When you are considering a purchase, who do you ask for your advice?

If your like me, you start with your friends. And you will probably seek out the ones who have some experience or passion related to your purchase. If I want to buy a guitar, I’d seek out a cousin who is a musician. If I want a new telephone system, I’d ask a half dozen of my friends that are consultants, managers and business owners  – the ones that make their living on the telephone..  Depending on the purchase, I would do more research online, on industry sites and forums, and visit your web site.  At this point, I’m ready to buy – for big-ticket items I’ve got a short list and will now call a company rep.

By now your starting to realize that in the early stages I may not spend much time on your site – in some cases I may not even visit it.  So as a marketer, you need to find a way to reach me through the mediums I am using.

Webcasts – audio and slides or video -  not only are good at educating the prospects you know about, but can be a compelling way to help your customers (my friends) and your evangelists (the ones commenting in user groups, message boards, and industry forums) share your story.

You can continue to deliver your webcasts live, but make sure you create an archive in bit-sized chunks and share it with the world – in your newsletter, on your site,  with user groups, on message boards.  Make it easy for your fans to share it too.  Its a great way to keep your name in the conversation and help your friends spread the word.

Tags: archives, conversations, live event recordings, Marketing, On-Demand, Promotion, Video, video webcasts, Webcasts.

Is it time to use Twitter as part of our webcast strategy?

Twitter has become a true social phenomena.  As the eMarketer chart below shows,  Twitter’s popularity continues to grow:

ComScore reported 4 million unique visitors in February 2009 while Nielson Online reported 7 million. Both services show the growth rate above 1000% year over year. Twitter is heavily used within tech and has surprisingly strong adoption by the older tech demographic.

So will this community (or more accurately, federation of communities) be interested in educational or informational-oriented webcasts? According to a MarketingProf’s survey of Twitter users,  both the statements “I find it exciting to learn new things from people” and “I value getting information in a timely manner” were rated 4.5+ on a 5 point scale.

I know companies that are using Twitter today as a promotional medium for video webcasts, and you can easily integrate Twitter into an event or webinar to replace or augment an integrated chat capability.  I have seen Twitter used  at conferences as a means for the panelists to engage with the audience and as a tool for submitting questions.

In the examples above Twitter is being used for promotion and engagement.  To fully tap into  the word-of-mouth power of Twitter,  we may want to re-think presentation formats – short form content that can be quickly accessed and shared (e.g. video) may be a better choice than traditional webinar technologies like WebEx.    I can see the day when we use our event recordings and create discrete “highlight” video segments that can be shared with our new Twitter followers so they can propagate the message!

So are you planning on using Twitter with your webinars? Can you see using it with a live event that is webcast?

Tags: LinkedIn, tweets, twitter, Webcasts.

Video’s pervasiveness online is impacting everyone with a web presence, even B2B companies.   First, remember that even business purchasers are consumers too and we bring our purchasing habits to the office. Then consider these recent surveys reported by eMarketer.

Online Activites of Internet Users Worldwide - 2008

Over 60% of adults using the web to research a product of service, then visit the company or product web-site for more information.  Over half of these folks have watched a video clip.  Now consider this: Over 40% of retailers are expected to add video to their web sites during this next year.  (This would be in addition to those that are already using video today to sell product.)

Planned Advanced Site Features and Functions

This will continue to increase the expectation that prospects expect to access product and service information in a multimedia format. We already see this trend.  Consider your own habits – when looking at products don’t you look for a video that really shows the product in use so you know what to expect? Now extend that expectation to a B2B purchasing decision;  Don’t you really want to hear how an existing customer implemented the solution and make your own conclusions as to their veracity? Wouldn’t it help if you could see the product/service demonstrated?

For B2B companies, this means not only providing a library of  web seminars, but delivering product tours, demonstrations,  case studies and testimonials in a video format, and promoting it on your own web site.

So the net-net here is that we as both consumers and business buyers are doing our research online and visiting your web site. We want to access video as part of the education and qualification process, and those companies that provide it first are going to be have a competitive advantage.

Tags: Marketing, screencasts, selling, Video.

I just finished reading Malcomb Gladwell’s Blink, which is another fun read. I found two chapters in particular relevant to delivering effective video presentations.

For the record, I am not a psychologist, so if you are, and what follows does not make sense, please set me straight by leaving a comment.

In essence, modern psychology is giving our “adaptive unconscious” more and more credit for making sense of what we see and hear and filtering the information without the need for conscious, higher-level thinking. This is both good and bad. It means we can effectively process and evaluate situations readily using only “thin-slices”, but we also unconsciously impose cultural bias and situational influences into our judgments.

What do I mean?

First, the research shows that we are pretty good at judging others in just a few seconds to a few minutes. We can read faces and tell when the delivery is sincere and truthful, and when it is fake and deceptive. We may not be able to tell you why, but our unconscious will sense a disconnect between what we see and what we hear. Video gives us both the visual and audio input to make that judgment.

Now the bad news is that we also bring a lot of bias – cultural, experiential, and situational – to these judgments. Gladwell uses the example of the performer that was praised as the most outstanding trombonist in a blind audition. When this happened in 1980, orchestras were still dominated by men, and it was commonly believed that you could tell the difference between how men and women played the same instrument. When they were introduced to Abbie Conant, a woman, they were in disbelief. Clearly if it had not been a blind audition, Conant would not have been selected.  This is one case where visual, video communication can work against you.

