Robert Scoble is always advocating this practice…
The effectiveness hits home when you see it happen to someone you know who is less famous (but no less remarkable)…
Congrats, Dan! See you soon.
David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
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Robert Scoble is always advocating this practice…
The effectiveness hits home when you see it happen to someone you know who is less famous (but no less remarkable)…
Congrats, Dan! See you soon.
Just saw Eco-Safe installed on Chris Brogan‘s blog. It looked super cool and was excited to try it so I emailed a file to my self.
I was massively disappointed by what followed…
A giant and unnecessary pdf file weighing in at a hefty half a megabyte arrived in my mailbox. 🙁
Giant pdf files are anything but eco-friendly!
Sometimes those massive pdf’s are jammed into archaic email servers with small file size limits like the joke of the size of my chicagogsb.edu email address (the quota hasn’t ben raised from 20MB in it’s history and creates networking bottlenecks). Secondarily, large files are not eco-friendly in general as they take up larger amounts of hard drive space which drives demand for more hard drive space – this is hardly eco-friendly. This isn’t even mentioning RAM implications.
I would hope that Eco-Safe would chose to immediately work to limit the file size of it’s output or better yet eliminate pdf’s altogether…
Before I post about Jon’s interesting session, I’ll note that it’s important that marketers considering using this channel read my post on YouTube Video Optimization as there are many highly unique search engine optimization techniques that can improve your success in this area.
Jon Kaplan’s talk starts here: Youtube was founded at a dinner party in 2005. There was no easy way to share video files.
Online video viewing in the mainstream
Americans stream of 10 billion online views monthly…
Explosion of Content = connection of people + democratization of the tools of production + broadband penetration + falling cost of data storage
Sharing is the new viewing – 150M unique users globally
Demographics: 2/3 of YouTube users are over 35, 37% earn above $75,000
800 content partners attended YouTube Videocracy in February
Four ways to think about marketing in 2008
– Target your audience with video profiling
– Integrate your brand into the user experience – on YouTube and Beyond!
– Leverage your offline assets and ones YouTube is creating
– Think about measurement differently
Video Profiling – Building Tools for Effective Targeting – using traditional demographics in the search by audience features…
YouTube’s Creative Standards – 20 million home page views a day
Animated flash overlay is the current YouTube ad format – NO Pre-rolls are shown
Promote Your Video: Video Search capabilities
Integrate Your Brand into the Experience – HP example
It’s all about interesting content: Turbotax
It’s about all about educational content: Vanguardinvestments brand channels
Launched test of video ads in the 1st Quarter of 2008
E*TRADE – pre-seeded SuperBowl commercials – 2,000,000+ views on Youtube.
American Express sponsored fashion week
YouTube Global Gathering
Metrics – the social side of YouTube
– Users can rate videos
– User can comment on videos
– User can add videos to their list of favorites
– User can share videos with friends
– Users can subscribe to their favorite channel
New metrics will accompany this, Google Trends data – admitted that this drives need for Adwords campaigns. Discussed other metrics in terms about how the video was measured and then closed with questions.
Audience question: Should YouTube provide statistics for videos with completed views or the average time of engagement with viewers so that more accurate measures of engagement could be provided?
Answer: That’s a good question. Said several things about exploration of new areas. Did not say yes we’ll add it or no we’ll never do that. It will be interesting to revisit this issue at some point.
It appears that Google is starting to prepare for the inevitable acceleration of pre-IPO employee departures and exodus as it has posted the role of Alumni Relations Program Manager. UPDATE: While I at first thought this was creating an employee alumni program from my quick read, it’s actually to create relationships with university alumni programs.
Many strategy consulting organizations with outstanding reputations have alumni relations programs including: McKinsey & Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), A.T. Kearney, Bain & Company, Katzenbach, ZS Associates, Marakon Associates, L.E.K. Consulting, The Parthenon Group, Oliver Wyman, Kurt Salmon Associates and Monitor. If it is n longer hyperlinked it mean the consulting firm changed the URL without a 301 redirect.
