Creating a video is about more than just presenting information for your business or organization. You need to have a goal and ideally a way for you to track if you have reached it.

There are many things a video can do for you, and below is a list of 5 popular goals that can be considered when planning your production.

1 – Drive “direct traffic” to your website.

Encouraging viewers of your video to move on to your website can promote sales, donations and familiarity with your brand. You can easily add your website address to the end of your video and/or in the video description and direct traffic to a page on your site. With a system like Google Analytics you can track how many people are visiting your website, how long they stay on pages and where they are coming from. If you direct individuals to a specific landing page from your video, rather than just the homepage, it becomes easier to track how much of an impact your call to action is having.

2 – Build a subscriber base for your YouTube channel.

Once a viewer has finished watching your video suggest that they become a subscriber, so they know when you add new content. Keeping subscribers builds loyalty with your brand. It also encourages sharing among your subscriber’s social circles. Keeping track of subscriber numbers is simple, and Google Analytics also builds reports for YouTube channels.

3 – Support your brand and build your identity.

A video can be an amazing tool when it comes to supporting your brand and building your identity. Whether you choose to make a series of quirky webisodes that generate interest in your newest endeavour or create helpful how-to videos that promote your products, you want to make content that builds how your audience perceives your brand. A car company that uses a humourous series to sell its product will be perceived quite differently from one that focuses on driving through luxury locations. Feedback from your consumers on your videos, through something like a simple poll, can be invaluable when gauging impact.

4 – Train employees and build the culture in your organization.

Training for employees can be very expensive, but video offers an affordable method of delivering top-notch instruction without worrying about consistency and accessibility. Testing your employees after they watch a video is a great way of gauging how successful a learning tool the content has been. When it comes to the culture of your organization, setting standards of performance and portraying your brand personality on screen goes a long way to influencing how your trainees understand your brand and their role in maintaining organization standards.

5 – Secure funding for projects.

The popularity of crowd funding through such sites as Kickstarter has grown and it now has an important role in the way many people do business. It allows those with great ideas to gather funding even when more traditional support, such as bank loans, aren’t available to them. Alongside this, social media is also utilized to secure donations for numerous projects. Because video is easily shared it becomes a powerful tool for spreading your story and making connections with people right around the world.

Video can be a perfect way to help people get to know your organization. Don’t underestimate the power of those you have helped. Having real people you’ve assisted share their messages in their own voice and showing what you do is far more effective than a series of bullet points that must be read. You can make the push to donate your call to action. You can track how far your message is spread and what funds are generated by monitoring your shares on Facebook and donations made.

Melissa Jackson is a project assistant extraordinaire at Atomic Spark. A master of multi-tasking and managing miscellany requests she keeps everyone on track while blogging, organizing and whipping up nifty graphics.