Posts Tagged ‘Video Marketing’

Can Social Media Really Make A Difference For Businesses?

// June 22nd, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing, Thought Leadership

Right now many companies large and small are exploring the idea of social media.  Many are unsure about how to social-mediadevelop a strategy.  They don’t know where to start or who to trust.  Moreover, what empirical evidence can a business turn to help it determine the value of building a social media strategy?  Well, these are questions and concerns that I plan to address here.

Last week I raised the question, “How do you systemize social media”?  In terms of process and daily practice, I was hoping to spark a  conversation to understand and uncover other practitioners methods and systems of use.  Little did I know it would create a deeper conversation on a more strategic level.

If you click on the link above you’ll see embeded in the post a conversation stream that took place.  What I learned from a few social media colleagues is that in order for social media to make a difference in businesses, social media at a high level must first be understood.  With out understanding the value proposition of social media at a leadership level, a business or businesses will be hard pressed to allow a socialized media culture to be adopted inside the organization.

Say what?  Social media can only make a difference in a business if the company from top to bottom understands and believes in the value of such a dynamic culture shift.  THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL!

“SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIRES A CULTURE & MIND SET SHIFT”

That is a very BOLD statement but, for social media to really make a difference for an organization it is an ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT.  Why is this the case?

It is required because most business were not built on the fact that everyone, no matter what you’re title or position, has the power and opportunitiy to make significant things happen because of the power of the internet.  Everyone in the organization, has the power to produce content and build a following.  People’s voices are the new currency that drives the influence to exchange.

If you’re a company of 10, then you most likely have 10 able promoters and content creators on your team.  Now consider this, “It is estimated that the average person knows about 250 people. And each of those people knows, in turn, another 250 or so people. This means that for each new person you meet, you gain access to a potential pool of 62,500 people separated from you by just two degrees!” – Buzzy Gordon.

Don’t you think the ability to potentially influence approximately 625,000 people is pretty powerful for a small business?  I do.

Now, of course, influencing that many people to actually make a purchase is far fethched but influencing just a small percentage of that group of warm connections by practicing social media makes for a pretty compelling business case.  Would’nt you agree?

To accomplish this though requires leadership to adopt a culture of transparency and expression for the good of its customers and employees.  Giving up control and truly leading is what is required here.  And, leading with an educated understanding is a big step to social media making an impact on a business.  In a future post I’ll show you an example of how social media activities are just starting benefit me.

CONSIDER THIS VIDEO AS A 1ST STEP TO UNDERSTANDING

(Note:  A collaborative team I am working with are in the early stages of developing a resource to help companies understand and use social media.  This video is part of recommended material to be reviewed).

Now that you have a better understanding of how social media might benefit your business, in a future post I’ll show you an example of how social media activities are just starting to benefit me.  Do you have any questions that I might be able to help answer?

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5 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Video Marketing

// June 16th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

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Image via Wikipedia

For years you have heard about the online video craze.  You have also heard for decades that Television is the most powerful medium for advertising your product or service and generating leads.  Further, you know how expensive buying TV media can be.  Well, I am about to share with you 5 reasons why your company needs to use online video as a marketing tactic.

1. Online Video Is Searchable & Historical

After you spend thousands of dollars producing a TV commercial you have to go out and buy your media placement right?  And, to do this you need to have thousands if not millions depending upon how far and wide you want to distribute the message.

Also consider that after you have spent thousands if not millions on your TV campaign you then have a duration by which your TV spot runs and expires.  Oh, not to mention you have to pay more money if you want to run the commercial again.  Oops, I also forgot to mention that in order to measure the effectiveness of your TV spot you’ll be depending on an archaic metric system — Nielsen Ratings — that really produces a large failure rate yet when you look at the success criteria.  Is the most effective and most expensive of all the traditional marketing media really that effective in terms of ROI?

In contrast, with online video you could spend thousands of dollars on producing your commercial and a few thousand for premium placement on high traffic websites but, you don’t have to!  You also don’t have to pay for media placement when you want to run a spot.  Of the biggest advantages of online video, when you publish it online it becomes a piece of internet history!

Your video is now searchable and on the internet historically.  You no longer have to pay someone to have your spot run in market X for Y number of days - isn’t that cool?

