Reel SEO Video Marketing

uSocial is Selling YouTube Views – Should you Buy em?

Jeremy Scott — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:45:04 +0000

uSocial, the company that has created controversy regarding their services in the past, is at it again. You might remember them as the company that sold Diggs for your Digg submission, friends for your Facebook account, and followers of your Twitter ramblings. Now they’re offering a new service: views for your YouTube video.

For $127, you can buy 5,000 views for your fledgling viral video. That’s about 2.5 cents per view. uSocial claims:

“Using several of our methods, we can get a totally unknown video in front of the eyes of potentially millions of people which can mean megabucks to anyone who’s in business.”

Exactly how they do that is apparently a “trade secret”. But with 168 Million US viewers per month, racking up 26 Billion views, it’s not too hard to believe that a fraction of them are willing to sell their services as a viewer.

As of the writing of this post, you need at least 88,000 views to crack the first page of YouTube results for videos filtered by “today” and “number of views,” and more than 54,000 to make the second page of results.

That’s not a terrible amount of money at uSocial prices. It’s actually pretty cheap. You could buy, at $127 per 5,000 views, a block of 88,000 views for $2235.

But cost isn’t the problem. The bigger issue here—at least to me—is how worthwhile those views are going to be. Unlike on Digg, where enough upvotes will get your story on the home page and seen by tens of thousands, YouTube doesn’t just automatically start promoting your video because you got 5,000 views. Now sure… if you buy enough blocks of 5,000, you’ll eventually get 100,000 views. And you’ll definitely get noticed by the audience at that level—at least the audience that filters by number of views.

But are we really to believe that uSocial has 100,000 or more viewers ready to go at a moment’s notice? I very seriously doubt it. It’s possible that they’re paying out to contracted individuals who are using multiple computers at multiple locations to view a particular video.

I feel like this system is going to break down somewhere between uSocial signing up enough paid viewers and Google figuring out how to tell when views are being manipulated. With all of Google/YouTube’s raw computing muscle and human brain power, it seems pretty likely that they’ll catch on pretty quick to uSocial’s tricks and begin penalizing videos they believe are artificially increasing the view count. You don’t think they know the organic growth track of a successful viral video by now and are able to spot when something artificial enhances that number? uSocial is going to have to serve their “employees” with either a link or a keyword phrase or at least some method of finding that video so they can watch it, right? You don’t think YouTube has a grasp on how videos are naturally found? I mean, this is the company that claims they can tell when you’ve bought a link from a blog as opposed to having earned one.

Of course, it’s also the same company that allowed Avril Lavigne fans to artificially boost a particular music video to the top of the “all time” views chart, so maybe I’m off my rocker.

Ultimately, the real problem with uSocial’s service is that it simply won’t translate to conversions. While they claim they can target your video to receive views from a certain demographic (a claim of which I am skeptical), they are still paid views. People paid to watch something will watch it and move on. They’re not the kind of viewers a viral campaign is seeking. They’re not potential customers. They won’t forward it to mom and dad. They won’t post about it on their Facebook wall, or email their frat brothers. They’ll simply watch, and then move on to the next one they get paid to view.

Bought views don’t convert, don’t promote the video for you, and are the exact opposite of the kind of viewers viral-producers are seeking (and YouTube is hoping to deliver). They are a band-aid covering up the root problem of poor content. I would not advise you to start buying video views from uSocial. You don’t buy Adwords ads for an awful-looking website that has no call to action, do you?

Is there such a thing as great video content that never finds its audience? Sure. But those videos are the exception, not the rule. There are a host of proven methods for driving valuable views to your online video, such as SEO, email marketing, links, and more. Going uSocial’s route seems misguided. It’s like filling a convention hall with people you paid to listen to your product pitch, and then being upset when they all leave afterward without buying the actual product. They weren’t in your demographic to begin with, and the only thing they had in common with each other was that they all suckered you out of your money.

If your content is good enough, viewers will find it. If your content and SEO work is so awful that viewers can’t find it, then it’s not worth the money it costs to buy the viewers.

