The Interview: Sounds like the most obvious one, right? Well, David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, along with Steve Garfield, author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, say that video interviews are one of the simplest and fastest ways to put together a piece that elicits a social response.

Vlogging: Blogs are the #1 social media tool for doing business today. Not only can your videos be easily embedded in your blog around related text content, but it’s accessible and affordable to generate text content right from your own video for the blog post. Even WordPress now has its own online video platform (called VideoPress), and blog design themes for business are increasingly incorporating video-centric content.

Social Experiments: Diet Coke + Mentos. This is one of the earliest records where a backyard experiment from an entertainment science show turned into a cultural phenomenon. Because social media was nary a blip at the time to major brands like Coke, they missed a good opportunity to capitalize when it was hot.

Reviews: Amazon.com is one of the better-known examples of how consumers can now respond to an Amazon video about a product and also share their own video review. Today there are business models built entirely around customer video reviews such as Expo.com or BeautyChoice.com.

Staff as Presenters: Companies like Zappos have video presentations of their products featuring their own employees. Instead of having a scripted actor, you have someone who knows the car and comes across naturally.

Customer Feedback and Service: Some companies now have special YouTube channels for the purpose of allowing customers to submit their own questions, comments and suggestions. In turn, companies like the outlet store Crutchfield Electronics create videos that are more common and pertinent to customer conversations and addressing their needs.

Real-time Responsiveness: One of the big factors in social media marketing is the ability to act in real time. An increasing number of businesses are learning to respond to breaking news with real-time information and commentary, all in video. Videos are immediately posted on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, embedded right into the post and shareable with everyone (and with proper attribution).

Social media professionals already have a special advantage in working with video, for the very simple reason that video is naturally a “social technology” – probably more so than text. Video is going to continue to be easier to do; and whether you’re a social media marketer or a general marketing professional, it’s going to be more expected of you to do, so embrace it. Make video marketing an integral part of your social media marketing strategy.

What do you think about video marketing? What tips do you have to share?

(from social media examiner)