Video is an engaging medium. And we mean, truly engaging… not the fluffy type that you hear about on Facebook webinars. Video is the kind of engaging with stats to back it up.

Not only do people prefer to watch a video to learn more about you, when a website has video on it, visitors will stay longer and be more likely to make a purchase.

“60% of business people said they would rather watch a video explanation than read the text on a webpage.” [source: Forbes.com]

“Retail site visitors who view video stay 2 minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors.” [source: comScore]

“A significant 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2012.” [source: Social Media Examiner, April 2012]

If that isn’t enough convincing for you to take video as a serious part of your digital marketing mix, then consider the fact that video is the easiest way to a first page ranking on Google.

In the slideshare document below, we go show you all of the channels you can be using to boost your company’s video presence. Get all the details, tactics, and tools that can take your video distribution and marketing to the next level.

Aside from the supporting stats, I’m finding this truth in daily conversations with clients and prospects asking a common set of questions.

What Types of Video Should You Be Aware of For Marketing?

Video has value for two main reasons:

• Social: The power of sharing is a metric that is quickly trumping clicks. YouTube clued many into this in May when they began a cost per view advertising model, as opposed to a cost per click.
• Search Engine Visibility: Forrester research has pointed to the fact that web pages with video stand a 50 percent better chance than text pages alone of showing up on the first page of Google search results.

The following are eight types of video you should consider for marketing:

1. Slideshows: This could be considered a low-cost/entry-level method of creating YouTube assets or simply a repurposing of presentation (PowerPoint slides, photos, shorter video clips) content that is converted into video. Could you expect this kind of video to go viral? Likely not, but it’s potentially a good start to increased search visibility for targeted keywords. Check out Animoto as a low cost resource for helping you build such assets.
2. Product Demonstrations: The more you can tell a story in the context of a product demonstration, the better. Note: the number of product demo videos to promote mobile apps is increasing. Example: Word Lens iPhone App.
3. How To / Tutorials: Serve an immediate (searched for) need while also positioning yourself or your brand as the expert on that subject matter. For web-based tutorials (as well as product demos), the use of screencast software like ScreenFlow or Camtasia is a no-brainer. Example: Brandon Whalen’s post “How to Get Started With Google Plus.”
4. Case Studies and Video Testimonials: Considering the effectiveness of product reviews, it isn’t surprising that customer testimonials via video can drive real results. Additional advantages are present with a video case study that can also be repurposed for online press releases, landing pages, and award submissions: Example: Sanrio Store Locator video featured on Facebook Studio.
5. Social Videos: Although “social” is a potential value to any form of online video, these types typically focus a more intentional (with supporting budget) approach to viral activation. Like game mechanics, the core of what motivates people to act (in this case, share) is fully tapped. Check out Jeremy Scott’s Social Video Blueprint series, which highlights several social video examples.
6. Video Vignettes: This kind of production can be effective in supporting a series of videos, or simply helping to create an impression/focus around an organizations’ culture and ideas. A good example of this can be seen via The Founders TechStars videos.
7. Video Scribing: This evolving, white-board animation methodology was first made popular by Cognitive Media’s RSA Animate videos. The key to this medium is effective and concise storytelling, where potentially long stories with various complexities can be synthesized to the essentials. Example: The Story of Linux.
8. Branching Videos: This is an emerging form of interactive video that “branches” to other videos based on a choose-your-own-adventure model. There are some very cool things happening in this space in terms of analytics, publishing tools and engagement. Keep your eye on FlixMaster as a company supporting (HTML5-powered) video publishing tools that could help shape the next generation in video marketing.

Quick Video Marketing Tips and Trends

Apologies for stating the obvious, but if you aren’t already doing this, YouTube advertising is something you need to seriously consider as part of your video strategy – especially considering how relatively inexpensive it still is.

Lauren Fisher’s post on why and how to run an effective YouTube video ad campaign is definitely worth a read. And as Chris Schreiber stated in his post about Google+ driving social video growth:

“It’s quite possible that we will look back on the Google+ launch as a landmark moment for social video advertising, because of the new possibilities it created for people to share, co-view, chat and text about entertaining videos.”

Outside of advertising, meta data is an important part of your strategy to ensure videos are effectively indexed on search engines. Brightcove’s Sara Watson references the first best practice of a social video program as leveraging the power keywords in your video’s titles, descriptions and tags to maximize search engine visibility.

One of the best tips I picked up from Greg Jarboe at an OMS conference pertains to the fact that YouTube gives you 5,000 characters to describe your video. That translates to approximately 850 words – and if you treat that 850 words as an SEO’d webpage, also using your targeted keywords within the video’s title and tags – your likelihood of being indexed on page 1 of Google for those words substantially increases.

