Archive for Online Marketing
Business Applications Of Social Media Inside Organizations: An Overview
Posted by: | CommentsIs social media good for business? How do organizations use social media to improve their marketing effectiveness and boost their sales?
Photo credit: Stephen VanHorn
Social media is making strong inroads in the business world, but understanding how to leverage social media properly remains one of the greatest marketing challenges to overcome.
While there is no secret formula with which your business can benefit from social media, there are a number of facts that do point clearly at the increasing relevance of using social media to improve their business opportunities:
- The use of social media is growing rapidly. eMarketer predicts that in just four years more than 50% of Internet users are going to be regular social media visitors.
- Traditional marketing channels have become tricky venues to promote your product. Consumers are suspicious of marketing and relationships created ad hoc to sell a product do not work anymore.
- Social media is focused on engagement, community and authority. Your marketing approach in the attention economy, should be to create a community of loyal visitors and “evangelists” for your brand, willingly spreading the word about what you do.
- Social media is emerging as a reliable indicator of online advertising performances.
“OK” – you may say now – “I am starting to understand the value of social media for my business, but what type of social media should my company use?”
Linkedin and Facebook seem now the preferred venues for businessmen, while blogs are the most popular form of social media that organizations are starting to use.
How do I know all this?
Josh Gordon, marketing consultant and president of Selling 2.0, has prepared an extremely useful social media report providing interesting insight about the use and adoption of social media inside the business and corporate world.
Part one of this report provides an overview on how much organizations are familiar with social media and why their usage is predicted to grow exponentially in the next few years.
Here all the details:
The Coming Change In Social Media Business Applications:
Separating The Biz From The Buzz
by Josh Gordon
Introduction
A shift is coming in how organizations use social media
Companies have been using social media primarily as a general communications tool – mostly for public relations and marketing. That is about to change, as businesses discover its value as an essential tool for customer engagement – providing lead generation, immediate customer contact, and customer interaction.
Four factors are driving this trend.
- First, due to the rapid rise in the popularity of social media, the number of potential customers engaged on social media sites was previously underestimated by many organizations.
- Second, in the current economic downturn, where there are fewer customers in general, finding them and engaging them are much higher priorities.
- Third, there is now a “Main Street” acceptance of social media as a powerful persuasive tool. Regardless of political affiliation, managers everywhere recently noticed that the largest and most successful social media campaign in history helped elect Barack Obama President of the United States.
- Finally, there has been a breakdown in traditional lead-generation programs. With more customer contact moving online, it is easier than ever for a client to ignore messages from potential suppliers. Social media can help break the ice.
Why This Study?
Social media is getting a lot of media coverage, but all the attention does not necessarily make it easier to understand which functions are actually useful in business. This study was designed to provide managers with guidance in that area by measuring which social media tools are being used right now, and by whom.
A look at what other businesses are doing can offer perspective, as well as a benchmark for managers to compare their own organizations’ progress and opportunities.
In order for a benchmark to be useful, it must be specific and detailed. To that end, I have divided this survey into three parts.
- Part I is an overview of both current and future intended business use of social media.
- Part II focuses on the business use of Twitter.
- Part III examines the business use of social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, with a separate focus on the four general business functions that social media serves: sales, marketing, public relations, and internal communications.
Overview
Leading Business Uses of Social Media
Most popular business uses of social media
Marketing and PR are currently the leading business uses of social media; sales and collaborative work lag behind.
Social media is being used in business most often as a marketing and public relations tool, while uses in sales support and collaborative work lag behind.
Almost three quarters of respondents said their organizations use social media for branding, and two thirds use it for public relations. Only 38% are using it to support collaborative work, and only about one in four use it to support sales efforts.
Lead Generation
Most frequently desired business functions in social media
Looking to the future, “lead generation” is the top business function for which organizations most want to use social media.
Organizations have shifted priority.
With the economic downturn, “lead generation” has moved to the top spot as the business function organizations are “most considering” for the future.
The two currently most frequently used functions, branding and public relations, follow behind. This is a highly significant shift, and is reinforced by other findings in this survey.
Customer Competition
Business social media use for external communications
When competing for customers, smaller organizations use social media more frequently.
The smaller the company, the more frequently social media is used to improve external communications.
As we compare social media usage at smaller companies with one to 10 employees to organizations with over 1,000, there is a steady decrease in the percentage of usage.
Companies with 10 or fewer employees are about 30% more likely to use social media for public relations, branding, and understanding customers than companies with over 1,000 employees, and twice as likely to use it for lead generation.
Internal Communications
Business social media use for internal communications
Larger organizations use social media more frequently for internal communications.
Organizations with over 1,000 employees are twice as likely to use social media for internal communications as companies with one to 10 employees, and roughly 18% more likely to use social media for collaborative work.
Larger organizations have more complex and geographically dispersed communications challenges. In addition, they often have more sophisticated IT support. They need the communications services more, and they have the technical support to take advantage of them.
Where larger organizations have more resources to touch their customers, such as corporate advertising, social media may not be as big a priority.
However, with less money for outreach programs, smaller companies can make big inroads by focusing more on social media.
Encouraging Social Media
Business social media policies most used inside organizations
More organizations encourage the use of social media than discourage It.
It was not long ago that many organizations discouraged employees from visiting social media sites, with many of them blocking access to sites outright.
But today, 41.2% of businesses have employees whose job function includes spending time on social media sites, while only 9% report blocking internal access for employees.
Whereas 41.9% of organizations report that they have no corporate policy of any kind regarding social media, 21.8% report having a formal policy for employees who want to blog.
Finally, about one in four organizations sponsors a group on a social network for personal announcements and social events.
Leading Social Media For Business
Most used social media technologies and tools for business organizations
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging lead social media services and activities for business
Four services dominate the use of social media networks and tools:
- LinkedIn (79.3% of respondents now using),
- Facebook (77.2% now using),
- Twitter (75.3% now using).
- Use of blogs follows closely behind, with 68% of businesses currently using them.
- Only 17.2% of organizations use MySpace for business.
Blogs As Preferred Social Media
Social media tools organizations are turning to most
As organizations look to the future, the social media form they are “most considering” using is blogs.
While Twitter and Facebook get the headlines, the social media form organizations are turning to most as they look to the future is blogging.
Some consider blogging “old” social media, but it has proven itself an effective communication tool.
The ability to reach a mass audience with a personal point of view and invite comments is very powerful.
End of Part 1
Originally written by Josh Gordon for Social Media Biz Buzz, and first published on July 20th, 2009 as The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications
About Josh Gordon
Josh Gordon is president of Selling 2.0, where he works to improve the performance of organizations and sales teams with research-based training and consulting services. Josh has written four books on the subject. For more information, visit www.Selling2.com.
Photo credits:
The Coming Change In Social Media Business Applications: Separating The Biz From The Buzz – Björn Meyer
Future Of Mobile Web Applications: Application-Centered Or Browser-Centric?
Posted by: | CommentsMost web publishers and online media companies view mobile applications as little more than Compuserve-like kiosks from which they can serve slightly jazzed-up versions of their web page content. But is that the best perspective from which to look at the future of content and apps on mobile phones?
Photo credit: Eray Haciosmanoglu
Is the future of the mobile web in custom apps like Apple did it with its own AppStore or is it by way of more typical web browser experience? Apple had originally considered emphasizing the browser as the focus of delivering content on the iPhone, but later shifted to its AppStore as a preferred method for getting people excited. On the other hand Google seems to have a much more web-centric approach. So, what is really better? Where is the future headed?
Mobile apps or web-centric applications?
How long will it take for most content consumers to realize the difference between a transitional technology designed to bolster the margins of publishers (iPhone – AppStore) and a more satisfying technology that connects them more effectively with the world at large (web-browser-centric mobile apps)?
In this article, content and media expert John Blossom, looks at the likelihood that one of these approaches takes the lead over the other in the near future and at the possible reasons behind this.
