Super Bowl Commercials: How to Win Big in the Online Marketing Game

This afternoon, Super Bowl 46 will be held in Indianapolis between the New England Patriots and New York Giants, re-igniting a fierce rivalry between the two teams. And while many people tune in to catch the touchdowns or the half-time show, a highlight of the game every year for many is the commercials. Thousands of people tune in to see what creative and interesting ways companies will promote themselves in 30 second slots throughout the game. The best and most memorable commercials will stay in the media conscious for weeks to come, and be talked about around water coolers across the nation. A Super Bowl commercial even revived the acting career of Golden Girl Betty White, who starred in an advertisement for Snickers and has since appeared in movies, hosted SNL, and even has her own television show.

Buying a Super Bowl ad isn’t cheap; it costs 3.5 million dollars for a 30 second time slot during the big game. This means that companies have to make the most of their airtime, and so a method has been perfected to create the most effective commercials. Many of the tools used by these big corporations can be applied to your business, especially in online video marketing. Here are a few things Super Bowl commercials do that you should consider in social video marketing for your company:

Keep it Short: 30 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but a good commercial tells a complete story and gives the audience an understanding of the product in only half a minute. An online video doesn’t need to be quite this short, but somewhere between one and a half and two minutes is recommended. This gives you enough time to introduce your business to prospective customers, but is short enough to ensure that they watch the video until the end.

Be Selective With Your Information: The purpose of an online video, like a commercial, is to provide enough information about your company or product so that a viewer is interested in learning more. But avoid too many fine details, long winded speeches, or an overwhelming amount of text, as it can be off putting to a viewer.

Make it Engaging: No matter how wonderful your product is, if people forget your advertisement, you’ve wasted your time and money. And with $3.5 million on the line, the marketing experts behind Super Bowl commercials know how important it is to make it engaging. For your social video marketing, the keys to keeping it interesting include a high level of technical skill, quality video production, and showcasing your product or services in a unique way. Many viewers are drawn to humor if it’s done well, but this isn’t the answer for every business video.

Use the Internet to its Full Extent- This year, every Super Bowl commercial is linked to a Facebook page, Youtube account, or Twitter feed. Even with a viewing audience of 111 million, companies know there are still millions more that can be reached online. This dedication to getting their brand out there is exactly what your company needs to be thinking about. Having video on one website isn’t enough; think about linking it to your Facebook, Google +, website homepage, or Youtube account to get the most of your social video marketing.

So whoever wins the big game today, watch the commercials. Pay attention to how this year’s commercials adhere to tools and suggestions in this post, and see if you can use any of their creative solutions for your business needs.

SVG Shoots Two Marketing Videos for Arch Painting

This week, Skillman Video Group shot two online promotional videos for for Arch Painting, a Boston area company providing quality painting and wallcovering throughout New England. Wednesday’s shoot showcased Arch Painting’s superior craftsmanship in residential home painting, and on Thursday the shoot was based around the company’s quality work for commercial clients. Skillman Video used a combination of client testimonials, footage of the professional painting crew in action, and a voiceover outlining Arch Painting’s capacities as a company.

Making two videos was essential to the success of Arch Painting’s marketing campaign. Commercial and residential clients are looking for very different capabilities from a painting company. A residential home may be concerned about the painters’ cleanliness and friendly attitude, where a business may need the painting to be done quickly and for the paint crew to work seamlessly within the space while business continues as usual. Combining these specific needs into one video would force the company to leave out important information that could, in turn, lead to missing out on important clients.

If your company’s client base is broad, sometimes one video for your website or social media pages isn’t enough. If you try to reach every group of customers in one clip, trying to include all the necessary information will lead to the video being too long. Online customers are not the most patient people, and probably won’t wait through a 15-minute video to learn what they need to know about your company. On the other hand, if you cut out too much information to shorten the video, you risk viewers not learning enough about how wonderful your company is. By breaking the information down into several shorter videos aimed at specific clients, the information they need is presented in a simplified way, making it more likely they will learn about all the advantages of your business.

If your business has a broad client base, talk to Skillman Video Group, and we’ll work to find the best way for you to reach each and every one of them.

