Hidden Tools Find What You Want on YouTube

Have you seen YouTube lately, staying on the site for longer than the three minutes it takes to watch the video link that a friend emailed? Chances are the answer will be no.

Though YouTube calls itself the third most-visited site in the world (after Google and Facebook), it works like an efficient courier service, playing content for you wherever you are on the Web, including Facebook, Twitter and email instant messages. But while we’ve been busy watching YouTube videos elsewhere, the site itself grew up.

YouTube has things like personalized channels, more editing options for uploading clips and a full-screen mode for sitting back and watching videos. A lot of these extra features are buried on the site and difficult to find.

I took a deep dive into YouTube, compiling a list of handy shortcuts for navigating this video hub and getting more out of it.

Quick Keys
Sharing videos with friends is one of the most popular uses for YouTube, but sometimes you want to share just the best part of a video. With two clicks, you can trim videos to begin exactly where you want and then share them. As a video is playing, right click at the point where you’d like your video clip to start and select “Copy video URL at current time” to get a URL for the trimmed video. When others open the link, it will start right at the spot in the video where you right-clicked. No longer will a video clip take too long to reach the best part, like waiting for a model to fall on the runway, and leave you hesitant to share it on Facebook or via emails with friends.

Real Deal Musicians
Searching for music on YouTube can be exasperating since so many people upload videos of themselves singing and tag the video with the name of a well-known musician. So while you’re looking for the latest Coldplay song, you find a high school band covering the song instead. To find artists who do publish on YouTube, look at youtube.com/disco, where users can type in artist names to get a playlist of videos by that artist. In regular YouTube search results, the official stamp from YouTube (and wording) signals that an artist is verified—much like the blue checkmark beside popular Twitter users who are truly who they claim to be.

With Video Editor, users can edit existing videos or upload new ones.

Edit Better
If you’ve ever recorded a video shot in portrait mode that you’d rather share in landscape or vice versa, the video can be switched to the correct viewing angle, saving viewers from tilting their heads to one side to watch. Do this with YouTube’s editor in the cloud, youtube.com/editor. Here, people can edit (including rotate) existing videos or upload new videos. Content can be mixed in with other video clips from the Creative Commons site, soundtracks can be added by choosing from a selection of music, and text slides can be dragged in to display between video clips.

If you’d rather use a third-party company for editing, multiple options are listed at youtube.com/create. A company called Vlix recently announced its integration with the YouTube site, bringing its editing features from the Vlix iPhone app—like artsy designs and text slides—to the site. Magisto automatically skims videos for the best footage and creates short clips with that content, and the Xtranormal Movie Maker lets people add text, such as a personal narration, to an animated video. (Never underestimate the entertainment value of hearing your words come out of an animated bear with a robotic voice.)

Personalized Viewing
If you’re tired of hunting for videos to watch, take a look at clips that YouTube thinks you’ll like. Once signed into your YouTube account, if you’ve used the site to watch at least one video in the past, the homepage will show Suggestions below your username based on that past watching history. These suggestions appear as small thumbnail images of each video and include the reasoning behind why a clip was suggested, like “because you watched Lady Gaga and Sting.”

Videos From Afar
To see all of YouTube in a much more handsome layout, try Leanback, found at YouTube.com/leanback. This opens a page that’s meant to be viewed far from your computer, complete with a black background and white text written in large font.

Sign In, Sign In Again
Recently, it became possible to log into YouTube using your Google account username and password (Google has owned YouTube since 2006). Using their Google account, users may browse YouTube, rent a movie and “like” a video. To upload their own videos, subscribe to a channel, make comments on and “favorite” videos and get recommendations from YouTube on content they may like, people must create a YouTube account and use that in addition to a Google account.

Testing, Testing
A site called TestTube, found at youtube.com/testtube, holds many in-the-works projects from YouTube engineers. Here, users can kick the tires of some features that aren’t fully baked. One example is YouTube/slam, which pits one video against another and lets viewers vote on the best one.

Posting Video
It’s important to know the sharing settings in YouTube. There are three: public (anyone can search for and view); unlisted (anyone with the link can view); and private (only people who you choose can view). Any video can always be taken down from the site by its original publisher.

Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal

Video Production Rates: Video Production Costs for Marketers

Video Production Rates: Video Production Costs for Marketers

Many marketers are now eager to use web video for business, but when it come to the video production process, they don’t quite know where to start. I’ll outline the main corporate video production cost factors below. This video is intended to demonstrate how to make a basic interview much more engaging than just a talking head.

