Brightcove Offers a Roadmap for Online Video Success

If you're currently planning a video strategy for your company or trying to optimize the system you already have, you might want to take a look at "Video Strategy Framework," a free whitepaper created by online video platform Brightcove.

It's one of the more useful whitepapers to cross our desk lately, and we admire the way it presents best practices for a successful video framework simply and clearly. Here are a few tips we gleaned from it. Download the entire 37-page white paper (it's free) for much more.

Quantity

One of the biggest challenges in starting out with online video is getting enough content on your site to draw an audience and make sure it returns for more. You don't need to create all your videos yourself, however: videos can come from in-house production, licensing deals with third-party providers, companies that you do business with, and your own viewers.

Quality

A good way to lose viewers is to ask them to watch low-definition jerky or stalled videos. Be sure that high quality is automatic on your videos and that your viewers don't have to change settings to have a good experience. Also, be sure your video player fits the look and feel of your site.

Discovery

Search engine optimization (SEO) is like exercise: you know it's good for you, but you don't always feel like making the effort so you neglect it. Viewers are going to find your content primarily through search engines. When you optimize your pages, you help those search engines direct viewers to you. Video SEO can be a lot of work, but the rewards are worth it. You'll benefit not only from more traffic, but from viewers spending more time on your site.

Distribution

YouTube is great for getting your videos in front of people, but try to get interested viewers to come over to your site where you can control the entire experience. Also, syndicate your videos on third-party sites when you can, but offer people at easy way to jump to your site to see your full video library.

Devices

Think only a small percentage of your audience is viewing your videos on mobile devices? Think again. In fact, Brightcove predicts that within five years more video will be watched on mobile devices than traditional computers. Find a solution that streams to the major mobile platforms, as well as connected TVs and set-top boxes.

That's just a taste. Download the full whitepaper for more advice on streaming video.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net