Coming Soon: Skillman Video’s Newest Social Marketing Video

I have been an Intern here at Skillman Video Group since November, and in that time I have learned a lot about online marketing, and in particular the benefits of a successful Social Video Marketing campaign. Now, it’s time for me to put these skills to use, producing a short video for online distribution. I have written a script and made some design and costume choices already, and I will be starring in the video when we shoot it. I’m very excited to see this video come to fruition, and to talk about some of the stylistic and technical choices I made to maximize the videos success online. I wanted to share these tips with you when thinking about your own Social Video Marketing strategies.

1. Keep it short: The final video will be around two minutes in length, which is a good length for what I wanted to do with the video; introduce SVG as a company. While it can sometimes be frustrating to limit yourself to a short video, in the long run it will be beneficial to the success of the campaign. People are more likely to retain the information from a short video and seek out more about the company on their own, rather than get lost or bored while watching a long, in-depth video showcasing every detail of a company.

2. Make it engaging: It is important you find a way to keep viewers interested and leave them wanting to know more. For my video, I decided to capitalize on something very relevant and almost universally recognized; superheroes. The central character of my video will be “Skillman Video Girl” a crime fighter with the capacity to fix any business online marketing blunders.  Superhero movies have dominated movie theaters for the last decade or so, with reboots of Spiderman, X-Men, Batman, and a ton of others. By working with this pop culture phenomenon, viewers online will recognize the motifs and can automatically associate with the video.

Also, the piece doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a few tongue-in-cheek jokes aimed at the major themes present in these movies. By playing with comedy within the superhero genre, the video is engaging and entertaining, keeping viewers tuned in an interested in learning more about Skillman Video Group.

3. Focus on what you want to say: Since you only have a few minutes, you need to know exactly what elements of your company you want to focus on. SVG offers a variety of different video marketing ideas, from how-to-videos to videomercials, and each of these categories has its benefits. Pay close attention to what you want customers to come away with. Do you want them to have a better sense of what your company does? Or do you want to showcase your beautifully crafted products? Once you figured out what your focus is, SVG can help you choose what style of Social Video Marketing best supports your goals.

For my video, I wanted something that would draw prospective customers in, and give them the tools to learn more about the company. The video provides enough information for clients to understand what Skillman Video Group does and who would benefit from their services, along with highlighting the name of the company to increase customer retention.  Video is an entertaining form of information gathering, and so rather than bog down the video with a lot of detailed specifics of what the company does, I decided it would be better to emphasize the most important things, to peak interest and lead people to our website.

4. Have some fun!: Remember, this is your chance to engage with potential customers. So no matter what type of video you decide to make, keeping it light and fun will help you enjoy the process, and improve the final video.

Check in soon to see the final video, and to hear more about the production!

From the Red Carpet to your Computer Screen: How Hollywood is Going Viral

It’s the first month of 2012, which means that award season in Hollywood has begun. On January 15th, the 69^th annual Golden Globes kicked off  several months of red carpet events that will include the SAG awards and, of course, the Oscars. And even if “there’s no business like show business”,  Tinsel Town has followed suit and gone high tech for the upcoming award shows, utilizing  social media and online video.

The biggest of these upcoming award shows is the Oscars, which will be held on February 26th. For the second year in a row, the nominations for the prestigious awards were announced live via Youtube. This year, the use of mobile devices to watch the announcement was at it’s peak; the availability and popularity of smart phones allowed more people to follow the broadcast regardless of where they were located. As a result, the internet played a much larger role in the announcement than the televised event.  After the nominees were announced, people flocked to social media sites to share their predictions and expectations for the show. To add to the online social interaction element of the event,  Facebook and NYTimes.com are teaming up to create an interactive online ballot for the Academy Awards. The ballot will allow participants to select their choices for winners in the various categories, and the on the night of the big event, track how their votes stack up against friends and even celebrities. This is an exciting way for fans to participate in the big event, but the plans for next year are even more high tech. In fact,  the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences has decided to move forward with a completely electronic voting system for the 2013 Academy Awards.

