Video marketing is here and it is a force to be reckoned with. YouTube is now the largest search engine on the web and more than 90% of Internet users prefer watching a video to reading an article.

It is no secret that visual marketing can be an extremely powerful force in creating brand awareness and reaching a larger demographic than traditional search. So, how can your business use video and what kind of video is best for your business?

Videos are incredibly powerful mainly because they allow companies to control their brand image. Companies can gain back some of the power with Visual Marketing, this also means that anything you create must be crafted with care. Video has bridged the gap between consumer and company online by giving back face to face time.

There are several different types of videos and each company will have to meet their own customer’s needs. Company videos are good for every business there are also customer reviews, instructional videos, 3d product videos, how to videos, series of videos, etc.

Here are some tips for creating effective Videos for Social Media Marketing:

Create custom landing pages on your site that you can embed your video in. This can help increase your time on site metrics as well as help decrease page abandonment rates.

Use YouTube: YouTube should be your main focus and creating an account is simple and it is free. There is a lot of ways to optimize your videos so be sure to tag, annotate, and title your videos correctly. Your YouTube channel should also be customized to your brand and you should actively engage with other channels and encourage comments. Put your link on your channel page and in the video description field this will also give your main site an incoming link.

Propogate: Don’t limit yourself just to YouTube, check out Metacafe, Yahoo Video, Viddler, Tumblr, the list goes on. They all offer their own unique ways to engage your fans.

Let’s start with a few definitions.

Social Media is any site online where you interact with other people such as your blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums, Nings, etc. A Social Media Marketing campaign is a marketing plan using Social Media. The goal is to interact with and develop relationships with as many people as possible online so they will feel comfortable about doing business with you. Your prospects must know, like and trust you before they will feel comfortable about spending money with you.

Keywords are the terms or phrases people put in the search box of Google when you are looking for something online. Or in simpler terms they are the words associated with your niche. You obviously want to use the words that are used the most often to reach the largest number of people.

For example you have just started a blog or website about an Italian Restaurant you have in NYC. What words would people put in the search box to find you? Obviously Italian Restaurant is a keyword phrase but there are a lot more related words that might reach different people. They include Italian Food, the best Italian food, Italian food in NYC, Italian restaurants in NYC, the best Spaghetti restaurant, and on and on. Remember your goal to reach the largest number people.

Twitter is one of the hottest social media sites right now and lots of people are using it to successfully market their products or services online. Prospects find them by using Twitter search engines such as Twellow or Twitter Search. Those engines search the 160 character Bio so chose your words carefully. Each separate Tweet is also indexed by Google so it’s important to use your keywords there whenever possible.

Your Facebook Public Profile Page (these pages are different from your home page or regular profile page) is indexed by Google also so it’s important to know and use your keywords there. To be successful online you want your name or your business name to come up in as many different places as possible whenever someone uses one of your keywords. This is how the most people possible will find you.