Hosted verses Posted

1. Hosted

This is where you host the video on your own website. You can use a paid service, like Brightcove, or use your own website hosting company. This is the best solution for videos that are designed to sell, and I’ll explain why in the next point.

2. Posted

This is where you upload your videos to video-sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, or Revver and optimize the videos for search engines. This technique works best for videos that entertain, educate and enlighten potential prospects. If you upload direct sales videos, optimized with transactional keywords (sale, buy, save), the search engines will penalize you. Video on YouTube is a social experience and selling is considered anti-social, so save the sales message for your website.

video player

A strong video marketing strategy will likely incorporate both deployment methods with a hybrid approach: posting the teaching videos on YouTube (which you can also place on appropriate pages of your website) and hosting selling videos on your website (especially the homepage, product pages).

I covered techniques for best results with Posted Content in last blog http://spykermedia.com/eight-steps-to-getting-your-video-in-search-results

Techniques for best results with hosted content

• Embed a full player in your website, not a link.

It still shocks me when I see written links for a video. What’s even worse is when I have to download the video in order to watch it.  People won’t download videos for fear of viruses, not to mention download times. If you post a link, you’ll also never know how many people watched your video. So skip the link and get a full-screen video player on your website. You can use YouTube for this, but the YouTube player is clickable, meaning people can leave your site and watch your competitors’ YouTube videos.  Your best bet is to use a video hosting platform like Brightcove, Viddler, or SpykerMedia’s platform, upload the video and copy the player code.

• Make sure the player is sharable.

People should be able to share your video on e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, or copy the video onto their own sites.

• Make sure the video is well-positioned

Place the video above the “fold”–the bottom of the screen–so viewers don’t have to scroll down the site to find it. Prime spots are left side, top, or middle right. Make sure the player is large enough to get noticed.

• Have a large play button

Create a clear trigger for your video.

• Choose a compelling thumbnail image

If possible, choose an “action shot” over a talking head. A compelling title frame can also work.  People are more likely to watch.

• Don’t auto-start the video

Don’t embed the video in such a way that it plays automatically when a visitor enters the site, because that’s just annoying. Visitors may return to your site a few times before making a purchase decision. Forcing visitors to watch a video again and again is tantamount to driving customers away–but when visitors choose to play the video, they feel in control and engaged.

• Mobile-friendly

More and more people are viewing content on mobile devices, and it has become vital for your videos to play in these environments–so make sure your hosting service is mobile friendly (another reason to use a paid video hosting service).

Share your strategies!

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which Wikipedia defines as “the process of improving ranking in search engine results.”

Videos, just like website pages, get indexed and ranked by search engines. Google, as the owner of YouTube, makes it a point to place videos directly into search results. Video SEO, therefore, involves the processes of improving ranking for your videos so that they are more likely to show up on search results.

Benefits of video SEO

According to a recent survey from Forrester*, “videos stand a much better chance than your text pages of being shown on the first results page.” What’s more, studies show that people are more likely to press “play” on a video in search results than a text site, increasing even further your chances of being found.

Videos in search results

What should you do?

A good place to start is by uploading your video to YouTube. You can’t, however, simply upload and hope people watch. Forty-eight hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, resulting in nearly eight years of content uploaded every day. This means that if you don’t optimize and share your video, it won’t be found. http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics

Eight Steps to success

1. Make a good video

The video needs to be short and engaging in order to get a lot of views on YouTube.  That means less than two minutes, and getting to the point in the first ten seconds.

2. Pick a good title

The title of your video is critical. It needs to reflect the content of the video and include the keyword(s) you are after.

3. Description

This is your chance to describe the contents of the video. Be thorough and rich with your use of relevant keywords.

4. Tags

Use as many tags as possible but ensure they are actually describing your video.  Use general and specific keywords and use all of the 120 character limit YouTube allows.

5. Thumbnail

The thumbnail is a “mini-poster” for your video. People will decide to watch or not based on a good thumbnail.  YouTube generates three images, or thumbnails, from your video, but they will not always be the best. The best solution is to upload an image yourself.