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BitGravity – A Cool, Quick Embeddable Player + Major Content Delivery Network

Christophor Rick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:00:15 +0000

Need to embed a video in a site super-duper fast? Why not try the 3 form version of Bitgravity Player 6. Give it a video URL, width and height and you’re all set. But is it truly that easy?

Actually, it truly can be that easy. But that would leave out a lot of people who need a more advanced set of controls over their online videos. Luckily, Bitgravity has you covered on that end as well. Simply flipping a switch so to speak gives you a range of fine detail controls over the player including:

Playback Options – Autoplay, buffer size and advanced seeking (for Bitgravity content delivery users)
Player Configuration – Height, width, video dimensions (16:9, 4:3 and fully customizable), default scale mode.
Player Theme – Including control bar color schemes, a logo and a URL link for that logo
Advertising - Allows you to specify pre and post-roll ads from URLs (COOL!)

For those that might opt for the Bitgravity content delivery package you can offer on demand , BGLiveBroadcast and RTMP.

So what makes this so special? Well, the ability to drop in pre and post-roll ads is super cool and easy, something that isn’t always either of those things. On top of that you have a good deal of control over the player without having to struggle with the cryptic Flash embed code. Just fill out the web forms and click the button to get the code. That’s pretty sweet if you ask me.

Bitgravity has been around for a few yeas now (founded in 2006, privately held) and have been obviously building a content delivery system to back up the video player. When you use their service the videos are pre-warmed which means they are stored throughout the BG network and the player chooses the fastest, nearest server to minimize wait time. That cuts down on re-buffering and choppiness, usually. Oddly the video on their BG Video Delivery page had to re-buffer for me when I went to get the info. Ironic no? I go to write about how great they are and their service does exactly what the page is telling me doesn’t happen.

Now that could simply be they don’t know where the Czech Republic is and their nearest server isn’t anywher near me. It could also be my Wi-Fi acting up again. So no finger pointing at present, just a note to let you know. BG says their service is integrated with the largest Global Tier One network (a short list of ten possibilities – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_Tier_1_networks I would say Level 3 off the top of my head, but could be wrong) so they should have a seriously global presence. And yet, the video on their site still stuttered for me.

They offer video packages of course because who would have that massive of a network and not right?

Video Plus Package Features

Reporting includes raw logs and CSV files
Directory mapping to a custom docroot
Flash Player with support for Advanced Progressive
Advanced Progressive
1. Includes the ability for end users to skip without downloading, jump between quality levels, jump between clips
2. API allows customers to provide support in their Flash players so end users can create start and stop points of content and share the clips with friends
Rate throttling: Control your users’ stream to a specific rate
Custom 404 errors

Of course the question of cost arises and that would be a good one. BitGravity falls into the old “if you have to ask you probably can’t afford us” category because nowhere on their site could I find the price. In fact even for the 15-day free trial you need to fill out a form longer than that to get their player on your site for free. But if you’re looking for a serious place to drop a large amount of cash on your video delivery services, they’re probably the place and with all the services they offer, they look to be well worth it.

The real benefit here to the small business operators who want to get into video online is that super quick setup which I mentioned way up at the top of this article.

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YouTube Beefs up Partner Video Blocking Ability

Christophor Rick — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:51:57 +0000

It is making the rounds on the webosphere that YouTube has implemented two new buttons on the partner interface that pertain to blocking of videos.TechCrunch (Hi guys!) got a tip that two new buttons appeared on the YouTube partner interface specifically dealing with the blocking of videos:

Enable Autoblock outside Ownership – Streamlines the blocking of duplicate content on the site which used to be like pulling teeth
Block by country – Sort of self-explanatory no?

So now you no longer need to jump through a series of hoops like Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games but rather just click a button and all duplicate content will be blocked. What does that mean for the little guys?

Theoretically A place like Gamers Daily News could simply lose all of its content. Since we don’t use our YouTube Channel for our own content but rather to share game trailers etc with the masses, the game companies could block it all to drive more traffic to their channels. Of course that would make enemies of a lot of people in journalism that support them by spreading the word about their games. Or it could force many of us to simply move all our video hosting in-house where we could then control the content and make money by showing ads. See, since it’s not our original content we cannot show ads on youTube. But taking it back to the site and doing all ourselves with something like the BitGravity player, we could easily start monetizing all those videos, but at the cost of bandwidth. Of course we have enough to cover the videos as well so maybe this could be a good thing for the little guy.