To look closer at what’s involved, lets go over some of the main video production cost factors:

Market price: Lets face it, Atlanta is more expensive than Arkansas! You might be able to hire a cameraman in a small town for a sandwich but in Atlanta and other major markets, you can expect to pay somewhere between $600-$2,000 a day depending on experience, talent, etc.

Quality level: There are wide variations in quality and competence. I see three levels of quality that can be applied to each of the below aspects of video production costs. To illustrate, here are the 3 levels of manpower quality:

• Basic: The most basic fulfillment: a warm body that shows up.
• Pro: Competence: someone who can do the job to industry standards
• Premium: (AKA: Experienced and Talented): These people are actually really good at their job. If you want to make stand out content, you probably need this level of resources.

Manpower costs: Depending on the basic, pro and premium considerations can be anywhere between minimum wage all the way to thousands per day for a well known actor/director, etc. You can save money by finding part-time freelancers who can do some of these themselves, but beware, if they are doing too much, quality will always suffer and since it’s a part-time job, their priorities may not e the same a yours. For example, I hear stories all the time of part-timers that offer a low price then fail to finish a project and disappear when they realize they under quoted.

Here are a few of the roles involved in the video production process:

• Producer
• Director
• Host/Actors
• Concept Creator/Writer
• Camera Operator (Director of Photography – or D.P.)
• Gaffer/Lighting
• Sound Operator
• Wardrobe and MUP (Make Up Person)
• Production/Set Designer, etc.
• Production Assistant (P.A)
• Editor
• Graphic Designer
• Motion Graphics Animator

Video Production Equipment: Cameras, lights, sound equipment, monitors, tripods, dolly, etc. There are wide ranges in quality but even a decent basic camera kit costs thousands of dollars.

Video Production (shooting): How many days and where/what are you shooting? Customer testimonials shot all around the world or a CEO interview in a conference room? The video production costs are going to vary widely!

Video Post-Production (editing): Need just need a quick 1-day edit? Or a 10-day marathon? That could be the difference between boring and amazing! I firmly believe that the more you put into editing, the more you get out. Give me boring footage and some editing time and I’ll give you amazing!

Graphics and Animation: One of the biggest misconceptions is the talent, time and cost that is required to make many of the stand out graphics and animation examples that clients send along as a reference for what they want to produce. That animated video you love? There’s a reason you love it: it was made by talented pros ad takes time to create.

The wild cards: Of course there are other factors at work that will be specific to each project like the complexity of the material, the speed at which the team can work due to weather, location, crowds, field noise, etc.

Approvals: Don’t forget your time cost! On many occasions I’ve sent a review video to a client and they don’t have time to get me feedback for days. With a deadline looming, even if an editor works round the clock to make up last time, the final product quality ends up suffering.

Distribution: Once you have a video, how are you planning on getting people to watch it?! The art of promotion via social networks is a fast changing and complex craft, taking far more time that most professionals have available. I estimate that one must spend 20% of their time to be successful with social networking; can you spare 2 days a week? Or maybe I should ask: can you afford not to?

The key take-aways: The key point I’d hope you’d take away is that quality matters and it applies to all the parameters mentioned above. In any complex sale, it’s only natural to want to ‘commoditize’ the solution, but not all video production is equal. If you want to earn views, you have to give your audience something worth their time, worth sharing and commenting on. Respect your audience and you may earn their respect too.

Feel smarter? Please do me a big favor and share this post! I encourage comments, and please re-Tweet away!

I’m also available for free consultations so contact me with any questions regarding video production costs, video production process or corporate video production projects.

Good luck out there in video production land!

Roger Stix

Executive Producer

Atlanta Business Video

Content Deluge Swamps Yahoo

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

Ousted Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz faced a plight all too familiar to many of her peers: Making money off digital content isn't easy and it's getting harder.

As Web traffic explodes, Internet companies are struggling to profit off ads shown next to the articles, videos and other content offered to viewers.

It's a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online.

"People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. "Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content."

Internet pioneers Yahoo and AOL Inc. are losing out to Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., both of which are adept at helping point the way to pertinent or interesting material. As a result, Yahoo and AOL are getting left behind in the fast-growing U.S. market for online advertising, which ballooned 20% to $31.3 billion from 2010 to 2011, according to eMarketer.

