Here are links to see the new season pass finder app and season passes info app for the 2012-2013 season in all of their 810 pixel width glory. I’ve posted screenshots below as well.

What the season pass finder does is help users determine what pass is best for their needs, based on the number of estimated days the user plans on skiing at each resort. The application’s logic determines all available pass options and then outputs the best pass option based on lowest calculated cost per day. Additionally, there is still a backend CMS that allows page admins to change pricing, images and copy on the fly. When pass or resort pricing is adjusted, the app’s logic still works its magic, outputting the best pass option based on lowest price per day. It’s pretty awesome if we do say so ourselves. Let’s take a look at what the apps look like:

Season Pass Finder Header

We built a new header module with additional functionality to mirror the epicpass.com website, where users can hover/click on each resort logo and get a nice summary of the mountain, in addition to adding the Like button which allows users to easily subscribe to each resort’s Facebook updates.

Initial State

Clicked State

Season Pass Finder Main Functionality

The core functionality of this app is pretty similar to last year, but the app now looks much clearer, which should help increase engagement. We also had to add in another resort, Kirkwoord, as the Vail Resorts family continues to grow. The first screenshot here shows the default landing state, while the second screenshot is showing how the app adjusts when users select different days on different resorts.

Initial State

Selected State

Season Passes Info Application

In addition to the season passes app, we created a separate new standalone app that outlines all of the pass options and information in an interactive, visually appealing way. To see all the pass info, we utilized styled modals to keep the main state cleaner.

Initial State

More Info Modal State

We’re really excited to continue to build customized, integrated Facebook applications in the new 810 pixel wide space – it’s almost like applications can now exist as microsites within Facebook. What are some of your favorite examples of new apps taking advantage of the new 810 pixel width?

Burt’s Bees Music From Nature: A great piece of content marketing from Burt’s Bees. They worked with a composer to create a musical track made entirely from sounds from nature in celebration of Earth Day.

Paid Media Coming to Fourquare in June: The location-based social network is aiming to launch a paid-media platform in mid-June and is pitching brands to become launch partners.

10 Great Facebook Timeline Examples: We’ve seen a bunch of creative work for Facebook Timeline on brand pages. Here are some more really nice examples of well designed Facebook pages.

Spotify and Coca-Cola Partner To Share Music: It’s interesting to see brands leverage music in the social space to build relationships with users and ultimately increase the intangible value of the brand. Coke is working to not just sell soda but create lifestyles and identities for their consumers.

Online Consumers Vastly Prefer Email for Direct Marketing Messages: Marketing Charts reports that Email is still king for delivering marketing messages that convert.  Here are the highlights: 77% of respondents chose email, with direct mail (letter, catalogs, postcards, etc. – 9%), text messaging (SMS) on a cell phone (5%), Facebook (4%), and phone (2%) trailing distantly.

Smart Car uses Twitter as a Flipbook: Go to Smart Car’s Twitter account for Argentina, scroll down and you’ll see flipbook-style visuals in which they’re creating an animated story/commercial for the brand — all in a venue that’s supposed to be reserved to 140 characters of text. Awesome.

So, what’s in this thing? Expect 20 juicy, knowledge-packed pages on the following:

1. Instagram for Brands: Many organizations are adopting Instagram to extend the essence of their brand through photos and graphics. We outline the incredible growth, emerging opportunities and practical tips for leveraging this fast-emerging social media platform.

2. Mobile Strategy: We highlight the adoption and usage patterns that support mobile as a critical marketing channel. Mobile is now a leading communication channel that consumers use every day to learn, connect and make purchasing decisions. We teach you to define goals and develop strategies that result in winning campaigns.

3. Facebook Parent-Child: Facebook places listings are a common struggle for retail brands with multiple store locations. We explain how the Facebook Parent-Child feature provides brands with the ability to promote retail locations and drive traffic by providing relevant content and running engaging check-in deals.

We’ve worked hard to make this thing valuable, but also readable and digestible. What good are recommendations if you can’t take what you read and put it into action?