This becomes an extremely important tactic when considering how some web pages have seemed to lock up the placement of top search rankings on highly competitive search terms.

As it’s been established, audiences will reward emotional content (humor, surprise, curiosity) within video by sharing it with others. But also of importance, is the means by which video content can be optimized for high search engine visibility.

Answers to these questions begin with an understanding of game mechanics, which encompasses a range of rules and theories aimed at positively engaging human behavior.

What Worked Then Still Works Today

Without delving as far back as we could, a common early example of game mechanics in marketing was the creation of the frequent flier program by American Airlines almost 30 years ago.

The game mechanics that made American Airlines’ program successful then are the same making others successful to this day: collecting, points, access, status, rewards.

Because these mechanics are now being focused around driving online engagement, often within a social network, we are witnessing the emergence of a new market of developers and best practices dedicated to helping companies “game-ify” their marketing.

Gamification and Funware

Yes, two more buzz words for your collection. As Gabe Zichermann, co-author of “Game-based Marketing” discusses, almost any task can be designed in a way to make it more fun.

Zichermann, who coined the term Funware, is one of a growing number of experts helping companies understand gamification. Beyond the impression-based concept of inserting brands into games as a marketing tactic, Zichermann challenges us to consider a new paradigm where the brand is the game.

What do the game makers know?

Game Mechanics Work When it Comes to Engaging People

Game company SCVNGR understands this so well they even made “Game Dynamics Playdeck,” a game to help their employees keep game mechanics top of mind.

Erick Schonfeld first published SVNGR’s playdeck on TechCrunch, which includes a comprehensive set of definitions and examples of game mechanics — but even greater insight (along with all contents of the playdeck) can be gained from Adrian Chan‘s expert follow-up post, “I Just Killed a Social Game Mechanic.”

Game Makers Understand the Importance of Fun

Part of that reality translates to a short shelf life for copycat development endeavors that apply uninventive game mechanics only to prod actions towards empty marketing objectives.

I spoke to Zac Brandenberg, CEO of Meteor Games at length about this. Meteor was spawned from the cofounders of neopets.com, an early virtual gaming venture that sold to Viacom for $160 million in 2005.

Brandenberg’s message to me was loud and clear: “Simplicity is current, but audiences become more demanding for the next best thing. The design of (social) games are evolving to become real entertainment, not just for motivating a click that expands a friend base.”

From a marketing perspective, Brandenberg acknowledges the most successful games of the future won’t necessarily be the ones with the largest user base, and from a monetization perspective, smaller audiences (perhaps still in the millions-per-month category) are frequently more engaged, the more tailored the game is to their interests and entertainment levels.

Practical Takeaways

1. We as marketers need not become gaming experts to benefit from game mechanics. Watch Amy Jo Kim’s presentation on MetaGame design. The steps she outlines should motivate you.
2. Game mechanics can have a limited focus, and still be very effective depending on your goal. The Hello Kitty app referenced in “Social Intelligence for Facebook Marketing” takes one simple (but powerfully effective) cue from applications like Farmville — sending people virtual gifts. From virtual to real, the new Ford Focus campaign on Facebook is predominantly tapping into the charity-based game mechanic — enabling multiple participants to not only win something, but also direct $10,000 to the charity of their choice.
3. Become a better marketer by getting familiar enough with game-based marketing to identify which human desires are fulfilled by game mechanics. Bunchball’s Gamification 101 white paper covers several key topics pertaining to this in detail.
4. Companies will continue emerging to fill new needs. Each of us have opportunities to learn how we can apply and even create our own context for game-based marketing — and as the field continues to grow, new companies like Big Door, a game mechanics platform provider, will step in to help.

Constant Connected Consumer

Understanding how mobile can support your existing marketing programs and developing a mobile strategy is the best place to start. But, if you want to jump right in, one of the easiest and most effective ways to generate mobile marketing success is a dedicated mobile search campaign.

Mobile search as has grown 400% in the past year*. Hybrid campaigns which target desktop computers and mobile devices can be effective, but to truly maximize mobile visibility, advertisers should budget for separate mobile campaigns for these 10 reasons –

1. Mobile use is on the rise and it’s only expected to significantly increase in 2012.

2. Google has seen advertisers experience an 11.5% average increase in mobile CTR with a dedicated mobile campaign.

3. Gain better insight into your campaigns performance allowing you to optimize mobile ads without impacting your desktop campaign.