Yahoo and AOL's shares of the overall U.S. online advertising market will drop to 11% and 2.7% in 2011, respectively, according to the research from, down from 16.1% and 4.4% in 2009.

Their businesses have been plagued by a range of missteps that extend far beyond their current regimes. Both were slow to recognize the appeal of social-networking and to update their once dominant email services to compete with new rivals.

Excessive turnover and extensive bureaucracies have strained their relations with Madison Avenue, say advertising executives. Ms. Bartz recently attributed Yahoo's weaker-than-expected ad sales to heavy turnover among advertising executives.

Yahoo said in a statement that the company has been meeting with advertisers and agencies who say they excited by the advertising opportunities at the company. A spokesman for AOL declined to comment.

A few years ago, scale virtually guaranteed profits if Internet companies had relationships with marketers, as there were few sites that could deliver large audiences to advertisers. But advertisers now can turn to a wide range of competitors to reach a similar number of people, and that has pushed down the amount of money they spend on those sites and the price for ad rates on the portals.

"What do Yahoo and AOL bring? In fact, they don't bring all that much," said Rob Norman, chief executive of WPP PLC's GroupM North America, who says marketers view them as large quantities of mostly commoditized inventory. "Just because you have a lot doesn't mean that you have something that is of distinct value."

Pricing trends across both properties vary depending on where the ads appear, advertisers say, but overall rates aren't rising fast enough to compensate for meager to flat traffic growth. In the second quarter, AOL's revenue fell 8.4% from the year earlier to $542.2 million.

Yahoo's revenue fell 23% to $1.3 billion.

The average cost to reach one thousand views across both Yahoo and AOL sites has fallen steadily in the past year, ad executives say. At Yahoo, that rate dropped to an average $6.50 in July 2011 from $7.65 in July 2010, while at AOL, that rate dropped to an average of $7 in July 2011 from $9.45 in July 2010, according to SQAD WebCosts. Back in July of 1998, Yahoo was fetching about $25 per thousand. A Yahoo spokeswoman said their internal data isn't consistent with WebCosts' data.

Some companies have responded by cutting back the number of ads to boost their value. AOL stripped ads off several of its marquee sites in recent years, including AOL.com, its fashion site Stylelist and movie site Moviefone to make room for more premium advertising.

Both AOL and Yahoo are under pressure from "advertising exchanges," the lingo for services that allows advertisers to bid for ad space across a multitude of properties that reach a particular type of user. Increasingly, marketers will turn to the advertising exchanges directly to buy high volumes of cheap online ads instead of negotiating with big publishers like Yahoo and AOL for more expensive ads.

In addition, marketers can target those ads bought via exchanges directly to people who are likely to be interested in their product or service, regardless of the context of the site where they appear. That gives the big portals less bargaining power, advertisers say. Yahoo runs a major exchange but the business isn't growing fast enough to restore overall revenue growth.

While it's a juggernaut, Facebook isn't immune from the problem of expanding inventory. Advertisers say most ad rates on the social network remain low, as its growing traffic leads to a proliferating number of pages it can show ads on.

"Sometimes there is an irrational desire to be involved with things that are just on upswings," says Mr. Norman. "The value of (marketing on Facebook) may be open to some questions."

Smaller publishers are also feeling the changing economics acutely. News sites such as Salon and Slate aren't consistently profitable. Upstarts like the Daily Beast have yet to reach profitability though executives say the three-year-old site is ahead of its pace. Slate last month laid off a handful of editorial staffers, citing unexpected "head winds" in advertising.

—Amir Efrati and Russell Adams contributed
to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576556973446155098.html

What's new at ABV?

As Atlanta Business Video begins to leave the first quarter of the year, we thought it was time to reflect a little on what an amazing and fun year 2011 has been so far! We have been blessed with staying very busy- but the best part by far has been all of the wonderful new friends we’ve made and people we have had the opportunity to work with. Being a small business, our clients are our colleagues- and it’s a rare gift to have the opportunity to be work so closely with such great people.

As with any business, Atlanta Business Video has certainly evolved over our 3 years together. The truly unique thing about video is that we have the capacity to work in so many fields, and learn about so many different industries. While ABV began as a company focused solely on offering affordable high quality business video solutions to the Atlanta area, we have had the opportunity to expand and diversify immensely over the past few years.

