google updates

Google to Release Further SEO Updates

Lucie —  May 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

As the world’s largest and most popular search engine, Google is constantly updating their algorithms and other tools for determining which content deserves a high ranking position in the results. Whilst most video creators have been keeping tabs on the twice a year updates to Youtube’s system, you should be following Google search updates as well. These changes will affect how viewers can find your content, so read up before the company puts them into action later this summer.

Penguin 2.0

Many of the changes included in this second update to the SEO are designed to stop the efforts of black hat administrators. These marketers attempt to game the system through various backlink and keyword scams. As Google only alienates searchers by allowing poor quality content to rise to the top, cutting out the power of black hat users is a major focus for them. Matt Cutts announced that the changes will drastically lower the benefits provided by random and unrelated linking efforts. Link spamming is one of the few techniques that still work for cheaters trying to boost video views, so the results should be noticeable if they work.

Hacked Websites

No one wants to lose their library of content or carefully crafted website to hackers, but it happens every day. Google plans to implement new ways of detecting when a website has been compromised by a virus or stolen information. They will also bring in new tools to help you reclaim your reputation once you have eliminated the issue of content theft. For many small to medium companies, these tools may be a godsend. Getting rid of a scammer’s damaging work can take weeks, months, or even years. Google has a lot to gain by improving their support for website and video owners.

Certain Queries

The company is also exercising a little direct control over what appears when certain keywords are entered into the box. Eliminating pornographic results helps the search engine remain family friendly and the new algorithm changes should make it much harder for Google users to accidentally or purposely find adult content. Other blocked phrases will likely involve payday loans and other suspect industries. Only time will tell if website owners react badly to this decision. Quite a few legitimate websites may rely on these keywords for the bulk of their traffic, but both written and video marketing will do little for them if the entire search process blocks their results.

In Featured Posts, Video SEO, Wooshii News
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New Video Codec Coming From Google

abilewis —  May 17, 2013 — Leave a comment

On the heels of their announcement about search updates, Google has also revealed that they are working on a new video codec to change the experience of content producers. The codec is known as VP9 and may just come out as an open source and royalty free project if the company has their way. The new release is designed to improve performance over the H 264 codec that is the current standard for video viewing online.

Google announced the project, among other new releases from the company, at their annual I/O conference. The team claims that VP9 will cut the bandwidth required for high quality playback. If this is true, millions of viewers could enjoy a smoother viewing experience with fewer buffering breaks. This may increase the popularity of video even further, especially for people that haven’t embraced the technology because they rely on relatively slow connections. However, VP9 is still in development, so nothing is fixed in stone yet. Other new codecs are also on the horizon from other developers. The upgrade known as H 265 may prove to be more popular or efficient in the long run. However, Google is definitely aiming to improve the efficiency of data delivery as their content library continues to grow.

In All, Video & Rich Media News, Video Marketing, Wooshii
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picwethepeople

Video for Legal Practices – 7 tips

Fergus —  May 16, 2013 — Leave a comment

You’ve probably worked out already that we think video presents many great ways for different businesses and industries to engage with customers. In this post we will focus on just a few tips that a legal practice might employ – And through in a bit of a freebie at the end :)

1, Promote Your Authority

There are hundreds of resources online for finding answers to legal questions. Understanding whether these sources are reliable or not is another matter. Video presents an ideal channel for a lawyer to engage their audience with answers to questions whilst doing so in way that carries more authority than an anonymous Q&A site.

Step 1 – Scour forums or sites like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers or Quora to see what questions are being asked.

Step 2 – Film your lawyers answering 10 of these questions. (Malpractice concerns can easily be avoided whilst ensuring comprehensive answers are given.)

Step 3 (a) – Start adding these videos to your YouTube Channel. Link them together using annotations to ensure maximum engagement with your channel

 or

Step 3 (b) – Create a video landing page on your own site. Use a player such as Wistia to upload your videos and optimize for SEO and rich snippets.

Over time you will build up a large bank of answers that will either drive engagement with a YouTube channel or generate traffic and enquiries through search engines.

2, Tent Pole Programming

Predicting when a client will need your services on a day to day basis is all but impossible BUT there are certain general dates that you can play to with your content output. For the same reasons scary movies get released just before a Halloween and the relationship experts turn up on chat shows just before Valentines Day, ‘Tent Pole’ programming can work for your legal practice.

