Digital Marketing and Web Strategy by Bob Hazlett | One Half Amazing!

So here’s a crazy prediction for your Thursday morning.  Last week, Facebook officially announced their Facebook Live app which is their own little way of showing off all the hipsters that roll through their offices and as a way of updating users about the behind-the-scenes doings at Facebook in all its live-streaming glory.   You can go and check it out here.

I could be reading way too much into this, but I’m going to be interested in seeing how this evolves.  This could be the beginning of Facebook’s take into live user-streaming video content.  Instead of having all their users leave the site to record their “hauler” videos on YouTube and UStream, Facebook Live could allow them to record and interact with their friends and fans directly on Facebook’s site.  It could go even deeper to take on such services like Hulu and actually stream live TV right to the web.  That would be cool.

Just my 2 cents.  Am I taking this prediction too far?  Let me know in the comments below.

Mark Robertson of ReelSEO caught up with YouTube’s Matthew Liu to get some insight on best practices for optimizing your videos. Here’s what he had to say.

Content

• Creative should be engaging and compelling enough for users to comment, rate and ultimately share.
• Shorter videos (2-3 min) perform better than longer (~10 min) videos.
• Learn from your video Insights.  If your viewers are engaged better than other videos, you’re going to be rewarded in search rankings.

Community

• Clear and concise tags, description and title.  Use complete sentences when you can.  Tags should be relevant, don’t try to play off of popular terms if your video isn’t related to that particular subject.
• Keep embeds on, the more links or times your video is embedded on outside pages, the better ranking you’ll get.
• Videos with more ratings, comments and views typically get better rankings.
• Use annotations to link multiple videos together.  Don’t forget to add date and location to your video’s description.

Found a YouTube tip that’s helped you achieve better rankings? Share it in the comments below.

Video is an amazing medium that’s being integrated into every part of our digital lives. It’s power is enormous. The one main downfall with video though is that its hard to optimize it’s content so that search engines index it correctly.  Have no fear, here are a few tips that I’ve found that can help you better optimize your video for the web.

1. Ensure that you have a detailed description, tag and category associated with your content.

2. Create a video sitemap.  Google allows you to easily create a video sitemap in order to syndicate your video data and make it accessible in their search index.  Sign in to your Google Webmaster account, upload a few files to your site and add the appropriate metadata such as description, title and duration to the video index.

3. If available, add your closed caption file or annotations.

4. Submit your video to multiple services. TubeMogul.com is a great place to start.

5. Use relevant keywords in the video’s URL and associated landing page.

6. Listen to your analytics.  Both YouTube and TubeMogul have a decent set of video analytics.  See where users are tuning in and tuning out.  Optimize to your strengths.

If you’re willing to pay to have your videos shown for certain search queries in YouTube, then you may want to try Google sponsored videos. It works very similar to adwords (actually you can tie it to your adwords account) in that you bid on certain keywords to promote your videos or products within search results on YouTube.

In case you were too busy being inaugurated, here’s what you missed last week;

• Belkin got caught paying people to write fake Amazon reviews of their products.
  
• YouTube is expanding functionality to include links to the iTunes store.  Currently only available in Europe, but could a  monetization ‘buy this video’ option be too far behind?
• Pepsi asked high fructose corn syrup lovers what input they would like to give the new President in order to refresh America. Their new microsite couples user and celebrity content together on a huge wall of carbonated social goodness.
• Google is discontinuing their print ad service, while at the same time giving tips to optimize your campaigns with smaller budgets.
  
• 7% of MySpace users and 3% of Facebook users are dead.  At least those users won’t be sending me an invitation to Mob Wars.
• Smashing Magazine posts their 2009 web design trends.
  
• Twitter is cutting back on the use of their API. Could this mean the beginning of additional features or a premium subscription model?
• Feedburner is making it’s move to better integrate with Google’s architecture, but has encountered some hiccups along the way.

Originally posted October 28, 2008

While the internet is great for commerce, there are still elements of the brick-and-mortar world that customers crave.  Engagement, customer service and human interaction are hard to replicate through a website.   Video is a great way to add more of a human side to your online presence.  Here are 3 quick ways you can incorporate video into your e-commerce site.

* Product Demos - Photography helps, but video draws a better picture for the consumer.  Not only can they see and hear how a product works, but they get the benefit of different angles and have an easier time seeing themselves using the product.  Throw in additional product placements and up-sell related products and you’re more likely to increase your average purchase price.  Williams-Sonoma does a great job of showcasing products with video.

* Customer Testimonials – Not only do adding customer reviews to your website increase sales, site traffic and conversion rate, but it also they also connect with consumers on a more emotional level. A well done testimonial adds instant credibility to your product or service.  Martell Home Builders has done a fabulous job of embracing video.

* Video FAQ’s – Most sites have very little time to engage the consumer before they leave for a more gratifying experience.  Adding Video FAQ’s to your site can increase user engagement as well as education.  Video establishes a personality to your brand and better replicates a live shopping experience.

Bonus Tip: Think ahead during the production and planning of these videos so they can be repurposed and used in other areas such as an rich media ad campaigns or social media sites like YouTube for example.