6. Embed the video

Place the video on your website. Optimize the page it’s on by having the same title for the video as you do for the page, and visa-versa. Use the same keywords and description on the page around the video.

7. Submit a video sitemap

Once you have videos on your website, submit an XML Video sitemap to Google. This will tell Google’s search-bots where to find the videos on your site and what they are all about.

8. Share the video

Leverage your social networks. Embed and share videos on Facebook and LinkedIn. You should also post on your free Google Places profile.

Then track your success.

Good luck, and happy video marketing!

*Forrester Report http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/01/the-easiest-way.html

Where people watch depends on your deployment plan and how your viewers share the content. The more engaging your video, the more people will share it. How many people watched your video? This is the number that everyone looks at first when evaluation a videos success. If it’s a big number that means the video is a success…right? Not necessarily. This statistic is actually of little use if you don’t know how long they watched.

video engagement analytics

Let’s say Video A gets 5,000 views, but people are only watching the first ten seconds. Video B has 1300 views, but people are watching it all… which is the more successful video? How long people watch, known as “engagement statistics,” is a critical measure of a video marketing campaign’s success. You need an analytics program that includes engagement statistics as a standard feature.

But what do you do if you’re getting views, but your video is not engaging?

Review the engagement statistics and look for the “drop off point.” Watch the video as it lines up with the drop off point, and you will find clues as to why people left. You can then ask critical questions, like, Is this something that can be fixed with a simple re-edit, or would re-writing and re-shooting be more effective? What are the costs for the fixes, and do they justify the ROI? Often, with mission-critical marketing videos (like a home page conversion video) the best approach is a limited distribution (send to a small group, like your Facebook fans) in order to evaluate the engagement statistics, and re-edit to improve engagement if needed. Once you find that your audience is engaging with the video’s content, then you can roll out a wider delivery plan and continue to measure your response rates.

What is a trust network?

When we want to know the answer to a question, we Google it, but how reliable are the websites we go to? It turns out that we are using our social networks to help filter and sort what is truthful from what is not. We trust our friend from Portland to recommend a local restaurant, or our rock climbing cousin to recommend a hiking trail.

Some people complain about the sheer volume of information out there on the Internet. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose… you can’t take it all in. Bilton postulates that, rather than adding to the deluge with Tweets and pokes, mobile and online interactions with our social network act as filters for the massive stream of daily content.

We pay attention to things that are recommended by our network.

Bilton recalls a teenaged girl who asked to borrow his laptop to check the news. When Bilton asked her what news site she preferred, she responded, “Facebook.”  Facebook is her personally filtered sole news source…all the things that are relevant to her.

This leads into the idea of the “me economics.” When you buy a map of a city in a store, you are not on the map. The map merely shows what exists around you. But get out your cell phone, and there you are at the center of your map… and that same phone can serve up information relevant to you at your location. It can show you nearby places to eat, or local museums and stores.

As these apps get smarter, they will be more and more personally catered to you.  Facebook has already partnered with Bing and Google has Google Plus to offer your trust networks as part of online search.

Video, of course, will play an increasing role in social media and marketing, because people don’t want to read all that tiny text on cell phones. Businesses of all sizes will serve up videos for mobile devices where viewers can see, for example, the restaurant ambience, look at the food and listen to happy customers. Online video advertising is set to explode with a staggering 5.7 billion annual projected spending by 2014. These video ads will become more and more targeted to users’ interests as marketers get smarter about figuring out what we want in the moment.

You can check out the book at http://www.nickbilton.com/

Or on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Live-Future-Heres-How-Works/dp/0307591115/ref=sr_1_4

One of the problems with a website is that it consists of many pages and any visitor is faced with a lot of choices as to where to go in exploring the site.

An optimal path, from the site owner’s point of view, might be to start at the home page and get an overview, then go to the product page, learn about the product, then see the case studies or testimonial page, and then arrive at the price page primed to buy… but what is to stop a visitor from going straight to the price page? The latter path would clearly lead to fewer conversions – but it is hard for a website to steer people through an ideal series of steps to conversion.

Video: the path to success

Here is where video stands out.

Video is a linear medium.