4. Customized mobile ad creative will connect better with your mobile audience, “Download your mobile coupon”.

5. Mobile device specific features influence immediate action, such as Click-to-Call or Text coupon to 1234.

6. 1in 3 mobile searches have local intent. You can be local in search before you think about location-based apps or services.

7. Mobile optimized landing pages will increase mobile page rank which will improve your campaign performance.

8. Search is a great way to better understand you audience before investing in expanded mobile experiences.

9. As you finish this blog post someone else just purchased a smart phone and mobile search grown.

*Google Insights

If you are an SEO, I bet you get a little tired of making titles out of keywords like “mobile application development” and “business process improvement”? I sure do. While keyword optimized titles are legit SEO-wise, it can be challenging to create an interesting title out of dull keywords.

Back in my more regular blogging days (3-5 per week) one of my most ridiculous blog titles was, “Rich Internet Application Database Development: Project Crescent” Keyword stuffing anyone? I was obviously tired after writing the article, and just took the easy (and boring) way out with the title.

If you read the content/news-aggregator Huffington Post, you know that they have great titles for their syndicated content. I visit often and usually make several tabs of articles I want to read, simply because the titles are so interesting and make me to want to know more.

Because Huffington Post is an aggregator, they have the luxury of having both a title that is optimized (coming from the actual news source) and a vanity title (that they ‘rename’ the content, this is the one you see and click on). This means they can focus on pure draw with the headline.

Here are a few examples:

Unfortunately, we’re not all aggregators and cannot have vanity titles for our own original content. There is however a lesson in this; about breaking the mold on conventional titles.  In the ever-evolving world of SEO, Google Panda and changing user relevancy algorithms, creating less keyword-stuffed, more interesting titles will serve us better rankings and popularity-wise.

How to Create Interesting Titles for Content:

Limit keywords: Fit in a keyword if you can, 1-2 maximum. We know sometimes they have to be there, but do not keyword stuff.

Leave them asking questions: “How did she change it all?” “How was the Cain Train rocked?” Make readers want to answer the question that comes from the title.

Put away the thesaurus: Try to use smaller words; big words do not register as easily with readers.

Test Different Things: Test a sensational/goofy/alluring title once-in-a-while to see if it works.

Take some time to think about it. Many of us rush titles because it’s the last thing we think about; but it’s really the price tag on your product. How will your title entice people to act?

Soldier On SEOs!

Jansen’s latest book, Understanding Sponsored Search, is a great pickup for anyone interested in the foundational elements behind search marketing.

Capture the Conversation: How is search marketing affected by social media like Facebook and Twitter?
Jim Jansen: Social media has already had an impact on search marketing. Facebook’s online advertising platform seems to be working well, with their demographic targeting. The viral component of social media, on Facebook and Twitter, seems to be an effective marketing and advertising medium. So, social media aspects will probably be more closely connected in the future.

CTC: Will Google+ have a big impact on search results and Google advertising?
JJ: Personally, don’t know if Google+ is disruptive enough to change the marketplace any, relative to what Facebook and Twitter are already doing. However, the ability of Google to link all their products within a browser is or can be a key advantage. We’ll see though. To me, it doesn’t seem like a disruptive enough technology to make much (i.e. >10%) of a difference.

CTC: With location-based deals becoming a popular means of marketing, how do search marketers react?
JJ: The location deals are really popular because they are really targeted geographically. One might see an even more tightening and targeting by location and interests. For example, I like the restaurant offers now. Not keen on the spa treatments. I see this as another avenue of marketing for commercial entity. Everything doesn’t have to fit in the sponsored search/keyword advertising box.

CTC: How do search marketers prepare for the rise of the mobile web?
JJ: After years of predicting “this is the year of mobile,” mobile is already here. And search engine marketers should already be working this aspect into their normal routines. Mobile, combined with the smart phone technology, has change the way people interact with the web.

CTC: Do you have any tips or unique ideas to build off-page links?
JJ: Provide good content and a great user experience first!

About the author: Jim Jansen is an associate professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several books, most recently UNDERSTANDING SPONSORED SEARCH (Cambridge University Press, September 1, 2011). He is currently a senior fellow at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, where he studies the uses and affordances of the Web for information searching and ecommerce, with a focus on the interaction between the person and the technology.

Honestly, initial engagement around this news leads me to believe people are not understanding how significant it actually is. Time (and search results) will certainly tell – but in the spirit of helping companies do all the right things to get and keep high search engine visibility – here’s some quick insight:

What’s Schema and Why Should We Care
Schema is a collection of new HTML tags that help search engines more accurately index relevant content within web pages.