And how receptive we are is impacted by other, situational circumstances. In fact, you can influence other’s behavior by “priming” them with words. Gladwell cites an NYU experiment where two groups of students were primed with words and then sent off to reception to get their next assignment. One group was exposed to words like “aggressively”,”rude”,”bold”. “bother”, and “intrude”. The other group was exposed to words like “respect”,”considerate”,”patiently”,”polite”, and “courteous”. When they arrived at reception, the attendants were engrossed in a personal conversation with a fellow employee. The group exposed to the aggressive words interrupted on average after 5 minutes, while 82% of the group exposed to the polite words did not interrupt at all. (The experiment was stopped at the ten minute mark.)

Now I understand why they start playing good, upbeat music 10 minutes before the band takes the stage.  And how music lead-ins to presentations can ‘prime’ you to be more receptive to the presentation.  It makes you think we ought to be doing more than show dial-in telephone numbers before our web seminar’s start.

For more information, I recommend reading “Blink” or visiting Malcomb Gladwell’s website.

Tags: effective presentations, interviews, Video, video presentations, video webcasts.

TubeMogul is a service that enables you to upload your video once and distribute to the leading video sites. They then provide aggregated tracking statistics for your video.

TubeMogul recommends the following encoding options  if you want to widely distribute your video:

• File format: mp4 or mov
• Video codec: h.264
• Bit-rate: 700 kb/s – 1500 kb/s
• Resolution: 640×480
• Audio codec: mp3

For a detailed list by social media site, take a look at this format listing by social media website.

Tags: archives, event recordings, live event recordings, Social Media, Video.

So you have your webcast or webinar video archive recording ready, and you want to post it to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Metacafe, Revver,  and more. Here is the quick way to get the widest distribution possible.

Upload your video once to TubeMogul and let it distribute it to all the major video sharing sites for you. An account is free – just remember that you need to have an existing account on your targeted video destination sites.

View the TubeMogul tutorial on uploading and distributing your video here.

One problem you may encounter – every site has a different supported video length, so you will need to consider that before posting.

Tags: archives, event recordings, event replays, Promotion, Social Media, tubemogul.

Want to get more registrants for your on-demand webinars and webcasts?  Try posting a video out-take to YouTube to improve its visibility and make it easy to share with partners.

First, you will want to reduce the length of your webinar by breaking it into chunks or by creating a highlight reel.  Look for statements that are controversial or compelling, and leave you wanting to learn more.

Editing your webinar length really is a requirement since you want this to be a teaser and fit into the viewing habits of visitors to these video sites.  During editing make sure you add a closing call to action that shows the URL for your landing page. Make that link short and simple since viewers will need to write it down and enter it into their browser.

Next you will want to give some thought to YouTube channel placement and tagging. I recommend that you check the tags your considering by searching for them before you publish – you want to make sure your placement is next to appropriate content for your audience.

Finally, use the embed code to place the video on your landing pages or other pages as a promotional teaser. Promote it with your partners for placement on their site, and use a source code in your registration link to track which partners are sending you registrants.

Bill

Tags: archives, event replays, Promotion, YouTube.

As reported by Yahoo,  MySpace Mobile is launching a streaming video service to deliver video in multiple formats to multiple devices.  The focus today is on reaching iPhones, but the service is designed to be carrier and device agnostic.

This announcement in itself is not such a big deal for B2B-focused enterprises, but I think it continues the trend where employees, partners and customers expect to be able to access video-based training, tutorials, demonstrations and product communications.  I know from my personal experience that one of the first things I look for when evaluating a vendor is an online product demo. Then I know if its worth exploring further with a sales rep.

Rich media communications will increasingly be integrated into every type of text document – quick start guides, help screens, product briefs, case studies, testimonials, etc. – so that users can choose how they want to receive the information.

I think the biggest question mark is not if this will happen, but if it is company-driven or user-driven. Marketing communication professionals may not be prepared – time, skills and budget – to support this effort quickly enough. If a vacuum exists, users may step-up and fill the void.

Thoughts?

Tags: demo, Education, Marketing, rich media, streaming video, tutorials, video training.

I just attended a live video show by HubSpot.  They are experimenting  with a  live show format on the web.  Although targeting a business audience using this approach is clearly bleeding-edge,  I think its a worthwhile experiment. I will have more observations on this effort, but wanted to share with you specifically what happened today.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: HubSpot, internet tv, Justin.TV, mogulus, Streaming, Streaming media, Ustream, Ustream.tv, Video.

According to Computer Economics, 55% of businesses are cutting travel expenses in expectation of lower revenues driven by recession.  In addition to using video conferencing and collaboration tools, for larger meetings, web seminars and video webcasts are an effective way to eliminate travel expense while stil maintaining good company communications.

Computer Economics reports other cost-cutting moves include not back-filling open positions (40%), eliminating contract workers (33%) and cutting staff (17%). If your company is doing more with less, when your looking at webinar/webcasting solutions it makes sense to look for managed solutions – this both helps ease your workload and saves you time since you can leverage their expertise.

Tags: travel.