New Metrics Show Video Emerging As Star Player In BtoB Campaigns

admin | March 20, 2011 - 11:35 pm
As BtoB marketers turn to interactive tools and tactics to engage prospects and optimize lead generation campaigns, research shows that video is becoming an increasingly viable source for engagement and enhanced response.

According to Forrester Research, video in email campaigns can increase click-through rates by as much as 2-3 times. In a recent webinar titled “How to Increase B2B Leads 200% By Using Video,” Joe Eldridge, VP & Co-Founder at Visible Gains, offered a BtoB take on how marketers can integrate video into campaigns for effective customer engagement throughout the sales cycle.

While YouTube is the common starting point for many videos, Eldridge said there are many more opportunities to integrate video into emails, landing pages and product demos. According to a 2009 video marketing benchmark report, online video is second only to word of mouth for its ability to influence decision makers in every stage of the purchase lifecycle. Video can drive awareness of a brand’s product and/or service, leads, customer acquisition and loyalty.

CompeteVideoUsageSurvey

The following are four key objectives driving video usage among BtoB marketers, according to Eldrige:

  • Achieving higher email open and click through rates associated with the opportunity to watch a video;
  • Achieving higher conversion rates associated with watching a video (theory is that people that are tentative on the offer are more likely to take it);
  • Putting a face to the company and increasing brand perception by connecting with prospects using a short authentic video;
  • The opportunity to better explain a complex product or service offering using a thought leader in the business.

In any demand-driven effort, tangible ROI is imperative. Eldridge said video marketers should measure opt-in (who actually clicked through to watch the video); bounce rates (how many dropped off before the video ended); completion rate and conversion rate. Eldridge noted that 17 seconds appears to be the “magic number” when video viewers drop off.

“You need to be measuring these things in order to really talk about ROI, particularly with an overview video,” Eldridge said in the webinar. “It’s got to be compared to the actual key components to ROI for video: time spent; cost (production); and what impact it has on your funnel (increases in leads/opportunities). Funnels work faster with video. That means more sales efficiency, which is a good thing.”

Eldridge offered the following benchmarks for video success:

  • Opt-In rate of greater than 40%;
  • Bounce rates less than 10%;
  • Completion rate greater than 80%;
  • Conversion rate greater than 40%.

Although video has been commonly viewed as a costly endeavor, Eldridge said it’s a misconception, and there are simple ways to create video content without breaking the bank. “Business casual” videos can effectively communicate company messaging and overviews within 1-to-3 minutes, while product overviews can give prospects a detailed explanation for visual impact. But Eldridge cautioned marketers to be aware of several things to avoid, like music intervals, fading to black, lengthy segments and overt humor (which, he said, he difficult to pull off in a BtoB video.)

By utilizing video throughout the customer lifecycle, marketers can leverage a funnel-focused approach to interactive marketing. Eldridge offered the following “types” of video for BtoB marketing:

  • Engage- By giving prospects added content, companies can connect to increase downloads of e-Books, white papers, webinars and other sales materials, expand on company events and offerings or post topical information relevant to prospects;
  • Nurture- By providing an overview of specific products or services, marketers can keep in touch and share demos and testimonials for added value;
  • Close- By sending follow-ups or proposals relevant to prospects, marketers can make the connection between the audience and the sales prospects to demonstrate authenticity and credibility.

During the webinar, Eldridge compared approaching video with learning to swim: get your feet wet by simply taking footage of something familiar; learn to do something simple, like an interview clip or voiceover diagram, and practice regularly. “The consumption habits for video are going through the roof and that is creating the drive for marketers to use the medium,” Eldridge told DemandGen Report. “With regard to adoption for a BtoB given marketer, the key stumbling block is education on how videos can be created and used for effective business communications. We have had very strong interest in educational material and our coaching program and we have found that over 90% of marketers that are successful with their first 2 videos then operationalize the creation of regular videos across multiple parts of their customer lifecycle.”

WRITTEN BY AMANDA F. BATISTA
TUESDAY, 21 DECEMBER 2010 14:37
Posted in Industry Facts and Figures, Strategy | Leave a comment

What’s in the Customer’s Mailbox?

admin | March 12, 2011 - 12:10 am

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Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?

admin | February 17, 2011 - 11:41 am

Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?

