Video is en vouge. I mean, I’m so hyped about video that I even started a blog about making videos and marketing them. Damn!

And while it may seem that the medium is dominated by teens filming inside jokes that we will never understand, the last few years have shown that video is a great medium for businesses as well.

If you look around, you’ll find that many big companies have started using video as one of their primary marketing strategies. Buzzfeed and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV are prime examples, but even the English dictionary Merriam Webster has its own video series now. So what’s so special about video? Why does it work so well for businesses?

Video creates trust

Here’s a thing about businesses: they’re usually pretty impersonal. This is especially true for online businesses, because they’re abstract entities that get their identity through whatever content they put out. As a potential customer you will take a look at their website and assess them:

• Are they trustworthy?
• Knowledgeable?
• Organized?
• Helpful?
• Friendly?

The problem is, even with the best texts and nicest pictures, potential customers might not be sure what to think about a company they’ve come across online. In particular, if people are looking for a personal service (e.g. coaching), it is difficult for users to know if the company truly matches what they’re looking for. Everybody can pay for a nice looking website and hire a professional writer, but does that mean the company is trustworthy and good at what they offer?

This is where video comes in. Video offers that additional layer that will fill in all the essential information that isn’t communicated well via text or images. A video that contains a face and/or voice will help your company to become instantly more trustworthy. Your potential customers will realize, “Hey, there is an actual person behind this. It’s not just a machine that wants to screw me for my hard-earned money.“

Video is particularly important if you’re a one-person business or sell services that you execute yourself (consultation, graphic design, coaching, etc.), as this can be a big advantage. Your potential clients will be able to picture themselves doing business with you more easily, and based on that they might choose to work with you over someone who has a similarly nice website but no video.

Video is shareable

Another advantage videos have over other content is that they’re extremely shareable. Unlike blog posts where you usually put them on your website and leave them there, videos are much more flexible since you can embed them anywhere. Additionally, more and more social media platforms have started to become more video-friendly in the past few years. Facebook, Instagram and even Twitter allow users to upload videos.

What’s so great about these social networks is that native uploads (direct uploads to the network instead of sharing a video to YouTube or vimeo) will autoplay in your followers’ feed. This is extremely attention-grabbing, and especially if people already know you they will probably want to hear what you have to say.

Video drives traffic

If you do it right, videos can drive traffic to your website and business. I’ve just mentioned social media, but one website that is completely underestimated by most business owners is YouTube itself. Youtube is not only the biggest video search engine, it is also the second biggest search engine in general. Every day, millions of people are looking for something on YouTube. Uploading your videos and optimizing them the right way can lead to a lot of extra traffic , which equals extra clients.

But that’s not the only benefit of uploading your videos on YouTube.

As soon as you publish a video on YouTube, Google will index it as well. That means that your video will potentially be discovered via Google searches – like this:

(When your videos show up in Google…)

In July, 1,678 of my views on my channel Why Stuff Is Great came from people finding my videos through Google.

How to get video ideas for your business

What kind of videos you should make depends very much on your business. An international online store for electronics needs to go a different route than a one-man consulting business. If you’re struggling to come up with video ideas, check out my article How to Find Hundreds of Video Ideas.

Also, for inspiration check out my article How to Find Hundreds of Video Ideas for Your YouTube Channel. It’s not exactly targeted towards businesses but I think many ideas would work for business as well.

Are you thinking about using videos in your business? I offer consultations for business owners who want to use video (or are already using video) in their businesses. Find out how I can help you here.