Posts Tagged ‘video’

There’s been an enormous surge in original content making its way onto YouTube in recent months; the huge networks are even taking a slice of the action by commissioning original TV shows to be broadcast on the new-look tube. YouTube recently announced that they would be adding 60 new channels, and there are companies like Machinima accounting for a huge amount of the YouTube views. Added to this the growth of the tablet and mobile entertainment market, and it seems like there are more reasons than ever before to be actively using YouTube to reach your audience for marketing purposes.

YouTube is no longer confined to sharing videos of kittens on slides, or dogs saying “I love you” – there’s been a huge surge in brands using them as a way to offer more valuable and useful content to their customers. And now YouTube is starting to reward those content creators who share the most interesting and engaging videos, by optimising the search results based on how long users watch the video.

This means that related videos and search results will now favour those videos that engage past viewers for a longer time. So what does this mean for content publishers and viewers? Content publishers will have to work harder to keep their content engaging – either by making their videos better, or possibly even shorter. Videos will now either have to be incredibly entertaining, or incredibly ‘to-the-point’.

How to Use YouTube for Promoting your Company or Brand…

1. Are there any frequently asked questions about your product or industry circulating on sites like Quora? Why not offer a video explanation that will help your audience to make the most of your product. PowToon create presentations, using their own product, to help people make better presentations. Remember, you’re the expert on your product – why wait for a blogger to share a tutorial?

2. If you’re going to (or hosting) an industry event, why not film some footage (make sure you get permission first if it isn’t your event) and then create a video round-up for those people who couldn’t make it.

3. Create product demonstrations – but try to steer away from the usual stock video style. If you’re not the best on camera, join forces with a video blogger to

4. Got an industry expert in the office for a few hours – conduct a quick interview about issues affecting your industry at the moment. You’re more likely to get a 15 minute interview out of someone than a 500 word blog post – and it’s great material for social media.

5. Use video to show the inner workings of your company – this can be particularly valuable to companies trying to gain the trust of investors or big clients. It can also help you to attract the best talent, as prospective employers will have a good idea of what it’s like to work for you.

Video is great for capturing an audience and telling a story in a way which is entertainment and engaging; sure, you could do it with text, but putting it in video form makes it so much more shareable. If you’ve grappled with webvideo marketing before you’ll know that placement and optimisation of said video can be a nightmare.

You want your videos to be noticable and you want to encouage your website visitors to watch until the last second, but all of this has to happen without annoying the visitor. Sean Knapp, CTO of Ooyala, a video publishing platform offering advanced analytics and monetization, has a thing or two to say about the use of autoplay for web content.

His first tip is to determine what it is that you’re trying to optimise for. Are you looking for a specfic action, or are you simply looking for user interaction and engagement? This will determine if Autoplay is appropiate at all.

Secondly, as a general rule, Knapp advocates that you should avoid using autoplay on your homepage. No one screams “get me off this site now” faster than me, when I navigate to a page which instantly begins playing something I didn’t ask to see. If you have advertising on your website, your advertisers won’t be impressed if their hard earned money gets them space on an often abandoned page.

Instead, consider putting your video on a page which the user specifically navigates to; at this point, autoplay is entirely appropriate, as the interaction with your website has already begun.

What about when the video is over, and your user is staring at a blank screen? You have their attention, but as Knapp states, they’re already in a “lean back” position, don’t make them have to “lean forward”. Try setting up a playlist which will allow your viewer to select another relevant video from your selection of content.

Ooyala offers a recommendation engine which intelligently provides a few options for the view, either based on similar views, or based on their individual browsing habits. Content discovery like this is big news, as the Internet expands and more and more content consumers are looking to technology for smart recommendations.