Jose Castillo writes:

“Over 50% of the broadband usage in Europe is video”, said Fernando Gil del Bernabé from Cisco Systems. And yet a large portion of online video have not embraced social media features. Our panel discussion today, The Convergence of Social Media and Online Video, discussed the merits of using social functionality to add business value to video. Njara Zafimehy, VP Marketing and Sales, ScrOOn, Fernando Gil del Bernabé, Managing Director, Cisco Systems, and Yann Motte, Co-Founder and CEO, Webjam, brought great perspective to the ongoing debate around ROI on social features like blogging, embedding, sharing, commenting, and uploading.

Here are 3 reasons to use social media that stuck out from the great discussion.

1. It costs ten times as much to get a new customer than keep an existing one. Social features allow much more interaction and allow customers to truly engage with the content, offering higher retention rates.

2. The cost of implementing social features is free or very cheap if you are all ready using video.

3. Remember to be very specific about your goals and set clear reasons and targets for using social media.

Whether you were at this session or not it would be great to hear your feedback on why or why not we should use social media to expand the impact of online video. Comment below and lets keep this conversation going!