To instantly download the report just head to our social media trend report page!

Have questions? Shoot us an email at socialmedia[at]room214[dot]com.

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.

What Happened in 2011

For most brands, perhaps the most predominant focus with Facebook marketing in 2011 was growing the fan base. We saw a variety of custom Facebook applications (tabs) paired with Facebook ad buys – where requiring a Like (the becoming of a fan for that page) was the first or even final call to action.

As a result, some of the most common questions emerging were:

• What’s the value of a Facebook fan?
• How many Facebook fans shouldwe have?
• Now that we have these fans, what should we do with them?
• What can we be doing with Facebook outside of Facebook?

And honestly, many have even asked, “why are we doing this again?”

It’s The Data, Stupid

If you’re saying, “oh no, not another discussion on analytics or the latest changes in Facebook Insights,” fear not. This discussion goes beyond tracking simple key performance indicators (KPIs) within some marketing dashboard that spits out monthly reporting with +/- percentages.

On the contrary, it goes straight to the core of how companies can use a new breed of tools leveraging Facebook data to dramatically improve advertising results, content creation and overall business strategies. For the sake of brevity, we’ll take a quick look at two tools in particular: CalmSea and InfiniGraph.

CalmSea

CalmSea is a technology platform that enables you to create a conversion-based offer that can be accessed via a website, email, tweet, mobile device or Facebook page. As an example, let’s consider a coupon.

Normally, the basic data you would expect to collect with an online coupon might consist of clicks, shares and redemptions. Of course, you may also collect some demographics – or even additional data, depending on form-related entries required of the user in order to get the coupon.

The trick with CalmSea lies within an extra click that prompts your Facebook authorization in exchange for access to the coupon (or other offer). This authorization includes access to 3-4 of your Facebook permissions, which provides the CalmSea platform with multiple data points specific to your social graph (likes, interests, demographics, friends, etc.).

All of this activity can take place on any web page, including your ability to share the coupon with others on Facebook without actually ever going to your Facebook page.

When I spoke to Vivek Subramanian, VP of Products for CalmSea, he said they are seeing upwards of a 70 percent acceptance rate on the permissions authorization for branded apps (which could include coupons, sweepstakes, private sales, group buys and more).

The Power of The Data

CalmSea takes the Facebook user interactions and news feeds around the given offer – then combines that data with purchase/conversion analytics (could be Google Analytics) to aggregate and display insights on segments of users/customers with the highest levels of:

• Engagement
• Profitability
• Influence

This kind of data goes beyond Facebook Insights, in that it enables you to build predictive models based on distinct attributes that best describe current and potential customers with respect to the three items listed above.

In the figure above, you can get a slight feel for CalmSea’s dashboard, which demonstrates, among other items, the ability to view social insights compared to purchase data insights on users who have authorized the offer.

Depending on your role in the company (media buyer, content creator, channel partner/affiliate manager, etc.) this kind of data ideally improves how and where you spend your time and money.

The initial offer you develop with a platform like CalmSea will likely have a consistent conversion rate with similar offers you may have conducted in the past. It’s the offers that follow, leveraging the data collected from your first use of the platform, that stand to produce significantly improved results.

InfiniGraph

The InfiniGraph platform aggregates Facebook and Twitter data for the purpose of identifying relevant (real-time) affinities, content and interests that are trending around a particular brand, product or industry. There are two key considerations with respect to how this platform’s output produces actionable value:

• Improved performance on your Facebook ads: Gives you insights to new interests/keywords you should be targeting as part of your selection process within Facebook’s ad platform.
• Insights to assist with content creation and curation:Gives you a clear picture and delivery mechanism for content that is trending via a content “Trend Score” that algorithmically combines likes, comments, clicks, retweets, and shares.

InfiniGraph’s approach to identifying content that’s trending on Facebook, in particular, provides a level opportunity that is certainly missed by many brands wishing to dive deeper into content strategy (check out the Digital Path to Social Media Success to view the four kinds of content you could be addressing).