You’ve seen them. Those tag clouds in the right-hand column of Web sites with jumbled type of varying weight and size indicating the relative usage of words. Tag clouds may be the most common example of an emerging field known as “information visualization,” an offshoot of graphic design devoted to the clear display of complex information. Executive pay in relation to shareholder returns. Senate voting patterns. The geographic location of cell phones. Similarities among rock albums. Graphic designers are mapping over the known world and posting their graphic interpretations on sites like Visual Complexity [1].

Visualization got a big boost during the political season from newspapers and networks. On March 24, CNN aired what it claimed was the largest ever tag cloud composed from President Obama’s press conference that day.

visualization [2]

If we’re going to live in a world driven by data, the thinking goes, we need a simple means of digesting it all. We are increasingly a visual society, and our understanding of the world is increasingly made possible by this new visual language.

nyt flu map [3]

Visualization has been used prominently, and to dazzling effect, at The New York Time s [4], where a collaboration of art directors and programmers turns masses of data into intuitive displays, like the interactive map [5] of the swine virus shown above.

webtrend map

Another example: the Tokyo firm Information Architects [6] created this Web Trend Map [7] which presents the most popular Internet sites in the intelligible graphic language of a subway system.

traffic

Designers have historically excelled at finding insightful ways of looking at complex problems. Visualization will likely play a prominent role as design evolves beyond the consumer economy (selling $2,000 poufs and other high-end furnishings) and helps create efficient new forms of buildings, food distribution and transportation.

For example, it’s likely that New York and other major U.S. cities will experiment with systems that monitor traffic patterns in real time and manage the use of lanes and access accordingly. A project like that would hinge on our ability to map patterns as they happen, along with the alternatives and consequences. It’s a big undertaking, but the benefits are considerable: In Stockholm a system that tracks the movement of every car has reduced carbon emissions by 25%.

electric-meter1

Visualization may play a big role in wising up consumers. In the future, we’re told, sensors will pick up tiny bits of info on every aspect of our lives and they will be played back to us as graphics. The smart grid, for example, will read the energy use in your home and send back understandable displays suggesting how you might save money by, say, waiting an hour to turn on your air conditioner or reducing your thermostat by two degrees. It will be up to architects to imbed this feature in the home in a way that allows us to interact more efficiently with our surroundings.

power point

You might think of visualization as the antithesis of Power Point, which sometimes seems to make us dumber. Six years ago, Edward Tufte [8], a Big Thinker in the field of information graphics, issued a 28-page pamphlet that dumped on Power Point as “a faux analysis” that “turns everything into a sales pitch.” Visualization does the opposite: it reflects the complexity of the world in simple terms. It is a window onto the world, in all its digital complexity. Though of course data can be skewed in deceitful and insidious ways.

Picture 4

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B2B: The Benefits of Online Video

admin | October 25, 2010 - 6:30 am

Posted By Troy Dreier On September 28, 2010 @ 10:00 am In Video Essentials

We usually focus on reaching consumers with online video on this site, but the business-to-business world can benefit from online video, too. While the videos might look a little different and appeal to a more focused audience, online video can help you do just as good a job reaching and winning customers.

[1]To learn exactly how online video can benefit the B2B world (and why you should care about getting started with it), we spoke to an industry expert. Tom Pick is an online marketing executive with KC Associates [2], a marketing and public relations agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He also writes the blog Webbiquity [3], which is focused on B2B marketing.

5 Online Video Benefits for B2B
It Can Explain the Complex
B2B products and services are often more complex than their consumer counterparts, says Pick, and require more explanation. Rather than expecting your buyers to read through pages of text, offer them a video that explains quickly and clearly what you’re offering. Demonstrate the benefits instead of just telling them.[4]

It Can Show How to Use a Product
Most people don’t like reading through dry product manuals, and online video is the perfect remedy, especially with complex B2B products and services. Offer your clients a video that tells them everything they need to know.

It Can Show Your Company’s Personality
In the consumer world, most people know the personality or corporate identity of large companies. Except for frequent clients, that’s not true in the B2B world. Use video to help communicate your company’s image, says Pick.

It Enhances Lead Conversion
Showing video on your site is likely to make new clients trust you more. Pick tells the story of a client that offered a white paper on its website. People had to register to download it, giving their personal information. Not surprisingly, the response rate was low, with only five percent of visitors downloading the paper. That company put a short video on its landing page, which people saw before requesting for the white paper. With the video in place, the percent of people willing to give their contact information nearly doubled.