Here all the details:
Yeah, There Is A Web For That: Where Are Mobile Apps Really Taking Us?
By John Blossom
I had an interesting exchange on Twitter today with Rafat Ali, founder of paidContent.org and a person who I respect and admire greatly for his insights into the content industry (not to mention for having blown the socks off of many a trade pub over the past several years).
Rafat had pointed out in a post on paidContent that The New York Times had started to use barrier ads on their iPhone applications, something that he found to be very intrusive. I could not agree more on this point.
Most media companies view mobile applications as little more than Compuserve-like kiosks from which they can serve slightly jazzed-up versions of their web page content. With that in mind, it should not surprise us that the NYT or any other media company will be intent on carrying over its ad strategies to these walled gardens.
As a follow-up, though, Rafat pointed me towards a good post on paidContent’s mocoNews site that outlined the case for Apple’s approach to mobile apps versus Google’s more web-centric approach.
Tricia Duryee points out in this article that Apple had considered emphasizing the browser as the focus of delivering content on the iPhone, but then shifted to its AppStore as a preferred method for getting people excited about the potential of mobile devices for delivering useful content and services.
As she notes:
The biggest problem facing Google will not be convincing developers, but consumers.
Apple’s steroid-enhanced marketing machine has drilled into the public thinking that “there is an app for that,” not that there is a URL.
Clearly after logging 1.5 billion downloads within a year, Apple is on to something and vigorously training the mobile users of tomorrow.
Sorry, Tricia, but I have to smile at that one.
While Apple rolled out a very savvy strategy for the iPhone given its market position as a high-end product oriented towards proprietary intellectual property, I think that it is worth noting that a lot more than 1.5 billion web pages, many of them with embedded applications, are downloaded every day on the web.
Evolution of Mobile Applications
The iPhone’s app strategy has certainly made mobile technology platforms far more usable and understandable for its early adopters, much as early premium online information services such as Compuserve and the original AOL made the still-crude world of networked information delivery more palatable.
Similarly, early PCs benefited from a galaxy of packaged software that used to line the shelves at local stores, providing “user-friendly interfaces” that made still-crude PC technology more palatable.
But today the walled garden services of Compuserve and AOL are distant memories, and packaged software for PCs is almost non-existent in most local stores, except for a few have-to-buy items like Microsoft Office software (about the most expensive items to be found on any of the shelves at our local Staples office supply store), accounting systems and tax preparation tools.
Why? Because for the most part these products and services were attached to more mature technologies that no longer required packaged IP to help people get to the good stuff.
- In the instance of software, many of the functions that used to require packaged software are now available via cloud computing services, including tax preparation, bookkeeping, spreadsheets and word processing.
- In the instance of services like Compuserve, it also became a matter of scale: 65,000 or so iPhone apps sounds like a lot of services, but good luck finding any of them once you begin to scale up to more broad markets.
Walled gardens are great when you have a cozy crowd, but most people’s interests will not be content to stay in them very long when a good search engine can help them to find the next movable feast easily.
This is not to say that there is not a valuable place for mobile applications in the mix of marketing strategies for publishers and technology companies.
Good functionality with good content being fed into it is a winning combination on any platform.
But if we were to speed up the clock and have this discussion a year from now, I do not think that people will be waxing as sanguine about the AppStore as they are today – and not just because of Google’s Android mobile platform hitting the scene.
The Future of Mobile Web Applications: A Standardized Environment?
Real applications, as opposed to the lightly gussied-up browser substitutes that most publishers toss up as mobile applications, take time and thoughtfulness to develop and to roll out carefully.
Yes, a Safari browser is a somewhat different platform than a Chrome browser, and so on, but it is not very realistic to compare the relatively minor differences in how these packages handle largely open web standards such as HTML compared to the larger, glaring differences between
- iPhones,
- Palms,
- Blackberries and
- Android phones.
Mobile applications will be useful, but there is no practical way to expect publishers to deal cost-effectively with this broad array of approaches simply to get their content to and fro.
No amount of seductive ads by Apple or any other platform manufacturer is going to be able to conceal this basic fact, it would seem.
The truth is, of course, that many web pages are in fact driven by very sophisticated applications already, a fact that will be only accelerated by the emergence of HTML 5, which does more to merge programming functionality into the web environment than previous versions of the basic code for web pages.
The architecture of today’s Google Chrome browser hints at where this is really taking us.
When you have more than one page open in a Chrome browser, each tabbed page is its own separate program process on your computer. If one tabbed page has a problem, it can stop functioning without affecting the other opened pages.
In other words, Chrome as a browser is actually a multi-process program execution environment.
To put it another way, it really does not matter whether you are running a web page or an application, as long as you can get to it easily in a standardized access environment.
Why bother with a page of apps and a separate set of web page bookmarks when you can have one unified environment where you can access whatever is important to you? Once you have that kind of environment, people will want to have billions of choices filtered by a good search engine or recommendation service rather than a few thousand apps that have to be “mother-may-I“ed through Apple before they can be accessed.
The iPhone AppStore has been a very clever and useful marketing mechanism that has allowed Apple to make its platform more palatable and useful in a highly controlled way that is appropriate for any emerging technology.
Conclusion
Let’s face it, the mobile web is still a work in progress, making the more sophisticated displays of some mobile apps far more appealing than dealing with the almost-good mobile web functionality that is available on most platforms today.
But given the already mature nature of the web that is awaiting better browsing via Chrome and other platforms that will not intentionally cripple web functionality to make more proprietary approaches more palatable to consumers, it is not likely that this artificial Compuserve-like era of iPhone applications can be expected to dominate the mobile content landscape very long.
iPhone apps will endure and even prosper for quite some time, to be sure, just as those early online services such as Compuserve managed to endure for several years after the emergence of the web.
But it will not take long for most content consumers to realize the difference between a transitional technology designed to bolster the margins of publishers and a more satisfying technology that connects them more effectively with the world at large.
As long as companies like Apple can create new frontiers of technology that entertain and delight high-end mobile content users, we will be hearing, “Yeah, there is an app for that” for quite some time.
But if history is any guide to the future, it is not likely that any one company will be able to keep that phrase rolling off of their clients’ lips when more powerful substitutes are available that intrigue more people, more easily.
Yeah, there is a web for that, all right.
Originally written by John Blossom for Shore, and first published on September 7th, 2009 as Yeah, There’s A Web For That: Where are Mobile Apps Really Taking Us?
About John Blossom
John Blossom’s career spans more than twenty years of marketing, research, product management and development in advanced information and media venues, including major financial publishers and financial services companies, as well as earlier experience in broadcast media. Mr. Blossom founded Shore Communications Inc. in 1997, specializing in research and advisory services and strategic marketing consulting for publishers and consumers of content services. John Blossom is also the author of Content Nation a great book about “Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives, and Our Future“.
Photo credits:
The Future of Mobile Web Applications: A Standardized Environment? – Jay Oatway
Evolution of Mobile Applications – Miro Kovacevic
Guide To Licensed Content Syndication
Posted by: | CommentsWhat is licensed content syndication? What are the key misconceptions of this content distribution and online marketing approach? Is licensed syndication profitable? Do you retain rights on your content? What are the key benefits?
Photo credit: head-off mashed up by Robin Good
In this licensed content syndication guide, you can learn more about how licensed syndication can be used to deliver your content beyond your typical audience.
Licensed content syndication promises to be a win-win approach where the end-user gains access to exclusive content while you generate new traffic and increased brand awareness by reaching new audiences. Licensed syndication can also become a source of additional revenue as it can provide royalty payments to publishers when their content is viewed by end users who have paid for it.
End users are generally willing to pay for licensed content if the type of information provided is particularly rare, difficult to find or unique. Often, business people prefer to pay a small amount of money rather than having to wade through hundreds of Google search results. This is why it is possible to get significant amounts of people to pay small amounts of money to get access to valuable information, when this is not easily available elsewhere on the open web.
