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This post is part of the coverage of the Search Engine Strategies San Jose Conference & Expo in San Jose. It appears in full on Reel SEO - The Online Video Marketing Guide.
As part of the Search Engine Strategies San Jose Conference & Expo last month, YouTube and Google sponsored a day long event with ClickZ, the Social Media & Video Strategies Forum which featured a variety of speakers who explored the successes and failures experienced by companies, celebrities, and politicians in using video in the online social sphere. We had the opportunity to speak with Kristin Kovner, Industry Marketing Manager with YouTube about their sponsorship of the track and what’s new and exciting with YouTube.
YouTube was excited to bring this first-ever full day event dedicated to video and social media to the SES community. Kristin said that people are really hungry for information on how to bring video and social media into their marketing plans. One of the main messages that YouTube brought to the audience at SES this year was around Promoted Videos.
It’s a pay-per-click model similar to Google Adwords which YouTube launched late last year that enables video content owners to promote their videos across YouTube through keyword-based targeting. Content owners set cost-per-click values and pay only when someone clicks to
watch the video. With 90 millions unique monthly visitors to YouTube and now the second largest search engine on the web, after Google, many content owners and marketers have found this a great way to surface their videos on YouTube Search Results pages, within Related Videos and on the YouTube homepage. More information on editorial and format guidelines are here.
This is Part 2 of our interview with Nate Elliott, the Principal Analyst at Forrester Research from the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose in mid-August. Jeremy Scott drafted a great post on ReelSEO the describing how Nate sees the importance of social media and video with examples of social media gone right and wrong, the benefits of user-generated content, and how trust in brands play into consumer engagement. In Part 1, I spoke with Nate about the Groundswell, a book based on analysis by Forrester Research on how they look at social marketing.
In this follow up video Nate says:
"A lot of the best social media we've seen, a lot of the great examples of social media both positive and negative have focused around video. If you look at some of the most recent things we've seen online of course, the recent United Breaks Guitars video is a great example of social media gone wrong and of course that was a YouTube video. You can go all the way back to the Ford SUV contest that they ran on YouTube several years back where a handful of users wound up using Ford's own contest to accuse them of ruining the environment with large vehicle and lots of emissions. So there's certainly some downsides there but we've seen some positive examples of marketers using video and user-generated videos as well."
He added that social video builds trust and value in brands:
"We know that users want to see video and not just video content. We know that users are excited to see video from the brands, the companies they trust online. So when we ask in surveys, :What do you expect to see on favorite brand, your favorite marketer's website? Some people refer to social content but actually a lot users are saying they're expecting to see video content there. So we know it's powerful, we know a lot of users are getting used to watching video online and we know it's something they want to see from their favorite companies.
And the advantage to using social video is... you're increasing the value and the trust of that video. Users are a lot more likely to trust the things they see from other users then are trust something they see from you as accompany. Or even from a trusted their source like an independent reviewer or a media outlet. So when you're using social video you're adding the element of trust. It also opens you up to in many ways a cheaper way to create video content as a marketer and provides creativity that you might not have in-house or might not have come up with otherwise..."
One of the highlights of the day-long track on Social Media & Video Strategies held in conjunction with in San Jose, was a presentation by industry leader Nate Elliott, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research on the Groundswell, a book based on analysis by Forrester Research on how they look at social marketing. All too often marketers launch a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account without a social media strategy which according to Forrester is a backwards approach.
We had an opportunity to speak with Nate following his presentation and he described several practical, data-based strategies that companies can use to build their social strategy. According to Nate you need to look at consumer engagement and ask what they want. Social media has changed the way consumers participate in group action and if companies don’t heed the Groundswell they could be dealing with a public relations disaster, like the viral video hit, United Breaks Guitars.
He said:
“We actually encourage marketers to use the POST method. Focus first on the People they are trying to reach, second on their Objectives and finally look at what Strategies they want to pursue and what Technologies are most appropriate for achieving those strategies.”
Forrester’s Social Technographics:
Forrester’s Social Technographics® is a tool that classifies social media consumers into six overlapping levels of participation according to how they use technology. Based on their 2008 survey data Forrester was able to see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally. They’ve made available a consumer tool and a B2B tool that lets you rate the social technographics profile of your customers. (more)
One of the highlights of my week was spending the day with my good friend Mark Robertson, Founder and Publisher of ReelSEO, at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose Conference & Expo in San Jose on Tuesday, August 11th. ReelSEO was a media sponsor and I was part of Mark's ReelSEO press team and helped cover the events of that day.
Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2009 took place from August 10-14 and covered topics from local search to universal search to social media, SEM techniques designed for both beginners and veterans to search. Mark spoke on the SES panel session, "The Next Wave for Online Video," which focused on optimizing online video for search and other strategies. The session was moderated by Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board & Principal, Page Zero Media and other panelists included Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative, LLC, Erin Bouchier, Business Lead, Google / YouTube Advertising and David Burch, Director of Marketing, TubeMogul. Mike Sachoff of WebProNews has a nice write up on the session, Tips of Online Video Optimization, in which he summarized the message conveyed by all the panelists to consider all angles. This includes keywords and tags and all the elements surrounding the video and apply the same strategy for ranking high on Google to YouTube which is now the second largest search engine in terms of search queries, according to data presented by Mark.
A few of the highlights we caught were the keynote by Clay Shirky, Author,Here Comes Everybody which explores how organizations and industries are being upended by open networks, collaboration, and user appropriation of content production and dissemination. Shirky is an adjunct professor at New York University in the graduate interactive telecommunications program, where he teaches courses on the interrelationships of social and technological networks, particularly how they shape culture and vice versa.
In this video he recorded with Byron Gordon of SEO-PR, Shirky provides a great afterword to an excellent keynote which he discussed the change in user behavior as a result of the internet. Bringing up HSBC's penalty free checking account fiasco, in which targeted college students, and when the students went on summer vacation, reneged on the deal. Students angered by the unfulfilled promise, used Facebook to protest the changes, as a result of which HSBC reinstated the deal. Shirky also touches upon the Josh Groban non-profit group using social media to further their cause, and the importance of citizen journalism in a Web 2.0 world, improving Journalism even if major newspapers shrink. He dazzled the crowd when he revealed he was wearing The Mountain Men's Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee, the viral hit and best-seller on Amazon.com.
Other highlights included sessions from the day-long track held in conjunction with SES on Social Media & Video Strategies, which was put on by the teams at ClickZ, YouTube & Google. Industry leader Nate Elliott, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research set the stage with a presentation on Groundswell, based on analysis by Forrester Research Social Media & Video. A few other sessions we caught were What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video, which was moderated by Dan Greene, Head of TV Ads, Online Sales & Operations, Google and featured Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR, Chris Sams, Internet Marketing Specialist, ZAGG Inc, Lisa Abourezk, VP, Marketing, ooVoo and Shattuck Groome, Co-owner and Managing Director, Gotham Direct who shared best practices for incorporating video and social media into their marketing efforts.
One of the not-to-miss presentations of the day was by Michael Fischer, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Coldwell Banker, who presented Coldwell Banker's successful viral marketing campaigns. He showed how their YouTube Channel energized their network by showcasing what video can do for them through geo-targeting and local search.
Look for more coverage on these sessions along with several on camera interviews that Mark and I conducted that day with Nate Elliott of Forrester, David Burch of TubeMogul and Kristin Kovner of YouTube which will be featured here and on ReelSEO in the coming weeks.