It Helps with Blogger Outreach
Pick often works with Pitchengine [5], a PR tool for reaching bloggers with social media releases. He finds that attaching multimedia assets to a social pitch makes the subject more appealing to bloggers, since it gives them video to post on their sites. Not only does video help companies get more coverage, but the coverage is more useful since the posted videos communicate the company’s message directly.

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10 Technological Advances Marketers Can’t Live Without

admin | October 25, 2010 - 12:47 am

Posted By Martin On 23 July 2010 @ 1:28 pm In Marketing,email bulletin.

Inventions have changed the face of advertising consistently throughout history and will continue to do so, as technology evolves at an ever-increasing rate.

The creation of new forms of media, from radio to TV and the internet, have caused the industry to create new strategies and tools to help brands find their own optimal media mix.

This week, as the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) hosts its inaugural Digital and Social Media Conference, we take a look at 10 technological advances that marketers of today and tomorrow cannot ignore.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Advertisers always sought a way to track the elusive “word-of-mouth” phenomenon that affected their brands so heavily. Social media brought the conversations that consumers were having online, giving marketers the chance to monitor, further and contribute to them in real-time. Nielsen found that while 14% of people trust ads, 78% of people trust consumer recommendations. The conversation for marketers turned from the one-way nature of traditional media to a two-way dialogue that could not be ignored. Social media has shifted the conversation so forcefully that consumers have an unprecedented level of control over brands, rapidly turning themselves into a brand’s best advertisers.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search engine optimization is one of the most important and cost-effective ways to attract customers on the internet. Research has found that almost two-thirds of the time, people look only at the first page of their search results. They rarely make it beyond the first 10, and virtually never beyond the initial 30 results. When it comes to e-commerce transactions, more than half originate from a search listing, proving the importance of being “found.” SEO is a way to ensure that those consumers using the web to search for a product or service easily find it, resulting in a more targeted lead for the advertiser and easier search process for the consumer.

INTEREST-BASED ADVERTISING (BEHAVIORAL TARGETING)
Behavioral targeting allows ads to be more relevant, valuable and thus persuasive to the consumer. This has given the marketing industry an unprecedented level of precision. This comes with a level of caution, however, as consumers are wary of being watched on the web. As such, a group of the nation’s largest media and marketing trade associations including the 4As, ANA, BBB, DMA and IAB released self-regulatory principles to protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media. The principles require advertisers and websites to clearly inform consumers about data-collection practices and enable them to exercise control over that information.

ONLINE VIDEO: VIDEO ON DEMAND
The arrival of video on demand and sites like Hulu and YouTube signaled a huge change in the industry. People started looking to the web for entertainment, and advertisers redirected dollars to take advantage of the growing world of online video. Because of internet video’s low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit. Viral videos have shown potential to turn ordinary people into brand ambassadors as the clip gets instantly forwarded to friends and family. Internet broadcasting also has provided another online venue for measurable and targeted advertising in the form of attached text and pre-roll ads.

MEASURING ACTIONS VS. IMPRESSIONS
Online ads originally mimicked those in traditional media, where marketers paid for the amount of exposure gained. Since the cost-per-click model has emerged, advertisers have been taking advantage of the internet’s ability to measure user action, something impression-based pricing cannot match. Those using action-based systems like Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter, and sites like Facebook, pay based only on how many people engage an ad with a click. Marketers can now see a clearer picture of ROI; consumers who interact with ads tend to be more valuable.

INTERACTIVE TV
As DVRs made their way into consumers’ lives, many industry pundits mourned the end of the 30-second spot and wondered how advertisers would fare now that people could skip through their commercials. The answer was not just to formulate ads that worked in fast-forward, but to introduce interactive TV ads that worked within and in tandem with regular programming. Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV, and Canoe Ventures brought the first clickable ad to “receive more info” to the airwaves just last month. This area is one to watch, as consumers accept, and eventually seek, interactivity in all aspects of their lives.