Each video has a beginning, middle and end.  The opening needs to engage viewers and draw them in, laying out the pain point. The middle shows the benefits of your product or service, tying them back to the pain point and selling the solution. The end directs them to the action you desire. One video by itself might not sell people on a complex product, but two, three or more videos can be connected to continue the linear experience.

For example, your home page or conversion video (as described above) might end with a call to action directing people to watch the product demonstration video. You can link the videos directly – having the second video load automatically in the same player – or send people to the page with the product demonstration video. The later solution works better for search engine optimization, because the text on the page will match the text in the video description, title and keywords, and submitting an xml video sitemap to Google works better with one video per page.

As people watch the product demonstration video, their commitment level rises and the call to action at the end might invite viewers to watch a case study video or view some testimonial videos. Viewers are sent to that page, and can watch several testimonials and/or the case study video, before finally being asked to call or e-mail for more information or be delivered to the pricing page and asked to buy.

By handling it this way, you have walked your website visitors through the exact path you want them to follow in order to lead them to conversion.

You can also use analytics to track progress through each step in this sales funnel. This enables you to find weak areas and make adjustments to things like the length of the video, the call to action, music, play button, etc.

Video is linear; that’s part of its power. When crafted carefully, a series of interlinked videos can be used as a direct path to profits.

Video and social media are tightly connected and our clients will frequently use social media to spread there videos. Especially within the small business community, I hear a lot of questions and confusion about social media and how to use it effectively. I also hear so-called “experts” handing out advice that is not helpful. The confusion and misinformation seems to revolve around two main points:

Myth No. 1:  I have to be on Facebook and Twitter!

Everything you do for your business takes time, and time is finite. Consequently, you need engage in activities that will bring your business the best results. If you used every social media tool out there you would consume so much time that other areas of the business might suffer. The trick is to pick the social media tools that your prospects are using. Find out where that conversation is taking place and join it. If you’re doing B2B, for example, then LinkedIn is probably a better solution than Facebook.

Myth No. 2:  It’s a great way to advertise!

Social media doesn’t lend itself to traditional methods of advertising. I recently met a “social media expert” and, after giving him my card, was inundated by tweets, text messages asking me to watch videos and sign up for prizes . . . essentially, an impersonal barrage of sales pitches. It reminded me of telemarketing – but telemarketing doesn’t work in a social medium. The audience is in charge now; they are initiating and engaging in a dialog with brands and about products. If you annoy your audience with intrusive marketing, they will share their irritation with their network, creating resistance to your company.

A balanced approach to social media

So, how should you approach social media?

The following tips are gleaned from some great books (check links below) and my own experience. I am not an expert in this field; in fact, I don’t believe there are any real experts, because the medium changes to fast… but there are some thoughtful guides. I hope these ideas are helpful.

1. Listen and approach with humility

The best approach is to listen to the conversation, learn the rules of that particular network and then join the conversation with humility. If they are talking about your company or brand or just your industry, identify yourself and make helpful comments. If they are talking about problems they are having with your business, address the person directly and resolve the situation (for example, if someone complains about poor service at a restaurant, consider a coupon with an apology and explanation of how you are handling this issue). The person will be pleased and it will make you look good to those seeing the comments.

2. Create content

Create content that your prospects value. Write a blog, make some videos, write a whitepaper – things that give information about your area of expertise without selling. If you’re a garden center, write gardening tips. The idea is that you establish yourself as an expert in your field. Those that read, engage and share your content have an interest in the topic. At some point, when they are ready to buy, they will want to learn more about you, because you are the expert in their network. This is called “inbound marketing.” Rather than shouting your message to the world – which most people will probably ignore in an already ad-rich environment – you provide value and they come to you.

3 Share and engage

You’re out there reading things that relate to your industry. Try sharing the things you think might be of interest to your network. While you might not have time to create content every day, you can certainly be finding and sharing things as you come across them. Also comment on content where you have an informed opinion. In LinkedIn, answering questions is great tactic. The idea behind all these things is engagement in a social dialog with a network of people. As soon as you start selling, you lose your standing.

4 It takes time

Social networking won’t lead to sales overnight… in fact, it is extremely hard to track direct links from social networking to a sale. What is does is create goodwill and establishes you as an expert in your field in a community who might be interested in what you have to offer, and should therefore be an important part of your marketing plan.

