Social Video: Crying About Cats

This amusing online dating bio video went viral last week. At first it seems to be an amusing online dating profile video about a girl who has these ridiculous histrionic displays when she thinks about cats. Something about it seemed just a little disingenuous to me.

First, who would post such a humiliating video of themselves? Second why was this the first video posted on this account? Third, is the only other video in the account which was posted just after this one an attempt to make the account appear older? Is this just a joke? I think it might be a cleverly disguised social marketing video posted by eHarmony.

I used some of Skillman Video’s usual SEO analytics to investigate the resuls of the video on eHarmony’s visitors. As of this posting, Alexa rankings show a small increase in visitors to eHarmony following the video’s posting. Google trends also shows a spike in searches for the website. How many of the 8 million viewers navigated to the website after seeing this video? Enough to justify a video that cost nothing to make.

You might be familiar Boxxy, a mysterious vlogger who created an infuriating vlog of herself that sparked virulent debate about whether she was earnest of trolling. Entire communities of Boxxy haters and supporters waged cyber wars for weeks as the video went viral. Whereas Boxxy merely intended to satirize the typically vapid, adolescent vlogs on YouTube, eHarmony might be capitalizing on the same social video formula. If this isn’t already a deliberate social marketing scheme, then it should be.

Simple social videos like this are so easy, fast, and cheap to make, but they can have great ROI. You can’t force your video to go viral. You might not even want to, especially if you are interested in attracting B2B clients —   a more directed, professional target. But you can drive some traffic to your website by entertaining your audience with a little satire.

YouTube Aims to Improve Quality of Video Production

Recently, Youtube has gone out and acquired two new companies with the intention of improving the visual quality of the videos that are uploaded to the website. One of these companies is Green Parrot Pictures, an Ireland based business that specializes in improving video quality. Youtube is looking to create a better image from homemade and amateur videos such as for example the ones coming in from Japan recently documenting the wreckage. The service will also help to lower the bandwidth of the videos uploaded.

The other Youtube acquisition is the video production company Next New Networks, which will specialize in helping to improve and accelerate the video production process in order to bring more money to Youtube’s content partners. Youtube’s content partners would include those that have established Youtube channels, which are making money by allowing for display advertisements to be posted next to the videos.

It would appear that through the acquisition of these two companies, Youtube is attempting to create more consistent and quality video channels to compete with media outlets such as cable television and Hulu, which broadcasts high quality video programs. Youtube’s steps toward creating a inexpensive and easier way to create and upload high budget caliber video at a low budget cost is great news for all content creators. It also means that Youtube is investing in the idea that more people will be turning to the internet for their entertainment programming. This is a golden opportunity for a Medium to Small business to  market their product or service using video on the #3 search engine on the web – YouTube.  With their new focus on quality, YouTube is hedging their bets that more and more people will be looking for their entertainment and information from Social Media as opposed to traditional Broadcast or Cable television.  Is your company taking advantage of Social Media and video marketing to their fullest?  At Skillman Video Group, our service Social Video Marketing, uses all aspects of Internet Marketing -  from high quality video to SEO, web design, blogging  and Social Media – to both drive more traffic to your site and then convert those visitors into business prospects.   We have our own Youtube channel, which we continue to grow by posting our high quality videos and directing others to the channel through our various social media outlets.  Ask today how Social Video Marketing can increase business for you!

To see the type of enhancements Green Parrot will provide to Youtube users, follow this link: http://www.greenparrotpictures.com/stabilization.php

SVG Video of the Week: Old Spice Man Demonstrates the Power of Social Video Marketing

In 2010 Old Spice unleashed a commercial featuring a shirtless actor named Isaiah Mustafa who became famously known as the old spice guy turned into a viral video sensation. In case you missed it, check out the original commercial here:

Recently a new Old Spice commercial has been released, and below is a video with a behind the scenes look at what went into creating the 30 second spot. Looking back on what Old Spice was able to accomplish with Viral video marketing, it is important to point out the great decisions they made.

