BY Steve Young
Do you want more people to watch your videos?
Have you thought of integrating your YouTube channel with your Pinterest account?
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
How to Use Pinterest to Drive More YouTube Views
Have you thought of integrating your YouTube channel with your Pinterest account?
Why Short Videos Are Wildly Popular Over Social Media
BY Michael Miller
When it comes to marketing your brand or business online, can you tell your story in 15 seconds? How about six?
That's all the time you have when you use one of the new short-video sharing apps available for iOS and Android devices. Vine was the first of these video apps, enabling you to shoot and upload videos no more than six seconds long and loop over and over. Not to be left behind, Instagram recently added video sharing to its digital photo app, and upped the time limit to a whopping 15 seconds per video. Instagram videos don't loop.
Then there's MixBit, which lets you shoot short videos but also enables editing of multiple clips into longer one- and two-minute videos.
All of these services are mobile-only, with videos shot and shared from iPhones and other mobile devices. Vine and Instagram video, especially, are proving to be immensely popular. Vine, which is owned by Twitter, amassed 13 million users in its first four months on the market. Instagram Video was immediately available to the service's 130 million users, who uploaded more than five million videos in the service's first 24 hours.
But, let's be serious: What is up with the short videos? Are six seconds and 15 seconds arbitrary amounts of time? Or is there some method to this madness?
The short-video approach is designed to offer viewers a much different viewing experience than with traditional longer-form videos. Case in point are Vine's six-second videos, which are immediate and without pretense. They're also short enough to upload and view quickly, even on slower mobile connections. Instagram went for slightly longer videos that enable companies to upload new or existing 15-second commercials.
In practical use, Vine's shorter videos tend to inspire more creativity.
Since you can start and stop recording for multiple shots, many companies are creating interesting stop-motion animations that showcase their products. The looping nature of Vine videos can also result in interesting effects as videos circle back into and through themselves. The "summer up" roller coaster video from Target is a perfect example of Vine's stop-motion and looping in action.
Instagram, on the other hand, is attracting more traditional promotional videos.
You don't have to be as inventive to fit your message into a 15-second container and many companies appreciate the extra time to tell their stories and showcase their products. For example, a Starbucks video gives a short tour of the company's original Pike Place store.
Since both Vine and Instagram encourage social sharing, the most interesting videos can quickly go viral. It's not unusual to see popular Vine and Instagram videos popping up in Twitter and Facebook feeds. The sharing nature of both services offer the potential for significant customer engagement.
If you want to see how the different services require different approaches, search for Gap's stop-motion videos on Vine and Gap's more traditional customer testimonials on Instagram.
Key Ingredients to a Winning Mobile Content-Marketing Strategy
BY Jayson DeMers
When you think about the different ways customers land on your company's website, mobile is most likely a growing driver of traffic. According to the latest statistics from Pew Research, 56 percent of Americans own a smartphone and 34 percent own a tablet. Then consider that 63 percent of smartphone owners use their devices to go online.
Does your content-marketing strategy take these trends into account?
Plugging new channels or technologies into your existing content strategy isn't enough. As a business owner, you need to consider how your site and your marketing are being delivered over the devices people are using. If you're not delivering your marketing messages in a way that's tailored specifically to the experience of a smartphone or tablet user, chances are you're turning customers away.
Here's a closer look at some critical points to consider about your company's mobile content-marketing strategy:
Mobile isn't just about the device.
Don't just look at the mobile channel as a series of devices. It's true that your content needs to be optimized and look great across different brands of tablets and smartphones. But mobile is also about the context and behaviors of your customers while they're on those devices.
What are they doing on that smartphone?
Are they accessing content relaxing at home, or glancing quickly during their commute? Your content strategy needs to represent a deeper understanding of your users' mobile context and what that means for both your content and experience creation.
For example, I recently bought a new home theater system. As I was setting it up in the living room, I realized that I lacked a particular part to enable the wireless rear speakers. I needed to figure out how to buy that part while I was next to my speaker system so I could examine their part numbers and other information printed on the speakers. I pulled out my iPhone and began searching the web. Plenty of suppliers had the part available, but I made my purchase based on what I needed at that moment: Assurance that it was the right part, trustworthiness of the supplier and a reasonable price. I purchased from the supplier that was able to convey each of those things in the easiest, most efficient manner on my smartphone.
Base your strategy on how your audience really uses mobile.