The key here is to look for predictable diary events that you can leverage content creation against. (For example, the end of a financial year may create a surge of inbound calls from clients old and new. What are the chief concerns these people have?) Create a calendar of dates and events that you can play to and create videos in advance. Release just before these dates. Such content ensures that you are relevant just when your audience need you to be.

3, Meet your team

Legal firms are knowledge businesses. There is no product that can be shown off. Essentially lawyers are working with the same raw materials (i.e. the Law!) as every other business – so how can you differentiate your team?

Produce videos that showcase your team. Who are you? Put a face to a name. This will build confidence and engagement with your firm before a client even walks through the door.

Capture your team talking about the culture of your business. Explain how you help clients, your processes, your offices, your specialties. Allow clients to get to know your business. The mere fact that you are prepared to expose your team to the camera shows openness and builds confidence with your prospective clients.

4, Meet Your Clients

Even better than meeting the team is meeting some clients. What better way to find a trustworthy and competent legal firm than through recommendation?

Have you got three or four clients that will talk about the work you do? Make it fun for them – encourage them to participate. Promote their business too in exchange.

Nothing builds confidence more than a client that will stick his hand up and talk positively about your business.

5, Educate / Webinar

Run a live Q&A session online. Pick a topic such as tax and deliver a live webinar series featuring your lawyers and have an online community ask questions. Limit it to, say, 40 minutes and take pre-registrations.

Allow participants to ask questions via Twitter using a hashtag to gain extra exposure.

Once the webinar is complete take the recording and split it into several videos for each question.

Post these video clips to your YouTube channel or again to your own video landing page. After your webinar be sure to run an email campaign that includes links to your videos.

6, Add video to your Email

Start adding video to your email campaigns. It will not only increase your open rates dramatically but it will also increase the engagement with your services. Use a hosted video service such as Wistia so that you can track who is watching your videos and how they are engaging with them. Are they finding particular sections interesting? If so concentrate other videos on these areas.

If you have run a live event be sure to include video in your post-event mailout.

7, Feedback

Use video analytics to assess what to make. Are certain videos doing better than others. If so why? Is it a particularly difficult topic or one that is relevant at a particular time of year?

Take these trends and build on them. Can you expand on these topics?

Look at in-video metrics. Are certain parts of videos getting repeated? Again, Wistia in-video analytics is a great way to determine what people are watching. Can this a particular topic be broken off to a new piece of content?

8, Pay Per View – Guaranteed views for your videos

Perhaps one of the best ways to quickly and directly engage with prospective clients is using LinkedIn Video and Google Video Ads.

That is a whole new post but as a tester – Promote this article and receive a $100 LinkedIn Video Ad Coupon.


In Buyer, Tips n Tricks, Video Marketing Tools
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Video Marketing Strategies

You Don’t Have to Please the Crowd

Fergus —  May 16, 2013 — Leave a comment

When it comes to content, marketers often fall into a common trap that saps the strength of their campaigns. It is very easy to tone down your message or only consider marketing ideas that will appeal to the broadest common denominator. Most businesses are afraid to upset consumers or drive a sensible shopper away by using a silly tone. However, this attempt to become appealing to everyone often leaves the videos or written content much too bland to do any good for the brand. In the long run, videos with strong messages targeted to a specific and accessible demographic will perform better than the vague and inoffensive content for everyone.

All Exposure is Good Exposure

Whilst you don’t want to use such shocking content matter that Youtube must take down your clip, it is okay to use humour, get crude, or go for sugary sweetness if that is what your audience wants. However, you cannot assume that you know your demographics unless you have invested in plenty of research. You might know that your product is popular with women between the ages of 18 and 25, but do you know why? Furthermore, do you know what they want to see in a video? If you hit a home run with that audience, criticism from people who do not like the tone or imagery can still give you a much needed boost in exposure. Like-minded individuals will still flock to the content through the links provided by people who weren’t impressed with your video clips.

Polish It

If you are going to produce something with relatively limited appeal, you should put everything you can into its production. Yes! MediaWorks recommends pushing the values as high as possible to ensure it is still popular with its target demographic. (http://www.yesmediaworks.com/blog/bid/115124/TechCrunch-Hates-This-Startup-Video-and-Totally-Misses-the-Point) Your audience will appreciate professional sound recording, smooth animations and steady camera work. Don’t put a lot of effort into a clip if the story won’t ring true with its viewers. If your demographic is too small, it may be nearly impossible to ensure they find it. Create a professional representation of your brand that can be shared even if the viewers don’t necessarily agree with the message. You will be surprised at how effective these targeted releases can be if you manage to utilise the power of social sharing to your advantage right off the bat.