2. Online Video Is Selective Upon Demand

Since your video is now part of the internet forever and searchable when someone is looking for relative content, your video is available to be played on-demand.  This is really important, specifically for the fact that demand driven or opt-in marketing has been invited by the individual - you’re not interrupting the person.  They have given your company permission to market to them.

Since you have been given permission to market, you are more likely to actually sell your product/service to this person.  Or, you could go the traditional route and cast a very expensive net in hopes of getting a few people to respond to your very expensive message.  What sounds more intelligent to you?

3.  Online Video Is Shareable

Ok, so now your prospect or customer wants to tell others about your product or service.  Do you think they can send them a TV commercial via email from the 65″ Plasma?  Well, they could if they watch your video spot on a Web TV and had a shareable video player option. Then, so would their friends, their friends friends and so on.

Customers who become promoters of your product or service, which you want, are  the most powerful marketing medium you could deploy.  And, with online video to go along with their product recommendation you have a very effective marketing strategy in the works.

4.  Online Video Is Immediately Global

Did I mention that once you publish your video online you now are able to reach a global audience?  I just did.

You cannot buy a global TV spot, period.  Ah, but you can produce a global online video spot for FREE if you want and it could be highly effective.

Check out this video commercial on the new iPhone 3G-S:



5.  Online Video Is Measurable & Actionable

Thanks to analytical software offered by companies like Ominture & online services like TubeMogul you can get detailed analysis on who watched the video, where, when, on what type of a computer, type of browser, screen resolution and more.  Most importantly, you can track the user coming to your site or web property to take action that you offered in the video.  Can you do that with TV, direct mail, news paper - no?  I didn’t think so but, if something has changed let me know.

* BONUS * — Your Video is Now Viewable on A Mobile!

With mobile video subscriber expectations to top 534 million by 2014, you have enough time to figure out how to better market your products and services online so you have a better chance at success.


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It’s Gettin Hot In Herre And Your Brand Sucks…How To Change The Perception With Social Media Monitoring

// June 8th, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing

YourBrandsSuck.com

YourBrandsSuck.com

Suppose for a minute or two that Your Brand became an innocent by-standard of an endorsement deal gone really wrong.  I mean really wrong…so wrong that you got submitted to YourBrandsSuck.com and the world is bashing you for something Your Brand had no control over.

Yep, HE said that, “It’s Gettin Hot In Herre, So Take Off All Your Cloths” at a night club and took her back to a hotel room according to HER, which was written on her MySpace page and now thousands of people are talking about it.

HE is a super star athlete with hundreds of thousands of dollars in endorsement contracts for companies like Nike, Pepsi, and Your Brand, which targets married soccer moms. She is a young woman who also happens to be good friends with Paris Hilton, who was present when this interesting occasion occurred.  HE is married to a faithful soccer mom and has just been accused of an extra-marital affair by HER.    HE was apparently captured on video

with another woman, not his wife, early that morning leaving a hotel room wearing Your Brand’s T-Shirt.

Now, that video has been remixed on YouTube and has spread like wildfire all across the internet with millions upon millions of views and Your Brand is front and center of the conversations.  Several popular Soccer Mom blogs and forums have started talking about Your Brand and how could Your Brand be associated with such an individual.  As “Your Brand’s” Brand Manager, what are you to do?

Brand Managers:  Wait & It’ll Be Too Late

Your Brand is quickly becoming associated with a lot of negative press of word-of-mouth buzz.  However, you can do something about it and I would encourage you to strongly research and understand how social media monitoring can provide you the proactive technology and capabilities that can help you put out a firestorm such as the one described above.

Social Media Monitoring as an industry is in itself starting to take off like a wild fire with new companies and solutions popping up everyday.  So, what can these tools and companies do for me and who are they?  Radian6, ScoutLabs, Sysomos and a handful of others.

How can they help you?  Well, Sysomos appears to understand the power of video marketing best as they are the company that has prepared the best overview video of their product - take a look below.

Changing The Perception by Being Proactive

If you’re still here and have not run off to Sysomos,  I would strongly encourage you to read the following two blog posts Grudge Match by Jason Falls and Tools Analysis by Frederic Lardinois .

No matter which of these tools you use, they all provide a clear value proposition in that they can enable you to proactively change the perception of your brand through participation and conversational engagement with data and metrics.  If you don’t know that Your Brand is in danger of its reputation being damaged before it’s too late, then it’s too late.