To describe how this works, imagine a series of Facebook status updates that are posted about subject matter relevant to your fans (on your Facebook page or another Facebook page your fans follow).

In the sample from InfiGraph above, you can see the dates these status updates were posted, in addition to the enormous amounts of engagement they received. Here’s the problem: Think of how many fans of this page would also be interested in this content, but simply didn’t see it. Now think of how quickly those status updates will slide down the page and disappear.

As Chase McMichael, President of InfiniGraph, told me, “Humans can’t keep up with trending content, nor can they see how content trends across multiple Facebook pages containing fans with similar interest.”

McMichael alludes to “crowdsourcing” of the human voice around collective interests and actions. Not only can this aid in the repurposing of content otherwise lost, but as McMichael so eloquently puts it: “you can know where to double-down from a media buying perspective. Who needs comScore when you have a resource that is guiding you where to advertise based on what a large audience is in essence telling you?”

Wrap-up

Although the summaries on these platforms don’t do them justice, my hope is you’ll be inspired to dig deeper regarding the possibilities they offer. It will be interesting to see how Facebook will continue enabling access to data, but I think it’s a safe prediction that advanced marketers will leverage it to the hilt.

After discussing social media with senior marketers from several large brands, the implementer reference in the above tweet by Shiv Singh really resonates with me.

More brands are taking (social) community management activities back in house while seeking outside expertise to continue guiding decisions around social strategies and applications.

When it comes to the day-to-day of social marketing, corporate competence is rising — and the “yeah, I get that, but what’s next?” mentality is placing a higher demand on strategy with expectations of research (or at least experience) to back it up.

Game Mechanics for Custom Facebook Applications

For those of you sick of hearing about it, I’ll start by saying game mechanics are not a magic silver bullet — and I took great delight in hearing Gowalla CEO Josh Williams proclaim “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges” at Snowcial.

However, like Williams, those who have an established understanding of game mechanics are better positioned to get ahead. Why? Because it’s a matter of better knowing how human behavior works.

If you’re aware of certain ingredients that foster a higher propensity for sharing a social experience on Facebook, then you may realize higher fan growth and engagement as a result of implementation.

I touched on the Sanrio/Hello Kitty gifts application as an example of this when discussing social intelligence for Facebook marketing.

Another recent and impressive implementation of game mechanics (and overall digital strategy) is Vail Resort’s EpixMix, which is also promoted on the Snow.com Facebook page.

Although the application doesn’t reside on Facebook, the Connect functionality takes full advantage of Facebook sharing via passive, automated check-ins at six separate ski resorts, all enabled by an RFID chip embedded in your ski pass.

“Passive” means you don’t need to pull out a mobile device for checking in. Updates to your Facebook feed are automatically posted based on your location with the pass, and one-time Facebook authorization.

A leading game mechanic in play for EpicMix is the use of more than 200 ski pins (digital “stinkin’ badges”) you can earn based on locations you ski at each resort, total feet of elevation skied and more. Although Vail Resort’s CEO, Rob Katz, wasn’t specific about adoption rate when asked, he was very clear about the fact that users signing on to share in Facebook exceeded expectations.

Game on.

Strategic Modeling for Social Strategies

While game mechanics address specific strategies from a human behavior perspective, the bigger and equally important picture pertains to how all elements of social marketing work together for the good of a business.

A valuable, but often overlooked practice is to adopt a model that facilitates a framework for strategy. There are a range of options with strategic models, but the one I follow is a layered (“Four Cs”) approach:

• Content: This is the foundational element, focusing not only on the type of content (video, infographic, written, etc.) but also how to apply supporting research to guide its development and/or justification.
• Context: Think of this second layer as platforms enabling the display and distribution of your content. Facebook, for example, would be an element of context in this model.
• Campaigns: This layer puts the context in action, addressing key variables around planning, implementation, supporting applications, visibility efforts, communication, and measurement.
• Community: As the top layer, the strategic focus centers on loyalty achieved through specific campaigns, advocacy, or customer experiences. Community should be viewed as long-term, with the expectation of learning that can be applied to future iterations of strategy and research.