While publisher royalties derived from online content syndication may not represent the main part of a web publisher revenue stream, this should not be considered a matter of concern.
Professional web publishers should rather focus on the general benefits that licensed content syndication can provide to their overall online marketing approach including the increased exposure and visibility it can bring, as well as the additional extra credibility and authority it can provide when the content being distributed is of really high value.
In this guide, Larry Schwartz and Susan Gunelius, have researched and debunked some of the most common misconceptions about licensed content syndication.
Here all the details:
The Truth About Blog And Twitter Content Syndication
By Larry Schwartz and Susan Gunelius
Dispelling The Myths and Rumors About Licensed Blog Syndication
The Most Common Misconceptions Debunked
Licensed blog syndication is very different from ad-supported, free or bartered syndication.
While some of the myths and rumours about blog syndication might apply to the ad-supported, free or bartered syndication models, they are not true of licensed syndication.
It is important to make the distinction between what is accurate and what is false before bloggers can make educated decisions as to whether or not blog syndication will help them achieve their individual goals.
Myth #1: Distributors Make All The Money From Syndicated Blog Content
The truth: It is true that end-users pay for access to the highly selective content delivered through licensed blog contracts. From those subscription fees, several parties are paid:
- The distributors are paid to maintain the systems and to get blog content in front of highly influential audiences that are unlikely to find it easily through open web searches.
- The aggregation company is paid from those subscription fees to maintain the systems and standardize, enhance and deliver content to meet both the distributors’ and end-user customers’ needs. Again, a haphazard web search will not produce the results that top companies, universities, government entities and law firms are looking for.
- The bloggers are paid royalties from those subscription fees based on the actual use of their content by end-user customers.
Myth #2: Bloggers Do Not Make Any Money From Blog Syndication
The truth: While it is unlikely that bloggers will not make any money from blog syndication, it is probably true that they will not earn huge royalty payments. However, every dollar helps.
Many bloggers think, “I am writing my blog anyway, why not syndicate it to an audience who probably will not read it otherwise, and make a few bucks, too?” The money is nice, but the exposure is priceless for the majority of bloggers.
Myth #3: Bloggers Who Syndicate Find Their Content All Over The Internet and Lose All of Their Rights
The truth: The difference between free, bartered and most ad-supported syndication models versus licensed syndication is the type of exposure they provide to bloggers.
Most free, bartered and ad-supported syndication opportunities deliver blog content through the open web, making it available to exactly the same people who could find it directly through web searches. In other words, bloggers will not necessarily boost their blog traffic to a new audience.
While free, bartered and ad-supported syndication might boost blog traffic faster than a blogger can achieve on his or her own, eventually, the same people would find the blogger organically. With that said, free, bartered and ad-supported syndication can be useful to some bloggers who want to grow their blogs quickly.
The drawback of free, bartered and ad-supported syndication can come on the back end in terms of hurting the blog’s search rankings.
For example, Google ranks the originating site of an article or blog post higher than the sites that republish it.
Depending on a blogger’s individual publishing situation and syndication agreements, first publishing rights might go to the syndication site, not to the blogger, as far as Google’s search ranking algorithm goes. That can actually hurt a blog’s traffic numbers in the long run and is something every blogger needs to consider when researching syndication options.
However, blogs that are syndicated through a licensed syndication agreement have their content delivered through closed systems, not on the open web, with links back to the original article, so the blogger retains all rights to his or her work.
Furthermore, the blog is always identified as the original publication source, thereby preserving the blog’s search rankings and organic traffic growth.
While it is harder to get accepted into a licensed syndication agreement than an ad-supported, free or bartered syndication agreement, the results are quite different.
Licensed syndication drives smaller amounts of highly targeted and influential traffic over time and often leads to other opportunities for the blogger to grow his blog and business.
Myth #4: Since People Read Syndicated Content Outside of The Blog, The Blog’s Traffic Will Drop
The truth: This is a common misconception related to licensed blog syndication. Unlike free, bartered and ad-supported syndication, where blog content is republished in a myriad of places and on multiple web sites, thereby reducing the potential traffic for the originating blogger, licensed syndication works differently.
Subscribers pay to access licensed content through closed environments such as university libraries, corporate or legal research departments, and so on.
There is little likelihood that the individuals who access blog content through syndicated, licensed distribution would be the same audience that would find it through web searches.
In short, the audiences are quite different and licensed syndication introduces a blogger’s content to a new and highly targeted, professional audience that may turn into loyal readers and ultimately, boost a blog’s traffic over the long term.
Myth #5: The Amount of Traffic Blogs Get From Blog Syndication Is Negligible
The truth: It is difficult to predict how much additional traffic a blog will get as a direct result of licensed syndication.
More often, it is the indirect traffic and exposure to targeted influencers in the fields of journalism, business, law, government, academics, and so on that are the primary benefits of licensed blog syndication.
According to Jonathan Hoy, director of news and business content for LexisNexis,
“Traffic trends often change with the current hot topics. For example, during the election, political blogs were popular.
During the recession, financial blogs have grown in popularity. Currently, international blogs are becoming big, and blogs in languages other than English are likely to be in demand from our end user consumers in the future.“
Bottom Line
Each blogger must identify his or her goals for a blog in order to determine whether or not syndication is right for him or her.
The key to determine whether or not syndication is right for the blogger is to understand that licensed blog syndication is very different from free, bartered or ad-supported syndication. That is why many of the most popular and well-trafficked bloggers, as well as many smaller, high quality bloggers, choose to syndicate their blog content through the licensed syndication model.
The next section provides more details about the benefits of blog syndication.
Why Should You License and Syndicate Your Blog?
The Top Benefits of Blog Syndication
Licensed blog syndication can play a pivotal role in a blogger’s overall marketing strategy.
In the 21st century, generating word-of-mouth marketing and online buzz are extremely powerful tools. That is why so many people around the world have started blogs.
Everyone has a particular goal in mind for their blog. For those bloggers who are interested in growing their blogs, developing a platform as a subject matter expert, and connecting with:
- Top journalists,
- corporate and legal researchers,
- academics,
- financial experts and others,
licensed syndication is an easy way to broaden their exposure to a highly targeted audience of professionals and it fits in perfectly as part of an integrated marketing plan.
The decision to syndicate blog content is one that each individual blogger needs to make based on his or her unique goals.
Bottom line, a licensed syndication agreement can bring added exposure, new opportunities, a broader reach, and some money to the blogger.
Increased Credibility and More Authority
The power of the blogosphere has grown exponentially over the past five years and shows no signs of stopping.
Traditional mass media is feeling the effects of that growth as print newspapers and magazines struggle to stay in business and news organization web sites search for ways to stay profitable despite the demand from consumers for free online content.
Blog syndication provides one more avenue for bloggers to directly and effectively compete with mass media because it allows user-generated content to be delivered to professional end-user customers, including many of the top companies in the world, alongside content from highly-respected global news organizations.
More specifically, professional influencers from Wall Street, the legal and business fields, government and law enforcement agencies and universities access syndicated blog content through private systems via well-known distributors such as LexisNexis, which immediately gives those blogs a credibility boost.
It never hurts a blogger to be able to tell potential advertisers, clients or employers that his or her content is distributed through organizations like LexisNexis or Thomson West.
Increased Exposure and Brand Building
Blog content that is syndicated through a licensing contract is delivered to end-users who access it through closed environments, which are completely separate from the open web.
End-users who pay for subscriptions to access syndicated blog content have specific needs.
End-users do not have time to search through Google or Yahoo! to find targeted commentary from premium bloggers. Instead, they are willing to pay for access to commentary written by experts who can help them do their jobs, build their businesses, and so on.
