If you spend a lot of time and effort creating videos for the web, you want to have them found. Here are five tips from the Online Marketing Blog  to help you get started with video optimization:

1. Organize with Keywords
2. Distribute videos on video-sharing sites.
3. Implement a linking strategy.
4. Encourage viewers to share your videos.
5. Re-purpose your videos.

Read the complete post 5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization.

Tags: Marketing, search, Video.

James Pitaro

Want to start your own web video channel for internal or corporate communications?

Here are some good points from someone who knows a little bit about video – James Pitaro, vice president of media at Yahoo!.  In his post The Do’s And Don’ts Of Creating Original Video‘  he shares lessons learned at Yahoo!.

Although the Yahoo! focus is building online audiences that can be monetized, these are still good points for B2B companies. I particularly related to the observation about ‘Being Fast’ and getting your content out in a timely manner.

Read the The Do’s And Don’ts Of Creating Original Video here.

Tags: corporate tv, tv, Video, web tv, web video.

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.

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.

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.

eMarketer just reported that experienced Internet users give more weight to the information they find on the web than that shared by personal contacts.

What are the implications?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Marketing, On-Demand, screencast, trends, Video, web demonstration.

While learning about ‘Getting Things Done’ I discovered this great blog – Merlin Mann’s 43Folders.

He has been blogging for a long time and 43Folders started out focused on productivity solutions like GTD.  Although his focus has changed, his blog is still a good read.

He uses a presentation style that we also are putting into practice.

What’s really exciting is that this presentation works so well both for the live audience and the video webcast – the slides add to his message without taking your focus away from him as the speaker and what he is saying.  And from a technical perspective, the slide imagery avoids small text fonts that video does a poor job of broadcasting.

Take a look at this video of his final presentation: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: effective presentations, GTD, live event recordings, Video, video webcasts, Webcasts.