First and foremost, they created the original commercial, which was funny, clever, and garnered multiple viewings once it was put on Youtube. After that, Old Spice capitalized on this success by filming short clips of the Old Spice Guy answering questions sent to him via Twitter. These weren’t questions sent by anyone however. The Old Spice Guy was creating video responses to famous people such as Ashton Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore. In the Twitter world, Ashton Kutcher has about 6 million followers, which means that when he tweets about the Old Spice Guy responding to his question, a lot of people are going to see it and then watch the video. In doing this, Old Spice used celebrity Twitter user to generate an enormous and invaluable amount of free advertising.

The is just one of the many success stories of online social video marketing and just another reason why it is important to have an online video presence.  What’s great about Social Media is that it completely blows open the box of traditional TV or radio advertising.  The sky is the limit as far as what can be possible in marketing business of all sizes.

Google To Integrate Social Media Into Search Results

Google is working specifically with social media platforms Quora, Twitter, and Flickr to integrate the content produced by these sites into searches made on Google. What this means is that you can allow Google to access your accounts on these websites so that it can pull information from them and present it in the search results depending on what you are searching. For instance, if someone is following me on Twitter, and I tweet about riding on a motorcycle, when that person searches about motorcycles on Google, my tweet may come up as a search result.

As of now the focus is on Quora, Twitter and Flickr. The search engine Bing currently has access to “likes” on Facebook, so any collaboration between Google and Facebook is not going to happen in the near future. For those that may not know, Quora is a relatively new website that specializes in creating a database of user generated questions and answers that gives people the ability to rate the quality of the answers given.

This is good news for Skillman Video Group’s new service Social Video Marketing as it will allow for the use of twitter to tweet links to videos that are on other social media websites. So although Google won’t be utilizing Facebook, the new social media aspects of its search engine will still present ways for people to draw traffic to their Facebook  accounts. Basically it is presenting a way to get people to your specific social networking accounts without them having to actually search through platforms such a Twitter or Flickr to find information.

SVG Video of the Week: Social Media Revolution

For the Skillman Video Group “Video of the week”, here is a clip that makes an argument about social media possibly being the biggest shift since the industrial Revolution. It is based on the book ” Socialnomics” by Eric Qualman. Make sure to show this one to your parents, grandparents, or anyone else who still refuses to acknowledge the existence and usefulness of the internet and social media.

Pertaining to the service of social video marketing, there is one statistic that stands out more than others in this video: “Youtube is the 2^nd largest search engine in the world”. This seems to make a lot of sense. People enjoy watching videos, and many people expect now to have a video to supplement the writing on a website. For example, every news story that gets released, chances are good that someone was there with a camera to capture the event as it unfolded. Although words on a page are great, the video helps to create a better connection with the viewer. This is especially true for a company selling a service or product. When people can put a face to the name of a company, it helps to build trust.

Keeping the above statistic in mind, Skillman Video Group has an updated Youtube page (http://www.youtube.com/user/skillmanvideogroup?feature=mhum) to utilize the power of this social search engine and make sure that people not only see the production quality of the videos we create, but also the information these videos can divulge to help grow ones business and client base. Social Video Marketing is a proven, all-in-one solution that taps into the tremendous power of social media, SEO, Internet Marketing and video marketing to drive more visitors to your website and then convert those visitors into business prospects.  Video plays a key role in driving people to your site, but in also converting those visitors into clients.  Call today to learn more!

Video Conversion Point: What it is and how it works

At Skillman Video Group, we realize your desire to improve conversion rates from casual web visitors to viable business prospects through your web site. And, most importantly,  we know how to do it. Our approach to Internet marketing is two fold: 1st by drawing web surfers to your site through SEO and social media etc .  2nd We then help you develop enough engaging and informative content on your site to convert those visitors into leads for new business.  It’s what we call the “video conversion point”. A video conversion point is the place where surfers view a video of your business that works to convert them into customers.

Video has proven time and time again to be a powerful medium. Just last year, YouTube had roughly 1 billion daily hits; now they’re up to 2 billion. This fact alone shows how placing a video on your site could make it more enticing–people like video and continue to want more of it. More importantly, video harnesses the ability to condense a wide array of information about your business into a format which is much more accessible than navigating through a website.  The services of your company, examples of your work, testimonials etc could all be immediately shown in a video professionally produced by Skillman Video Group. These video conversion points are placed on your site based on where people will most easily view them. All people have to do is sit back and watch while the key points of your business are served directly to them.