Syndicated blog content that is delivered through closed systems gets in front of an audience of influencers who are unlikely to find it otherwise, and since the blogger’s links and original branding are retained for end-user customers to see, blog syndication presents an invaluable opportunity for bloggers to generate increased brand awareness and recognition across a new global audience.
Imagine the advertising dollars a blogger would have to invest to get his message in front of that same audience!
Some people and businesses pay hundreds or thousands of dollars on press releases to reach a similar audience, but bloggers can do it (and earn money rather than spend it) through licensed blog syndication.
More Readers and Opportunities
Since syndicated blog content that is accessed through closed environments gets in front of influential users who are not typical blog visitors, the added exposure a blog gets from this audience often leads directly to increased blog readership.
For example, bloggers who syndicate their content to closed systems are often called upon for interviews, to write books, for public speaking engagements, for job opportunities, and more. Such broad exposure ultimately leads to more blog traffic. Depending on a blogger’s goals for his or her blog, that added traffic can be an important part of his or her marketing plan.
The added traffic could help the blogger boost ad revenue or present new business opportunities. The possibilities are vast and real.
Make Money
Bloggers who syndicate their content through licensing contracts earn royalties when end-users access that content.
The vast majority of bloggers who syndicate their content are looking for increased exposure and recognition to boost their blogs or develop other businesses ventures.
Therefore, to many bloggers, royalties are an added bonus that will not make a blogger rich, but when coupled with the added exposure, credibility, and indirect opportunities that licensed syndication offers, the entire licensed syndication model is an excellent way to enhance a blogger’s overall integrated marketing plan.
Originally written by Larry Schwartz and Susan Gunelius for Newstex, and first published on July 9th, 2009 as The Truth About Blog And Twitter Content Syndication
About Larry Schwartz
Larry Schwartz is a co-founder of Newstex and President of the company, with responsibility for sales, marketing and product development. Larry has guided numerous entertainment and new media ventures, from start-up through growth, development and maturity, including Bolenka Games Online (Trivial Pursuit Online), GFI Group (Nasdaq:GFIG – financial), Wizard World (publishing), Patron Technology (technology) and Tickets.com. Most recently Larry was President of Comtex News Network, a real time wholesaler of news to the financial industry.
About Susan Gunelius
With nearly 20 years of marketing, branding and copywriting experience, Susan Gunelius, President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. is a published author and active blogger (Susan owns one of the leading blogs for business women, Women On Business). Susan is also a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com where she writes about copywriting and marketing communications.
About Newstex
Newstex was founded in 2004 by online business experts CEO Steve Ellis and President Larry Schwartz. Newstex is a content aggregator and syndicator, which means Newstex collects licensed content and delivers it to numerous content distributors who provide it to their end-user customers. Copyright of Newstex, LLC Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0.
Photo credits:
The Most Common Misconceptions Debunked – Robert Byron
Myth #1: Distributors Make All The Money From Syndicated Blog Content – Milous Chab
Myth #2: Bloggers Do Not Make Any Money From Blog Syndication – Joshua Haviv
Myth #3: Bloggers Who Syndicate Find Their Content All Over The Internet and Lose All of Their Rights – BabyCakes_73
Myth #4: Since People Read Syndicated Content Outside of The Blog, The Blog’s Traffic Will Drop – Eric Isselée
Myth #5: The Amount of Traffic Blogs Get From Blog Syndication Is Negligible – Stephen Meese
Bottom Line – KAREEM saady
Why Should You License and Syndicate Your Blog? – alastor
The Top Benefits of Blog Syndication – Andrey Zyk
Increased Credibility and More Authority – Stasys EIDIEJUS
Increased Exposure and Brand Building – Mikhail Lavrenov
More Readers and Opportunities – Emin Ozkan
Make Money – head-off
Guide To Online Content Syndication: Part 1
Posted by: | CommentsOnline syndication allows web publishers to distribute their content to multiple audiences, networks, as well as to traditional media outlets and to their online counterparts. In an age where content is increasingly in contexts different than the original source, understanding professional syndication options and their pro and cons is a strategically important piece of the success puzzle for any professional web publisher.
Photo credit: head-off mashed up by Robin Good
Blog syndication works much the same way as the syndication of content from well-known online content producers.
For example, just as the Associated Press, the largest and oldest news organization in the world, is paid to allow a myriad of web sites to republish content from its reporters, bloggers are looking for ways to get paid for the content they create.
However, blogger content is far too often republished without permission, without attribution and without payment and that is where blog syndication comes into the picture.
Do you want to understand what online content syndication can do for you? Are you interested in making sense of all the different syndication options available?
Larry Schwartz and Susan Gunelius have prepared an in-depth report on online content syndication which provides lots of valuable insight into the various options, pros and cons available to web publishers.
Here all the details:
The Truth About Blog And Twitter Content Syndication – Part 1
By Larry Schwartz and Susan Gunelius
What Is Blog Syndication?
The Opportunity
The concept of syndication is not a new one. In fact, syndication formally originated over 100 years ago. As early as the late 1800s, news organizations were participating in syndication activities.
Before 1910, the syndication of comic strips in newspapers began as a tool to boost newspaper sales through the broad appeal of comics like Buster Brown and Mutt and Jeff.
Today, consumers take it for granted that a new Dilbert will appear in their Sunday newspapers each week.
As media evolved throughout the 20th century to include radio and television, syndication grew as well. Soon comic strips such as Little Orphan Annie became syndicated radio shows, television cartoons, and more.
Today, the syndication business model is extremely popular and has proven to be beneficial to content producers, distributors and consumers.
It’s not surprising that the 21st century brought with it a new age of syndication – online content syndication.
As the business of online content grows, more and more consumers shift their content consumption habits from traditional, mass media to freely available content on the Web.
According to an April 2009 report from The Nielsen Company, The Global Online Media Landscape, nearly 1 billion people around the world are actively involved in the digital media universe.
With nearly 1 billion people looking for specific content each day, syndication provides a unique opportunity for media producers (such as news organizations, bloggers, video producers, and so on) to get their content in front of a large and highly targeted audience.
Today, it is common to find large companies and well-known brands, particularly from news organizations, syndicating their content. Those influential content producers have three things going for them:
- They produce content that people want to read.
- They produce high-quality content, making consumers perceive them as authoritative and credible sources.
- They create brand recognition across a broad audience.
Blog syndication works much the same way as the syndication of content from well-known online content producers.
For example, just as the Associated Press, the largest and oldest news organization in the world, is paid to allow a myriad of web sites to republish content from its reporters, bloggers are looking for ways to get paid for the content they create.
However, blogger content is far too often republished without permission, without attribution and without payment. That is where blog syndication comes into the picture.
Types of Syndication
Syndication can be confusing, because there are actually several types of syndication.
Each syndication model centers around an agreement between content producers and content aggregators or distributors, but the processes between syndication models differ.
The three types of online content syndication are defined below:
1. Licensed
Distributors pay a fee to content producers to provide their content to end-user customers.
Blog syndication through Newstex Blogs On Demand follows the licensed syndication model.
Unlike other syndication models, in which content can be republished on multiple, publicly accessible web sites, licensed syndicated content through Newstex Blogs On Demand is distributed to end-users who access that content via closed systems found at
- corporations,
- law firms,
- financial institutions,
- government agencies,
- or academic research libraries.
Links back to the content producers blogs are retained to ensure the bloggers are identified as the original publishers.
In return, bloggers are paid royalties when consumers access their syndicated content and bloggers benefit from increased exposure to professional influencers.
2. Ad-Supported
Content producers share in advertising revenues generated from their content that is syndicated to end-user customers. There are some blog syndication companies that follow the ad-supported syndication model, which offers little control to bloggers.
Blog syndication through BlogBurst follows a version of ad-supported syndication by paying only top performing bloggers using a performance-based reward system.
Blogs that are not highly trafficked do not earn money but do benefit from broader exposure than they might be able to get on their own.
