People soshalize. They don't care how it's spelled. They just do it.
Companies for the last few years have tried to connect with internet trends and celebrities to give their marketing a better chance of “going viral” on social media. The more their products are associated with things that are popular online, the better-branded the companies will be.
There are occasions when a specialty within a company translates into an something unexpected. Think “penicillin from moldy bread.”
That’s the case with Whiteboard Fridays, an offering by SEOMoz that gives tips to aspiring search engine optimizers as those simply wanting to help their own websites rank better. It was supposed to be a tight niche. Since its humble beginnings they have grown tremendously to the point that they are an excellent case study on how to do video marketing the right way.
The beta version of Google+ has been out for nearly two months now, and if you have been keeping up with the news, you know Hangouts is one of its most exciting features. A chatting tool of sorts, Hangouts allows users to communicate by video with up to 10 people at once, which makes it useful for a wide range of purposes. It also lets them view YouTube content as a group. In an interesting development, the search engine company has decided to take its video-based chatting component out of the Google+ arena by integrating it with its immensely popular web destination YouTube.
In one month, Facebook leaped over Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom to become the 3rd largest video site in the US according to comscore. This is all good news for the social network, but there are caveats.
Every now and then, a smaller brand is able to achieve national recognition through creative use of social media. Moe’s Southwest Grill and Brandmovers were able to accomplish just that with a modest budget and an innovative concept.
When I first heard that the former-internet-sensation-known-as-Boxxy had returned from a 2-year hiatus, I imagined that we were in for another round of postings, perhaps a 4chan civil war or two, and millions of views. I must admit, I am disappointed after watching the video.
It used to be, if someone had a complaint about a business, they’d have little recourse.
Sure, they could go to the Better Business Bureau and lodge a complaint. Some TV stations and newspapers had consumer advocates who would shame companies into doing the right thing.
This post is part of a series titled 10 Ways to Use Social Media for Day-to-Day Business. Every day we will be expanding upon a new tip until the list is complete.
If there’s one medium to bet on for the future, it’s video. Tweeting may someday fall out of favor. Thousands of new blogs are popping up every day, making it hard to get in through the noise. Even Facebook, as gigantic as it is today, could collapse under its own weight from a couple of wrong moves.
Video, on the other hand, is going to be around in one form or another for a long, long time on the internet. We, as humans, love the sit-back-and-enjoy style of information consumption. It’s what made the television such a gargantuan medium and it will continue to drive the internet for decades to come.
The trends are clear: more people are watching videos online and spending less time in front of the television. Perhaps more importantly, it’s easier to skip television ads thanks to technology such as Tivo than it is to skip ads online. For Worcester Nissan, video is increasingly valuable in attracting and converting online car shoppers. Many other businesses are also finding that video is more alluring than static content alone.
With such clear trends, why are companies not embracing online video advertising more?
This Infographic by our friends at BuySellAds has clear implications, but online video ads are only marginally increasing. When will big business start to understand that branding online is much more cost-effective than through traditional media?
Soon.