However, if Your Brand was listening and engaged in what is happening out there you will have a much better chance at being able to mitigate the risk of damaging your company’s reputation by not acting.  Furthermore, developing a social media strategy with monitoring tools can provide your company an immense amount of business intelligence that could greatly improve lead generation, sales revenue and brand reputation.

With the landscape of the internet changing and moving so rapidly, you cannot afford not having a Reputation Management & Social Media Monitoring plan prepared and put into action for your company.  Not taking action will only result in Your Brand being smeered and being submitted to websites like YourBrandsSuck.com .

What do you think?

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We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Blog To Sell My House

// May 29th, 2009 // Comments // Social Media Marketing

378-stone-pointYep, I’m selling my house!  Thus, I’ve been working like a madman doing various staging projects (painting, rearranging furniture, fixing odd things, cleaning, landscaping, etc.). It’s a lot of work getting a house ready for optimal marketing but, if you approach it as if you’re opening up a retail store to sell it - that’s essentially what it feels like.

Interestingly, we put it on the market last Thursday and have had 5 showings already.  We’re still waiting for an offer but it’s coming I can feel it.  Since, we’ve kept the house in great shape over the years and made some valuable upgrades - I believe we’ll get an offer soon.  Still, I’m going to take this opportunity to do what I know with interactive media to help sell it.

Just a quick word of advice when selling your home or setting out to do anything where you do not have domain expertise, listen to the people who are experts in their domain!  Swallowing your pride is sometimes hard for people to do but, for me I have no problem communicating my weaknesses and you should too - it actually puts you in a position of power by allowing you to focus on your strengths.

Last week we had an expert home stagger come and help us rethink how our home is perceived by buyers and to really get into the mind of the buyer.  Hence, my long list of home prep projects above.   Based on the recommendations we received, I’m amazed at how some of the small changes we have made to our house have made it much more appealing - you’ll see what I mean if you continue to read my blog, as I use my house as a social media campaign example.

Since I’m almost done with the projects, I’d like to do something fun to show you how to use social media & video marketing to bring more awareness and develop leads for your business by running a small home brewed interactive marketing campaign.  Here’s what I’m going to do to use myself as an example to sell the house:

  1. Talk about the fact that I’m selling the house regularly on the web and in the local community (you’ll see in my LifeStream I’ve already started doing so on Twitter & Brightkite).  BTW, all of the content I create for Twitter and BrightKite gets aggregated to FriendFeed, Facebook, My Website and becomes searchable content.
  2. I’m going to produce several short benefits focused videos of the house as a walk-through tour.
  3. I’ll get a simple blog built for the house and post photos and videos there.
  4. I’ll send out an email to my friends and professional network.
  5. I’ll track all of this with some analytics in the background.
  6. Hmmm should I tell you everything right now?

Since this is an interactive post here, what else do you think I should do?  Here’s the listing for the property.

Video Marketing Is Powerful but How Important Is It?

// May 18th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

Video Marketing Expo

Video Marketing Expo

Last week I attended the 1st Video Marketing Expo in Austin, TX which was put on by a couple of good friends and savvy entrepreneurs, Chris Justice & Kelly Shores.  If you are a business that wants to learn and stay on the cutting edge of how to use video marketing I highly recommend that you attend next year.

So, how powerful is video marketing?  Well, you know how powerful TV advertising has been over the years and you know that online video is exploding but why?

With 57% of internet users consuming online video and growing, there is actually a scientific reason why TV and online video commands our attention as consumers.  Backed up by Forrester, Ominture and other scientific sources; video stimulates over 40% of the brains cortex thus commanding in depth attention.  Since video stimulates the human brain so much it is why we love our action-thriller movies, sports on TV and other genres of video based entertainment.  We just can’t get enough video and it’s why video based marketing is one of the most important ways to market.

Wanna see how powerful it is? Watch this commercial for Grasshopper, a telecommunication system for small business owners. Then find out how they could have spread this message further using a unique video syndication system!

Spread Video Far & Wide Online

Grasshopper has done a fabulous job with this video commercial and has done a great job using social media to enable the opportunity for people to spread their message on their website.  How could this message have been spread even further?

If Grasshopper wanted, it could have used TubeMogul to spread their video to several of the most popular video websites.  TubeMogul provides you a single point of distribution by allowing you to upload and distribute your content to some of the most popular video sites.  Here is Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO explaining how TubeMogul works.

With that, how important do you think video marketing is now for your business?  I’d love to hear from you.