An effective mobile content strategy demands an understanding of your audience's mobile usage. Marketers like to imagine they know their customers. But the reality of mobile usage may differ from your perception.
Part of your audience profile should focus on how mobile fits into your customers' lives.
What devices are they on? What kind of an experience are they looking for from you?
Data from your existing website analytics program can give you mobile insights, as can targeted surveys, to form the foundation of your mobile content strategy.
Think before you shrink.
The old model of content creation was to adapt content from other formats, usually the web, to a small screen. Text was chunked differently, visuals updated and overall layouts simplified and made more "tappable" for touchscreens.
Instead, look at all of your content through a mobile lens at the point of creation. Copywriting and visuals should be as short and minimalistic as possible, while effectively conveying your message. Then adapt your ideas from there to the bigger screen. Scale content creation up, rather than down.
Rethink your user experience through design.
Every business needs a website that looks great and functions well on mobile devices. If information is hard to find or your site is impossible to navigate, you'll lose customers. But mobile design goes beyond basic functionality. Ask yourself if you're providing the right experience in terms of content, look, feel, functionality and tools to help your customers achieve their end goal.
Going back to my example about buying the part for the home theater system, during my search for suppliers I found several that had awful mobile design. One in particular wouldn't even let me add my item to the cart. Needless to say, I didn't make my purchase from that supplier.
Focus first on the experience, and then optimize the visuals.
Expand your understanding of conversions.
In the mobile universe, conversions go way beyond the sale. Signing up for a newsletter, sharing your content or downloading a white paper may be valuable customer touch points. Think about the range of mobile conversions with value for your business and develop mobile content to support that funnel.
Take advantage of location.
Geolocation technologies are giving businesses creative ways to engage customers, from sending market research surveys to customers nearby to offering discount codes to drive sales. Examples of these technologies include Apple's Siri, Google Now and GPS-enabled apps for iOS and Android.
Mobile devices are the lever these campaigns hinge on. Consider how location-based technologies could increase immediate engagement with your customers.
Leverage the rise of micro-video.
As visual content such as videos and infographics become the preferred form of content, specific opportunities are appearing for mobile. Short videos on Vine and Instagram have provided marketers another way to reach their audience. What part of your story can you tell in a micro-video? For some interesting takes on Vine campaigns check out Oreo's campaign and Lowe's six-second home improvement tips.
Make social engagement easy.
Is your content easy to share and easy to engage with? Simple like and share buttons encourage social engagement. If you're requesting information, avoid long essay questions and forms that are awkward to navigate.
With more opportunities to reach customers and prospects by mobile, companies can stay relevant by creating mobile-focused content marketing strategies. This can help you to concentrate on high-return mobile activities that drive website traffic, engagement, leads and sales.
6 Tips for Taking Your Video Ad Content Mobile
Make it snappy.
Moving your ads to the small screen means you’ll need a laser-focused message. Keep your mobile ad campaign short, engaging and low-key. Also, if text is required, make sure the font is readable and avoid images that require scrolling.
Placement is key.
While ads have generally been at the beginning or end of a video, YouTube recently enabled 'mid-roll' ads, meaning channels are allowing advertisers to play ads during a video. This new format could make sense for you, depending on your objective. For instance, placing your ad before a video will produce the most impressions, ads at the end will garner the highest click through rate and mid-roll ads will have the highest completion, according to the 2012 Adobe Digital Index.
Find your audience.
If you are looking to provide your mobile ads on a video platform like YouTube, scope out your target demographic. Users subscribe to a channel which provides consistently entertaining content that suits their needs. Use the demographic information of a channel to pinpoint channels that best fit your target. Once live, take advantage of analytical tools on the video platform.
Leave them with a smile.
People smile for many different reasons and the ability to capitalize on a happy emotion in a short amount of time, could lead to a lasting impression. Try to incorporate humor, an inspirational tale, an emotional moment or a slice of entertainment for impact.
Social media is only a tap away.
Mobile devices and social media go hand-in-hand. Make sure you have sharing components integrated into your video that allows users to post on social media networks, embed in their blogs and email to others.
Skip the Flash!
For content you want to release for mobile users, forget Flash. Back in 2011, Adobe announced it will not support a Flash Player plug-in for mobile, resulting in Flash videos not being accessible on smartphones and tables. Instead, opt for HTML5, as it will allow for resizing across various mobile devices.