Practically speaking, we as marketers should be both implementers and “idea evaluators.” But as strategists, we’re called to a higher accountability — one that distinguishes originality from repurposing, and activity from productivity.

“Sweet, Google’s rolling out its own improved version of Facebook. Wait, it doesn’t look like there’s anything going on for businesses with this. Wow, not many clicking on the +1 buttons. Hmmm, none of the cool kids are playing much here – guess we’ll wait and see if this thing grows legs.”

Today, 90 million users later, wait mode is over. Google+ is running on fresh legs – and beckoning us to join while the echo from the starting gun can still be heard.

Jury’s still out, you say? Don’t really want to hear it, as you’ve hit a good stride with other social media activities you must manage? If this aligns at all with your thinking, then now is the time to pretend you have been a bad salesman, and I am Alec Baldwin, who has been sent on a mission of mercy to help set you straight.

The New Necessity of Google+ for Business

Regardless of your experience with Google+, you may still find yourself needing to articulate, even justify (to yourself, your clients or boss), why attention must be paid to this effort.

The most significant reason to get your business on Google+ is simple: The quality and corresponding engagement around your search engine visibility stands to either noticeably improve or gradually decline.

At the heart of this lies the new “Search Plus Your World” algorithm (also referred to as “Search+”), which relies on data collected from logged in Google+ users. The output is search results that display/promote People and (business) Pages in Google+.

This is a bold direction for Google, delivering search results based on a new range of personalization signals that include elements of user engagement we’re familiar with in Facebook (comments, shares, likes – or in Google’s case, +1’s).

Yes, this is still relatively early-stage, but make no mistake. New patterns are being established for the long term. Now, more than ever, is go time.

2 Top Advantages of Google+ Pages for Business

Although related changes to search results were an easy prediction several months ago, there’s now plenty more visible evidence from recent Google algorithm updates that demonstrate the importance of Google+ practices effecting search results both inside and outsidethe Google+ environment.

To clarify on the significance of that last sentence, consider for a moment the work that goes into maintaining status updates and community response on an active Facebook fan page.

Can you get relevant, topical access to Facebook engagement via a Google search? No way. But guess what? You can’t on Facebook either.

Status updates/wall posts come and go. Got a post on your Facebook fan page that got over 350 comments? Cool, but too bad it’s here today and gone tomorrow – soon to vanish with no commonly known way for anyone to look for or happen upon it in the future.

Like Facebook, you’ll see updates from those you follow (Circle) in Google+. But unlike Facebook, the content in your Google+ posts may turn into highly ranked search results on Google (again, inside or outside the Google+ environment) – providing keyword and topic-relevant search engine visibility that improves based on your “AuthorRank” and content-specific engagement levels.

A second key advantage relates to how you can target your messaging and more directly interact with your followers, organizing those you follow into the circles (groups) of your choosing. Google+ has done a good job of enabling a fairly intuitive way to track and engage with segments of an audience curated by you.

Learning From Early Adopters

Perhaps the most valuable piece of advice I can share with you as a marketer who is just getting setup in Google+ or wants to learn more is to create a circle called “Google+ Resources”, then begin to add people and pages who are on the cutting edge of this subject matter.

A good first Google+ page to add would be Google’s own Google+ Your Business page. Toby Stein, the Pages and Mobile Community Manager for Google+, is great about referencing helpful articles and other expert resources in the field.

Recently, Gideon Rosenblatt created a circle that now has over 100 G+ influencers who have demonstrated various levels of thought leadership around social media in the context of this platform. You can follow all of them in the click of a button.

