Archives : 2011 : August
YouTube Video Marketing – Part 1
YouTube is a website that allows people to share videos, including user-created video content, movie clips, music videos and more. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion. YouTube was founded February 14, 2005 and has since come a long way. We have the following impressive statistics:
- YouTube now averages over 2 billion video views per day globally
- 35 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute
- 5% of the time spent on the internet is on YouTube
- Over 13 million hours of footage was uploaded in 2010 alone
How do these figures translate into revenue for business? There are two ways you can use YouTube for business marketing. The first is simple video marketing, which we’ll cover in this blog post. The second is advertising with YouTube, which will be covered in YouTube Video Marketing – Part 2, which will be coming up in a few weeks.
Using YouTube for Business Marketing
One of the hardest statistics about YouTube for business owners to swallow is the second on the statistic list above—35 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute. While the fact that 2 billion videos are watched every day may inspire you to start thinking about YouTube video marketing, the fact that 35 hours worth of video are uploaded every minute is enough to make a person think twice about using the site. That kind of competition is simply overwhelming.
There is one way to get over that figure, and that is to start working. The number of videos uploaded is only going to rise as time goes on, so now is the best time to get started with your YouTube video marketing.
Your YouTube Video Marketing Plan
One of the most important things to have when starting any online marketing is a YouTube video marketing plan. In creating your plan, you will need to keep in mind what you want to get out of this endeavor. Are you looking for increased sales? Brand recognition? Community building? Choose a specific focus and don’t deviate from it.
The second thing to decide on is who you’re advertising to—your target audience. The age, gender or business you are advertising to should determine the style and tone of each of your videos.
With those parameters in place, it’s up to you to start building videos. There are several easy and free tools that can be used for video editing. Start out small and inexpensive, and once you’ve grown your user base, move on to more quality editing programs.
When people start on their YouTube video marketing and can’t get high numbers for their user base, video views and subscriptions, they will often quit before they really had a chance. If there is one thing that we can warn you against, it’s exactly that. The only way to truly gain a following on YouTube is to be consistent.
Bend WebCAM – Web + Creative and Marketing Conference in Bend Oregon
Since its beginning in 2008, the Bend WebCAM has become the go-to conference for the newest Internet marketing techniques. Attracting well-known SEO and web professionals, the two day event draws speakers from all over the United States.
The workshops, lectures and panels that make up the Bend WebCAM are on every online subject imaginable-from social media to SEO, mobile websites to branding, conversion methods to local search. With three different tracks on everything web, you’ll be sure to find the speakers and sessions that are most important to you and your business. The Bend WebCAM 2011 is going to be the one web marketing conference where it all clicks.
Bend WebCAM Agenda Covers SEO, Social Media, Design and More…
The two day internet marketing conference promises two days of mind-blowing concepts related to Web, Creative and Marketing. Here is an excerpt of what the web marketing conference has to offer:
The Ins and Outs of Social Media is a panel discussion featuring a fab four of local experts – moderator Cassondra Schindler; Brenda Speirs, President of Buzztag; John Dempsey, Director of Social Media for American Licorice Company; and Jesse Felder, Owner of Felder & Company and Cat 6 Gaming Lounge. They’ll cover everything from learning how to Tweet to implementing an effective social media plan, including what’s hot in trends and applications, and what’s not in terms of etiquette.
Creative Research + Killer Briefs provides ideas and skills to help you dig for gold in customer, brand and category insights, and shows how to develop a killer brief that gets people excited to bring it to life. Lynette Xanders, CEO and Founder of Wild Alchemy in Portland shares her 20+ years of experience with some of the best agencies and biggest brands in North America to help you create something amazing.
Bring a Friend, Bring a Colleague to Bend WebCAM
Attend the Bend WebCAM internet marketing conference and enjoy even more socializing—hit downtown Bend or visit the Old Mill District for after-conference activities. Visit local restaurants and enjoy the nightlife. Bring a Friend, Bring a Colleague to the internet marketing conference of Bend, Oregon. It all clicks.
Flow in Web Design
Theory of Flow – Losing the Feeling of Self Consciousness
According to psychology researcher Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, flow is a positive, highly enjoyable state of consciousness that occurs when our perceived skills match the perceived challenges we are undertaking. We lose our sense of self and time distorts. People who have experienced flow consistently report the same nine dimensions:
- Clear goals
- Unambiguous and immediate feedback
- Skills that just match challenges
- Merging of action and awareness
- Centering of attention on a limited stimulus field
- A sense of potential control
- A loss of self-consciousness
- An altered sense of time
- An autotelic experience
Flow Online
Marketers Hoffman and Novak extended Csíkszentmihályi’s Theory of Flow by relating it to users’ activities on the Internet. The prerequisites for flow online relates to Csíkszentmihályi’s Theory of Flow. Flow online is determined by:
- High levels of skill and control
- High levels of challenge and engagement
- Focused attention
- Is enhanced by interactivity and telepresence—users feel like part of the action
One such example of flow online is Facebook. Facebook is user-friendly and gives you the amount of control you need. It offers challenge and engagement through its game apps. You are focused and there is interactivity on there with your friends. You feel like you are living their world through their pictures and updates.
Flow in Web Design
It is important to take into account flow in web design to ensure that users are getting what they want out of the online experience—be it targeted experiential or goal-directed. Users wanting experiential flow are usually surfing for fun, while users wanting goal-directed flow are usually shopping, looking for information, etc.
Depending on the purpose of your website, you create components, look and feel to allow users to achieve what they want from it. Here are some factors that we think affects to ability for your users to experience flow online:
- Follow basic rules: It is important to follow basic rules of websites. Users understand that websites work a certain way and use their past experience to aide them in navigating future sites. For example, a basic rule is that colored or underlined words are usually a link. Most people will know to click on it to open another web page. An example of not following basic rules is having a navigation bar at the bottom of the page. This will definitely confuse users and disrupt flow online.
- Level of skills: It is important to match the interface to the user skills. You need to understand your target audience and ensure that the website matches their skills set. If your target audience is users with basic internet skills, you want to create a website that is as simple as possible with easy navigation and clear instructions for them to experience flow online.
- Speed: Your pages need to load quickly to prevent users from getting impatient—thus leaving the site. Ensure that your images are optimized for web view and website is free from codes that will slow down the loading speed. A good SEO friendly CMS is able to optimize your website for speed.
- Good navigation: Good navigation gives the users control, allowing them to know where to look for the information that they need, thus experiencing flow online. Top and side navigations are standards that majority of websites use. Extras that would help include bread crumbs and site maps. These allow users to visualize the structure of your website.
The challenge is for web marketers to offer websites that allow users to experience flow online. Our web development team understands the flow in web design concepts and can create websites that allow your users to experience flow online.
Please contact our web development team to find out how they can help create a website that helps you achieve your goals.
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