by Rachel Blankstein.

Video is everywhere these days—online, e-mails and even on your mobile devices. About 28 percent of people watch video online every day, according to a July 2011 Pew Research Center report. As a small business, you should be using this trend to your advantage by incorporating video into your marketing toolkit.

Video broadens the spectrum on how you can communicate. You can use it to create a wide variety of engaging content such as product tours, how-to guides, user testimonials—basically anything relevant you can think of. And any new content always has the potential to draw in new customers while deepening the relationship you have with your existing client base. Video sometimes has an added bonus: the potential to go viral.

Many small businesses are scared to take the plunge into creating video content because they have no clue how to produce quality videos. But it’s not as hard as you think, and you don’t need to spend tons of money. Like any other marketing campaign, you do need to invest time to plan and execute. Video marketing is not beyond your reach. Here is how to get started:

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