BRAND-SPECIFIC COMMERCIAL RATINGS
More than $70 billion is spent each year on TV advertising. With such a large amount of funds devoted to commercials, the industry began calling for a better way to assess whether they were getting their money’s worth. Where, on one hand, the digital realm was providing precise statistics on an ad’s effectiveness, TV ratings were still based on the average of all commercials airing with a program. In 2007 the ANA began calling for ratings that were specific to each commercial. The industry is now starting to see a potential pathway, as a test conducted by Nielsen shows that the move toward brand-specific commercial ratings is clear.

MOBILE ADVERTISING AND PAYMENTS
According to eMarketer, the mobile advertising industry is expected to be worth more than $1.56 billion by 2013. This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cell phones, smartphones and tablet computers. Apple’s iPhone and iPad specifically have brought the mobile arena to the forefront, as consumers increasingly look to their phones to aid in more aspects of their lives. While the internet can tell advertisers what sites consumers visit and for how long, the iAd platform gives a detailed picture of their potential customers’ everyday lives. Additionally, mobile payments allow marketers to make appeals for instant buys, and dole out coupons and other rewards.

MARKETING-MIX MODELING
Marketing-mix modeling provided researchers and analysts the opportunity to think more precisely about integrated marketing. Technologists found ways to create highly productive media-decision models by weaving together analyses of consumer sensitivity to a company (or brand’s) media platforms. This tool gave media planners the opportunity to increase the effectiveness of an integrated marketing plan while reducing overall costs . Modeling has become more difficult with newer forms of media, the management process for conceptualizing integrated media plans remains the same. This is expected to improve as marketers and agencies better assess consumer sensitivity to digital media platforms.

AD-ID
Since 1970, advertisers, agencies and TV networks used the ISCI commercial coding system to identify TV commercials. To help bring a higher level of accuracy to the coding process and consistency to advertisement identification, as well as enable the industry for digital convergence, a new identification system was created. Developed by the 4As and the ANA, Ad-ID came into the marketplace in 2003 as a digital identifying code for advertisements. It has since been dubbed the “UPC code of the advertising industry.” Ad-ID helped transform the marketing industry for the digital revolution.

Source: Bob Liodice, president-CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (Advertising Age, 12 July 2010)

Posted in Best Practices, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Look Ma, No Hands: More Than Half Of Companies Say They Are Using Social Media With No Strategy

admin | October 25, 2010 - 12:44 am

by Gavin O’Malley, Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 6:10 PM

While 78% percent of corporate respondents say their company is using social media, only 41% say they have a strategic plan in place to guide such activity, according to a new study from marketing firm Digital Brand Expressions.

Of those companies that have some semblance of a social media strategy, 94% say that marketing activities are included in the plan; 71% said public relations were factored into the equation; and 55% say that they use social media for sales-related activities.

“It’s fairly well established that social media is a channel that businesses must participate in, leaving CEOs with the new challenge of planning and implementing brand aligned initiatives enterprise-wide,” said Veronica Fielding, president and CEO of Digital Brand Expressions.

Even for the firms that do have a strategic plan in place, only 29% reported distributing policies and/or communications protocols to employees via social channels. “This leaves the majority of organizations exposed to problems arising from employees saying the wrong things in the wrong ways to the wrong people at the wrong time,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, most companies appear to be shooting from the hip, with no cohesive game plan or measurement systems in place. Even among those with a plan, few have written policies and communications protocols in place, leaving the organization exposed to problems arising out of employees communicating in ways that inadvertently hurt — rather than help — their company brands.

Among those companies that are presently executing social media plans, 69% have set up metrics/tracking methods to measure ROI of such activities, while 71% plan for ongoing monitoring of brand reputation across the social media landscape.

Another 71% claim to be preparing and distributing protocols and policies for ongoing communications, including how to respond to positive/negative comments on social media Web sites.

Also of note, the majority — 74% — of respondents said their marketing departments should be responsible for the creation and maintenance of all strategic social media plans. About half — 51% — said their corporate communications team should be in charge of such efforts, while 28% said their executive team should lead all social efforts.

Of the 100 companies that DBE surveyed in May, the majority — 49% — were made up of less than 50 employees; 32% had 50-999 employees; and 19% were made up of more than 1,000 employees.

Note, 6/23: This last statistic has been amended from a previously published version.

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YouTube Fact Sheet

admin | October 25, 2010 - 12:42 am

YouTube Fact Sheet

Overview and Features

Published online by YouTube.com (2010)

Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.

YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail.

Everyone can participate in the YouTube community by watching, sharing, and commenting on videos. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, relive their favorite TV moments, find videos about their hobbies and interests, discover new artists and filmmakers, and even uncover the quirky and unusual.

As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to share their experiences, talents, and expertise with the world.

Some of the site’s features include:

  • Video embedding: Users can insert a YouTube video into Facebook and MySpace accounts, blogs, or other Web sites where anyone can watch them.
  • Public or private videos: Users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with friends and family upon upload.
  • Subscriptions: Users are able to keep track of their favorite users’ new videos.
  • Record from Webcam: Users with a webcam and Flash software are able to instantly record video responses or normal videos onto the site rather than having to prerecord and then upload the video.
  • TestTube: This is an area where YouTube engineers and developers conduct alpha testing for new features in development. Users are encouraged to participate in the development process and are welcome to evaluate the feature.

By registering, users are able to upload and share videos, save favorites, create playlists, and comment on videos. YouTube is building a community that is highly motivated to watch and share videos. The YouTube service is free and will be supported by advertising.

Part of YouTube’s goal is to extend its reach beyond the Internet browser and enable users to discover and share compelling video content. As part of this, YouTube continues to innovate and enhance its APIs and tools. This includes wholesale access to its extensive video library, worldwide audience, and the underlying video hosting and streaming infrastructure that powers the site, giving users yet another way to engage the world of video and actively participate in the YouTube community wherever they are, whenever they want.

The YouTube Community

YouTube is a place for people to engage in new ways with video whenever and wherever they want. YouTube began as a personal video sharing service, and has quickly grown into the world’s leading video community on the Internet.

YouTube offers a community for everyone, including personal video creators such as cooking, beauty, health and fitness experts; aspiring and professional musicians; amateur and established filmmakers; comedians; and professional content owners.

The community is truly in control on YouTube and they determine what is popular on the site. Discovery is at the heart of YouTube and we continue to create new features to help our users discover and share compelling content, for example through featured videos, related videos, and guest editors.

We are focused on building the best user experience and the best platform for people to broadcast their videos around the world. We want our users to continue to unleash their creativity and share their talents with a global audience.

The explosion in consumer devices with video capability continues to give people control over the videos they record, watch, and share, and YouTube is dedicated to making their experience as easy, seamless and entertaining as possible across the Internet and on any device.

YouTube will always be an open community and we encourage users to send in their thoughts and comments about their experiences on the site. YouTube understands that each and every user makes the site what it is and welcomes them to get involved to help create new features and be a part of new developments on the site.

YouTube also is actively exploring a variety of ways to help the community to monetize content through programs like the User-Partner Program and YouTube Nonprofit Program, and we are dedicated to continuing to create new and innovative programs in this area.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the community and we will continue to do what we can to make the user experience a prosperous one.

Traffic and Stats

People are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

Demographics

Our user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies. Fifty-one percent of our users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues. With such a large and diverse user base, YouTube offers something for everyone.

Advertising on YouTube

Marketers have embraced the YouTube marketing platform and as an innovative and engaging vehicle for connecting with their target audiences, and they are increasing sales and exposure for their companies and brands in many different ways. In some cases they run video advertising, such as InVideo Ads or YouTube video ads, but they are also sponsoring contests, creating brand channels, and adding their own original content to the site. This model is a natural fit for our community because it follows one of the general philosophies of the site itself—user experience comes first. Our community has defined what works in this space, and we’ll continue to innovate based on their feedback.

There are several other ways for users, partners, and advertisers to benefit from engaging with the millions of people who make up the world’s largest online video community:

  • YouTube Insight: A free tool offered by YouTube that allows anyone with a YouTube account—users, partners, or advertisers—to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site.
  • The YouTube Partner Program: Original content creators have the chance to generate revenue from their work and receive the same promotional benefits afforded to YouTube’s other professional content partners.

You can learn about advertising on YouTube on our very own brand channel.

YouTube and Google

YouTube is an independent subsidiary of Google Inc., having been acquired by the leader in search and online advertising services in November of 2006.

Google and YouTube share the vision of enabling anyone to find, upload, watch and share original videos worldwide, and the dedication to innovate with video to offer compelling services for our users and for content owners.

