• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 22, 2012

It takes informative and engaging content to get videos indexed in search engine results or to get people to share them. Producing entertaining videos that help solve problems increases the likelihood that people will share with others. Here are a few tools that marketers can use to get started.

Since soundtracks make the video more appealing, earlier this week Rumblefish introduced several search tools that make it easier to find audio that matches the visual. MoodMap, for example, allows content creators to search for music that complements the mood or the action taking place in the video. Pick a video. Then click on the smiley face, sun, lamb, grey cloud or frown, and the platform will make suggestions for music that matches the video.

What's the Occasion -- another feature introduced this week -- enables users to browse through occasion categories, including celebrations, themes, current events, moods, sports and holidays. Editor’s Picks allows users to browse playlists handpicked by the Rumblefish editorial team, including songs focused on current events, holidays, and pop culture.

YouTube, the second-most-used search engine in the world, should not be ignored. Marketers must think carefully about how to monetize each video click they get. aimClear Founder Marty Weintraub once told me to think of the video as an organic ad, as the title of the video will likely appear in the search engine results on Google and Bing. He also suggests disabling the public's ability to view analytics for your videos. There is no reason to give your competition insight into what works and what doesn't.

In an interview earlier this year, Trada CEO Niel Robertson suggested a few strategies, which include starting a Google display campaign through AdWords that targets specific videos by URL.

This will put a text ad on top of your own video when the user clicks on it, Robertson said. Since this is a traditional Google display ad, it will allow the user to click through to the brand's Web site or landing page. He said that for many advertisers, the cost per click is so inexpensive that the additional steps to capture a lead are well worth the effort. And the scale is there due to the volume of searches on YouTube.

Correcting glitches in videos is not always easy. Google's YouTube engineers figured out a way to improve video quality. New features in the YouTube Video Editor offer to stop the shaking in clips or correct the darkness levels, and identify the issues and automatically offer to fix it, creating an updated version of video on YouTube. Even when uploading a video from a mobile device, the platform color-corrects and stabilizes shaky footage.  

I really could have used these tools when producing the following footage of Annabelle.