Week 8: Multimedia

Marketing is a huge part of business, and everyone has an online presence these days. So how do you keep your customer engaged and coming back for more? You certainly can't rely on a traditional web page with just text and links, can you? You have to use multimedia.



According to wikipedia, multimedia is media and content that uses different combinations of content forms, like text, audio, video, images, animation and interactivity.

But how do you integrate multimedia and marketing?



Most importantly, it has to be of a certain quality. You wouldn't want to stumble across a multimedia corporate website that looks like one of those bastardized MySpace profile page with too much animated glitter, awful music and jarring videos right?

Everyone can preach quality, but how exactly do you come up with something of good quality? Mashable has a good idea of how small businesses can leverage techniques to obtaining good videos.

Multimedia is extremely useful, but what content should you put up? If it does not further your company vision, increase brand awareness, engage customers or sell a product, then why put it up at all?

According to Mashable, here's what NOT to do with your company's blog:

1. Don't start without a strategy
2. Don't make it all about you (i.e. it's not a bulletin board!)
3. Don't forget to link (sources, competitors, anything you refer to!)
4. Don't forget to be yourself (customers are all about sincerity)
5. Don't ignore social media

Lastly, here are some tips on how to be future-proof for at least the next year:

1. Go mobile. Get a slice of the smartphone pie. 
2. Use Facebook social plugins. (Place the "like" button next to your posts!)