Of course it will all depend on the level of anal retention of the copyright owners. Given that YouTube is where you put things to have them go viral, does locking them down to a single copy really sound like a good idea? I guess time will tell how these new features affect the little guys and places like GDN. Since I’ve already been thinking of bringing all of the videos back to our own site, perhaps this will simply accelerate my requirements for a video CMS and push our timetable up. Or perhaps it won’t do a damned thing and we’ll continue on as is.

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Streaming Media West 2009 – Discount for ReelSEO Readers

Mark R Robertson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:23:08 +0000

Just a quick note to all readers… Streaming Media West – the leading online video industry conference & expo – is offering a $100 discount until FRIDAY, November 6 to attend Streaming Media sessions.

Click here to take advantage of these savings. If you can’t buy a conference pass, you can still sign up for a free expo pass which this year includes access to two separate, open-bar networking receptions!

Streaming Media West is in 2 weeks – November 17-19 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The Exhibit Hall opens on November 17 at 5pm.

More to come about this great conference and its satellite conference, The Online Video Platform Summit. We are excited to participate at both events and we’d love to meet any of you that might be there.

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Predictions with Local Online Video Marketing – Interview with Topix

Grant Crowell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:26:11 +0000

I interviewed Chris Tolles, CEO of the online news portal Topix, on his predictions for how video will mature into the local landscape, and its impact for audiences and businesses.

The following interview took place at the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association’s 7th Semiannual Interactive Marketing Survey, where Chris was one of the featured panelists. Sorry in advance for the audio/video quality as all I had with me was a Flip and it was dark and loud at the show.

Chris Tolles’ forecast of the local video landscape for business

Prediction #1: Increase in scale. Video content and activity will increase in the local online space. (Yes, that sounds like the obvious prediction!)
Prediction #2: Production key to manage. This is in regards to cost, time and project scale, which Chris believes will be more of a priority for local campaigns than for larger-scale audiences.
Prediction #3: Very short format. Successful local video campaigns will need to be very, very short. “There’s a cycle of 12 seconds (for online engagement) that’s sort of interesting.” Says Chris. “People may want a 5-second or 10-second video of something. They don’t want an hour.”
Prediction #4: User-generated content will dominate. Successful local video campaigns will be based around authentic audience-produced video as opposed to professionally produced videos. “Somewhere along the line, integration of video from an audience standpoint is going to come out. Its going to be something where a video of a store or of the (customer) experience I think will be part of the process; but I think we’ve got a ways to go where that’s going to happen.” He says. Which brings us to his next prediction
Prediction #5: Change in form factor. Chris believes that while video will eventually become an integral part of the local landscape, he doesn’t forecast any commonly-adopted strategic implementation in the near future. “Text still rules. You don’t want to see 20 videos or even photos of a restaurant. You can look through 20 reviews in text. If I look at 20 different video reviews, I wouldn’t be able to do it. So I think the real problem is that the form factor of video is hard, especially in local. I think video will be important, and increasingly so. But it hasn’t been solved yet. It’s not going to be a linear progression. Something different is going to happen down the road… I think (video) will just take a different form factor. It comes down to, you don’t want video commentary, you don’t want video reviews – I think you’ll want something else.”

Grant’s Rant

After I did this interview, I had to ask myself, does Chris really “get it” when it comes to the business opportunity with local online video? I think he’s most accurate with talking about a content-type (customer testimonials and reviews), but less accurate when thinking that user-generated video content will trump professional-quality content. Production value also means good production quality, and one professionally produced video testimonial and review would not only be much more likely to have better influence and reach than a bunch of amateur-looking UGC videos, but also be more visible in keyword searches and social media sites – AND provide a level of influence over the message – which businesses desperately want and need.

I think search traffic and engagement reports have already shown pretty well that people DO want video commentary, they DO want video reviews; they also want instructional videos, videos with interviews, videos of demos, videos of events – the whole gamut. Its not really about a linear progression; its more about many paths that overlap and integrate; and from new and enhanced technologies, audience awareness and input, and increased levels of passive-to-active engagement, new marketing models will continue to emerge – just like has already been proven in the local online space.