Some investment banking and institutional money managers have started to follow this trend of starting alumni relations groups that the consulting companies started such as: Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. I’d be delighted if BlackRock joined this elite financial services thought leader club creating alumni networks shortly as I’d love to reconnect with many of my former BlackRock, reconnect with them, form and fund entrepreneurial ventures with them. There is amazing value that can be created for everyone that puts a common social network experience in the center of the conversation.
In all of those companies there is a diversified portfolio of services and business development that can be created from these interactions that is good for the company. In Google’s case, I’m struggling to see what value can immediately be created beyond selling Adwords to alumni’s new companies and facilitating funding or acquiring start up companies via Google’s corporate development department.
One thing is clear, Google is planning for a future that includes more former Googlers who have moved onward!
UPDATE: One word changes ALOT of meaning. I neglected to notice the word university. Apologies.
Ironically this makes this role even more unique. As I’m unaware of any companies that partner directly with either of my university alumni programs in this manner. Makes you wonder if they have plans to offer a service offering to this sector.
Lee Odden has posted the results of his online marketing survey. The blog result is likely directionally correct, but is likely skewed on the high side a bit due to the survey being on a blog. Go figure. 🙂
Continue reading Lee Odden’s Top Ten Online Marketing Tactics for 2008 Survey
The Chicago Tribune has a nice user generated content piece where they allow readers to input pothole locations. It is an open thread that simply says: “Tell us: Where are the worst potholes? Potholes seem to be everywhere this winter, but who has the worst — the city or suburbs? Tell us where you’ve seen the biggest and deepest.”
What’s upsetting is that just like the mismanagement of the CTA for decades, many of the comments allude to years of neglect and mismanagement by the government of the City of Chicago. CBS put together a story on how to file a claim for damage. Why must everything become a crisis before anybody does anything about these things? Maybe the city and state will put in resources to fix the lack of easy access to entrepreneurial grants and angel investor tax incentives like Wisconson has next – while we still have an economy…
Here are a few answers Chicago Tribune readers gave (some make you laugh and cry at the same time):
Potholes on my entire way to work on Devon Avenue Between Northwest Hwy and Caldwell Ave. Noticed several vehicles with flat tires this morning causing a traffic jam
Westbound on North Ave, there are are at least 2 or 3 massive potholes just before and after Elston Ave. Stay out of the right hand lane
On Webster between Clybourn and Ashland. There is a fifty foot section with about 25 potholes
One more vote for Lincoln Ave. between Petersen and Devon — avoid at all costs if you care about your car
Central Road, from Milwaukee west to River Road. It is like driving a road in a third world county. Cars bob and weave into oncoming traffic. You can’t driver over 20 mph. Someone at county should be fired for letting a road deteriorate to this degree
Just as you get off LSD on to LaSalle North exit going south right lane is full of potholes
Park Ridge: Cumberland Avenue between Devon and Higgins
Worst — take your pick, LSD Irving Park Road to Foster. Second worst — Oak Street underpass northbound to LSD. Third worst. 47th underpass to LSD. Some of these above holes are a foot deep and several feet across
Cicero Ave and Lawrence, in the left hand turn lane on Cicero… it’s like an unavoidable abyss
On westbound Lake Street between Ashland and Western there are so many little potholes the drive seems like you are off-roading
Under the pass to get on Lake Shore Drive from Oak it’s been like that for over a year! Disgraceful! The CTA ride is awful and 311 doesn’t do anything about it! The drivers try to drive on the left side when possible as the busses bounce horribly!
