Recently I wrote a post, here on BurrellesLuceFresh Ideas, outlining key tips for integrating online video into your PR campaign from a recent PRSA-NY panel. For this post, I thought I would re-cap some of what I thought were the most compelling best practices for creating, marketing, and measuring online video content – as discussed at the event.
It was followed by a roundtable Q&A moderated by Jason Winocour, social and digital media practice leader at Hunter Public Relations.
How to Create Online Video Content Nearly 89 percent of journalist report that they regularly include online video content in their stories. But how can marketing and communications professionals create compelling video content?
Jim Sulley, president of Newscast U.S., had these best practices to offer:
Understand who you are trying to reach. Who are your target demographics?
Get the attention of the people watching. You only have 10 seconds to hook their interest.
Shoot to script, don’t script to shoot. In other words, take the time to plan your videos and write a script.
Create biscuits, little surprises along the way, and don’t give away the ending upfront.
Be truthful. And remember, production values count.
Entertain or DIE.
Too much text is annoying for online video.
When creating video content, you will also want to get your online community, stakeholders, and agencies involved, as this with provide you with feedback and help you market your initiatives. (more…)
Listening, as I define it, is not a passive exercise. Listening is not a matter of simply hearing words. Listening requires a concentrated method of digesting the information, and using that information to take action. So like any exercise program, I’ll recommend you do a quick check up before starting to strengthen your listening efforts.
Check Up Take a quick pulse: Review your business objectives and marketing plan. Keep in mind that social media participation should be integrated with your overall communications plan.
Set Goals: What business objectives will your social media participation help you to achieve?
Sales
Donations
Event attendance
Customer Service (response/retention/loyalty)
Brand Awareness
Crowd sourcing/ product development
Membership/Admissions
Communications amongst different stakeholders
Recruitment
Thought leadership
Warm Ups
Who are you trying to reach? Consider what social media channels will be most beneficial for your organization. Stretch. Extend beyond Facebook and Twitter. Consider Flickr, YouYube, Tumblr, LinkedIn and seek out forums and blogs with strong communities. BurrellesLuce offers several tools to help get you warmed up quickly, including ContactsPlus™, which helps you to identify new blogs by matching up a current release with those bloggers who are writing on similar topics, and Social Media Monitoring and Engagement solution, Engage121, which enables you to explore what is being said across social media channels and effectively build and manage your online communities.
Speed
Are you planning/prepared to provide immediate responses? The W Hotels “Whatever/Whenever” promise may well be on its way to becoming the standard, rather than the exception, in customer service. Social media allows stories to break and quickly spread at any time of day. I encourage those using BurrellesLuce’s Social Media Monitoring and Engagement solution, to experiment with setting up alerts using filters such as Klout rank or sentiment to sift through the noise and make sure that they are advised of critical information whenever it breaks. Of course a quick, well thought out and efficient response across all channels is critical.
Strength
Do some heavy lifting, err, searching. Investigate the current conversations being said about you, your competitors and the industry. Identify recurring themes and study trends. Review sentiment and compare how the conversations vary across different platforms. Identify key influencers and pay attention to the language and tone. What topics evoke passionate responses?
Flexibility
Don’t get stuck monitoring the same keywords you have always deemed important. As you study industry trends and influencers, adjust your searches accordingly. Begin listening to your communities even when they are not actively speaking about “relevant” topics. What do they care about? Consider what new topics or audiences may be interested in your organization.
Endurance
Set yourself up to succeed over the long term. Put in place a structure to collect the data that will allow you to learn from both your communities and your own social behaviors. There are a myriad of ways to measure social media buzz, sentiment, link tracking, share of voice, fans and followers, geo-location check-ins… slow down and take another pulse check. Review business objectives and consider what metrics can best indicate whether your activity is supporting those business objectives. As you embark upon this listening exercise, look at the data in a number of different ways.
Cool Down
Evaluate all of the data you have collected and all your new knowledge regarding trends and influencers. Go back to your business goals and consider how you will align your social media activity to meet those goals. What channels are best suited for your organization? Where should your voice be heard? Where can you build a strong community that will offer business results? Participating in social media will require an investment of time, so consider the time and resources you can devote.
Prepare to Play
Listening exercise complete, you are ready for the big game… engagement. But that, my friends, is another post!
What would you add to your listening exercise? What activities are included in your daily listening routine? Share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
With over 20 million subscribers, Netflix has been dominating the at-home-movie scene. As a subscription-based platform, Netflix allows users to watch unlimited TV episodes and movies via the Internet on either a Mac or PC or stream the content to a television using devices such as Xbox 360, Wii, or PS3. A subscription, according to their website, is $7.99 a month for unlimited streaming video or for DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming video, plans start at $9.99 a month.