The Oscar’s aren’t the only way Youtube is getting involved with the film industry this year.  Starting February 2^nd, the video site is launching it’s largest film festival ever, called Your Film Festival. Anyone 18 years and older can submit a short film (no more than 15 minutes) to the social video site, and 50 semifinalists will be chosen by Scott Free Productions (Ridley and Tony Scott’s production company). Those 50 short films will be hosted on a youtube channel, where viewers will vote for their favorites. The 10 films with the highest amount of votes will be flown to the Venice Film Festival, where a winner will be chosen and awarded $500,000 to produce a movie with Scott Free Productions. This film festival is another example of how the internet can create a level playing field for businesses (or film makers) of all levels. Having worked for a film festival, I have some idea of how expensive the processing of a blu-ray or 35-mm film can be, even for a short. By allowing participants to post their work directly to the internet, allows small production companies to be considered for an award.

Even if your company doesn’t have a red carpet and golden statues, you can still take a page out of Hollywood’s book and improve your online business.

Facebook Gets Political: Social Media Marketing and the Race to the White House

Presidential elections and new media have always gone hand in hand in America. In 1948, the first radio debate was held in Oregon between Republican primary candidates, the first televised debate in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon changed the face of politics (in fact it was Kennedy’s handsome, healthy face that led viewers of the program to feel he won the debate, while those that listened on the radio thought Nixon had the upper hand).

And of course, Al Gore invented the internet.

In the 2008 presidential election, the internet played a major role for voters seeking information and news about the candidates with an  11% jump in voter use of the internet from the campaign 4 years prior. And so, there was a push to capitalize on internet marketing, particularly social media and the “youth vote”, which candidates believed could be the turning point in the election. This focus on internet marketing was not in vain; over 22 million voters between the ages of 18-29 voted in 2008, the second largest youth turn out in American history.

With the Republican primaries starting and the election coming up in November, internet campaigning has never been more prominent. Social media in particular has taken the foreground in political presence on the web. Potential candidates have Twitter accounts, create premade Facebook profile pictures for their supporters, and advertise on  Youtube. Republicans even have a presence on tumblr, a social media site  Skillman Video Group discussed in blog post last week.

However, there has been a shift since the last presidential race in the demographics of users of social media sites. For example: the average age of a Facebook user rose from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010.  In 2008 sites like Facebook were still used primarily by teens and young adults for interacting with friends. Today there are companies, corporations and established entrepreneurs that use the site for networking and establishing new clients. As a result, using social media and using it effectively has never been more important for the candidates.

This trend in political campaigning and the effect it has on results is interesting to look at for your own online marketing strategies. Campaigning for president and marketing your company are similar; both aim to reach as many customers (or voters) as possible in the most effective way.  Presidential candidates spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on strategists, researchers, and political advisers to ensure they are marketing themselves well, and if they are focusing primarily on social media marketing, there is a good chance your company will benefit from these websites as well.  Another interesting point brought to light by this campaign is the shift in users of social media sites.  Four years ago, it didn’t make sense for every company to have a Facebook page; today it is an indispensable aspect of online marketing.

Democrat, Republican, or Independent, there’s one thing your business stand behind this election season; the importance of social media marketing.

This time it’s personal: Google changes its search results to reflect social media

Recently, the website Poynter posted an article about a new type of search that can be performed on Google. Search Plus Your World delivers specific, personalized search results based on what a user’s online community has posted, shared, or linked. This is different from the current search results on Google, which are based on SEO, or the frequency and use of keywords in a website or post. The search engine Bing already uses community activity from Facebook in it’s search results, and Google works primarily with Google+, but the search engine wants to incorporate both Facebook and Twitter into its personalized search results.

What does this mean for your business? As we’ve mentioned before, social media is important to any company’s online business. But now, how your company uses social media sites becomes crucial to the success of your appearance in search results. First, it is important that you develop a strong online network of clients, customers, and companies on social media sites; being connected will give you a chance to appear in their search results. Also, it is important to post frequent and engaging material on your website, such as blog posts or videos. By staying connected and engaging your audience, you can maximize the success of your social media sites and the prevalence of your company’s appearance in search results.

The new search form on Google does not eliminate the importance of SEO, but it does make social media more important than ever in online marketing.

Is it Time for a Tumblr?

