Response to article by Andreas Roell, The ClickZ Network, Sep 30, 2008 - Article Posted below.

All good points. But, it is much more sophisticated that he explains. The primary driver behind a video is the production of the video itself. Specticle is usually the driving force behind this component. Most of the videos gone viral are simply capitalizing on shock value. If ever there is a subsequent video to this, the specticle must innovate at the same level or beyond the original. If not relying on specticle (or in addition to it) emotions must be moved - strong emotions, like fear or hope - look at the presidential candidates now!

The second component is visibility. You can place a fantastically compelling video into a network like Youtube and get no results because its buried in a mountain of wanna-be viral videos. Aside from proper tagging and titling (from a search marketing and publicity perspective) the video must be promoted and distributed to networks that swing towards appropriate demos. Furthermore, promotion within social bookmarking sites are essential for enabling virality. Digg and Stumbleupon are our favorites.

The last components are timing and luck. There might a current event that you could be leveraged with keywords. There is no guarantee that a video can go viral, but there are certainly best practices that position a video for maximum potential.

Response to article by Andreas Roell, The ClickZ Network, Sep 30, 2008 - Article Posted below.

While there is absolutely no formula to produce an effective viral video, there are some common themes. Here are two.

An obvious component, but difficult to manufacture, is to create a video worth talking about. A viral video is like the one play of a game that I talk about first. Whether it’s a touchdown pass thrown by a running back or a walk-off home run by a rookie, a viral video needs to show something novel to rise above the rest of the field. It needs to grab attention, be memorable, and ultimately make viewers feel duty bound to pass it on.

For marketing purposes, the video also needs to allude to the brand or product of focus in an unobtrusive manner. The risk of not including a branding message, even if it’s subtle, is that everyone will share the video but not be able to give credit where credit is due. On the flip side, very few users would pass a commercial on to their friends. To be most effective, a viral video must straddle the line between advertisements and CGM (define).

The most difficult part of crafting a viable video is that what internal teams find amusing, interesting, and attention-worthy might not be shared by their user base. To overcome this, marketers must attack a viral campaign from a user-centric perspective. EA Sports’s marketing team got it right with its response to a YouTube post exposing a glitch in the 2008 version of “Tiger Woods PGA Tour.” The glitch occurred occasionally when players hit a shot into a water hazard; Woods was able to walk on water, make the shot, and continue on. In response, EA Sports released a YouTube video that parlayed the original negative video to promote the 2009 version of the game. Using Woods himself, the video showed the golf legend actually walking on water to hit a shot off a lily pad. The closing line was, “It’s not a glitch. He’s just that good.”

The video has generated more than 2 million views to date. I attribute its success to communicating with users in a meaningful, unexpected way. The video would probably have been less successful if EA Sports didn’t include Tiger Woods in its response or if the video’s tone was less playful and clever.

Tackling a viral video campaign can seem like a futile effort since more times than not they fall short of expectations. I do think, however, there’s always value in thinking about a campaign from users’ perspective. With a broader audience on the online horizon, adapting a user-centric perspective will only become more important as advertisers plan their online video campaigns to reach users.

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National Park Service

All across the country, park rangers are turning into podcasters. Hundreds of brief audio and video programs are up on park websites and on iTunes giving visitors a new national park experience. People can learn about park resources, take a guided tour, get help planning trips, and, best of all, meet actual rangers.

“While nothing can replace a personal experience in a national park, we think our podcasts will enhance people’s trips or give them the opportunity to learn about a park that they can’t visit,” said Mary A. Bomar, Director of the National Park Service. “Whether people download them to portable devices or watch them on their computers, these free electronic presentations give us another way to serve park enthusiasts of all ages.

Sample Audio Tour of The Everglades

Learn About Parks Many parks offer interpretive podcasts about wildlife, history, and topical issues like climate change and fire management. The most extensive collection of park podcasts is from Yellowstone National Park where they are reaching out to new and nontraditional audiences to spark an interest in visiting the park. The Inside Yellowstone series has more than 50 episodes, which are one to two minutes in length. More episodes are on the way.

“Our podcasts give people from every corner of the earth the chance to fall in love with Yellowstone and become its stewards for the future,” said George Heinz, one of the writers and on-screen personalities for the podcast series. The park has another online series called Yellowstone InDepth that presents mini-documentaries on subjects like volcanoes, invasive species, bears, and wolves.

Yosemite National Park launched a new monthly podcast called Yosemite Nature Notes. A printed publication of the same name began in the 1920s and existed for five decades. “Just like the earlier version of Nature Notes, our podcasts tell Yosemite’s stories from the perspective of the people who work here,” said Steve Bumgardner, videographer and producer at Yosemite National Park. “I like the idea that we’ve brought this institution back to life and that we use new media to put a personal face on the National Park Service.”

