By now most online businesses are seeing the benefits of including social media in their marketing strategy mix – and taking advantage of the huge potential it beckons.

With the enormous growth of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube,  you can take your business to a dynamic level by using videos to send a clear message about your business, product or service to an audience that now expects the sight, sound and motion that video provides.

The prime-time rules that apply to television don’t apply so strongly to online video viewing.  Even though social media sites do have their busy traffic times, on average consumers are watching online video consistently throughout the day – and night.

Now there’s a market hungry to watch.

Social Media players thrive on the interactive opportunities created by the online social playground, giving online businesses the ‘red carpet’ to create a video as a content vehicle to create conversation and spread that conversation like wildfire across the internet.

Think about the possibilities of your video promotion going beyond the visual enjoyment of your website viewers and going viral on Facebook or Twitter.  With the click of a button your video, containing your message and your brand, can make its merry way to thousands of social media users (and even on to mobile phone users) and willing buyers.

One word of caution I have – and it’s a biggie:  Make sure your video production and message therein is well thought out and on-target as once it’s launched into the realms of the social media platform and it does become viral, it can’t be edited and you can’t take it back.

Ignore utilizing video marketing in the social media shift at your own risk.