These are all points I have gleaned from books like, “Social Media Marketing” by Liana Evans and The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg. They are strategies I have observed successful businesses engaging in, and strategies I try to emulate. I would love to hear what experiences you have had. Maybe I missed some cool ideas, or maybe you disagree with something.

What do you think? Let’s have a conversation.

Often I will have options, I could stay on the wide angle longer than I envisioned in the storyboard… or cut to a close up earlier. There is a lot of subtle timing involved. Cuts have to happen at the right moment so they are not jarring and don’t take you out of the storyline. Sometimes you’ll focus on a characters reaction to a line, rather than the character giving it. That small change can really add to a scene or take away from it.

Drama is far more compelling than straight interview and these videos really engage the audience.  Designed as part of an online course created by Clark College for medical professionals – these videos are designed to be discussion starters for a course on cultural awareness.  We could have just done interviews with people talking about Cultural Awareness, but by creating stories that engage, you end up with much more powerful discussion starters.  The test audience at PeaceHealth  Southwest Medical Center were impressed with the course.

After four days of filming, I have over six hours of video to sift through on twelve reels (folders with labels really). Working with P2 media is great. No more tapes or waiting to digitize hours of footage into a computer, it shows up instantly.  I use Avid Media Composer, which edits P2 in anyone of its many high definition formats. I worked in 1080P using AVC-Intra a high definition format packs a big punch. The videos will ultimately be delivered online, but starting with a bit rich format will pay off and deliver a quality image at the other end.

We will be integrating these videos into an online course and using the flash format to integrate with the other media. Closed captioning is the last phase and that will be streamed on a separate xml file which is integrated into the flash player to stream with the videos.

Is video social?

Video is perhaps the ultimate form of social media; moving images show the full range of human emotion, and great videos cry out to be shared.

In fact, it turns out video and social media are a match made in heaven, since social media has become the most effective way to share videos.

sharing videos on mobile devices

Videos shared through social media outlets are performing better than their static counterparts. There’s a direct correlation between social media referrals and engagement rates, meaning that not only are people clicking and viewing the videos more often, but also more of them keep watching until the video is done.  In Q4 2010, Facebook and Twitter accounted for the highest engagement rates across all media categories by referral source.

This makes sense, because if a social media user comes across videos in his or her feeds, it will have come from a friend or acquaintance. The fact your friend bothered to share the video at all seems to suggest that it is something worth your time, giving weight to the content, and your friends are more likely to have similar interests.

As of last quarter, Facebook surpassed Yahoo! as the leading referral source, second only to Google in driving traffic to online video content for media companies and brands. Facebook now accounts for 11.8% of all video traffic referred to media companies. To put this in perspective, Google accounted for 66.6% and Yahoo! accounted for 16% of the U.S. search market in the same period, according to ComScore.

Realizing this means several things:

1. Leverage your own social media sites to promote and share your video content.
2. Grow your social media subscriber base.
3. Equip the video players on your site with prominent social sharing buttons, making it easier for people to share your content.

Happy sharing.

Directing "Blood and Sand"

Filming medical dramas for an online Clark College course was one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on. We shot several of the videos at Southwest Washington Medical Center’s Sim Labs: rooms that simulate an ER, complete with hospital beds, monitoring equipment and dummies that vomit and have realistic heart attacks. We shot them on high-definition video with a four-man crew…a small crew, by ER standards, but working together, we finished filming all eight videos in four days.

The Crew:

I wanted these videos have the real dramatic feel on a show like “ER” and lighting is a key component to setting that mood.  For lighting design, I turned to local DP, Ryan Walters. Ryan created some amazing looks in short set-up times, utilizing Kino lights and grip equipment from Portland rental house, Picture This. We used a jib to add some nice, fluid movement in our shots. Brian Yazzie was our location sound engineer, and used the traditional boom mic to get close to the action. All sound was send directly to the camera and backed up on disc as a precaution. We shot on P2 cards (no more tape!) and transferred footage to two hard drives (one for storage, one for back-up) on the set. Our data wrangler, Nikia Furman, also acted as a grip and set up the jib.