Special thanks to ReelSEO’s contributing reporter, Erika Blackwell, for her on-site coverage of this event.

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Video Tip: How to Use a Gray Card for Great Video Exposure

Mark R Robertson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:00:16 +0000

I’ve often made the assertion that quality video production is important for successful online video marketing. Sure, some viral videos aren’t the most professional when it comes to the video production aspects, but, if you plan to produce your own videos for marketing your business, why not shoot for the best. Several months ago, I stumbled upon a video professional and internet marketer who has devoted the last several years to showing others how to produce quality videos – via online video. In his own words,

“It’s not the ‘black art’ that people sometimes pretend it is. Developing skills with video is as easy as learning the principles and then practicing them.”

His name is Israel Hyman (Izzy) and he runs a valuable membership website at IzzyVideo. Israel was kind enough to partner with us at ReelSEO in order to share with you readers some of his popular video training episodes. Below is a great video about how to get proper video exposure using an 18% gray card. Rather than go on and on about how cool Izzy is, why good exposure is important and how to use a gray card – I’ll let you sit back and watch Izzy.

Ok, I said I wouldn’t go on and on about how cool Izzy is. I lied. Here is what I’ll say. My dad, Rick Robertson (hi Dad) was a professional cinematographer his entire life and knows a thing or two about professional video production. He worked on many well-known movies (Spinal Tap -great one), TV shows, documentaries and music videos. Last week, my dad and I sat together and spent about 2 hours watching Izzy’s tutorials. My dad said,

“See, this guy is good. He knows what he is talking about. You should reach out to him. I bet your readers could really benefit from this stuff.”

And so I did… Stay tuned for more videos from Izzy on ReelSEO each month and please visit IzzyVideo.

Oh yeah, if you want to get one of those cool collapsable 18% grey cards, they have them at amazon.com Here. I picked one up myself.

Thanks Izzy

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End Your Video Encoding Blues with Encoding.com

Christophor Rick — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:40:28 +0000

Encoding.com offers, get this, web-based, on-demand, video encoding. Nope, no joke. They will grab your video encode it and then send it back to you. Sign up is free and you can even do a test run but after that, you’ll have to pay

Encoding.com brings a new use of cloud computing, this time to take those pesky video files and encode them into what you need. They can pull your video via FTP, HTTP, S3 or you can upload it from your PC. After that they will do all the heavy lifting of getting it into your chosen format (see list below) and then send it back to you via FTP, S3 or via an email with a download link.

What can you get encoded?

(input)

.mov, .avi, .wmv, .mp4, .3GP, .3G2, .mj2, .m4v, .flv, .mpg, .flv H.264, .flv VP6, .asf, and more?

What can you get output?

Flash up to version 9, Flash 9 with H.264, Windows Media, MPEG 4, M4V, iPod, iPhone/iTouch, Apple TV, PSP, ZUne, 3GP

The service even makes thumbnails for those videos, can resize them to your needs and allows for watermarking and can even add metadata to FLV files.

How about images?

DPX, EXR ,GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, TIFF

The service offers a host of other features including automatic watch folders, SLAs for maximum encoding capacity of shorter queue, an API, splicing and a whole lot more. You can read all about it on their features page - http://www.encoding.com/features/

The site offers a 1GB bandwidth trial for 30-days of use to test it out and see how it goes. Since the encoding is done on a cloud of computers it’s super fast.

The service isn’t cheap though. The package prices are Basic $19/month, Plus $49/month, Max $299/month. The major differences are the maximum queue times 30, 10 or 4 minutes, encoding bandwidth 1, 10 or 75GB and capacity 5, 15 or 50GB per hour. Even Brightcove users can use their service.

If you don’t want a monthly expense hanging over your head you can try their usage based pricing ranging from $2.50/GB up to 100GB/month to a low $1.80/GB for over 1TB a month.

Who would use this?

