Using online video to promote your business – Video News Releases (VNR’s)

May 1st, 2012 • no comments

Using online video to promote your business – Video News Releases (VNR’s)

If you want to interact with customers, build relationships, promote a business or do your own event publicity, mixing video with social media is a simple, inexpensive way to reach out and get people sharing your story.

In PR, consultants are practiced in art of producing video news releases (VNR) which is basically a packaged news story ready for television broadcast. Traditionally, VNR’s are not widely used by smaller businesses as the cost of producing one which is broadcast ready can cost anywhere up to $20,000.

Thankfully, small and medium size businesses can now participate and get their news and products out to a global audience through producing their own video content and uploading them to video social media websites.

According to a 2011 report by Comscore Australia, a staggering 69% of internet users are regularly visiting multimedia sites. It’s this popularity, which looks set to continue to grow over the coming years, combined with the ease of which videos are now produced for the internet and the ease of uploading them to sites which make the humble video a very powerful online marketing tool for businesses small and large.

It’s this statistic coupled with the fact that users are spending an enormous amount of time on video sharing sites (Comscore states more than half who visited YouTube in the course of a month stayed on the site for an average of 138 minutes!) which presents businesses with a unique opportunity – one which can hardly afford to be missed.

Through this post, Hybrid PR Australia are going to give our readers an insight into the different video websites out there and have put together a list of 12 websites we feel deserve a mention.

I’ve also included a link and short video from Guru Online who are doing great things with video, providing advice from business experts and informative videos on a range of subjects.

If you have any questions about how to put together a plan to help your company utilise this great medium, feel free to email us for help. We’ve also put together a handy list of subjects your business could cover in our 10 online video content ideas for your business post.