3. Free or Bartered
Content producers receive no monetary payment but can benefit from:
- increased exposure,
- embedded advertising, or
- secondary sales such as subscriptions, product tie-ins, seminars and so on.
Many blog syndication services have followed the free or bartered syndication model without long-term success, such as the defunct BlogRush and ScriptWords.
Other blogs follow a slightly different variation of blog syndication, such as PaidContent and SeekingAlpha (for the financial industry), where bloggers are given the opportunity to syndicate (i.e. republish) certain posts or articles on these sites for no payment but with the hope of achieving added exposure.
Who Syndicates Their Content?
Television studios, radio producers, web site creators, video producers, bloggers, microbloggers (people who publish short 140-character or less snippets via sites like Twitter) and others look for syndication opportunities to grow their audiences, make money and reach their goals.
In fact, blog syndication is gaining significant popularity as the number of blogs continues to grow (there are over 130 million blogs according to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report and millions more in countries not tracked by Technorati).
Well-known bloggers with highly-trafficked blogs, bloggers with growing blogs and bloggers of every size in between syndicate their content.
For example, Engadget.com, Gawker.com and Mashable.com are just a few of the thousands of popular blogs that syndicate their content through the licensed syndication model.
Who Distributes Licensed Syndicated Content?
Television and radio producers typically seek out individual distribution partners to syndicate their content. This process is also used by news outlets (think of news columns that are syndicated to multiple newspapers, such as Dear Abby), web sites and bloggers.
However, it is difficult for smaller players to secure syndication deals with large distributors.
For example, the average, quality blogger would have a very difficult time signing an individual distribution deal with LexisNexis (a leading global provider of information solutions to professionals in the legal, risk, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets).
When smaller players have to secure syndication deals with large distributors is where licensed syndication is useful for some content producers, such as bloggers.
For example:
- Companies like Newstex aggregate the content they license to syndicate and provide it to high quality, well-known distributors.
- The well-known distributors then provide that content to end-user customers around the world in real-time and often alongside content from internationally recognized and respected news organizations and sources.
- Suddenly a blog with an audience of thousands of visitors per month has the potential to get in front of millions of people through a simple syndication agreement.
Bottom-line, licensed blog syndication gives quality bloggers an equal seat at the table with top online influencers and media outlets.
Who Uses Licensed Syndicated Content?
People who use syndicated blog content come from a variety of professions. For example:
- Academics,
- journalists,
- scientists,
- legal professionals.
Them and many others use syndicated blog content to support and streamline their lives and their jobs everyday.
Unlike free, bartered or ad-supported syndicated content, licensed syndicated content gets in front of a unique audience, because it is distributed to closed systems. That means it is not accessible to the general public.
For example, LexisNexis content might be delivered to a corporation for use by corporate researchers on the company Intranet or corporate library. Alternately, content might be delivered to law firms or universities for research purposes.
In all cases, the content can only be accessed by employees or individuals who are able to use the closed systems through which the content is delivered.
Companies that license blog content for their distributor partners to provide to end-user customers must provide premium content, because end-users who access licensed, syndicated content on closed systems (e.g., a Wall Street trader accessing blog commentary about stocks from the trading desk or a journalist seeking commentary for a breaking story) expect to find only the best information.
The content needs to be:
- Timely,
- authoritative,
- credible, and
- accurate.
Many of these end-users choose to access content through a quality distributor of licensed syndicated content because they want more than a simple web search can provide.
End-users want easy access to great content from a variety of top sources that is directly applicable to their needs and they want it now!
Why Should You Syndicate Your Blog Content?
Content syndication offers a variety of opportunities to bloggers, but the decision to syndicate your blog should be made based on your individual goals for your blog.
In Part 2 we will discusses the benefits of licensed blog syndication and debunk some of the myths about blog syndication at the beginning, so you can make the best decision for you and your blog.
End of Part 1
Part 2 – Guide To Online Content Syndication: Part 2 (will be published on 9/16)
Originally written by Larry Schwartz and Susan Gunelius for Newstex, and first published on July 9th, 2009 as The Truth about Blog and Twitter Content Syndication
About Larry Schwartz
Larry Schwartz is a co-founder of Newstex and President of the company, with responsibility for sales, marketing and product development. Larry has guided numerous entertainment and new media ventures, from start-up through growth, development and maturity, including Bolenka Games Online (Trivial Pursuit(R) Online), GFI Group (Nasdaq:GFIG – financial), Wizard World (publishing), Patron Technology (technology) and Tickets.com. Most recently Larry was President of Comtex News Network, a real time wholesaler of news to the financial industry.
About Susan Gunelius
With nearly 20 years of marketing, branding and copywriting experience, Susan Gunelius, President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. is a published author and active blogger (Susan owns one of the leading blogs for business women, Women On Business). Susan is also a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com where she writes about copywriting and marketing communications.
About Newstex
Newstex was founded in 2004 by online business experts CEO Steve Ellis and President Larry Schwartz. Newstex is a content aggregator and syndicator, which means Newstex collects licensed content and delivers it to numerous content distributors who provide it to their end-user customers. Copyright of Newstex, LLC Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0.
Photo credits:
The Opportunity – Mikhail Mishchenko
Types Of Syndication – Michaela Stejskalová
Licensed – Michaela Stejskalová
Ad-Supported: – Michaela Stejskalová
Free or Bartered – Michaela Stejskalová
Who Syndicates Their Content? – Fantescawine
Who Distributes Licensed Syndicated Content? – Searagen
Who Uses Licensed Syndicated Content? – Richard Thomas
Why Should You Syndicate Your Blog Content? – Alastor
Online Video Marketing: How To Optimize Your Web Site Conversion Rates Through Video
Posted by: | CommentsHow can you optimize your web site conversion rates by using online video? Sure enough, there are several things you can do to make your web published videos help you increase your web site conversion rates. Whether you want more ad clicks, more time on your site or more downloads of your latest PDF, video can greatly help. The key is knowing which are the variables that make a difference when adding video to your content. How do you find out?
Photo credit: Ruben Sarkisyan
By testing.
Yes, video can be a persuasive tool in increasing conversion of casual browsers into paying customers for your site. But different videos impact different sites differently.
With that many differences, you have to test.
The emotional draw of the television experience, the increased adoption of broadband and the ongoing growth in Internet content consumption are all contributing to drive the growth of online video.
Just have a look at these two recent statistics:
- In April 2009, ComScore reports that U.S. viewers watched over 16.8 billion videos online.
- In a recent survey of executives, over 70 per cent of respondents believed video would increase their brand awareness.
But being aware of the power of online video, doesn’t help when you need make your videos become a true instrument of marketing advantage. What you need to know is what are the variables you should be paying attention to, to guarantee your video maximum impact, widest reach and the ability to communicate effectively your key message.
- Is it better to start a video via user input or have the video play automatically?
- What is the ideal length of a video clip?
- Can a visual trigger help increase user engagement?
- Does a voiceover help you broaden your audience?
To help you answer these questions, the good guys at EyeView have recently published a report outlining ten key video optimization techniques to test when trying to increase your ability to convert normal web site visitors into real customers.
Here all the details:
Conversion Optimization Through Video – 10 Things You Should Be Testing
Optimizing conversion for your online visitors should never be about guesswork. It’s not enough to build a campaign based on previous success stories for other people’s sites.
At EyeView we prefer to bring you proof direct from your own site, rather than relying on someone else’s results from another site during a different season.
Testing is the key to optimizing your website.
When you test, you remove the influence of guesswork on your business model and replace it with real data.
The results of your tests will inform the decisions you make with far greater authenticity than any supposition or anecdotal impression you may have.
Only by testing can you be certain that you are really achieving the goals you set for yourself and only by
testing can you prove your ability to surpass those goals.
In April 2009, Internet users in the U.S. watched over 16.8 billion videos online.
There is a growing expectation among Internet users that all sites will feature video.