I can see a lot of people using this. People who don’t have the money to shell out for the super computer at the home office or need it to be available for other things but still have a lot of video to endcode ore re-encode. People on the go, like myself, who generally operate from a netbook which could not handle any kind of large scale video encoding projects and people who want some automation in their encoding, like those with store fronts on Amazon, channels on YouTube, etc. At just under $20 a month

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Online Video Continues Ridiculous Trajectory

Jeremy Scott — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:44:37 +0000

ComScore has released their online video numbers for September 2009, and the trend continues. Online video views are again at an all time high.

More than 168 Million U.S. viewers watched online video during that month, accumulating nearly 26 Billion total views. Holy cow.

As usual, ComScore gives us a breakdown of the most popular sources for online video, and there are virtually no surprises. Google still has a stranglehold on the competition, with a dominating 40.2% market share. Second place goes to Hulu, which makes you want to celebrate until you see their market share, which is a paltry 2.2%. (Hulu, by the way, just recently added an awesome new “Episode Release Schedule”).

Watching Hulu try and catch YouTube is sort of like watching the Detroit Lions become a good football team.

But seriously, there’s plenty to celebrate for Hulu. In addition to holding the second spot, their users are also pretty loyal. The average Hulu viewer watched 15.1 videos in September, totaling 1.5 hours of viewing per person. (Of course, that pales when compared to YouTube’s staggering 82 videos viewed per person).

There some really interesting (and kind of mind-blowing) data on online video in general too. For instance, did you know the average video watched is now 3.8 minutes in length? I was shocked at that. I know three minutes doesn’t sound like much, especially when compared to the length of a TV show or movie. But think about it in terms of the web. Go open up your analytics program and tell me the average length of time spent on site is for your visitors. If it’s anywhere near 3.8 minutes, I’ll buy you a coffee the next time we see each other.

In terms of web visitors, 3.8 minutes is an eternity, and most webmasters would kill for an attention span like that. If everything else we’ve said before today hasn’t already convinced you to jump into online video, then zero in and focus on just this metric. What would it be worth to you to hold your visitors’ attention for four minutes? Because I can’t remember the last time I saw a simple text-based blog post average anything close to that.

Among the rest of the findings: 84% of Americans online watched videos. 84%. As I continue to try and convince all my clients to jump fully into online video, I’m going to stop using that statistic about how many searches are performed on YouTube every month… and I’m going to start using this stat. 84% of people online are watching online video. Talk about a hungry audience. They’re watching an average of about 10 hours of video every month.

What else do you do for 10 hours a month? Think about that. I mow the yard, probably 1.5 hours a week during the summer. That’s still only 6 hours a month. I spend about an hour a week at the grocery store… so that’s 4.

10 hours a month is a heck of a lot of video watching. Considering the average person sleeps about 8 hours a night, 10 hours a week is just about 10% of a person’s waking life.

While trying to get your head around such impressive data, consider this: What content are you creating to reach that audience?

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Sorenson Squeeze 6 – Total Video Workflow Solution?

Grant Crowell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:24:33 +0000

Today Sorenson Media announced the launch of the latest update to their video encoding software program, Squeeze 6. Read my interview with Sorenson’s CEO and President Peter Csathy on why his company is billing this update, the first in over a year, as “first total video workflow solution” for businesses. (Click the play button at the bottom of this post to listen to our podcast for my initial review of the software.)

Company Brief: Sorenson Media

Some super-brief background on Sorenson Media:

The company been around since 1995.
Their Sorenson Spark video technology is one of the longest-available and widely used codecs. It was the first video codec in Apple QuickTime and Macromedia Flash (Now Adobe). And up until fairly recently, all YouTube videos were encoded in Spark as well.

What’s new with Squeeze 6: Faster, Better Quality, Improved UI, and Better Workflow

Sorenson’s press release covers all of the new features of Squeeze 6, including:

Improved video quality and encoding speed
One-step publishing and syndication, which they tout as “set it and forget it.”
Review, approval, and notification capabilities for both account holders and clients/collaborators (via email or text message, web or mobile)
Enhanced user interface (UI), including an intro screen of tutorial videos for new users, and;
Direct publishing and syndication to more video sharing sites (YouTube, Twitter), and content delivery networks (Akamai, Limelight)
More presets and filters.
Encoding filter On2VP6 included
Improved integration with AVID, Final Cut Pro, QuickTime Pro, and iMovie
Complimentary account for all Squeeze 6 purchasers to Sorenson’s own video publishing platform and delivery network, Sorenson 360.
Training videos now included with software purchase.