In the past decade, there has been a boom in  Social Media. According to comscore’s 2011 wrap-up of internet use for 2011, 1 in 5 minutes spent online are on a social media site. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, and a myriad of other sites keep people up-to-date and informed with friends, family, celebrities, and even businesses. Social Media websites are key to viral marketing, but it can sometimes be difficult to know which ones you should join, and which ones will fall by the wayside.

One of these sites that is gaining popularity is the blog Tumblr. This social networking website allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their short-form blog. Although the site has been around for 5 years, it has seen an explosion in usage over the past 12 months.  Last year, Tumblr saw a 172% growth to the audience on their site, particularly in international markets.

It’s no surprise then that businesses are getting involved with the site. Coca Cola recently launched a tumblr called “happiness is…”, which consists primarily of photos showcasing young people with Coke products and vintage advertisements.  The site’s goal is to engage the brands teen consumers on a site where 11 million of them spend on average 37 minutes a day.

With the site’s popularity increasing and businesses getting involved, is it time for your company to hop on the Tumblr train? The biggest things to consider here are your key demographic and the visual interest of your company or product. Coca Cola succeeds on a site like Tumblr because it allows them to reach a high volume of teenagers. If your demographic leans towards an older audience (for example a law firm, home renovation, or tax preparation business), Tumblr may not be the best use of your time online. Another thing to consider is the visual qualities of your company or product. While Tumblr allows text posting, it is still primarily a photo and gif website. This means that a photography company could benefit from showcasing their work, but many other businesses lack that visual interest, and would not benefit from starting on the site.

Ultimately, you probably don’t need to sign up for a Tumblr account right away.  However, as we have seen with sites like Facebook and Twitter, there is a good chance that what starts as a social media site for teens and celebrities will turn into a valuable viral marketing platform. If the trends continue, Tumblr may become a great resource for internet and social media marketing.

New Years Resolution for Your Business

It’s a new year, and the time when everyone’s thoughts turn to the dreaded New Year’s resolutions. Now that the ball has dropped and we’ve sang a round of Auld Lang Syne, it’s time to focus on how to improve over the next 12 months.  SVG has some suggestions for internet marketing resolutions that will enhance your online appearance and increase traffic to your site, benefiting your business.

Get a Google+ Account:  In 2011, Google+ joined the ranks of Facebook and Twitter as a leading social media site. As we’ve mentioned before, there are a lot of benefits to being involved with Google+.  This latest member of the social media family created by the search engine Google is quickly becoming an amazing platform for finding customers and keeping clients informed, and is now open to the public, so setting up an account is easy.

Become involved in Social Video Marketing: Social Video Marketing (SVM) is a great way to enhance your online appearance. By combining interesting and engaging content with the efforts of search optimization, social media, and strategic linking, you can drive more customers to your site and increase their interest in your company.  A marketing video delivers information in a way that is easy to follow and more captivating than text, and allows you to show off the best qualities of your company in a unique and professional way. If you haven’t considered SVM, 2012 is the time to start.

Update your website design: If your website design is a few years old, it may be time to update.  The internet is a fast-moving technology, and a site that hasn’t been updated or redesigned in a while can look antiquated very quickly. Even if you like the format of your site, consider adding a blog, or ensuring none of your information is outdated.  The goal of the website for your company is to bring in new business and to keep current customers up-to-date, and if the design of your website is stopping this, it’s time for an upgrade.

Make the most of SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important elements of online marketing. If customers can’t find you through search engines, then all social media, video marketing, and website design won’t help. Learn more about SEO and what Skillman Video can do to help you enhance your company’s appearance in search engines.

New Years resolutions can be daunting, but the benefits of these few tips will help your online business substantially, and SVG has the knowledge and experience to help you succeed in 2012.

Google+ outranks rivals in SEO

Recently, a blog posted  on the site seomoz.com outlined the effectiveness of Google+ in SEO. When a company or individuals name is searched, their Google+ page outranks Twitter, Facebook, and many of their competitor social media sites in the results. While this information may be bad news for Facebook, and Twitter, the blog outlines the tools used by Google+ that you can apply to help with your business’ online appearance.