In a recent survey of executives, over 70 per cent of respondents believed video would increase their brand awareness. But video is not just for entertainment and awareness. It can also be used for information and explanation.
Video can be a persuasive tool in increasing conversion of casual browsers into paying customers for your site. But different videos impact different sites differently. With that many differences, you have to test.
This document will suggest the first 10 tests you should carry out to ensure that your video is performing
to the best of its ability and converting your visitors into customers.
1. Video Or No Video
The most basic control test means comparing your site without video to the same site with a video in place. But that doesn’t mean it can be passed over or forgotten. As soon as you have a video that you’re happy with you want to post it to your site.
You spent time agonizing over the script and now you want to show your masterpiece to the world. You want everyone who visits your site to watch your video and be so convinced by the added value you have demonstrated that they are instantly converted to lifelong customers. But before you do that, there are some things you need to know.
What’s your current conversion rate? Your conversion rate is defined as the number of visitors to your site who reach your conversion goal divided by the total number of visitors to your site expressed as a percentage.
Being able to define your conversion rate assumes you have clearly defined your conversion goal.
Let’s assume that you know your current conversion rate. The only way to be sure that your video is increasing your conversion rate is to test a version of the page with the video against a version of the page as it existed before the video.
It’s not enough to use last month’s figures and compare them to this month’s rate with the new video.
Comparing old data with new data is inconclusive. There are too many other factors that might have
contributed to the changes.
The only way to be absolutely sure that the introduction of your video is responsible for any changes you can measure is by simultaneously testing two different versions of the same page.
Once you have proof that adding video increases conversion and you can accurately measure the size of
the increase, it is easy to calculate how soon you will achieve a return on your investment in the video. With this information in hand, you are free to experiment with a wide range of additional tests to fine tune your video’s effectiveness and further boost conversion.
2. Autoplay Or Press To Play
It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. Should your video have a trigger requiring visitors to click somewhere in order to initiate the video or should the video begin playing automatically the first time a visitor arrives at the site? There are arguments to be made for both sides.
- On one hand many website owners believe that users find autoplay intrusive and pushy. You may feel it’s too much of a ‘hard sell’ to begin playing the video without a specific request from the visitors to your site.
- On the other hand, once you know that it increases conversion, you might want as many people to see it as possible, regardless of whether that comes across as pushy or not.
Before you can make an intelligent decision one way or the other, you need to know what the impact on
your conversion would be. Ultimately you have to decide what is right for your site and your users.
Different play options will work in different scenarios and only by testing will you know for sure whether the advantages to be gained by having the video play automatically outweigh the disturbance it causes.
At EyeView we saw one of our customers increase conversion by an additional 20% when their video was allowed to autoplay. Conversely we also saw a case where having the video autoplay reduced conversion indicating a negative impact.
Without testing, it is impossible to know which scenario would be true for your site. Wouldn’t you like to know for certain?
3. Call To Action
Everyone knows how important the Call To Action is.
Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg wrote extensively about this important element of online marketing in their bestselling book Call To Action: Secret Formulas To Improve Online Results. They describe online marketers as customer acquisition managers driving incoming traffic into the right funnel. The Call To Action is a crucial part of their arsenal and key to building and maintaining your conversion goals.
When it comes to scripting a video, the question arises as to where to place the call to action.
A video is a more linear experience than viewing a web page. On a static page, the user may jump around sampling different paragraphs distracted by various bells and whistles until he or she alights on the Call To Action and is suddenly inspired to perform the required action.
Watching a video is a different experience entirely. Viewer expectations are different for video. Unlike a web page, a video has a start, a middle and an end.
If the goal of the video is to increase conversion and get the visitor to do something, it has to include a compelling Call To Action, there are good arguments for doing so at the start, at the finish and anywhere in between.
There is even an argument for making the Call To Action visible and accessible to the viewer throughout the running time of the video. Following the principle of ‘See it. Hear it. Click it.’
Viewers will be more likely to respond to the Call To Action if they are explicitly told about it and can find itimmediately.
Only by testing different options will you discover which is the best for your visitors.
4. How Long Should My Video Be?
There is no definitive answer for this oldest and most baffling of questions.
The latest statistics show that the average length of an online video is three and a half minutes. But this average includes everything from full length episodes of TV on Hulu to the silliest short clips on YouTube and makes no concession towards marketing videos that are precisely designed to boost conversion.
There are some fundamental adages such as ‘less is more’ and reminders about how easily bored viewers can click away from your content, but on the whole, no one can say for sure, how much is too much or how little is not enough.
Every video we have published to date has shown a drop off graph of viewers over time. You must expect that not everyone who starts watching your video will make it to the end. All you can do is experiment to reduce the gradient and try to hit the plateau as early as possible.
The solution, as always, is to test and test again. Once you have completed your video seen it work, why not recut it and reduce it in length by 30%.
Pay close attention to the drop off graphs for each version and see how many people make it through to the end. The more people are engaged with your video, the more likely they are to convert.
Maybe the way to increase engagement is to add another chapter with a more detailed explanation of your offering once you have the viewers’ attention. If you are willing to experiment and try different versions of your video, you may learn some interesting facts about your messaging and its effectiveness.
Remember, you might not want to tell your visitor everything about your company, but you definitely want to tell him enough to move him to the next step in the funnel.
5. The Wonderful Thing About Triggers
Triggers are wonderful things. The trigger is the element on your page that lets visitors know that there is a video to be watched. It might be a rectangle in the ad column with a play button in the middle or it might be a giant square with all kinds of animated shenanigans encouraging you to click on it.
The trigger acts as a miniature Call To Action for your video.
If you know that your video works and you know that it is converting browsers into customers then you want as many people to discover the video as possible. A great trigger will help with this.
Of course your video’s trigger may have to compete with some other page elements for attention.
You have to find the balance between sending people to watch the video versus people who would convert anyway finding the Call To Action straight away.
Previous tests should have convinced you that video viewers are more likely to convert, now you have to turn casual browsers into video viewers without cannibalizing the ones that would have converted regardless.
Once you start looking at triggers, there is a remarkable variety to choose from.
- Do you want an animated trigger or a one that sits quietly on the page waiting for people to discover it?
- What are you going to write on your trigger to encourage people to click on it? Is “Click Here” more effective than “Play Movie” or “Watch Demo” or “Take Tour”?
- Where on the page should your trigger sit? It seems obvious that above the fold is going to have more impact than below the fold, but is there a difference between the right-hand side and the left-hand side?
The process of visual search that every user goes through when confronted with a new page is wonderfully complex.
Taken from a case study called Using Eye Tracking to Compare Web Page Designs by Agnieszka Bojko and originally published in the Journal of Usability Studies, this extract gives a brief taste of the complexities involved.
To find the correct link, button, or another control on a web page, users must successfully complete two stages of visual search:
- Deployment of attention: In the first stage, attention needs to be allocated to the target, so the target can be processed. Effectiveness and efficiency of this stage depends on how easy the target is to notice, which is affected by the overall display layout as well as the location and visual presentation of the target and other elements.
- Target processing: During the second stage of visual search, target processing, users’ attentional resources are allocated to recognizing the meaning of the target and its relationship with their goal. Completion of this stage depends on how easy the target is to comprehend, which is related to the target’s content (e.g., label) and affordances (e.g., whether it appears clickable or not). Only upon successful completion of both search stages, can users select the correct target.
Trigger definition should never be taken for granted while testing offers the necessary flexibility to
ensure your site is optimized.
6. Parlez-Vous Video?
You may not be fluent in multiple languages but your potential customer base is.
While English has become the lingua franca for international business meetings, the expectations of a user watching a video in the comfort of his home or her office are very different.
While every video engagement graph shows some drop off of viewers during the first few seconds, the drop off among non-native speakers watching a video in English is significantly higher.
If you want your video to have the same considerable impact in non-English speaking markets, you should consider offering the voiceover in multiple languages and aligning the default language with the geo-location of each visitor.