Since the collaboration and roll-out of this new tagging system was coordinated by the three leading search engines, everyone should be looking at Schema (schema.org) as a new standard for making web pages as search engine friendly as possible.

Note: I appreciate the arguments about how The Big Three have dictated this change, essentially skipping organizational/open review processes often associated with creating “standards.” But what’s done is done – so in the spirit of Heartbreak Ridge, it’s now time to improvise, adapt and overcome.

What You Should Do
Start by making sure your webmaster or whomever is handling SEO/search engine visibility for your web properties is on this. I’d recommend proceeding as follows:

1. Get oriented on why and how: The Schema site FAQ is a good overview of the purpose and reasoning behind the big change – but the real meat of what and how to implement the new markup language resides within the Getting Started documentation.
2. Get familiar with the Schema vocabulary applicable to your web pages: This begins to get technical, but the Getting Started document provides a good understanding of how information within your web page can be structured through “types” and “properties.”Even without being technically-minded, you can look at the full list of item types to get a quick idea of the kind of web page attributes which can now be indexed via the new standard.
3. Create a Schema plan: Conduct an audit of your web pages/sites to match applicable content with the Schema item types. You have numerous options for documenting how you will go about making changes, depending on how detailed you want to get. A spreadsheet might be the most helpful for organizing items types and properties by page, content sections, etc.
4. Make the Changes and Test Your Results: Google promises the Rich Snippets Testing Tool will soon support testing of the new Schema tags to ensure you have an opportunity to see how your content is parsed/displayed in the search results. I would recommend implementing your schema plan regardless of how long it takes for this tool to be ready for prime time. As always, keep an eye on your analytics to see the results of your changes.

A couple of other thoughts that come to mind with this change pertain to how we’ll begin seeing search results adjust due to those taking advantage of Schema vs. those who are not. Other than our own clients’ search results, we’ll of course be watching organizations like SEOMoz to see what they come up with in terms of research to validate the predicted significance.

I’m also curious about how the use of Schema might effect quality scores on landing pages used in conjunction with pay per click marketing. I can only guess that search engine ads driving traffic to pages that leverage schema will have a greater likelihood of higher placement and lower cost per click.

As Marshall Kirkpatrick stated yesterday, “This will change the way people design websites, it will change the way people do search marketing, it will change a lot of things. It should be very, very interesting.” I agree. How bout’ you?

But, when I read stats like “84% use mobile search to look for information on local retailers“, and “88% of these users take action within a day,” I can’t help but think the people who can benefit most from a mobile marketing strategy are local business owners.

Sadly, many local businesses don’t understand how their customers are changing the way they shop. Here are a few very convincing stats that should encourage you to think about your mobile marketing strategy:

• 95 percent of smartphone users have looked for local information
• 88 percent of these users take action within a day
• 1 in three mobile Google searches is local
• 80% of searchers research online before purchasing in a 10-20 mile radius

Yes, the numbers can get overwhelming, but what this means is:

Local shoppers (your neighbors, friends, family, and customers) use their mobile phones to search for information on local businesses (ie. the coffee shop on the corner) and they make purchase decisions based on what they find.

In short, you need a mobile marketing plan. Below, there are a few easy tips for local business owners to get started with mobile:

1. Claim your listings on Google, Yelp, and Facebook.
Make sure the information on those listings is accurate. Create deals for your customers using the easy tools they provide (Learn about easy local deals on Google, Yelp, and Facebook).

2. Create a simple mobile version of your website.
Start with a single landing page and a clear call to action. Make it easy to find a map or contact your business when someone visits your site on a phone. There are some great tips on this blog post.

3. Run Google Mobile Ads on mobile searches in your area.
If you are a plumber in Denver, you want your ads to appear when someone in Denver Googles “broken pipes.” “plumbing,” or “plumbers” on their phone. You don’t need a big budget to see results.

If you get started with these three things, you will be miles ahead of your competitors. As an added bonus, people have seen significantly higher return on investment in local search ads (In this example, Roy’s Restaurants saw 800% ROI).

Feel free to contact bwhalenATroom214DOTcom with any questions.

Neglecting your ongoing account optimization

Seems obvious, but a lot of folks get their account all set up and then forget about it completely. This is what we like to call the “set it and forget it” mentality. It is absolutely critical to not do this, as what will typically happen is your account will spiral out of control. Maybe there’s a rogue display network placement that is spending all your budget without bringing quality traffic and conversions to your site. Maybe your keyword bids that were once good are now way too low and your average position is such that your ads aren’t showing. Maybe the Google Search Partners are sucking hard. Maybe your credit card changed and you aren’t even running ads. Point is, if you aren’t keeping track, something will go horribly wrong with your account in time. Be warned … Ok that’s the end of my ominous rant.