Additional Next-Step Recommendations

I’ve summarized some favorites here, many spelled out in greater detail on Mark Traphagen’s post regarding the “First 5 Things You Should Do with Your Google+ Business Page”:

• Optimize your page for SEO by completing the verification process, adding recommended links and being smart about keyword placement in your Introduction and Subtitle areas. Thanks to people like AJ Kohn, you can get a deeper understanding of this, and take a closer look at the Google+ anatomy from an SEO perspective, for both personal and business pages.
• Take advantage of the “Scrapbook” photos and text editing features to make your page visually appealing and consistent with your brand identity.
• As always, the quality of your content is of paramount importance. Post pictures and videos when possible. Make your first few posts very rich so new potential followers will be attracted by their first impression of what you’re putting out. Don’t assume what resonates on Facebook will also appeal to your audience here.
• Promote your business page by leveraging personal profile pages on G+, announcements/requests to follow on other social networks and by using the Google+ Badge on your web pages.
• Be thoughtful about how you segment your audience with circles, considering how you might post frequently and differently to targeted interests.
• Monitor your stream, and be intentional about +1’s, comments, and shares of your follower’s posts. As Traphagen notes, “such engagement seems to be more valued on G+ than on other networks, and will induce your followers to do the same for you.”

Search Results I See Are Looking Less Like Search Results You See

Despite the strong opinions in this post, and in hopes of convincing you I’m really not a Google groupie fan boy – I will acknowledge that Google’s changes, even with our ability to control multiple query settings, have continued to evolve in a manner that arguably supports the “filter bubble” problem presented in Eli Pariser’s Ted Talk.

Helen Brown recently referenced this, along with a statement I’m empathetically compelled to quote: “Just to do one search in Google the way I used to just last year, I have to turn off two things and turn one on. Every. Single. Time. This is progress?”

We face a slew of other issues and challenges as Google and digital marketing in general continue to evolve. For today, hopefully you gained something that will inspire your next action on Google+.

How social media is being integrated with the whole of digital marketing is one of the greatest momentums we’re now witnessing as marketers.

A great example of this can be seen in Jermiah Owyang’s presentation with Larry Drebes, unveiling recent research that demonstrates the desire and importance of marketers making their websites and social networks work together harmoniously.

Some of these concepts are still in their infancy, so we can all appreciate how Owyang openly refers to “new practices” instead of “best practices.” With this in mind, I’m sharing a model I hope will prove helpful to your own approach to social/digital marketing.

Don’t sweat being unable read the small type in the infographic above, as the core elements to each (zoomed in) section are outlined within the body of this post.

1. Business Intelligence

This part of the path encompasses internal and external data collection that should be leveraged to guide your strategy and shape your ideas.

Practically, this begins with a combination of consumer research, web analytics, and social media monitoring/research. The goal is to interpret the data to uncover what’s working and what’s trending. This is where you can begin to identify opportunities backed by more than just your good ideas.

We consider the “brand filter” as a means of keeping ideas true to the DNA or character of your brand – and this may also include considerations with respect to your resources, history, and customer expectations.

2. Content Creation and Curation

Content is kin_. Sorry, that’s me trying to add a little more interest to a statement overly used but completely true. You know the drill.

There’s some natural redundancy here, but this approach to content for digital marketing comes in four flavors:

1. Useful Content: You’ll want to consider and plan for content that is:
   • Easy for people to share.
   • Data-driven.
   • Can extend to multiple networks and platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, mobile, etc.).
   • Always links to the brand’s position and conviction statements.
2. Content Types: This addresses what the content does and where it comes from:
   • Building trust: Reviews, testimonials, case studies, personal insights, social proofs.
   • Education: Survey data, presentations, infographics, video scribes, FAQs, white papers, how-to’s.
   • Conversion: Promotional offerings, sales and advertising copy.
   • Other People’s Content: User-generated content (UGC), community discussions, republished, shared.
3. Short-Term vs. Long-Term: This addresses intentionality and shelf life:
   • Brand / Conviction Focused: “Evergreen” content that can be repurposed.
   • Supporting Themes: Content with the propensity to attract broad audiences.
   • Campaign Focused: Content used to drive specific interactions.
4. “Psychological Sharing Motivations”: This addresses what inspires people to share:
   • Emotion: The feeling the content has created.
   • Information: Content that is new and/or highly interesting.
   • Self Expression: Content that exemplifies our personality to friends.