You might also want to test the use of subtitles on your conversion rates. Without knowing the proportion of your visitors who watch your site with speakers turned on, you have no way of being sure how many people are hearing your message.
Use your traffic source analysis to determine where in the world the visitors to your site are based and test different combinations of voiceover and subtitles to achieve optimum conversion.
7. What Kind of Voiceover Works Best?
Do we respond differently to messages delivered by a female voice than by a male voice? Do we have different expectations in terms of trust, authority, technical understanding? Do these questions elicit different answers depending on whether you are a man or a woman?
In their classic book Gender Voices, David Graddol and Joan Swann discuss in detail the differences between male and female speaking voices and our responses to them.
Most people can easily identify whether or not a voice belongs to a man or a woman. What is harder to determine is whether that voice influences the listener in any direction.
If your product is aimed predominantly at one gender more than another or one age group over another, you may want to test different voiceovers to measure their impact on your conversion rate.
There are other voiceover issues that are harder to track such as regional accents. Culturally, some populations are more sensitive to non-standard accents although even the BBC has long moved away from only allowing presenters to use Received Pronunciation.
8. Is Animation The Best Option?
Gone are the days when animators would painstakingly draw every frame of a film separated by minute changes and photographed in succession to give the illusion of movement.
Today’s animators have a wide range of images and effects available at the click of a mouse. You can go from storyboard to completed animation within hours. You can change your mind and implement those changes with very little fuss to produce professional looking and stylish animation that delivers your message and engages your viewers.
Animation is attractive, flexible and quick. But is it more effective than recording a human being talking to camera or interviewing someone on camera? In other words, is there a trust issue here that may impact your conversion?
The question doesn’t have to binary. There are ways of combining the flexibility of animation for the parts of the video that may change over time with the authority of a human face delivering a message to camera with sincerity and integrity.
Also the answer is not going to be the same for every site. If you are a lawyer should you let an animated avatar tell your story? If you are a medical practitioner should you have an actor say your lines? If you are a service provider, how important is a live testimony to your message?
If you already know for sure which of these approaches works best for your target market then there is no reason to run a test. But if you don’t want to look like a mickey mouse marketer, you need to understand the power and the risk of using animation in your video.
9. How Important Is Music To My Video?
Where would Norman Bates be without screeching violins to accompany his killer moves? How menacing would a mechanical shark named Bruce have seemed without the chromatic rumblings of the double bass in John Williams’ score? How does music enhance or interfere with the messaging in your video? As with many of the earlier
tests, there can be no definitive answer to this question.
Different viewers in different markets may have different expectations for background music.
Licensing professional music is time-consuming and expensive. It’s even harder to determine the ROI for such an investment.
Creating your own sounds or using a copyright-free loop is usually the cheapest option, but is it the most effective? Have you ever tried watching your video without music? Was it clearer or less clear? Will you viewers notice a difference and how will it make them feel?
You may be absolutely positive that the video is better with a stirring score, but how can you know for certain without trying the alternative? The results will either confirm that your intuition is great or they will surprise you. Either way, you will have learned something and moved closer to tested and proven optimized conversion.
10. How Important Are First Impressions?
First impressions are undeniably important. But second impressions can be important too.
If the gods of the Internet didn’t want us to deal in second impressions, they wouldn’t have created cookies.
Your site probably knows when a visitor arrives for the second time. It’s up to you what you do with that information. Do you use it to change the way video is presented? If a visitor has already seen your video once, do you offer him the same thing again or do you use the real estate to try a different approach?
You may even take it further by developing a second video for repeat visitors. Maybe just the highlights
with a different Call To Action.
A second visit is a second opportunity to achieve the goals you have set for your visitors. Perhaps the best way to do this is by experimenting with the video you show.
Depending on the market you work in, it may be perfectly acceptable for visitors to convert after more than one visit. Make sure your video does not become an obstacle for returning prospects.
Summary
Q: When will I be finished optimizing conversion for my video?
A: Not for a while.
Whoa! The reality is that you might never know for sure whether a tiny tweak here or an extra word there will make a difference to the conversion rate of your site. But that doesn’t mean you should do nothing.
If you start with the tests laid out in this document you should be well on the way to understanding the impact of video on your conversion rate and better informed about how video can help grow your revenue.
In an internet world of infinite variety you cannot say that what works for one will work for another, but you absolutely can say that what should be tested for one site should be tested for others.
The tests listed here are just examples of variables that could have significant impact on your conversion rate and therefore on your revenue.
Originally written by the EyeView Team for EyeView and first published on January 1st, 2009 as “Conversion Optimization Through Video – 10 Things You Should Be Testing“.
About the author
EyeView has established offices in Boston and Tel Aviv. EyeView creates engaging video content and then tests and proves that the inclusion of video on a site significantly increases conversion. In addition, EyeView offers services to optimize conversion by continuously improving the video solution and analyzing and testing its impact on visitors.
Photo credits:
Conversion Optimization Through Video – 10 Things You Should Be Testing – David Humphrey
1. Video Or No Video – Robert Kneschke
3. Call To Action – mipan
4. How Long Should My Video Be? – Aleksandr Lobanov
5. The Wonderful Thing About Triggers – Brian Jackson
6. Parlez-Vous Video? – Robert Lehmann
7. What Kind of Voiceover Works Best? – mipan
8. Is Animation The Best Option? – Visual Explainer
9. How Important Is Music To My Video? – Alex Kalina
10. How Important Are First Impressions? – Mikhail Matsonashvili
The Professional Web Publisher SuperGuide: POP Becomes An Online Learning Program
Posted by: | CommentsThe reason for which I started MasterNewMedia was to help others take greater control of their lives. I wanted to be meaningful to others by helping them discover how to effectively leverage the uniquely powerful communication opportunities offered by the Internet.
In full honesty, I really love to share what I discover and learn on a daily basis. It is not a marketing tagline: If I can help someone else achieve its communication goals by sharing what I have learned on my own, I am the happiest person on earth. Ask around (type Robin Good or MasterNewMedia in there and see). And this, at its core is what I have been doing here at MasterNewMedia, for nearly ten years (October 7th is MasterNewMedia 10th birthday!) now by sharing free in-depth content and making it also sustainable thanks to an extremely successful partnership with Google AdSense and its contextual advertising program.
And just about a year ago, I wrote here on MasterNewMedia what I wanted to be the new editorial strategy and direction to take:
“From a media and technology news and reviews daily web magazine to a reference, learning resource with a specific focus on media literacy, communication skills and professional web publishing. This is the new editorial strategy focus for Master New Media… This is where I am going next.“
Over the course of these last 12 months most such changes have become reality: I don’t cover anymore the latest news as a priority, I have increased the focus on the topics that are most relevant to those who want to communicate effectively by using the Internet, I have expanded my how-to / guide approach leaving behind more impromptu, spontaneous and personal coverage, and more. Just look at my plan of last year and see for yourself.
Today, I am finally adding another key component to this new strategy, on which I have worked for over a year and a half. It is item 7) of my last year plan and it is my most ambitious communication project so far.
Here all the details:
POP – What Is It?
POP is my first online learning program for professional web publishers, and by this I mean those who have a serious need, desire or plan, to make their online communication efforts more effective.
POP is not a course about learning how to make money online, nor about how to create a fast-success, big traffic blog site. I am uninterested in those goals per se and I have learned the hard way that it takes serious effort and true, genuine dedication to get anywhere memorable.
POP is more like a VIP club than a training school. The curriculum is dynamic and learners get to change and modify it. New information and know-how is served in many cool different formats and it is accessible 24 hours a day. I, the club founder, spend dedicated time with each one of my guests inside their VIP suites. I listen to their stories and I do my best to understand where they want to get, and then I help them identify possible critical points, as well as the alternative roads available to them. I don’t teach. I work with them to find a custom strategy that works for their specific needs.