Directing:

Directing on a film set is always fun. I was in my element, despite the challenges of working with actors with little experience. I started each day by going over the storyboards and shot list with the DP (Ryan) and figuring out the most efficient order to film them in. Then, while the crew set-up, I met with the cast, and we read through the script a few times. This is the point I see the actors interacting for the first-time and the performances coming together and I give input as needed. Once some of the gear was in place, we brought the cast in and blocked out the staging.  In blocking, you figure where the actors will stand and how they will move and on what line. You want them to start and stop and move at the same point during a scene, so when you change camera angles and film the same action again, the shots all cut together properly.  I watched to see how the scene looks on the camera, as the actors got a feel for the scene on the real set. We made adjustments, got the scene looking natural, and marked the spots on the floor with tape.

The actors were then kicked off the set while the crew, especially our DP, lit the scene. I went out with the actors for a bit more rehearsal time. I got them to a point where the scene was working smoothly, and then let them take a break; I didn’t want to push the actors too far, in case the performances became wooden. As soon as the scene was lit, the cast and I came back in and ran through the scene. This was a last chance to make sure everything was working and looking good on the monitor. Lights were tweaked, marks changed if necessary and then maybe one or two more run-throughs… and the shooting began.

Shooting a scene:

Typically, we started with the master shot – a wide shot that encompasses most of the action in the scene. Then we got in and did coverage – the close-up shots of various characters from different angles. Usually, directors shoot the coverage requiring the least lighting adjustments first, such as shots of the side of a conversation that the camera already faces in the master shot. Then the camera is turned around and lighting is tweaked for the reverse or reaction shots. This is where a storyboard comes in handy. A storyboard is a critical tool for any drama…it’s a way to communicate your vision to the cast and crew, but it’s also a way to keep track of what you’re shooting and make sure you don’t miss anything. There’s nothing worse than being in the edit room and realizing that you didn’t get an important piece of coverage, or a vital reaction shot.

After four long days of filming, we were finally done, and ready to hit the edit suite.

see more images at http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonspykerman/

Read about the edit next.

Producing eight medical dramas for the Clark College Cultural Competence training course was a great project. One of the biggest challenges was casting, because we were looking for experienced actors from so many different ethnic backgrounds. A “Ukrainian Male” in his forties or fifties, an “Overweight Hispanic Male” in the eighteen-to-twenty range, and a “Pregnant Vietnamese Woman” aged nineteen to twenty-five, accompanied by her “Fifty-something Vietnamese Grandmother” – to name just a few roles we needed to cast. It was indeed a challenge!

Cast for teenager fluent in American Sign Language

By using a combination of Craigslist, sending casting calls to college drama departments, and Southwest Washington Medical Center – along with calls to local casting agencies – we were eventually able to fill the more than 20 required roles.

We held our casting sessions over three full days, with a few of the hardest parts being filled at the last minute. Everyone who came in for a reading was given a script in advance, and they arrived in twenty-minute intervals. We saw real doctors and nurses offering to play a version of themselves, some with acting experience, and people who were merely interested in acting, but had never worked professionally as an actor before.

Casting is always an interesting process… seeing the different approaches people bring to a role, the different ways the same line can be delivered. I like to let people bring what they see during the first read, without too much direction or explanation. Then I like to see how they can take adjustments… an adjustment, in director-speak, is a peace of information which will inform a performance and produce a different take. Imagine, for example, that you’re hiding a stutter, or you desperately need to use the bathroom, or that you’re attracted to another character. These all have an impact on delivery, and can result in vastly different – and sometimes amusing – takes. A line that an actor is delivering in a way that seems too slow and deliberate (“Acting” with a big “A”) can sometime be fixed with a simple adjustment, such as asking the actor to imagine that she’s late for a meeting.

Although most of the people we saw had little acting experience, there were a few people who immediately impressed us with their abilities, and some roles (mostly the medical staff) were filled fast.

Eventually, every crucial role was filled, and we could begin the final stages of planning before shooting began.

Look out for our next entry on filming – coming soon.

or review previous entry on planning at http://spykermedia.com/medical-drama