“My favorite podcast about Canyonlands National Park is the one on potholes,” said Carter, an 8-year-old visitor who watched all of the park’s podcasts before his trip. “It was so interesting to learn that tiny creatures are living in a bunch of dirt.” Carter’s sister Brooke, 11, appreciated knowing how to recognize cryptobiotic soils so she didn’t walk on the delicate crust. Their mother, Tiffani, thought the podcasts empowered her kids and said, “they loved being the experts and teaching us (their parents) what they learned while we walked around the park.”

Take a Guided Tour In addition to general information, podcasts are a great way to offer ranger-led tours of specific areas that people can enjoy on their own schedule. More and more people download guided tours onto their iPods or mp3 players prior to their national park trip. When they arrive, they literally have a ranger in the palm of their hand to guide them on a walking or driving tour.

At Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, people stop at overlooks along the South Rim Road and watch podcasts about geology, history, life, and recreation at those exact spots. Everglades National Park also has a car tour (audio only) that leads listeners on a guided exploration down the main park road. Four civil war battlefields – Gettysburg, Antietam, Petersburg, and Richmond – offer podcasts that allow you to walk or drive along as you listen to an NPS historian talk about decisive and dramatic battles.

Urban parks use podcast tours to reach local residents who may not know much about the parks they pass every day. For example, residents in Minneapolis and St. Paul can listen to information about Mississippi National River and Recreation Area while walking a four-mile loop near the river. Residents of Washington D.C. can download walking tours for Rock Creek Park and people in St. Louis can do the same for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

Plan a Trip Visitors already use the internet to research park trips, but now podcasts make it more personal. “It’s a blast when visitors hear my voice and recognize me from the podcast,” said Elysha Iversen, Wilderness Visitor Use Assistant at Grand Canyon National Park. “It tells me that we actually reach people and help them plan their hikes before they get here.” Iversen and others record podcasts with important safety information about trail conditions. The park also offers hiking and river running orientation videos as podcasts and will soon, launch new podcasts about Leave No Trace to help people reduce their recreational impacts.

Glacier National Park offers videos online about hiking, and rangers say the programs speed up the backcountry permit process. “Rather than having to watch the video at the permit station which is required, more and more visitors have watched it online ahead of time,” said Bill Hayden, Interpretive Specialist.

Other parks help people plan trips with podcasts, too. Visitors can learn about recreational activities at Curecanti National Recreation Area, like fishing, hiking, and camping. Katmai National Park and Preserve has an audio podcast weaving together music, stories, and tips for reaching that remote wilderness area.

Take a Virtual Tour While not available for download like podcasts, virtual tours give people a park experience right on their home computer. For example, Clara Barton National Historic Site offers a virtual tour of Barton’s home, a building that served as the national headquarters for the American Red Cross. The tour allows visitors to navigate through all three levels of the house and gives access to images, text, and audio clips.

Acadia National Park has an eCruise along the rocky shores of Mount Desert Island and Glacier National Park offers eHikes that take visitors through stunning wilderness areas among glaciers, wildflowers, and bears. The experiences really have visitors buzzing. One man wrote, “I am a fighter pilot in Iraq…and it makes my day when I can take a hike in Glacier even if it’s from behind my computer.” A teacher from Michigan said, “the virtual hikes are awesome for a classroom project I am doing with my 5th graders.” And, another visitor remarked, “they are perhaps the next best thing to actually being there.”

New virtual tours are coming soon: Zion National Park will release an eHike for Angel’s Landing; Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks will launch eHikes that go through the Sierra Nevada foothills or among the giant sequoias; and the Statue of Liberty will provide an eTour covering Liberty Island, the inside of Lady Liberty, and a 360-degree view from her crown.

Some worry that creating podcasts and virtual tours about national parks may keep people, especially children, disconnected from the actual places. “Personally, I don’t think that people are going to give up on the real thing,” said Todd Edgar, Media Specialist at Acadia National Park. “After learning about parks from our online resources, people want to get outside and explore on their own.”

For many other national park podcasts and virtual tours, go to www.nps.gov. If a park unit offers online programs, you will find them by clicking on “Photos and Multimedia” in the left navigation bar of their homepage.

Matthew

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Wizzard Media, CEO, Chris Spencer, was featured on Fox Business this morning last Friday. Wizzard is our stategic partner, and the host of many of our podcasts. Fox reports that Wizzard delivered 275 million downloads in just the first quarter. Who thinks podcasting is still a fad?

