Viral marketing (and advertising) is a powerful technique that makes good use of social networks to increase brand awareness. Understanding the important role that video marketing plays in promoting your business online will make a huge difference in the success of your marketing efforts.

The theory of viral marketing is simple; if you have a compelling, true story, a friend will tell a friend, will tell a friend, will tell a friend and so on. Also referred to as word of mouth marketing, the livelihood of this extraordinary form of marketing thrives on people talking to each other about you, your service, and your product. Viral marketing can make or break your reputation on the Internet. With the influx of [good and bad] information on the Internet, whether solicited or not, your story has to capture the attention of your audience and be proven to be true and supportive of ethical Internet practices.

The behavioral characteristics of word of mouth marketing is well known; a satisfied customer will tell an average of three people about a product, service or experience; an unsatisfied customer will tell about a dozen.

Viral marketing and word of mouth marketing are the foundation for social networks; networks of people interacting with other people in social activities, for the innate purpose of sharing information, services and ideas.

Its human nature to talk; to capture this market share, you need to make sure people are talking about you and what they have to say is nothing but positive!

Viral Marketing Using Video

Social networks have made Internet marketing quite competitive, which has forced marketers into video production. Words can relay a message, but a professional, compelling video is worth a thousand words.

comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, released data in May of 2008, indicating that U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos from February to March 2008; comScore further reported a 64% gain from the previous year.

In the same study, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 477 million videos (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 328 million (2.9 percent) and Viacom Digital with 249 million (2.2 percent).

Video marketing has become quite adaptable to today s online marketing techniques; from traditional online video advertisements [commercials], to interactive Flash (SWF or FLA) messages, online learning (e-learning), to brandable software, and even messages to mobile devices, video composition done right can spark quite a bit of word of mouth enthusiasm and can create high social networking potential. With this much technology at our fingertips, why wouldn t you choose to promote your business with video?

Let s face it; online video marketing is undeniably the best way to get your message out to the millions with just click of your mouse. As bandwidth and Internet access get higher and faster, online video broadcasting will soon become the first and foremost form of communication.

Google s Algorithm Update

Generating more visual excitement about your product or service is great, but spreading your message via video stream on the Internet has other benefits as well. Google is constantly updating their algorithms to make search functionality more consistent with what Internet users are looking for. With the most recent changes in Google s algorithms, its now easier for the Googlebots to crawl videos, and online marketers can take full advantage of keyword search technologies for their videos as well.

In July of 2008 Google announced they improved their handling of Flash files in search results; they say they now have a better ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds, including buttons, gadgets and so on. Improved techniques also include simple JavaScript as well.

Google teamed up with Adobe to develop an algorithm that explores Flash files, in just the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on. Their algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed.

In addition to finding text, Google says they are also able to find URLs to feed them to their crawling pipeline. Apparently, all with a little help from Flash-maker, Adobe.