Western bridge going over Belmont, southbound, west lane. They’ve been there for at least a month
Have you seen the pothole on the bridge at Division and Halsted… Big enough to make a person disappear
Westbound on Grand just east of Milwaukee Ave. The whole thing is one series of huge potholes
The pot hole at Archer & Cicero in the northbound lanes just cost me $550 in repairs – yeah lets spend some more $$ on the Olympics -idiots
Like others have said, Cicero between 21st and 51st is a landmine. It’s so bad, I saw a small car driving along and it just disappeared into a hole….lol
I CANT BELIEVE DALEY HAD ALL THAT MONEY TO USE TO TRY AND BRING THE OLYMPICS TO CHICAGO BUT DOEST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO FIX OUR STREETS. WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE ON 31ST BETWEEN PULASKI AND CICERO IT LOOKS LIKE MINES WENT OFF
Southbound on N. Clark Street, just north of Upper Wacker Drive, right lane swallowed my car. Still can’t find it
Right lanes of Ridge Road in Evanston. Very bad in both directions
The worst pothole is on the east edge of the southbound Fullerton entrance ramp to LSD. A close second are numerous potholes on Halstead between Chicago and Erie. You have to drive like you are going through an obstacle course
Almost all lanes of LaSalle Street between the Lake Shore Drive ramps and the intersection of LaSalle and Clark
4200 South Ashland. Even the CTA bus won’t go near it! And avoid at all costs Pershing Rd. between Halstead and Ashland
Bridgeport – 31st street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Halstead (especially under the viaduct near Canal St) and the ENTIRE 31st St ramp getting onto the inbound Ryan. I’ve already replaced two tires this year.
Try driving on Cicero Ave. anywhere near the Stevenson. Pot holes deep enough to strand tanks. Been this way for weeks.
Looking around the net this political season, it’s amazing to see the number of conversations I’m seeing that discuss YouTube Video View Optimization in non-SEO communities. It’s a unique ecosystem with distinctly different rules and people figuring out how to optimize the current system. It would be impossible to summarize all of the things I’ve witnessed, so this is a summary that is a work in process and I welcome your contributions and discussion.
There are three primary prizes you are shooting for:
1) Becoming a “featured video” on the Youtube homepage.
This is apparently an internal process at YouTube and the system is not transparent. Andy Mckee’s “Drifting” was added to the Youtube featured videos after thousands of views, while Mike Huckabee eating a hamburger named after him in NH yesterday was added when it had zero views. One thing is clear, being featured on the YouTube front page can provide rocket fuel for perpetual viral status. For example, Andy Mckee’s “Drifting” now has 10,000,000+ views.
2 ) Ranking well on the any other social, tagging or metadata metric.
Most Viewed, Most Discussed, Top Favorites are all categories accessible within one click of the home page. The later two categories have been dominated lately by supporters of Ron Paul who have been actively doing the work necessary to get their videos featured. Each of these has subcategories to think about when you chose a category, tags and content wording – Autos & Vehicles, Comedy, Education, Entertainment, Film & Animation, How to & Style, Music, News & Politics, People & Blogs, Pets & Animals, Science & Technology, Sports, Travel & Events and Watch on Mobile. Do you have a community to mobilize?
3) It’s not a complete one to one correlation, but videos with higher views, comments and favorites tend to be the ones featured in Google universal search results.
This can keep the viral traffic going to that video long after the YouTube event. Critics would note that this creates an echo chamber effect that is as entrenched as a Wikipedia page.
OK, how do I do this?
– Start with making quality content that creates passion.
– Start with standard SEO of your video content.
– Build links via best practices – consult these expert entries on how to optimize for: StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us, link to the videos on blogs etc.
– If you have a community get them to view the YouTube video content, favorite it, rate it and comment on it in a tightly clustered time frame.
I’d also experiment with some new tools such as:
– Tubemogul (thanks to Karl Long for the suggestion)
– Video Sitemaps – though it’s not clear whether that is only for self-hosted videos.
For the gray hats out there:
– Tags appear to be valued highly in YouTube’s current search relevancy process. Yet unless a viewer clicks to see all of the content the tags will never be seen.
– After a video is popular on YouTube, you can edit the category and get it to rank in a new category using the traffic that was built in a different vertical. This tactic surprised me in that I did not know you could change the video after publishing in that manner, though I’m surprised by how well it works. Please keep in mind this only works for videos with existing high traffic.
There is an amazingly thin amount of content on this subject, I’d highly welcome other people’s thoughts on the subject for inclusion and expansion of this research to date. But for now I hope this serves as a useful guide to you for your YouTube video view optimization!
UPDATE 1/16 – this has been translated and expanded upon in German!