3. Activation and Acquisition

This part of the path addresses the digital extension of offline efforts as well as online assets and methodologies to initiate measurable action.

Again, there is natural overlap – but whether your company is seeking to develop short-term marketing campaigns or over-arching customer relationship management (CRM) efforts, the objective is to get the following elements working together:

• PR: Integration of media and influencer relations that drive awareness.
• Email: Messaging, segmentation, and lead nurturing.
• Paid Media: Digital, print, and broadcast.
• Partnerships: Leveraging the established presence and work of others.
• Owned Media: Brand pages, mobile, web, social applications, and private communities.
• Search Visibility: Organic and social search optimization.

4. Engagement

This area of the path is what should ultimately feed back into your business intelligence. As Coca-Cola’s marketing team has taught us, “expressions trump impressions.”

The reality with social: this is often where companies mistakenly focus first. They’ll see some application eye candy on Facebook, lay some cash out for their own branded version of it, then start backing in supporting content and considerations around what might be more relevant as the magic campaign launch date approaches.

Final Thoughts

Like any model, it’s easy to identify what’s missing. I can think of many other elements that could be relevant – while also acknowledging potential points of confusion with respect to platforms, descriptions, the linear order of execution, etc.

Have at it friends! Would love to get your take, or suggestions on how this model could be more useful.

Yet in the last week there’s been a flurry of social chatter about the importance of unplugging and the irrelevance of market research. Thank you very much, Gizmodo and Anna Wintour, respectively.

Sensational as these news bits might be, they do have some account planners wondering, “are we allocating our means appropriately?”  But where to start? ROI forecasting has led many businesses to rely heavily on intelligence results. We often see companies leveraging social listening and digital analytics dashboards while simultaneously measuring other key data points like traffic, content and path analysis reports.

But not to worry, business intelligence is likely trending in your favor. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by Richard Herschel, Chair of the Department of Decision & System Sciences at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, about a third of respondents think it is very important that their organization have a business-centric view of the data model to provide a framework for prioritizing and guiding the development of BI (business intelligence) activities.

The intersection of BI and account planning is rich with opportunities to observe consumer behavior on a scale that was just a decade ago considered impossible. Now, researchers and planners are able to access global data points via social listening to deliver not only better services, but also better products, experiences and ideas.  Take for instance, the spirit of holiday giving and our intrinsic love of samples.  Denver based gluten-free foods maker Udi’s capitalized on this insight with their Udi’s Joy Mission campaign to spread both free food and joy for the holidays. Via Facebook, users could log-in and send real Udi’s food to their friends through the tailored application. To ensure everyone was able to enjoy the holiday cheer, Udi’s donated a meal to local food banks for every new person who liked the page.

Although the idea was simple, based on the human desire to gift and give back, the campaign effectively leveraged fostering an undeniable emotional connection, as some of the best campaigns usually do.

(Full disclosure, Udi’s is part of the current client roster of Room 214)

To mine insights, innovators and ideators alike need simply to log on to a site such as Facebook or  Twitter, (never mind Hootsuite or Co-Tweet or any of the other sometimes difficult to navigate and costly tools) to see what the chatter is all about. With a few more clicks, metrics like geo-location, net sentiment and brand passion are easily accessible.  With just a few more clicks in your data gathering process, you’ll be armed with export and tracking APIs.

But what does all of this intelligence-mining really amount to?

Although technology and campaign planning have recently undergone seismic shifts, consumer fundamentals have not. Success, in the case of being able to effectively leverage BI, manifests as the ultimate data-driven understanding of consumers: who they are, where they are, what they’re saying and how they’ll change.

And just this week, Gizmodo published an article staking the claim that “Facebook is Making Us Miserable,” honing in on that je ne sais quoi that most of us are clamoring for. And of course, that level of venerable cool can’t certainly be achieved by unplugging, can it?