In Online Video Advertising, Video Marketing, Wooshii News
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Five Tell-Tale Signs of Amateur Video

Lucie —  May 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

Developing a content marketing strategy that includes video will provide your company with few concrete benefits if your clips look like the work of an amateur. Professional polish is crucial if you don’t want to drive away viewers with crackling sound or bad colour management. If you’re not sure how your videos look to the public, watch them with a critical eye whilst looking for these six common problems.

Poor Framing

A tight zoom can show off the details of your product, but it could cut out all of the rest of the action.

Amateurs often shoot at a slightly crooked angle that can drive visitors crazy when trying to view your clip. Proper framing ensures a square and level shot and also requires you to avoid shifting or drifting away from the centre spot whilst recording.

Audio That Peaks and Clips

When your narrator laughs or pronounces certain words, does the recording get so loud that the sound cuts out? This is known as clipping and can happen even with professional recording equipment. Combining a trained voice actor with a skilled audio engineer will prevent these kinds of common problems. Low audio is nearly as widespread. No one can enjoy the information you want to spread when they can’t hear what you are saying.

Blue or Orange Tint

Incandescent lighting will give the entire clip an orange tint whilst florescent lights provide a blue colour. Neither is flattering to your performers and could make it hard to see your product. Many cameras used by amateurs attempt to automatically balance the white value for the recording, but this can backfire and make the tinting even worse.

Blurring and Shaking

Investing in a tripod that costs less than $20 can eliminate this issue, so don’t upload blurry content that shows your hands shaking. Even the most basic family videographers can learn to take smooth, steady recordings with an affordable tripod. There’s no point in having expensive recording equipment if you don’t have anything to brace it against accidental movement.

Does your plotline jump around from point to point? How smooth are the transitions between concepts? Proper scene transitions aren’t the only requirement for a professional video. The storyline and script should also follow some kind of logical path. Don’t jump between product features and customer testimonials unless you want to lose your audience.

In Video Marketing Tools, Wooshii, Wooshii News , ,
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Product Video - Rap Battle

Product Video Marketing – TaqMan vs SYBR

Fergus —  May 6, 2013 — Leave a comment

How can you use product videos to engage an audience with two products that you market?

That was the challenge laid down by Life Technologies when they wanted to show how both their products SYBR and TaqMan were used.

Both products had fairly loyal followings for different reasons and both products have their advantages. So with the Wooshii team they head looking to make a product videos that would engage, entertain and of course promote these products.

Working with Wooshii the two products were personified as Rap artists and then pitched up in a Rap Battle in the Lab

The results were a load of fun – check out the finished article here

In Buyer, Featured Posts, Video Marketing, Video Marketing Tools, Wooshii, Wooshii News
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Using Parody the Legal Way in Your Videos

Ricardo —  May 6, 2013 — Leave a comment

In the quest to create a hit video for marketing purposes, many companies decide to parody a popular or well-known bit of media to catch the attention of viewers with short attention spans. However, using the name, images, or likenesses of a competitor or individual could get you into big trouble. It’s important to understand how to create an effective and legal parody video before you invest in recording and editing.

The Right Tone

A video showing your competitor’s logo with negative narration over it won’t qualify as a parody. Humour, sarcasm and commentary are all important aspects of parody. You don’t have to make jokes that everyone finds funny, but there does need to be some clear attempt at humour in the clip. Your right to use copyrighted material is only protected when you create commentary around it with mockery. If you don’t maintain that kind of tone, your material could be considered a misrepresentation of the truth.

Fair Use

That humorous focus is also crucial when it comes to fair use. Copyright law protects the creations of your competitors, but you still have a right to use them for parody videos. The power of the First Amendment overrides these protections when you are creating a joke around a specific cultural icon or company. However, it is still best to use variations on the logo and name of another establishment rather than copy them directly, to avoid disputes. Mocking Youtube by calling it BooTube will ensure your company won’t come under fire for using trademarked materials, without completely losing the interest of your audience.

Use a Disclaimer

If you want to avoid any confusion, add a quick disclaimer to the beginning of the video to make your intentions of parody very clear. You can also add a notification about your humour in the text description below the clip. It is best to consult with your company’s legal team or lawyer before you use any legal terms in your disclaimer. Your expert can quickly write a disclaimer tailored to your company’s video marketing efforts that will keep you out of hot water.