Who Is It For
I have not designed POP for those who want to learn how to get 10,000 visitors a day or who badly need to make some extra money in the quickest and easiest way possible. POP is not a shortcut to get somewhere faster and with less effort. POP is for those who have a real strong reason for wanting to become effective online entrepreneurs, publishers, change agents and who want to invest all of their best energies and resources to get there.
These are the people who have already been publishing online or caressing the idea of doing it, but have never gotten to achieve enough skill, clout or following to really make a deep, lasting change. These are the people who have started already a few times but who have never made enough of their journey to really see what was awaiting them on the other end. These are those who while having a great idea, failed to understand the strategy and best approach to make into a reality, often using the methods of the pasts to build something for the future.
These are the people I have designed POP for.
If I look at the demographics I have collected over time, they are also intellectually active, ambitious, strong individuals. Most are aged between 25 and 55, have a graduate degree, do not work for a large organization and, and many of them are trying to achieve something unique and very challenging in their life. Something that by itself means for them realizing a long-standing dream and not just a need to have a work or find money.
I guess I could say that in one way or another, all these people HAVE A MISSION. A mission to realize something, which requires communicating effectively to others, and being able to get others to see and act on that information.
Why Do I Do It?
That’s the million dollar question: why do I do it?
There are a few reasons why I decided to create this online learning program. The the top ones are:
1) If you know me a bit more than having read some of my articles, you know that, at the essence, I am and I always wanted to be an agent of change. I like to change the world around me and others, to see greater beauty, love, harmony grow and prosper around me. I like to help those, especially the ones who are not gifted by fortune, money or great resources to achieve what to others would seem outright impossible. I like to help the small guy, the passionate seeker who is after something special to achieve it, by empowering him or her to communicate more effectively and to leverage to the max the opportunities and reach provided by these new media, online communication technologies.
2) I want to help. I am very frustrated by seeing so many talented and capable individuals, many of whom are my friends or people I know really well, miss their most important goal and slowly give up on it. This drives me mad. I know that if I could help them see HOW they can change in simple ways their course of action, their ability to achieve what they were after would increase tenfold. Unfortunately, many of them fall into their own traps and never recover from it: Sometimes is just laziness, sometimes it is being too closed on one’s own ideas, sometimes it is wanting to get there too fast. No matter what is the reason, sometimes we all need a listening partner with lots of experience to really re-gain some vision and perspective.
3) I like to be independent. That is I do not like to “depend” on others to decide, influence or change my own course of action. I don’t like to depend on someone or something that sets the rules of when or how I must express my talent (work) nor on someone who tries to squeeze me as a lemon without treating me as a fair mate. I don’t like to depend on one great client, on one supplier, or on one great business partner. I like to be able to realize my goals with or without them.
4) I have understood that the future is not just about information, content and ability to publish and exchange, but it is very, very much about learning. If you can’t learn new things, then having all this information at your disposal is not only useless, but often counterproductive and detrimental. Knowing how to manage and extract from this ocean of information what is really uniquely valuable to you, is priceless. Knowing how to organize your know how and skills so that they do not get wasted, or understanding how these new tools and technologies function and how to extract the best from them is invaluable.
5) Learning is an enjoyable, enriching activity that is very different from the experience most of us have been exposed to in school. Education, including schools and universities are going to some deep transformations, and the value they are able to provide, outside of very specialist, closed systemic areas (medicine, law, engineering, education, etc.) is rapidly decreasing. People are starting to realize that great learning takes place not in a gray classroom, not by listening and memorizing information and not certainly by passing official tests and exams. This has nothing to do with learning. true learning has to do with being with others who have a love for your same interests, in being part of a group where there are people with more experience and people with less, in experimenting, trying and making mistakes while confronting new stuff in a playful, open-minded fashion.
6) Communication is the most powerful skill one can have today. It is worth more than money or estate and its effects reach far more distantly and deeply than weapons or laws. Look at the religious movements. Not that I am very fond of them, but, through communication, they have achieved some pretty amazing goals. Look at some of the leading countries of the world. They have perpetrated some of the most horrendous and nefarious actions while making it appear as they were crusading to save someone home and kids from the devil: all communication strategy masterpieces. And now that communication and publishing tools are within the reach of almost anyone, the key difference is not anymore in the tools, but in the strategy and tactics being used.
What’s So Unique About POP?
The key unique thing about POP is that I want to help DIRECTLY a few, very serious and dedicated individuals. Yes, I am not just taking anyone in. I am accepting only a small number of people because my key goal is to help these individuals on a one-on-one basis. Yes, I want to be able to help directly a few individual / projects to achieve their own goals and I know that by just posting my best know-how, tools and resources this would not be possible. Each one has a different story, assets, background, skills and goals and you can’t apply the same strategy, tools and sequence to everyone. So, I am going to have just enough participants that I can actually devote multiple one-on-one session with each one of them.
The other unique thing about POP, is that it is not the typical online course made up of PowerPoints and written guides that you access on an online web site. It is rather a social dancing club where passionate ballroom dancers get together to learn and share their skills with everyone. Besides great video lessons, audio stories, written guides and my very own publishing and communication toolkit, these individuals get to meet with me inside live events and workshops online, can attend open-clinics to review their progress, have access to an exclusive forum where they can ask questions and have access to every single resource and contact I use for my own work.
What Is Inside the POP Learning Curriculum?
The POP topics range from my very own communication strategy and approach to the specifics of content production, writing, content distribution and marketing, information architecture and design, SEO, advertising and monetization. I don’t focus on one area. I cover them all. From thinking and designing a strategy before you start, to refining and improving your existing publishing, distribution and social media approach. The end goal is to put these people in control of their ability to create an enthusiastic following, a community of passionate, an audience of raving fans. And to get there, there is no easy, automated, one-click solution. The secret is simply thinking more ahead of doing, in asking and questioning more your assumptions, and in trying and experimenting more, while in company of bright, trusted, generous friends.
How Much Does It Cost? – How Long Does It Last?
POP is just about to open. Pricing information and access to enrollments will be visible to everyone in a few hours. If you want to be there when this happens, simply go to http://pop.robingood.com and drop your name in the dedicated input box. I will notify you personally via email as soon as the POP doors are open and a few hours before I make my public announcement inside my newsletter and through my other public communication channels (Twitter, facebook, etc.).
During the POP experience, I unroll the whole POP learning program over the arc of five months, before adding new modules and update some of the existing information. In theory one can come in just for those five months or stay for as long as sHe wants. Once you are in, you can stay forever. POP is a lifelong learning experience, and just like at the dancing club, even after you have taken all courses you can still learn a great deal simply by attending, practicing and exchanging with the talented people who are there.
To Find Out More About POP
To learn more about POP I have published a few resources to give you a better idea of what is in store.
1) Think Strategy, before Technology – VIDEO + PDF
On the POP home page I have just published a very short video and a PDF entitled: Think Strategy, before Technology. With it I try to analyze why so many promising web publishers fail to achieve great, memorable results, or lose enthusiasm and confidence in reaching their goals via the Web, and I propose some basic, down-to-the-ground corrective actions. You will not duplicate your traffic omn your site nor you will make 10,000 dollars after reading and watching that, but it may be that you will look at how to get where you want to be with a different pair of glasses.
2) POP Sneak Preview
This is a 15-minute video presentation of the POP learning platform I made a few weeks ago. It showcases what POP looks like once you are inside. You can get a good idea of the variety of contents, the organization of modules and the overall ease of use and look and feel of the learning platform.
3) POP FAQ
I have received many email questions in the last few weeks asking me all kinds of things about POP. You have some doubts about POP issue and you want me to clarify it for you. Done. I have answered all of the most common questions you have sent me so far through a series of short videos I have published on this POP FAQ page. I have also added a box on that same page for you to submit new ones.
Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on August 26th 2009 as “The Professional Web Publisher SuperGuide: POP Becomes An Online Learning Program”