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.

In an age of quick surfing and shrinking attention spans, businesses are looking for new ways to talk about what they do. And with video, it’s possible. Video gives you the opportunity to tell your story. Period. And by leveraging the power of brief and concise storytelling, video can quickly capture and communicate the essence of your business, service and brand to a broad population of people.

The Value of the Medium

Video gives you a medium that can shorten the time your costumers may require to make decisions. In a climate where authenticity is key, video adds a layer of trust and intimacy to your content – and by leveraging it in sites such as YouTube, instantaneously puts it into the public sphere. Add the power of social sharing and search engine visibility to drive traffic, and you have the opportunity to capture an attentive audience like never before.

But while all this is true, you still may ask, is video really that important?

Short answer: yes.

Monthly Snapshot of Video Viewing Stats

Last month, comScore, released data from the comScore Video Metrix showing that last June, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched video content, a solid one million user increase from June 2010. On top of that, the average viewer watched 16.8 hours of video content and the U.S. Internet audience engaged in over 6.8 billion separate video viewings, an all-time high.

If these statistics show anything, it’s that video consumption is trending upward. 48 hours of YouTube content is uploaded every minute and according to a recent Pew report, 71 percent of online users are now accessing video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, compared with 33 percent 4.5 years ago.

With YouTube surpassing Yahoo as the 2^nd largest search engine on the Web last year (2^nd only to it’s owner Google), it should be clear to everyone that video offers the opportunity for unparalleled exposure to a massive internet audience that is only growing steadily larger.

As attention spans continue to dwindle, being able to effectively tell your story in a timely fashion will only become more of a challenge. This means we must not ignore the millions who watch video, and are becoming accustomed to consuming content through this ever-growing medium. It is clear that video is here to stay. Now it’s up to us to stay with it.

Trophy Room put together a little video recap of our fishing trip to Antero reservoir. It is a beautiful location and an amazing place to fish.

Enjoy!

-Brandon

All too often we see companies ‘interacting’ with their customers by merely posting brief status updates with words that include ‘buy now,’ ‘click here for 10% off,’ ‘NEW!’ Although these call to action items may briefly increase visits to their website, and may even generate a few sales, where is the personality? What else is that company doing online? Since launching your Facebook and Twitter pages, how is customer retention and repeat business? Who are your fans and followers?

How do you keep your personality when launching a social media campaign? In this example, I use Phish (not just for my love of their music, but because they have launched an incredible social media campaign).  Phish is a band that has a long history of interaction with their fans and that doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.

Phish hasn’t ever done things the ‘normal’ way; they have rarely used conventional advertising, or experienced popularity on MTV or the radio, yet they consistently sell out the largest venues in the US, and have held the “largest paid concert in the world on the eve of the millennium (1999, Big Cypress, Florida) with 80,000 fans.” - Rolling Stone – How? They continuously adapt with their fans and have never lost sense of their community, or their personality – even in their social media campaign.

Phish fans have always been internet savvy, from the days of tape trading and chat rooms, and the band recognizes this. In 2003, Phish launched LivePhish where fans can instantly download anything in the LivePhish catalog and stream music. Phish is on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and have a separate section of Phish.com: ‘from the road,’ where pictures and setlists from tour are posted.

Phish’s social media campaign launched with the announcement of their reunion show in March at Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, via video. Hampton Coliseum has been a fan favorite for years and it is no coincidence that Phish chose this as their venue – they listen to their fans.

Since then, Phish has incorporated their unique (and strange) personality into various announcement videos such as their 2009 Summer Tour, 2009 Late Summer Tour, their shows at historic Fenway park (in baseball form, of course – see below), and the unveiling of the box set for their new album Joy.

As of a few weeks ago, their biggest social media promotion was the puzzling ‘Save the Date’ announcement for their Halloween festival, in which various US states would be eliminated from a map by way of darts, hot air balloons, and tug boats, just to name a few.  From early July until they announced the Festival a few weeks ago, fans were fixated on the outcome, creating massive buzz. Hidden Track, voted the Best Music Blog by 2008 Weblog Awwards, received 642 comments on theircontinually updated post about the ‘Save the Date’ map.