Squeeze 6's new user interface (UI)

The price is $799 for new users ($499 for Flash-only module), and $199 for the upgrade – with same pricing for Mac and Windows.

Interview with Sorenson Media’s President and CEO, Peter Csathy.

How significant is this software release compared to previous versions of Squeeze?

Peter: This is a significant produce release for us. We haven’t had a new product released for well over a year now. It’s more of a melding with our 360 Product into a total workflow solution. That’s the central theme of Squeeze 6: It’s no longer just a stand-alone application for video encoding; it’s now a total workflow solution for the video professional and the business user.

What challenges are you looking to solve for video professionals and business users with this new release?

Previously, the video professional has had multiple ‘pain points’ along their workflow journey. They may have used Squeeze and that’s great, but then there’s all the other things that they need – the publishing, hosting, streaming, analytics – all pieces they need as part of their overall workflow solution. That’s what we’ve tied together with Squeeze 6; we’re making the process as painless as possible for the video professional, so they can get back to their work.

Here’s a great line from one video professional: video encoding is the modern-day equivalent to watching paint dry. Up until this time, the video professional has been chained to their desk in many respects. They would start a job, not know when it was finished, there wasn’t any interactivity really available on the mobile side to make things happen efficiently from a time perspective. That video professional also had a bunch of disjointed tools to work with. We’re solving that, and the need is obviously greater than before, because professional video content is growing by leaps and bounds.

At the end of that day, for that video professional and for businesses that rely upon video (and that will essentially be all businesses in the next couple of years), as one of our own customers has said, “quality is credibility.” Consumer-grade videos are just not enough. And that’s for all of the things that go with that – the lack of control, the advertisements – all of that. Quality is credibility – whether someone is marketing their services, their wares, themselves, or their brand.

What were trying to do with our legacy is raise the bar again. There are 3 themes you’ll see: Our first one that I mentioned is our central theme – that Squeeze 6 is a total solution. It’s also the quality. We’ve raised the bar ourselves with the video quality with our industry-winning H.264 compression, and making the encoding process as fast as possible. But it’s not just the encoding process; it’s the freedom. This will free up the video professional so they, and those who they work with, can be as efficient as possible.

Listen to my podcast show reviewing Squeeze 6, where I go into some of the new features, and discuss my own thoughts on how well it lives up to its billing of “the total video workflow solution.”

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Evaluating New Media Opportunities? Think Like a Venture Capitalist

Mark R Robertson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:00:57 +0000

There are a million and one new advertising platforms, technologies and tools today, it seems. So how can you figure out which new media opportunities to test and try? Use the same criteria a venture capitalist would use for investing.

Online advertising executive turned venture capitalist Brian McAndrews shared his specific tips at the iMedia Summit and Daisy Whitney shares them with her viewers in this week’s New Media Minute. This episode also includes the latest insight from interactive agency Questus on how young consumers are relying on social media to make purchase decisions.

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CIMA Survey – Video and Search Receive Highest Results

Grant Crowell — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:50:57 +0000

I interview the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association’s (CIMA) partner analyst Troy Mastin about their newly-released 7th Semiannual Interactive Marketing Survey, and we discussed what the findings say about the emphasis that agencies are giving to online video and search marketing for business.

How did this survey and panel event get started?

Troy: I came up with the idea of the survey three years ago, when I was working as an analyst for a firm in Chicago called William Blair & Company. I thought that it would be a good idea to get some proprietary differentiated information. I also felt that this could get some attention and it could become something bigger by adding some sort of a discussion element to it, rather than its one-directional communication.

This survey you’ve presented is meant to be “state of the industry” in Chicago. What is a good way to describe the makeup of the CIMA survey group?

As you can see from our pie chart, our group is pretty heavily skewed towards media sales. So, kind of agency advertiser are about 40% might be one way to put it; media sales are about 40% and other, which I would presume to be a combination of technology companies, that type of thing.

According to your survey respondents, search engine optimization (SEO) and SEM continue to be identified as the most effective internet marketing methods.