The Warner Brothers’ Facebook application will allow users to choose from a select number of full-length films priced at 30 Facebook credits. Facebook credits are an online currency that allow users to purchase applications and games on the site. Thirty credits equate to $3. Users can also acquire Facebook credits through applications and games also available on the site. Once the credits are redeemed, in this manner, the user has 48 hours to watch the movie.
But don’t think that Facebook is alone in the quest to provide pay-per-view movies. Google’s YouTube has been offering online movie rentals since 2010, allowing users to access independent films and recently more popular films like Scary Movie 4 and Hannibal Rising. According to the YouTube Store, movie rentals range between $2.99 and $4.99. Other lesser known services have begun to crop-up as well. For instance, Zediva streams new releases through what amounts to a loophole in copyright law. The site offers “new release movies you can’t get on Amazon, Netflix, or iTunes that cost $2 for a digital rental that lasts two full weeks,” explains this Wired.com article. “The company literally rents you a DVD and a DVD player, with your computer, tablet or Google TV as the remote control.”
Will Facebook give Netflix a run for its money? It seems that Netflix users and Warner Brothers Facebook application users will be targeting different consumers. Netflix users are avid movie watchers and actually save money by paying a monthly fee rather than a paying per view. However, Facebook may gain viewership with users who are on the go and want to rent one movie at a time inexpensively. Also, Facebook users who accumulate credits have the ability to use their credits to rent movies. The Warner Brother’s Facebook app pales in breadth and depth to the movie selection offered by Netflix, however, only time will tell how much of a threat Facebook’s movie rentals will truly be to the reigning streaming-video service.
If you are a subscriber of Netflix and a user of Facebook, will you be trading in your subscription? What about for one of these other services increasingly becoming available? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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*Bio:Soon after graduating from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, in 2006 with a B.A. in communication and a B.S. in business/marketing, I joined the BurrellesLuce client services team. In 2008, I completed my master’s degree in corporate and organizational communications and now serve as Director of Client Services. I am passionate about researching and understanding the role of email in shaping relationships from a client relation/service standpoint as well as how miscommunication occurs within email, which was the topic of my thesis. Through my posts on Fresh Ideas, I hope to educate and stimulate thoughtful discussions about corporate communications and client relations, further my own knowledge on this subject area, as well as continue to hone my skills as a communicator. Twitter: @_LaurenShapiro_ LinkedIn: laurenrshapiro Facebook: BurrellesLuce
The Academy Awards Show is my Super Bowl. That’s what I’ll tell my husband on Sunday, when I NEED to start watching the TV at 3 p.m. and switch between channels for all the best Red Carpet viewing possible. Additionally, I’ll have one or two laptops going with multiple Twitter searches refreshing faster than I can read. YouTube will help me replay some of the best and worst dresses on the Red Carpet.
I used to host an Oscar viewing party. But, I don’t need to anymore. I have all my social media friends to confirm that so-and-so did have the ugliest dress and celebrity Y should have shaved.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed I’m not alone and reported on the efforts of several agencies who have celebrities posting live updates via Twitter and Facebook streams during the Oscars. The article reports social media advertising company MyLikes Inc. has Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian commenting on fashion via Twitter for fashion site Gilt Groupe. It was noted, however, that marketers are still working to find the fine-line between selling and adding to the conversation.
This year, Oscar.com will offer live streaming from backstage in an effort to attract younger users to their site. Additionally, there will be interactive ways to enter your predictions and help choose a designer dress for the on-stage awards escort. If you have an iPad, you can download the Oscar app for the same interaction. Adding to the interactivity, Sprint is partnering with People.com for a real-time trivia game during the show.
Advertising Age says the cost for a 30 second spot for the Academy Awards show has increased this year to $1.7 million, and the Los Angeles Times reports the spots are sold-out. It’s not the $3 million the Super Bowl demands, but it’s getting there for arguably the second most watched event of the year. Oscar commercials are usually targeted to women, unlike the Super Bowl ads, which were mostly directed at men. This is an opportunity for advertisers to target the real decision makers in most households.
I wonder how many brands are looking for tie-ins to Oscars to capture the interest of the media and celebrity obsessed viewers? Pop Secret hosted a Twitter party, #PopCameraAcation, on February 24 and they used mommy bloggers to spread the word. What other hashtags will I be encouraged to use on Oscar night?
In my earlier BurrellesLuce Fesh Ideas post on 2010 Trends and 2011 Predictions…, the 2010 Academy Awards did not make the top 10 for Twitter trends. Could this have been because there are several hashtags being used to talk about the event? Also in the post was a prediction for the true integration of social media with PR. Will PR efforts around the Oscars take us a step closer to this?