Our business model has not changed- we still pride ourselves in providing the best quality HD video solutions for businesses- however the types of video we have had the opportunity to do this year has been very diverse. We have worked with organizations and clients as far as New York and California. We have been privileged to work with many fantastic local businesses- but also professional speakers, musicians, talk show hosts, sports programs, retailers, international and publicly traded corporations, celebrities, and many more wonderful individuals and organizations.

While the type of work we have done has varied, ABV has maintained one very important constant. No matter who the client is, and no matter what size the job or opportunity presents, our clients and their level of satisfaction has always been the most important thing to all of us at ABV. Whether on location at a tradeshow or live event or recording in our own green screen studio- our goal is to provide the most professional HD quality video the market offers while exceeding your expectations in client care and customer satisfaction.

Online Video Offers Low-Cost Marketing For Your Company

Ed Davis wanted to have a word with his customers.

He was shepherding his small California manufacturing company, Ceilume, through a transition from a custom job shop to a maker of vinyl ceiling tiles, and he needed to begin selling directly to consumers. That raised a perception problem: many people associate ceiling tiles with the ugly, dusty and stained mineral-fiber tiles that have loomed over offices for generations. Mr. Davis, Ceilume’s president, wanted to tell consumers his company’s vinyl products were different. He decided to try online video.

Over the last several years, Ceilume has produced dozens of YouTube videos for product demonstrations, advertisements and how-to instruction. These videos are embedded in the company Web site or show up in results when customers search for keywords. As a result, Ceilume has reached tens of thousands of customers at a very low cost.

Online video is becoming a first stop for many customers. It is akin to what the Web page was a decade ago — something that can give early adopters an edge over competitors. It gives them a channel to talk directly to customers in ways previously accessible only to large companies that could afford TV advertisements.

This guide to using online video focuses on YouTube, which is by far the dominant player with two billion views per day — but many of the principles also apply to the other hosting services, including Vimeo, MetaCafe, Facebook, Viddler, Brightcove and Blip.tv.

SHOW YOUR PRODUCTS Short of getting a customer in the door or sending a salesperson on the road, online video may be the best way to demonstrate a product. According to Mr. Davis, more Ceilume customers place orders without requesting samples because video helps them find what they want.

At Ceilume, video helps customers choose among 30 different styles of ceiling tiles. Ceilume, a 40-person company that has about $5 million a year in sales, produces its “Ask the Ceiling Tile Guy” videos for little expense with internal tech staff and Mr. Davis as narrator. The videos have attracted more than 500,000 views, and Mr. Davis says he believes that video has been a crucial factor in increasing sales 15 percent a year.

CREATE A DESTINATION It is easier to win customers if you give them a reason to tune in. For BBQguys.com, the reason is food sizzling on the grill.

BBQguys.com began as a traditional brick-and-mortar store (The Grill Store and More) in Baton Rouge, La. In 2001, the company went online, which allowed it to reach legions of new customers but also reduced its ability to provide personalized service. Online video has helped the company recover its human touch virtually.

In 2006, it started posting informal YouTube videos featuring new grills, narrated by its customer service manager and chief executive. The channel grew so much that the company recruited a local chef, Tony Matassa, to be its on-camera personality.

It now has nearly 400 videos on YouTube, which have collectively been viewed 1.4 million times. Video has become so essential that the company has built a small studio in one of its warehouses. “We see the video almost like a TV commercial,” said Troy Olson, digital advertising manager for ShoppersChoice.com, the parent company of BBQguys.com. “We’re planting our brand name in their minds.”

The company does not just pitch products. Rather, the goal is to establish its people as customer-friendly experts and provide a channel full of useful information about how to fry a turkey, grill a pizza or smoke a beef brisket. The hope is that the information will draw viewers — many of whom will become customers — and increase the site’s conversion rate. According to Mr. Olson, a person who comes to the site and watches a video is twice as likely to make a purchase as a visitor who does not watch a video.

USE ANALYTICS AND TOOLS YouTube offers tools that allow you to measure the effect of your videos. BBQguys has used this data to make its videos more compelling — shortening them, for example, to two or three minutes after discovering that customers tend to stop watching the longer ones. The company also discovered “hot spots” that viewers rewind to and rewatch — particularly images of food sizzling on the grill — and it now makes sure to include more such scenes.

“Video has to be evolving,” Mr. Olson said. “You have to always be willing to change everything you’re doing.”

BUILD A BRAND CHANNEL One way to get the attention of customers is invite them to become your video producers — especially if they jump off cliffs, ski down steep powder ridges or do somersaults on BMX bikes.