The biggest promotion now: what album will the band cover for their Halloween show during Festival 8? In the past, Phish has preformed albums by The Beatles, The Who, Talking Heads, and Velvet Underground. They have continued to engage fans by killing-off (Halloween style) the images of possible album covers.  Once again, fans are hooked on the cliffhanger waiting with baited breath for the outcome.

Phish posts about the festival on Twitter, as well as Facebook, and practice cross-promotion between their main sites and various social media sites. They continually keep their social media campaign interesting for their audience, they incorporate video that encompasses their brand’s personality and most importantly, they have fun with it.

Does your social media campaign have that much personality?

A few months ago, Room 214 worked with one of our clients (I’m not naming the company for competitive reasons but they are in the real estate industry) to create a series of promotional videos to be used on their website, blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Since we also manage a Google advertising campaign for this client, a logical place to utilize a small advertising surplus was with a one-month YouTube advertising “test” campaign. I call it a test because no one at Room 214 had ever tried a Promoted Video campaign on YouTube and, while we were optimistic that the campaign would work well given the visual nature of real estate, had no real benchmark in mind for what the results would be. It went well – we decided to allocate 20% of the monthly advertising budget moving forward to YouTube – and I walked away with a few learnings that may help you get your YouTube promoted video ad up-and-running.

First of all, I recommend that you consider a YouTube promoted video campaign if your company fits this description:

1) You already have a Google ad campaign (if you don’t have one, I recommend you make that your entree and consider YouTube as a supplement down the road)

2) Visual appeal has a direct impact on sales for your industry

3) You currently have or have plans to create a library of existing appealing video content (You probably don’t want to advertise the first video you put up on your YouTube channel – more on that in a sec)

If your company fits that description, keep reading. If not, you may want to look more closely at social media and search marketing.

·      A YouTube ad will, obviously, drive more views back to your YouTube channel so you’ll want to make sure that your channel’s up to par and that you have plenty of content/information available (re point 3 above). Create several videos and put them on your YouTube channel. Promote them via social networks, your website, blog, etc. Use audience feedback and YouTube insights to make an educated decision about which video resonates best with viewers and drives the most traffic back to your website and use that video for your ad.

·      The video you use should be entertaining and engaging. Don’t get too caught up with trying to make your video professional quality or overly marketed. You don’t need every line of the video to contain a keyword or marketing message – you need the video to be engaging and interesting so viewers will watch it and want to learn more. This is YouTube – some of the most successful viral videos have been amateur videos – this doesn’t need to be overly produced, shot on an expensive camera or cost a ton of money to show some ROI. If you’re not sure what I mean, check out Mashable’s list of the Top 20 YouTube and Video Memes of All Time.

·      When you create the ad, make a killer headline. The format of the ad is a still of your video, a 25 character headline and two 35 character lines of copy – so you need to make every word count.

·      Use keywords and linking in your video description, utilize tags and add annotations to point out what you want viewers to see/know during the video.

·      Create a Call to Action Overlay (they’re free with a promoted video campaign) so that, once you’ve driven potential customers to your video, they know what to do next and can become a customer.

·      Engage with viewers on your YouTube channel. You’ll see an increase in comments (ours increased about 300%), messages and ratings as well as views to the video – so be sure to interact with individuals who reach out to you.

·      Do a test run. I initially limited our campaign to one month and $3,000. Before you commit a large sum of your advertising budget to anything (in this economy?!) it’s a good idea to gauge if/how well promoted videos will work for you. During this limited-budget timeframe you can prioritize keywords, adjust bids and determine whether you want to allocate budget for it moving forward.

·      If you DO decide to move forward with a YouTube ad beyond the test-run phase – keep checking back with YouTube. This is a new ad platform for them so they’re making tweaks and updates that could potentially improve your campaign. Stay in the know and give it a shot!