For obvious reasons, a Google+ page is the top result in a search done on their parent company’s search engine, Google. Visiting someone’s Google+ page (as opposed to their Facebook or Twitter) ensures the company is more popular and retains more of it’s users, which leads to more advertising and prestige. And while this method may seem to only benefit Google, you can use it to your advantage to enhance your online presence and SEO. When most people use a search engine, they turn to Google. In fact, according to some statistics, more than  1 billion Google searches are performed per day. With all that site traffic, having a Google+ account that shows up early in the search results, before other social media sites, can really help your business. The faster a potential customer can find you, the better.

With Google having a hold on the search engine market, it’s no surprise that their social media site Google+ would rank higher in SEO than their competitors like Facebook and Twitter. But there are several other reasons why this site has better SEO standings, and it has little to do with their parent company. As the blog outlines, there are 6 main reasons Google+ ranks higher, including the amount of indexable content the site has and the use of internal linking to maximize the amount of people connected. Making the most of these built-in advantages to Google+ can be beneficial to your business, providing more information to your customers, partners, or clients.

Check out the original blog post on Google+, and learn more about the strategies the site uses to optimize SEO. Consider adding this newer social media site to your company’s online roster to garner more attention online.

Listen up! The new Pandora Radio, and what you can learn from their website design.

If you’re a music lover, then you are probably familiar with Pandora Radio. Pandora is a free website that allows users to customize radio stations based on their favorite artist, genre, or song. Users can further hone the music selection by giving tracks a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, allowing them to listen to their favorite tracks and find new artist with a similar style. Pandora has a music selection for almost any taste, from electronica to easy listening, and has seen a lot of success over the past few years.
Several months ago, Pandora announced that they would be updating their website, making both aesthetic as well as program changes to enhance their listeners experience. The site went through some major changes, and overall the response to these changes has been very positive. Blogs and websites ranging from music enthusiasts to tech fans have been abuzz with the new site design.

While there are a lot of great advantages to the site’s new layout, the most of the bloggers agree that several factors make the new Pandora great. These include the streamline appearance and bigger buttons that make it easier to use, the use of  HTML5, and the new social media aspects of the website that make it more user-friendly for the 21st century twitter/facebook-crowd. People are also excited about the removal Pandora’s of the listening cap, which used to cut off the music at 40 hours unless users upgraded to a paid version of the site.  The new Pandora will stop your music with advertisements, but it now allows users an unlimited amount of time to listen to their favorite music.

I have been a Pandora user for a few years now, and I must say that their new website design is a welcome change. It’s streamlined, sophisticated, and simplified, making it a thoroughly enjoyable site to use. This got me thinking about how your business can use the same methods that Pandora did to update your website. As we’ve said before, people make judgements on your site a mere 50 milliseconds upon viewing it, and so the design elements must be able to draw potential customers in, and keep current clients engaged. If your website is out of date, hard to use, or just unappealing visually, it can seriously hurt your potential business and online appearance.

So what can your company learn from the new updates that Pandora has made? Here are the biggest changes the site made that can be applied to your website:

Streamline: Your homepage should give potential customers a strong idea of who you are and what you do. But this is just an overview; wordy specifics and details of what you do should be saved for landing pages on your site.  Keep your homepage simple, elegant, and easy to follow, so that clients have an impression of company as a whole, rather than individual elements.

Be Social: The new Pandora allows you to connect to your friends and your social networks. Having an online presence that crosses from your website to facebook, twitter, youtube and other social media sites is beneficial. People may not check your website regularly, but they may be on twitter or facebook more often, and so reaching out on a variety of sites increases your company’s visibility.

HTML5: Even if you’re not tech-savy and HTML is lost on you, all you need to take away from this is that keeping your website up-to-date, both with the information from your company and with the latest technology, is very important. Making sure you have the latest technology will keep your website running smoothly and efficiently. The faster the site loads, the better it looks, and the better you look.

Make it Easy: People want to explore a website that is easy to use. Keeping things streamlined will help, but remember that organization and placement of important links or videos can also ease a customer’s use of your site.

Updating your website design can be a great way to increase traffic to your site, and to make sure that customers and clients get the information they need. While website design may not be your forte, Skillman Video Group has the tools and experience necessary to take your website from hard to hear to easy listening.

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