It’s a great idea and all, plush with nostalgia and a sense of the good ol’ days, but simply put, we just can’t disconnect. In the era of mandated transparency driven by the two-way 24-hour news cycle, when we encounter an “unplugged” brand that isn’t fully vested in digital communications and social media properties, we can’t help but wonder why they aren’t? Is it because they have something to hide? Something to be ashamed of? Take for example big banks. As of this writing, you won’t find many of them active on Facebook (but that doesn’t mean they’re not listening).

From my point-of-view, at the cross-roads of all of the above, the key to is to rely on every bit of research and the marketing mix available to you. The best brands and the most successful campaigns yield seamless, integrated experiences that blend right in with your life, without you even being aware of it.  And whether or not we’re cognizant of it, we’re watching, listening and waiting for that sweet inspiration to share, just because it really is that cool.

• YouTube videos are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google results than a text page
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the U.S.
• As of February 2011, visitors were spending around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube per month

When you look at the facts, YouTube optimization makes a whole lot of sense. To get you started, here is a great video series that covers everything you need to know about YouTube SEO.

Content Optimization:

• Start Building Content: You should be creating a portfolio of content on YouTube. Plan to build in video with your normal campaigns. But video production is so costly, right? Wrong. All you need is iMovie and an iPhone to start creating content. If that’s too much to handle you can try one of the many screen share tools, an online slideshow creator, or a text-to-video service like xtranormal.

• Keep It Relevant: As you begin creating content, ask yourself this question: “Will this be useful in three months?” If the answer is no, it’s unlikely that your video has real replay value. Try to create content that will be relevant in the future… think long shelf life.

• Do Your Research: Before you begin making videos, do some keyword research using YouTube’s keyword tool. This will give you an idea of which videos will be successful. As an example, if you search “NBA” in Google, you’ll get results on players, news, and game scores, etc. If you search “NBA” in YouTube, many of the top videos will be about dunks, brawls, and highlights. This is a clue that a dunk compilation will likely do much better than a player profile video.

• Competitive Research: Do a normal YouTube search for some videos that are similar to the content you want to create. What is already working? What do people seem to like? What is most popular?

Metadata Optimization:

• Optimize Metadata for Video Search: Your metadata can help you appear in searches and gain traffic, but your content has to be good to experience true success (surprise). However, a well optimized video can help your visibility. Optimize your video title, tags, description, and category to appear in searches. Remember, YouTube search works differently than normal search engine results. If you need some clues, go back to your competitive and keyword research and see which video titles are performing the best. There is a great explanation of metadata here.

• Thumbnails: YouTube thumbnails are automatically chosen near the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. As you create content, plan to have something visually interesting happening at one of these points. Most people will only have a choice between these three thumbnails, so pick the most visually interesting one. In the case that you are a YouTube partner, you can upload whatever thumbnail image you would like.

Video Promotion:

• Leverage Existing Networks: The obvious thing to do is promote your videos on your website, email newsletter, and social networks. Take advantage of any platform where you have the ability to post a video.

• YouTube Promoted Videos: YouTube promoted video ads allow you to target your videos to specific keywords and pay for views. As a bonus, when you run promoted video ads, YouTube allows you to create a call-to-action link on your video, which can be used to drive traffic to another site. There is a great tutorial on how to do this here.

• Annotations: Use annotations on your other popular videos to drive traffic to newer videos. This can easily be done through the YouTube Annotations tool.

• Link building: In many cases, over 40% of views on your videos will come from sites outside of YouTube. Create a plan to reach out to bloggers and other sites, and build embeds of your YouTube videos.

YouTube Community:

• Channel Design: Spend some time on your YouTube channel. A blank YouTube channel is much like a blank Facebook page. Create a color scheme, upload a background, and organize your playlists, subscriptions and other modules.

• Moderation and Response: Keep a close watch on the comments that happen on your videos and your channel. Be sure to answer questions and respond to comments quickly. Treat these folks like you would treat visitors to your other social pages.

• Engage Fans: Videos with more ratings and comments will appear higher in YouTube search results. Within your content, you should encourage fans to rate, comment, and subscribe to your channel.