Online Video is the New Business Media

Do you have an online video strategy for your company? If not, this may be the year to get one. That was one of the key insights from today's "Changing World of Business News" webinar sponsored by PRWeek.

"Broadband video could very well be a game-changing development in 2008," said Chris Peacock, executive editor and vice president, CNNMoney.com. CNNMoney.com just launched a new broadband video initiative that aims to post 30 new business news videos per day, including breaking news, opinion and feature stories.

Online video is the newest flavor of the ongoing mash-up of the business news media. "Everyone is becoming multi-platform, multi-channel and competing in each others' space," said Rafat Ali, founder and editor, ContentNext Media (owner of PaidContent.org).

So -- what's you're online video strategy?

Do you have recent b-roll video of your company's operations (b-roll is background video -- conveyor belts in action, trucks rolling, etc.) in the event that you're asked for video to accompany a media opportunity?
Have your key spokespeople been media trained to increase their comfort level in TV interviews?
Are you posting video about your company on your web site, or on YouTube?

Other insights from the audio conference (sponsored by BurrellesLuce):

Seeking Alpha is a business news site that aggregates blog posts and other online content about finance. They have about 300 regular unpaid contributors, mainly money managers and newsletter publishers. The main PR opportunity appears to be their Interactive Q&A section, where they interview a business leader via audience questions. Editor-in-chief Mick Weinstein said he's open to pitches for this section but that he really doesn't like all the PR spam he gets (bulk email pitches about things he would never cover)
Shawn Dainas of Sun Microsystems said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog gets up to 50,000 readers a day and 100,000 per month. He said the business media has been known to pick up stories directly from Jonathan's blog posts. Overall, Sun has 4,000 employees blogging and one million blog readers per month. Sun also posts video on YouTube and has generated 40,000 viewers.
Chris Peacock: Online business news users "expect both immediacy and depth." Interesting example: Seeking Alpha had two live bloggers this morning covering the Fed's surprise rate cut and the stock market's reaction.

You can listen to the re-broadcast of this free webinar by clicking here.

Jon Greer

Jon Greer has been analyzing media and PR for more than 25 years. He's been a journalist and a PR executive, and has been a featured speaker for many years at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit, and served as Bulldog's Editorial Director for their PR University series of weekly how-to audio conferences.

Jon provides PR services including media relations and freelance writing to clients including start-ups, law firms, corporations, investment banks and venture capital firms. In addition, Jon provides spokesperson training. Learn more about Jon's training programs at The Media Bridge.

More from CBS News