Not using conversion tracking

So, you’re driving traffic to your website. What do you want users to do after clicking on your site? Please, please, please don’t tell me you just want to bring “traffic”. That’s what I like to call wasting your money. Surely there is some funnel you want users to find and ultimately click. It can be buying products, signing up for email newsletters, filling out forms, downloading assets (behind forms), or the like. But you need to get conversion tracking in place to be able to monitor how many users are performing the desired action. Conversion metrics are the gold mine for PPC.

Grouping too many keywords into ad groups

I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been guilty of this before. Sometimes you want to get the new ad group up and running ASAP, but keep these ad groups as granular as possible. I have ad groups with one keyword in it. Why, you ask? Think of how targeted you can make your ad, which will improve your CTR, which will raise your quality score, which will make the keyword less expensive, which makes everyone happy.

Forgetting about landing pages

Ever search for something in particular, click on a PPC and and get taken to the home page of the site? Usually not super helpful. What you want to do is take users to a highly relevant landing page. I’ve got clients where we have 15+ specific PPC landing pages. I’m sure there are clients with many, many more. Are you an e-commerce site? At least take users to the product page of the product they are searching for. It is a pain sometimes to get tons of PPC specific landing pages dialed in, but it is worth it. As I’ve said, ads really just compel users to click. Landing pages take that user expectation and ideally, funnel users to a conversion. Therefore, I cannot stress how important landing pages are.

Leaving ad serving at optimized instead of rotate

By default, Google thinks it knows more than you. Which is probably right. But in this case, you’ll want to set your ad serving to rotate. Otherwise, you won’t get to do real A/B ad testing.

Neglecting negative keywords

Good way to save some money. You can do a little work when first setting up your accounts by thinking of similar terms that might show your ad that simply aren’t relevant. You can also see what actual searches your ads are showing for by clicking the “See search terms” button in the “Keywords” tab. You can then sort by spend and see which terms are bringing in traffic without converting. There are a lot of useful blog posts on the Internet about negative keywords if you’d like more detailed information.

Any of you readers have any other common mistakes to avoid with AdWords? I’d love to hear them.

However keyword research isn’t just for optimizing websites or building out pay-per-click campaigns anymore. Utilizing keyword research for social media optimization has become an important tactic for improved online visibility. Why do you need to worry about including high quality keywords in your social content? By “high quality”, I am referring to those keyword phrases that are very relevant to your business, have significant search volume and in some cases have low competition.

1. For Greater Social Network Visibility
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, behind Google. Twitter search is widely used and incorporated into many 3rd party clients/tools. Facebook search… well Facebook search is awful but has to improve at some point. Optimizing social content with high quality keywords is important for improved visibility on each social network. Including keyword phrases in titles, post content, descriptions, tags, and image/video names are all important areas to focus on for optimization.

Greater visibility in social networks will help build your community, grow engagement and drive high quality traffic back to your website. The next time you are reviewing your site analytics, check out your website’s referral traffic stats. There is a good chance you are experiencing a steady increase in referral traffic from social network sites.  If you are using Google Analytics, here is a great tutorial on how to set up an advanced segment to track referral data from all social media sources together.

2. For Greater Search Engine Visibility
For well over a year, Google and Bing (which powers Yahoo) have been displaying traditional search results blended with content from social networks, such as branded profiles, publicly posted content and real-time updates. Authority and popularity of the content are certainly factors in determining what gets displayed in search results however search engines need a way to categorize all of this social content, which means… keyword phrases.

Putting it all together
This graph helps to illustrate how traditional search engine optimization and social media optimization increase visibility (a.k.a. awareness) and drive traffic from multiple channels (click to enlarge).

Greater visibility in search engine and social network search results will lead to greater awareness, traffic, leads, revenue and brand advocates – the ultimate conversion in social media marketing. This reinforces the importance of having a well-managed social presence with a content strategy for converting visitors and achieving your ultimate business objectives for social media.

Getting Started
Go dig into some keyword research, compile a short list of high-priority keywords, print it out, laminate it and give it to every person in your company who creates content for social. Going forward, have a keyword focus when writing tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube video headlines/descriptions/tags, image names etc… Be cautious though, you don’t want to sound like a robot spewing nonsensical keyword phrases. The content has to be engaging and entice clicks.

Similar to traditional SEO, it is not enough to just optimize content with keywords. The content has to add value and you must work the popularity contest that is link building by sharing content everywhere.

Bottom line: If you are not utilizing keyword research for social media optimization, you are missing out on an opportunity for improved online visibility.