A new study out today shows that the top types of online videos people watch are. Here are the top five:
Efficiency defined: Productive without waste or the use of space in a Bangkok, Thailand market.
Link for the feed readers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aZFetrUEo0
A few weeks ago Apple released a new series of products. The major headlines seemed to go to either the new iPod Touch and the price reduction in the iPhone. Though this news may have overshadowed the update/name change about the iPod Classic, the new iPod Nano, and iPod Shuffle colors (which was hardly news, but still...), I think we will look back at this product release and see that the most significant announcement was new Nano.
The new Nano now plays video and the prices are at a level that lowers the barriers to entry so virtually anyone to get a personalized video player. Apple clearly dominates the MP3 market and the new Nano solidifies them in personal video players. Sure, the screen is small (2 inches) and the Nano moniker seems a little less applicable with this short and stocky version, but it doesn't matter. For $150 (4 GB) or $200 (8 GB) you get a video iPod.
So who should care about this? Well, video content creators to start. By January there will be loads of new and eager new Nano owners looking for good video content to fill their iPods. If you were ever thinking about starting a video blog/video podcast, now is the time more than ever. If you create video of any form and don't allow people to subscribe to it, you're about to miss out on a new wave of potentially interested people. Get some RSS feeds tied into your existing video and register with iTunes so people can subscribe.
If you have video that you sell, start promoting the heck out of it this fall. If you can bust up your video so it can be sold off in smaller parts, give that some consideration as well. Again, there's going to be a new group of consumers for your content.
If your business is trying to find a new way to regularly engage existing clients, consider this option: this Christmas send your clients a Nano and start a weekly five minute video podcast from your organization. Have the first video podcast ready for subscription by the time the clients receive their gift and you'll be giving them something with a high perceived value but also be handing them the vehicle to further you ability to connect with them. After all, now there's a little video for everyone.
A few weeks ago I was speaking with a publisher about how they can work with bloggers to get more exposure for some upcoming books. The publisher quickly dismissed the idea of using bloggers because "they tried that once before and all our authors got was a lot of bad feedback from the bloggers because they were accused of being spammers." When I inquired as to what they actually did I was told that the publisher hired a company which has a staff to post comments on blogs that may fit the book topics. Instead of the positive feedback and awareness, the authors were hammered with negative feedback that they were spamming these blogs. Those authors in turn hammered the publisher and the publisher has been wary of bloggers ever since.
What happened here is that the publisher had no idea what it was paying for. In essence they were duped into thinking that comments on blogs through any means necessary are a good thing. They had no idea how their vendor's strategy fits (or actually doesn't fit) into blog culture. The end result was a disaster where the authors got blamed and the publisher lost major credibility with some of their top authors.
I first realized that comment spam is an issue back in February but didn't dream that it could go to the level of paying a company to post comments on blogs. That simply shows both a lack of awareness of blog culture and a pressure that companies now feel to be using new media in their marketing strategies without a proper understanding. This publisher's vendor is preying on the sense of urgency companies have to "just be doing something" in new media. You must have a proper understanding of new media before you launch into a marketing strategy with new media elements. You cannot carry over the same old mindset, methodology, and cultural approach of traditional marketing. If your organization views bloggers like deer and you're just going out to hunt for the biggest one, you're missing a very crucial shift in the hunt: the deer now have guns too...
I took a little different route today on a tech review and decided to use the actual tool for the review itself. This new tool is called Sketchcast and is an online whiteboard with an optional audio recording feature. I've embedded my review below or you can click the link to check it out.
Link for the feed readers:
http://sketchcast.com/view/0e75T59
I didn't see this when it originally aired but it's very funny. Rainn Wilson is one of my favorite actors on The Office so pretty much anything with him in it is going to get me hooked...
Link for the feed readers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ygY17VsXg
A recent report by the New York Times says the average online video duration is 2.7 minutes. The report also said that 75% of Internet users watch an average of three hours of online video a month and that YouTube had 2.4 billion video views in the month of July. Yes, billion. That's a lot of video viewing. So what are the takeaways from this?