Paint Your Own Lush Music Video
by Taylor Hatmaker
With Google's browser-based experiment 3 Dreams of Black is an interactive experience that puts WebGL and HTML5 to the test.
Paint your own lush music video with Google's browser-based experiment A new music video crafted to promote Google Chrome is more than a creative way to flex the browser's muscle — it's also a fully interactive experience that lets you transform buffalo herds into tarantulas and sprout flowers on the fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifly, all just by moving your mouse. The video, called 3 Dreams of Black, also coincides with the release of Rome, the new project by famed producer Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi. It was http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmentioned earlier this week at Google I/O, wedged between Google's more gadget-centric announcements, and is now viewable online at "ro.me".
3 Dreams of Black is an experimental web film (created by Chris Milk and Google) that stretches HTML5's wings with a tool called WebGL. The advent of WebGL may not have you on the edge of your seat — it is a programming language, after all — but WebGL is poised to unlock the potential of browser-based 3D graphics. After a bit of a wait in loading time (it's worth it), you can generate blossoming vines and swooping birds of paradise just by pointing your cursor and making it so. Budding developers can even add to the video's third dreamscape with a built-in tool, so naturally you might see some Android and Reddit-themed statues pop up as the song winds down.
ro.me
TOOL OF THE MONTH
SnagIt 9 Nabs Attention
by Jessica Dolcourt
Many users have always liked the top-rated
screen-capture program SnagIt. When you need
functionality beyond the standard Windows
PrintScreen (or Alt+PrintScreen), SnagIt has been a
reliable, flexible, and powerful solution for many
years.
Though SnagIt has been a long-treasured workhorse,
the latest Version 9 update takes the feature set
well past screen capturing, with new image-management
features like handling multiple open documents, an
integrated and persistent search box, and image tagging.
This program is from TechSmith, the publisher that also
brought to market the top-rated Camtasia Studio.
SnagIt 9 makes sceen shots as glamorous as they'll
get, letting you capture any part of your screen,
from a partial image to the entire contents of a
scrolling window. You can grab images of Web sites
and software applications or pictures from scanners
and digital cameras. You even can capture video and
record screen action in AVI format.
Version 9 completely overhauls the interface to
bring the wide range of editing tools and effects
to the surface with a simplified, icon-oriented
menu structure that makes SnagIt even more flexible
and easy to use. Tools to draw, resize, recolor and
annotate the images are there, as is a menu to add
rollover hotspots for linking an image to a URL.
SnagIt 9 also adds automatic image-tagging, a
library for saving and indexing every capture and
an image tray for getting to the most recent opened
captures. Balloon tips, wizards, and an online
video tutorial make it simple for beginners, and its
sophisticated capabilities will satisfy
advanced users.
Associate Editor Jessica Dolcourt is a tough critic
to impress, but this latest version of SnagIt has
already found a soft spot on her PC. Check out her
reasons to love the new SnagIt 9 feature, which
includes a video walkthrough of the new release.
Reasons to love the new SnagIt 9
SnagIt 9 is a familiar, intuitive, and much more
varnished capture utility whose image editor has
finally come of age.
A well-stocked catalog
No longer must you recapture images you didn't
perfectly edit the first time around. With the
new Open Captures tray, a ribbon along the screen
bottom, SnagIt matures from a screen grabber that
callously dumps any capture you didn't save into
a helpful tool keeping track of all your images,
including those unsaved files. You'll be able to
jump from one open image to another to interact
with images at any time for editing, saving in a
new file-type and exporting.
Tagging
Like e-mails, images contain information,
relevance and nuance. SnagIt 9 introduces tagging
in the library pane and the menu navigation that
uses a combination of flagging, autotagging and
keyword entry to assign searchable tags to an
image. Flag categories include important,
follow-up, personal, finance, and funny. Captures
are also tagged by URL if they're taken from a Web
site, by the name of the application you may have
grabbed it from and by a manually entered keyword.
Search
SnagIt's user scenario is to store every capture
you've taken in the application's lifespan. After
a couple hundred captures, browsing through tags
gets old and inefficient. A search engine
integrated into the library pane pulls up relevant
tags and dates. Clicking the folder icon at the
bottom right of the screen helps organize the
findings with more granularity--you'll be able to
sort by name, size, dimension, flags, and keyword
and display image clips instead of the usual
text-chunky file names.
video walkthrough
License: Free to try; $49.95 to buy
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