By Ronni Rhodes

The "Wow" factor that accompanied introduction of streaming media on Web has long passed, and technology now has to prove itself to marketers. Its' acceptance by advertisers, in conjunction with other rich media technologies, is on upswing, but it's still not widely used to enhance commercial sites.

Companies trying to do business on Internet are bombarded with marketing advice. Go to your target market. Promote your brand. Develop a web "community." Publish a Zine. All of it, good advice. But shopping carts are still being abandoned at an alarming rate, and conversion has become most important web statistic.

In absence of live salespeople, who know how to listen and focus in on customers' desires, businesses on Web must use technological tools available to replicate that human experience. Streaming is one of those tools.*

Streaming Media is a natural way to motivate purchasing. It can be integrated into your website as a means to help people get over that “hump” when they haven’t been able to see or touch a product. Use it to calm customers’ nerves, build their trust in your company, and to keep their excitement about your service alive.

When would streaming media serve visitors' needs on a commercial or business site? Use it for:

*Product Demonstrations - Visuals are powerful and convey product features difficult to explain only in text. Medical devices are great candidates. *Installation issues - especially for products geared to personal safety such as child car seats - are expertly handled with video. * Human Resource professionals can use it to enhance corporate Intranets for remote sales forces and clients. Training programs can be stored and viewed by personnel at their convenience. Both audio and video can be used in conjunction with written materials to explain company policies and procedures.

By Ronni Rhodes

As a company that sells streaming media services for a living, we get questions everyday about what needs to be done to make an audio or video presentation that will stream well over Internet. Most of these inquiries come from small businesses with limited budgets for marketing and advertising. They are always pleasantly surprised when we tell them that they can do it themselves!

Let’s start with an audio only presentation: ·Write out your script first! Focus on two to three points that you feel are essential to explain your products or services. Keep script simple. If your site offers a wide variety of goods or services, you might consider several different messages with each one keying in on one or two important areas. ·Have someone who is not familiar with your business review script and your site. Be sure that they understand your message. If they don’t, rewrite it! · Practice reading script until you feel completely familiar and comfortable with it. (You can hire professional voice talent for reasonable rates if you’d prefer not recording audio yourself.) ·Use best quality tape recorder available to you. A cassette recorder is fine. ·Use a high quality brand name audiotape. ·An external microphone that plugs into your recorder is preferable to one that comes built-in. They are very inexpensive and produce a better recording. ·Do your recording in a quiet place with as little background noise as possible. (That one seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?) ·Speak naturally! It can help to have a friend or colleague act as an audience to give you focus. ·Record your presentation several times. Select one that will sound most natural and inviting to your site visitors. ·Send tape to encoding (streaming) vendor. They’ll take it from there!