Want to quickly and dramatically improve the engagement that website visitors have with your brand? Add video to your website! According to Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. (also known as “The Brain Lady”), there are a number of biological reasons that we tend to pay more attention to video content, rather than written text. Specifically: The Fusiform Facial areas of our brains compel us to pay attention to other faces. Evolutionarily, this tendency leads us to treat the face as a starting point for information and believability. As a website owner, faces can be used to call attention to important points and marketing content. Voices convey more rich information than plain text. When used in the context of web video, webmasters can use vocal inflections and other mannerisms to form a stronger bond with site visitors than they can using text alone. Emotions tend to be contagious. Want to get your visitors excited about a product or service? It’s a tall order to accomplish via text alone, but easy when your website displays a video of an enthusiastic person. The human brain is attracted to movement. Text doesn’t move. Adding video to your website allows you to capture the same attention that our caveman ancestors would have given to movement in the bushes that would have signaled imminent danger. The benefit of all these different biological processes is obvious. When you add video to your website, you tap into a number of key evolutionary mechanisms in order to boost both attention and engagement amongst your website visitors. But what if you aren’t a professional videographer with Hollywood-level equipment? Do you need to make a major capital investment in order to bring the power of video to your website? Absolutely not! Any of the following tools can help you to create powerful video clips without blowing up your marketing budget: Animoto When it comes to video creation, there’s no easier option than Animoto. With both free and paid versions available, the program allows you to drag and drop images into a pre-designed slideshow and to set your video to a musical background. The resulting video clips aren’t quite as compelling as a “talking head” style video would be, but they’re a great place to dip your toes into the waters of web video (especially if you’re camera shy!). Screencast Want to avoid having to face the camera, but still want to capture the benefits that vocal inflection can have on message retention? Screencast videos are the right option for you. In a screencast video, you use a program like Screencast to record both your voice and the content that’s displayed on your monitor. In this way, you can create simple tutorials and educational videos that allow you to boost your perceived authority within your industry while capturing the benefits that web video can bring about. Youtube Ready to take your web video marketing techniques to the next level? Record yourself speaking directly into your webcam using Youtube’s built in web video recorder! This style of video allows you to take advantage of all the different benefits listed above without any expenses beyond the use of your computer’s webcam. It can be scary to put yourself out there in this way, but the results will be well worth it. As you’re making your first web video, keep the following guidelines in mind: Web videos should be short. Limited viewer attention spans make it a good idea to limit videos to no more than 5-10 minutes in length. Think in terms of visitor value. Don’t make web videos just to make web videos. Think about the subjects that will bring the most value to your visitors and use these topics as the starting point for your new video marketing campaign. Not every video will go viral. One common misconception about web video is that every clip you create will go on to be a Youtube success. Obviously, this isn’t the case, but don’t let this discourage you. Keep experimenting with different video techniques until you find one that resonates with your audience. Once your video clip is ready, the easiest way to add it to your website is to upload the file to Youtube and then use the embed command to add it to your website. As an added bonus, utilizing Youtube in this way will give you access to the company’s internal analytics program that will show you how exactly viewers are engaging with your clips. Don’t be scared when it comes to web video. Using the tools above represents a quick and easy way to bring the incredible power of video marketing to your company’s website.