three solutions to fulfill their web video needs.  Your setup depends on how you intend to use web video and the response you get from using it.  Wistia’s detailed analytics work well for video landing page videos that you want to continuously refine (reshoot and edit).  BitGravity is a cost effective solution for high traffic videos that you want to put into a blog and will not really track above your blog page views and plays, but you can have your IT person setup their service and connect it to Google Analytics for more in-depth tracking.  Our video email and web video marketing system works well for novice people or companies that want to record and send videos in emails, and publish video to the web quickly and easily (e.g. following up a first phone call w/ a new prospect, or placing an evergreen video in a drip campaign).

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments sections below.  I will gladly do my best to assist you any way I can.