Skillman Video Group is a proven example of the power of the video conversion point; since introducing more video to our website, along with other marketing techniques outlines in our recent case study, our search engine traffic and positions have spiked and we continue to increase lead generation through our site and signing new clients weekly. Video conversion point is just one piece of our newly offered Social Video Marketing, for more information about this service click on the link below!

http://www.skillmanvideogroup.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allure_dark_10/SVG_case_study.pdf

Corporate Viral Video Of The Week: SVG’s Gerry’s Waterbed Emporium

Welcome to Skillman Video Group’s Corporate Viral Video of the Week. This week’s video is…. us. Skillman Video Group recently produced it’s own viral style video, “Gerry’s Waterbed Emporium”. When producing this video we focused on two key attributes, i.e. relevance and mass appeal.  As a corporate video production company, it is important for us to set a standard for clean, professional video that can be taken seriously. Everyday, we see other video that does not meet our standards. If you own a television, chances are you’ve seen hundreds of cheap local furniture ads that are poorly produced and awkwardly scripted. It is something that everyone knows and universally mocks. Our video provides a familiar setting that has mass appeal, while clearly juxtaposing our services to the other guys. These are two of the most important tasks when making a viral video. You need to find a subject that is recognizable to a large number of people; if its not pertinent to them, they won’t watch it. It is also necessary for the video to relate back to you and your services. A video can be very funny, but if it’s not clear that you made it and why, you won’t see any of the benefits.

We had a lot of fun making the video. We shot in front of a green screen and super imposed the ridiculous backgrounds to give it that extra “cheesy” feel. We used goofy neon graphics to really sell the tacky style and even took a cheap shot at Ralph Macchio, but I think that’s fair game at this point.  We wrote the original script and found a devilishly handsome young actor to capture to true essence of Gerry (hey if you write the blog post – you get to toot your own horn!). Pass the video on to your friends to help us reach viral status! “Do you want a wicked awesome viral video for your company? Then come on down to Skillman Video Group today!!”

Corporate Viral Video of the Week: Coca-Cola Happiness Machine

It’s clear that here, at Skillman Video Group, we believe using video is the most effective way to market your company online. Video provides a platform that is both personal and visually stimulating.  We then use search engine optimization techniques to route as much traffic to your content as possible. However, in the case of “Viral” videos, it is the content itself that generates the massive volume of viewers that are so desired in online marketing. When executed well, viral videos can provide a substantial amount of attention for your company.  Amusing time wasters like Chocolate Rain or Miss Teen South Carolina are great example of videos that have gone viral. However, using the appeal of viral video for corporate promotion is something that many companies strive for but only a few have managed to succeed, even without the use of sputtering sentence fragments or the soothing baritone of Tay Zonday.

In many ways, the key to an effective viral video is to keep it simple. The most successful corporate viral videos provide a brief smile and enough interest to pass along to a friend. Corporate viral videos do best with little dialog so it’s important to not be too wordy. This week’s corporate viral video of the week is the Coca-Cola Happiness Machine video. This video was posted on YouTube on January 12, 2010 and already has over a million hits. It is an example of a strong corporate viral video. The concept is simple and the focus of the video is the action rather than the script. Often, companies will try too hard to be funny and miss a large audience because humor is subjective. The Coca-Cola video won’t make you laugh out loud, but it will keep you smiling and has mass appeal. Another technique used in this video which makes it successful in the viral format, is that it’s not over produced. The hidden camera or home camera look is very effective with viral videos, it provides a more personal and intimate tone that we associate with Internet video and distinguish from television.

Ultimately, the successful corporate viral video does not express an overt point of view, but provides a moment of harmless levity in an otherwise dull corporate day. And therein lies the art.  Check back soon for SVG’s “Corporate Viral Video of the week”, or contact us today at 1-800-784-0149 to see how you can create your own viral video!

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