SEO is 12%, SEM is 12%, SEO got one more vote than SEM; contextual targeting is 12% with one fewer votes so those three together make up 36% which is kind of interesting. I always find something interesting here is that all this new stuff that everybody is so enamored with tends to score relatively low – like media exchange is at 1%; blogging, Twitter at 5%…

Why do you think some of these “new school” tactics are considered less effective? Is it because of their novelty or that they haven’t really been proven yet to be as effective?

I think it’s probably both, but I think probably more often than not, people are more often enamored with new; and in reality, new isn’t as good as old. Now, I think clearly when it comes to the Internet, in general, that was maybe the case early on. If you go back eight or nine years to when we kind of had a dot-com implosion but, so many times I’ve witnessed companies pursue acquisition strategies – investment strategies, focused on the new, and the reality is the new just doesn’t measure up. 9 times out of 10, I would guess that the new doesn’t pan out to be as robust as expected, at least at certain times.

This question is interesting because it really talks about what’s happening in the businesses today; and what this says is that what drives results are really those things that have been around awhile. For these newer things – either the model hasn’t been figured out yet, or perhaps there never will be a model that will drive results for marketers.

From this survey data, what connection can you make to video and its driving results with search?

I know we didn’t directly ask questions connecting the two (video and search), but yes, video and search regularly perform well. As you can see in one of our slides, the two highest scoring results are rich media and search. That said, we did add mobile and I think mobile outscores that now – and certainly the fastest growth in the coming year.

Would you agree that at least for now, rich media and search are more accessible to a larger business audience than mobile?

I agree. Mobile will be important, but will it be a key driver of search and video? Yeah, to a certain extent I suspect it will be for search, but for very specific searches – certain classes of search. Certainly, location-based searches will be increasingly relevant for mobile – but I think a lot the search activity will probably never go into mobile, and same with video…

CIMA’s next event will be taking place on Thursday November 19, 2009, titled 2009 Industry Review & 2010 Predictions, at the Westin on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago.

Special thanks to ReelSEO’s contributing reporter, Erika Blackwell, for her on-site coverage of this event.

This is a post from ReelSEO Video Marketing
Permalink: CIMA Survey – Video and Search Receive Highest Results

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Viral Video Round Up – Lessons From This Week’s Viral Successes

Jeremy Scott — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:54:23 +0000

Welcome back to the third edition of this weekly series where we examine viral video successes (and sometimes failures). The goal is to reverse engineer the examples to help break apart and identify what factors helped the video go viral. Learning from those who succeeded before us is the surest way to find our own success.

Let’s look at three videos that went viral in the last week or so.

1. The Kid

One of the most tried and true methods for viral success is to involve a child in your video, preferably one that is either cute or outrageous (or both). This first viral success story is about just such a child. Giuliano, the child star of the piece, is a 4-year-old weightlifter, and the video shows him performing various feats of strength.

The video was featured on Yahoo recently, as well as numerous other outlets, and has quickly amassed a ton of attention and views.

The four-minute video I’m embedding below is the most popular on YouTube (nearing 5 Million views after only seven days), but there are several versions, copies, and snippets of this on the site. There can be no denial that he is incredibly strong—just watch the video if you doubt it. He’s even got six-pack abs!

Check it out:

Click here to watch the video.

Say what you will about how healthy it is for a child of this age to be doing strenuous activities like bodybuilding… the video has undeniably captured the attention of the masses. People just love videos of extraordinary kids.

Clearly this viral success story is not backed by any corporation or company. There’s no commercial spin to this. Just a video of an exceptional child that is making audiences either cheer with delight or groan nervously.

I wish I had a more profound takeaway for you here, but the real lesson is truly this: people love kids. This truth is upheld with other famous viral videos like David After Dentist (33 Million Views), Pearl the Landlord (67 Million Views), Charlie Bit My Finger (130 Million Views), and Hahaha (or “laughing baby”, 95 Million Views). Last week’s roundup featured a miniature hockey sensation illustrating this same point.