The exciting and powerful platform YouTube has built complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

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Thinking Critically About Web Video

admin | October 21, 2010 - 8:54 pm

Originally published by Adam Singer on Jun 21st, 2010

Web video is hot. Some say your chance to be a pioneer.

How hot, and how much of an opportunity? Recent reports from comScore, consistently say more than 80% of the total U.S. Internet audience views online video in a given month. YouTube’s fact sheet states every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to the network and 2 billion videos are being watched per day.

All this popularity has of course been driving a trend with marketers: the desire to create video as part of their digital marketing mix. Except sadly, it’s almost never approached strategically.

Agency-side marketing/PR/digital pros: how many times have you had a client approach you after creating a web video and said “hey, we made this video, now make it go viral!”

Client-side marketing professionals: how many of you have had a CMO suddenly discover web video, only to enthusiastically push the team to concept something “because our competitors are doing it.”

Due to these mistakes (and many others) most companies get web video dead wrong. Their content is too advertorial, there is a lack of genuine reason anyone would want to watch it, let alone pass it on. It doesn’t pass the all important “so what” test of web content and feels contrived or lacks creativity. And these are actually just surface level problems, it goes deeper than that.

The real question you need to ask yourself is why am I making web video? What marketing problem does it answer, and how does it answer it? How does it feed digital marketing KPI/objective metrics? Am I doing it because I read an article about it in AdAge or because it’s an elegant way to express my brand’s story to the world?

“Let’s make something viral” vs. let’s create an ongoing dialogue

By now, most companies understand blogging. And everyone knows you’d never create just one (even great) blog post and be done with it. No matter how popular that post was, just one blog post is not likely to provide long term value for your brand. You need to continue creating posts over time until you have a large opt-in audience that’s consistently spreading your content organically. Consider the fact that a web video is not too different than a blog post. Successful text and video are both content formats that can be passed on socially, and successful archetypes of each share similar qualities.

Yet, the business world seems to place web video up on a pedestal as if it’s some magic animal that plays by different rules merely because it’s video. The rules are not all that different, and apply for both formats of content for it to spread socially. Creating one video that catches on may be nice, but this does not take advantage of the larger opportunity the web affords: to build up an audience of true fans who genuinely want to follow your every word carefully.

Poorly conceptualized content has no chance

Short of advertising and interrupting users, there’s not much you can do to create awareness for a poorly conceptualized video lacking the proper hooks. On the web, advertising is content – there is no captive audience and viewers can and will ignore your promotions if your videos aren’t worthwhile. It has to be interesting, relevant and sticky if it has any chance of getting passed on. And with a firehose of content being uploaded to to the web, most web video is likely to be lost in perpetual obscurity, perhaps given some life from search engines.

Unless you’re a massive brand with deep pockets that can work with a high-paid creative team to concept some remarkable content, you’re likely better off using video as you would any other social content. In other words: use it to connect with your audiences in a genuine, meaningful way that follows your larger content strategy.

The best part about treating video as you would any other digital content, is just like text: if you produce lots of it and experiment, you can begin to discover video content archetypes that work for you. Then, and only then, can you start to get agile with your video content production and iteratively get better until you can consistently create stuff that catches on.

With that said…you still need a community

Web video by itself is tactical. If you’re serious about influencing the social web you still need a community that’s interested in receiving all types of your content being published in a channel agnostic fashion. Simply put, you need to build up a group who has affinity for your brand, its team members and ideas. Without this you’re not feeding something larger. Even if you have a popular video with hundreds of thousands or millions of views, what’s the point if you’re not continuing the dialogue over time and nurturing those relationships?

Conclusion

Originally Published by Adam Singer on Jun 21st, 2010

Ignoring the “viral video” bug many have been bitten by, web video is an opportunity for your brand and should likely be a part of your content marketing mix. But think critically about how it plays into your larger content strategy, and understand your reason for being with creating digital content in the first place.

Placing web video on a pedestal, as if it’s so different from any other digital content, is the wrong approach. It has to be just as sharp, creative and relevant as your text-based content. Perhaps more so since we can’t just scan a video and get the gist of it. And just like your written content you will need to build an audience before you can have consistent success.

For long term results, experiment and play around with presentation, formatting and ideas. Work to discover what it is your audiences react to and ensure that video is created in a way that benefits your larger social and SEO programs.

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