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Creative Commons puts a great new spin on the traditional All Rights Reserved Copyright - Use of Some Rights Reserved Copyright. What does this mean? Traditionally if you wanted to use a piece of music for your podcast you’d have to pay for a royalty-free library or negotiate with the copyright holder for a the use of their work.

With Creative Commons, usually you can use the work with an attribution to the owner. There are variations on the SRR copyright, like attributed, non-commericial only. Here’s a list of the types.

To browse the library of music, go here.

Jonathan

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Podcasting is becoming more and more mainstream every day, and for good reason as marketers find it an effective and efficient marketing tool. Here are some of the reasons why you may want to consider Podcasting in your marketing strategy:

Power of the voice: One thing that sets podcasts apart from the written word is the production factors and emotions that can be present in the audio. This makes the intensity and degree of communication much more pronounced than simply reading text from a brochure or webpage. Consumers can listen to a podcast at any time, and often intergrate the audio into their daily activities, of walking, gardening, or commuting.

Market for podcasts: The market for podcast consumption is growing rapidly. The listener market is currently estimated at over 6 million. The podcast listener base in the US is forecast to grow to close to 60 million by 2010.

Podcast advertising: Advertising in podcasts or production of podcasting content is being utilized by savvy marketers. Podcasting advertising will witness a compound annual growth rate of 154% from 2006 to 2010 compared to $3.1 million revenue in 2005 according to a recent report by the Economic Times.

The future: Many experts report that podcasts represent the next evolution in the new digital media domain. According to a Forrester research report by 2010, 12 million people will be listening to podcasts as a part of their media diet. This figure was announced even before iTunes popularised podcasts.

Taking this all into account, podcasts provide a great opportunity to market your product or service to unique niche audiences. At InvisibleIdea we help you create distribution of your content by creating your own distribution channels.

Matthew

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Don’t be afraid to ask your listeners to fill out a survey, whether it pertains to your website, blog or podcast. As noted earlier there are a number of great different tools to ask your audience about their experience with your product. We use a great tool put out by Podtrac, which offers a free web-based survey that allows you to track and analyze responses specific to your podcast. This can be incredibly useful information as it allows you to identify areas to help you improve the topics that you cover in your program, as well as providing valuable qualitative information that advertisers crave.

The survey is fairly comprehensive, we added it the webpage for one client and in a very short time got almost 200 respondents. From this we learned that we had, as expected, a very richly qualified demographic of upper-income male listeners. It also demonstrated that people really enjoyed the program, and try not to ever miss an episode. Several audience members also asked that the audio quality of the show be enhanced, in exchange for a slightly slower download.

Our team has been able to take this demographic information and share it with potential advertisers. So far, two new clients have signed annual agreements based on this demographic information. The survey is a win for everybody, the listeners, the producers and now the sponsors.

Matthew

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Nobody explains it better than a Ninja.

Matthew

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Avinash Kaushik, Google’s so called ‘Analytics Evangelist’ says many web marketers are out of touch with the experience consumers are seeking from visiting their websites.

Free Online Resarch Tool

He advised marketers to create conversations with consumers using a simple, short and free online survey created by www.Iperceptions.com, an online research firm. The survey asks: Who is coming to your website? Why are they there? How are you doing? What do you need to fix?

The surveys “get customers involved in fixing things,” he said.

Kaushik describes his day-to-day duties of his job at Google to Adage as “giving a lot of talks” to teach people how to make better websites and spreading the word about Google’s seven “analytic tools,” mainly Google Analytics and Ad Optimizer. He noted that anyone from a mom-and-pop business to a Fortune 500 brand could use these tools.

“Google is giving the same tools that, only prior to Google, you had to get at a big advertising agency or digital firm for free.”

When asked to explain in more depth what Google Analytics — and his role as an analytics evangelist — means for digital and traditional advertising agencies, Mr. Kaushik said: “We want to be the company that really lives the spirit of accountable advertising.”

Matthew

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Forrester Research recently published a fantastic book explaining the social web phenomenon and how companies can harness its energy.

The “Groundswell” is how your customers define you in the social web by talking about you on Facebook, listing you in Wikipedia and posting user-generated videos on YouTube.

This inevitable force will only continue and is creating lasting, permanent change to the way business is run.

One of the great concepts I pulled from this book is the idea of Social Technographics - defining how your customers interact on the web. Listed by level of engagement on the social web from the top down there are: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives. Each age group, gender, and nationality has a general profile. This is the first step in identifying where your customers hang out on the web and the best approach to engage them.

Click here for Forrester’s free profiling tool.

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