How are other marketers promoting their brand with a tie-in to the Oscars? What will communications professionals learn from this year’s Academy awards? Were they successful? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Egypt is the hot button topic and we are all witnesses to what some want to describe as a 21st century revolution. On CNN, last week, the network repeatedly displayed a large screen showing in real time the social media posts that were related to Egypt. It was astonishing to see. The board could not keep up with the updating posts, so the board basically resembled something like an amusement park ride’s flashing neon lights. And just like those flashing lights, social network postings at a meteoric rate can be encapsulating. But can the intrigue last, or better yet, sustain an entire movement?
It can no longer be surprising that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the many countless blogs are being viewed as the forefront of this revolution. They have become what is the fulcrum of our collective “interconnectedness.” In my previous post, I discussed how email responses and phone etiquette, in today’s service orientated business world, are allowing employees to act as company brand ambassadors and, in turn, become the company’s brand. On the flip side of that, these company brand ambassadors are instantly accountable for their actions. Having a bad day? Better not let that show up in your service industry work. The public’s demand for real time results has an agent of technology with new media to enact a change in dynamics in the moment and maybe even a change in social dynamics for an industry. A waiter who gives poor service is no longer a regrettable experience between a few people. Neither is a rude representative on the phone. Nor the president or parliament that fails to support its people. In today’s real time world, the negative experience instantly becomes online fodder for hundreds and potentially thousands to see. Word of mouth, still the industry standard by which all companies build their reputations, no longer requires a face to face meeting for a poor review to be disseminated; it’s tweeted, it’s posted on Facebook, it’s blogged about and becomes part of an online community, with information that passes far beyond your own circle of contacts.
Before the advent of social media, your reputation was built on the hundreds of positive reviews and one negative review didn’t fully transcend that reputation. Now, that negative review becomes a flashpoint by which people will now effectively brand your reputation. Think, did restaurants and hotels pay attention to comments and blogs about service in their establishments even just two or three years ago? I am sure they do now. But can social media dispel the good reputations many service industry companies have accrued over the years? Or is it just a flashpoint quickly brushed aside after it’s been tweeted and read? Is it as lasting a movement, as say, the picture four activists sitting at the Woolworth counter in Greensboro, North Carolina? Hardly! Four students quickly grew to 600 protesters and in a few days, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away. The day after that, students at Fayetteville State Teachers College and at Johnson C. Smith College, in Charlotte, joined in, followed on Wednesday by students at St. Augustine’s College and Shaw University, in Raleigh. On Thursday and Friday, the protest crossed state lines, surfacing in Hampton and Portsmouth, Virginia, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sound familiar? No social media at the time. Malcolm Gladwell, recounts in this New Yorker article, “why the revolution will not be tweeted.” It’s the cause that rallied the people together, not someone updating their Facebook status while eating lunch.
The change and demand for freedom in Egypt is truly remarkable. It is something entirely different than what many generations have grown accustomed to. No army. No invasion. No secession. No strong victimizing the weak (for the most part). And yes, we have one tweet at a time, one Facebook posting at a time, one woman’s bravery for a call to a common cause on YouTube. One has turned into thousands and then millions, with billions of the world’s citizens watching events unfold in real time. But it all started in real-life, real-time.
February is Black History Month and I am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. I am, as ever, amazed by the picture of all the people standing in the Washington Mall, demanding, peacefully, the equality rightfully given to them in the Constitution. Imagine if that speech with the historical implications was given today. Would people attend or steam the video live at their computers? Would people make the trip to Washington, D.C. or just comment about it on Facebook? While social media has the ability to rapidly organize people to an event or a cause, it hasn’t shown that it can continue to extol its influence beyond that. As Andrew K. Woods wrote in his recent op-ed for the New York Times, “Of course, great movements require great leaders. That’s why the leadership vacuum in the Middle East is so politically electric, and why Tunisia is still a mess. The crucial question, in Egypt as in Yemen and Tunisia, has little to do with Twitter’s availability. It is whether a galvanizing figure will step forward and seize this opportunity to lead, or remain in the crowd, just another decentralized node in the network.”
So while I am here, I will gladly and proudly proclaim “Viva La Revolution” and hope for a better Egypt. Yes, I am astonished at that screen of social media posts. The question is, will the masses be listening, or better yet, tweeting, long after social media’s initial impact has been felt and the state of Egypt is left in the hands of the Egyptians? Or is social media just another hyped-up PR tactic?
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*Bio: Richard Gallitelli brought a wealth of sales and customer-service experience when he came to BurrellesLuce in 2007. His outstanding performance as a sales associate and personalized shopper for Neiman Marcus (he also has worked for Nordstrom) earned him a nomination by Boston magazine as “Best of Boston” sales associate for high-end retail fashion stores. Rich’s talents also won him praise and a profile in the book, “What Customers Like About You: Adding Emotional Value for Service Excellence and Competitive Advantage,” written by best-selling business author Dr. David Freemantle. Rich majored in English Literature at William Paterson University, and is a published poet and short-story writer. Facebook: BurrellesLuce Twitter: BurrellesLuce LinkedIn: BurrellesLuce
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