GoPro.com, a maker of small high-definition cameras that can be worn during adventure sports, has built a thriving YouTube presence with customer videos. YouTube allows businesses to establish channels, or a home page that lists videos, playlists and contact information. The GoPro channel features more than 100 videos — including surfing, skiing, motocross, auto sports and flight — which have been viewed more than 24 million times.

“It is the No. 1 most convenient way for us to validate our product to customers,” said Nick Woodman, founder and chief executive. He said business was growing 300 percent a year. “Viral word-of-mouth marketing for GoPro is massive. Video is really the conduit.”

ADVERTISE WITH VIDEO YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google(which owns YouTube) and represents a huge audience of potential customers. It offers a dozen advertising options, including banner ads, promoted videos that appear on top and beside search results, and “preroll ads” that appear during other YouTube videos much like a conventional TV commercial. YouTube recently announced that it was displaying more than three billion ads per week.

Like Google, YouTube generally follows a cost-per-click or cost-per-view model so advertisers pay only when users click on ads or watch ad videos. Advertisers can view metrics such as number of impressions, conversions and viewer demographics via theirGoogle AdWords or YouTube Insights accounts.

Ads can be aimed at customers based on demographics, keywords or interests. For example, a person who searches for “ceiling tiles” might see a Ceilume video titled “make an ugly ceiling elegant” highlighted as a promoted video atop the YouTube page. Ceilume devotes about 10 percent of its advertising budget to YouTube.

OFFER INSTRUCTION Online video makes it easy to follow the adage “Show, don’t tell.” Many businesses have turned to video for instruction manuals and how-to guides.

Directfix.com sells replacement parts and accessories for smartphones and other electronics. The business faces a constant customer service challenge: showing lay people how to take apart electronic gadgets and install fragile components.

In the early days, the company used pictures and text, said Robert Stanley, founder and chief executive. Inevitably, those instructions left customers with questions that placed a burden on the company’s customer service department. In 2007, the company began posting how-to videos on YouTube. That summer, it released one of the first videos showing how to take apart an iPhone, a video that has been viewed more than two million times.

The company has compiled a library of instructional videos that have reduced customer questions by half, allowed the company to eliminate phone support and cut its customer service budget about 40 percent. Without video, Mr. Stanley said, he would have to hire four or five additional employees.

“You can tell somebody over the phone to turn the screw in the top right corner,” he said, “and they might understand what you mean and they might not. If you show them on a video, they get the point.”

Facebook Breakups: ‘Tis the Season

Worried about your relationship? Going into the holiday season, maybe you should be. Graphic designers Lee Byron and David McCandless wanted to find out what times of year people (or at least people on Facebook) were most likely to break up.

Tracking search terms for breakups across 10,000 Facebook status updates, they found that Christmas Day had the fewest splits, but the weeks leading up to Christmas constituted one of two yearly peaks. The other busy time for relationships to go bust: spring.

In another survey, the designers looked at why Facebook users break up and how they do it—with younger users relying more on phone calls and messaging.

Below, the peaks and troughs of breakups through the year, with the designers’ speculation on the timing.

SEO- Practicing What you Preach

I have always tried to practice what I preach- In order to

market effectively online you need: video, SEO, and so

cial networking. I’d like to not only share where we are in our statistics, but also walk you through a few points that you should be looking fo

r when evaluating the effectiveness of your own website. Are you having the same success?

TRAFFIC SOURCES

: 

Where is the traffic to your website coming from? The more places you are on the internet, the more paths potential clients have to connect to your business.

These are our top traffic sources (in order):

- Organic Google

- Direct Traffic

- Online Video Multi-Players Referral

- SiteProWeb Referral

- LinkedIn Referral

- Youtube Referral

- Facebook Referral

- Yahoo Organic

- AOL Organic

- Bing Organic

It is also important to notice not only the different sources, but the type of source. When searching for Atlanta Business Video you get:

- Video results

- Website results

- Blog results

- Video Sharing Site Results

- Map results

BOUNCE RATE:

After the traffic has arrived at your site, it is important to notice the bounce rate. This is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). This can be caused for several reasons: your website is too cluttered, they didn’t find what they were looking for etc. It’s time to make some changes if this percentage is too high.

The online market is constantly evolving. Are you keeping track of your websites statistics for maximum effectiveness?

- Roger