Parents have been putting their talented kids in the spotlight for generations, so this concept shouldn’t be new. If there’s a master list of Topics Likely To Go Viral, kids and babies would be near the top, followed closely by Pratfalls, Sports Clips, Music Videos, Cute Animals, and Flash Mobs

I’m not suggesting you completely scrap your viral marketing concept in favor of something kid-centric. However, if you have an exceptional tyke nearby—and don’t mind permanently scarring them for life by making them a YouTube sensation—it can’t hurt to include such a child in your viral efforts.

2. The Zinger

The second example of viral success this week comes from someone who is no stranger to viral video success: Jimmy Kimmel.

You may remember his war with Matt Damon making headlines a couple years back, as he and his then-girlfriend traded video barbs about who they were “cheating” on each other with (Damon and buddy Ben Affleck were quite the good sports about it).

Kimmel’s newest viral success would seem to be completely unplanned. While interviewing Dancing With The Stars contestant Melissa Joan Hart—she of the Sabrina The Teenage Witch fame—Kimmel asked a question about her using witchcraft during her dancing competitions.

Clearly perturbed at having to answer yet another question about her ancient past, the actress tried to zing Kimmel. Unfortunately, most talk show hosts are quite adept at trading zingers, and Kimmel shot right back a joke that was even better.

Watch the exchange here

Click here to watch the video.

You almost have to feel sorry for Hart. It’s like me stepping into the Octagon with a UFC champion… there’s just a clear mismatch. I’m sure she’s tired of having to talk about her previous career choices, and is anxious to become known for something more current. But it’s never wise to try and burn the host of the show you’re being interviewed on, as I’m guessing she’s now learned.

The lesson? Well, that some of the best viral videos aren’t planned in advance. Capturing an unplanned awkward moment or accident is tough to do, to be sure. And Kimmel has the luxury of always having his show being filmed.

But I tell my clients all the time that if they have a video camera—particularly if they have one of the many portable cameras like the Flip—there’s really no reason to not be filming regularly at events and excursions. You never know when you might capture something so hilarious (or, on the flip side, so horrendous) that it could go viral in days.

This clip below has nearly 400,000 views in under two days, and that’s only this version (as with most videos online, there are several versions floating around on various platforms).

I’m not suggesting you turn a video camera on yourself 24/7. That’s called life-casting, and is something most of us want no part of. But your business has events, goes to golf tournaments, and has employee parties, right? What’s the harm in filming some of that?

Candid moments like this are incredibly hard to fake, as Spike Jonze and Kanye West illustrated this week with their fairly lame fake fight. (Oh, and on the topic of SEO, what is with that Huffington Post tag system above the article on that link? Can you say “trying too hard”?)

You will certainly never catch a moment like Kimmel’s or any of the other famous “accidental” viral videos if you aren’t even filming.

3. The Geek Out

If I had a nickel for every time someone had forwarded me the “2009 Best Apple iPhone Costume Ever!” video, I would have a heck of a lot of nickels. Uploaded on October 24, the video has already amassed nearly half a million views.

Take a look:

People love the iPhone. I would love it myself, if I didn’t mind switching to AT&T—but that’s another post for another blog.

People also love Halloween costumes. There’s this entire subculture of Halloween costume admiration online, and it grows stronger every year.

This video features two guys in full-body iPhone costumes that make them appear to be working, human-sized versions of the smart phone. In reality, it’s pretty clear they’ve modified a couple televisions to resemble an iPhone, and then hooked their real iPhones up to them.

While the explanation behind how the costumes work is very simple, the effect is that they appear to be giant walking iPhones.

The lesson? Tap into what’s hot. Nothing’s hotter today than Halloween, as the holiday arrives tomorrow. And in tech… there’s still nothing hotter than the iPhone (no matter what Verizon’s Droid wants you to believe). Smash those two together and you have a built in audience in the millions.

Distribution is always the hurdle for viral success, no question. Getting those first viewers to find your content is the toughest part. But everyone faces that hurdle. Starting out of the gate with content that is predestined to appeal to a wider portion of the video-seeking audience is a huge leg up on the competition.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s round up. I’ll be back next week with another. Feel free to share any success or failure stories with me (your own or those you find online) that you think should be included in the round up.

Best of luck in your viral video adventures.

This is a post from ReelSEO Video Marketing
Permalink: Viral Video Round Up – Lessons From This Week’s Viral Successes

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