Parody requires a good sense of humour. If you are creating video for marketing purposes, you will need to have a strong sense of what you want to accomplish before using humour in your content. A parody can bring in a lot of new attention, but only if it is genuinely funny.

In Buyer, Creative, Online Video Advertising, Tips n Tricks, Video & Rich Media, Video Marketing , , , ,
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Highly Engaging Banner Ads

Fergus —  May 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

HIGHLY ENGAGING BANNERS

This campaign was pointed out to me by one our legal clients 

Take a look at this page

To the right you will see an embedded video. The video promises to explain a point targeted to the users of this websites interests. “Nothing amazing in that” you say… which is exactly what I thought when I first saw it. (What I did note was how well the video stood out against all the other advertising. In fact to me it looked like part of the site I was visiting… not an ad.)

Upon clicking the video it shifted me to a video page and the video started to play. Great I thought. Nice use of video content on this site

… but….

then I realized I had actually been shifted to a new advertisers site. The video was playing and I could see other engaging videos on the site.
What I couldn’t work out was what video ad-network or system the original AD was being served through…. Had they paid specifically for a video placement?
Banner ads are staple of online marketing life. Many companies use them and although the click through rates are generally low price points are such that they are still an attractive proposition to some.
BUT what if those banner ads could take on the form of more engaging content and increase your click through rate and then conversion.

This is exactly what had happened on the site with the embedded video … The embedded video is actually just a banner ad, an image like the one below made to look like an embedded video.

As a viewer I am drawn to the video due to its placement on a related site and the question it promises to answer.
Clicking the banner actually takes me to the advertisers site where I am then able to not only view the video but also view others that might be of interest.
The whole process feels seamless.
Whilst I have no data I would hazard a guess that the click through rate on this banner, (designed to look like video content) is higher than click through rates of traditional banner ads and that user continuation into a customer funnel is also higher. (We will test and report back)
In essence the advertiser had leveraged the existing banner ad networks as a great way to serve video content
Can this technique be applied to your business?
YOUR COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS ARE WELCOME

 

In All
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IBM’s Brilliant Video Marketing Move: Atom Level Filmmaking

Ricardo —  May 3, 2013 — 1 Comment

This week, IBM unleashed “A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie” to the world.

The ability to move single atoms — the smallest particles of any element in the universe — is crucial to IBM’s research in the field of atomic memory. But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, IBM researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules (two atoms stacked on top of each other), all in pursuit of making a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million times. A movie made with atoms.

It is brilliant video marketing, by showing their work and what they do in a fresh way, and showing people something they have never seen before.

And that makes them share it. Makes bloggers post it. Makes everyone talk about it. Makes 2.2 million views in 4 days. And counting.

The previous record holder was already amazing, and also brilliant video marketing by Nokia. But IBM takes it to an extreme.

And not only that, of course they also released a “making of” of it (as they should!).

And not just one, but several making of-type of companion pieces to the main video, which they are calling “IBM Atomic Shorts”.

One of the is about the “The sound of moving atoms“:

Another one, “How to move an atom“:

All in all, a brilliant video campaign, well done IBM!

In Buyer, Creative , , ,
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Three Companies Utilising Video for Better Customer Service

admin —  May 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

Video may play a strong role in your marketing efforts, but do you utilise it for customer service solutions? There are dozens of companies spread across various industries finding that video is just as useful for solving problems with products or sharing updates with customers, but these three stand out from the crowd.

iRobot Corporation

This company helps customers to keep their Roomba floor vacuums running smoothly with a full library of support videos. Professional technicians demonstrate basic maintenance and simple repairs for common issues in a way that everyone can understand.

AT&T

Telecommunication issues are frustrating for consumers. AT&T designed a set of troubleshooting videos to help users fix their own problems or narrow down the cause before a technician comes. The one-on-one format makes each customer feel like they are receiving personal assistance, but these videos are pre-recorded.

Sprint PCS

When you’re having an issue with your smart phone, you can turn to the Sprint PCS knowledge base for help. Enter your phone’s model number or name and discover a resource that seamlessly combines videos, articles and images that are all related to your device and the issue you are facing.

In Buyer, Creative, Online Video Advertising, Tips n Tricks, Video & Rich Media, Video Marketing , , , , , ,
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