Posted on May 17, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
It’s Wednesday evening, and I’m watching the skyline of New York City fade into the distance on the way back from Streaming Media East. To be honest, I’ve never experienced a conference or trade show that was quite so busy. I had practically no time to check email or goof off on Twitter. I mostly talked to people about streaming video, and it’s clear that live streaming on the Internet is only going to get bigger.
Streaming video is a very interesting topic. Basically, it means watching video online before it has been downloaded, so it is the only way to webcast a live event. For a large enterprise network, the live event may be produced within the same building or campus as most of the viewers. For a live webcast meant to be viewed all over the world, it can be produced just about anywhere, provided the producer, the viewers and everyone in between have fast Internet connections and goof-proof capture and delivery technology.
Live Streaming is Easier Than You Think
Compared to television, live business and education webcasts are a lot more prevalent. There are live webinars and videoconferences going on all over the world every day. In television, live broadcasts are used primarily for sports, news, and only one scripted program that I know of, meaning Saturday Night Live. And all of these productions require a small army of people in highly specialized technical capacities.
Live streaming on the Internet is a hundred times easier, of course. It usually takes a couple of people to prepare and present the material, while two or three other people provide technical and marketing support. That’s it. As long as you follow a few webinar rules, specialized hardware and software does the rest.
The Magic of the Event
There are several reasons to present material in a live production online. Some of them are tangible and measured, but the best reasons, as usual, are more psychological:
- There is excitement surrounding a live event: Remember when the NBC television show ER did a live episode? For a show that featured loud dramatic drumming, doctors wheeling bodies around and people yelling “Stat!”, it was an ambitious undertaking. And the network never let you miss just how difficult and daring it was. A live event like that lets you push the limits of a coordinated marketing campaign, using email, partnerships, public relations and social media to raise the expectations of the audience.
- The higher perceived value yields better ROI: When used for lead generation, a live webcast is seen by the audience as having greater value, requiring their involvement at a specified time. There is a higher threshold of dedication, which means the people who take the time to register and attend are the ones most ready to do business with your company. Next to directly asking for your product demonstration, a live event usually drives the highest lead quality for your business.
- The timeliness of the content raises immediacy: The best example of this is the news, where you need to watch if you want to know what happened in crime and politics, how the game is going, and what tomorrow’s weather will be. For your purposes, if you need to cover what is happening in your industry, or a new technological advancement, or the details of an upcoming retail sale, a live event is practically the only way to do this.
- People want a chance to interact with you: In just about every interface you have with people, there is a delay. You post website pages and blog posts, and people find them days later. On social platforms, it may be hours. With live events, the audience has the best chance to respond immediately to what you say, and get questions answered in a raw context, where you haven’t had a chance to run your answer through the marketing mill. That’s a compelling draw.
- Live events get higher response rates: This seems counterintuitive, since a piece of content that is recorded or published for posterity will eventually drive a lot of business, but a live event pushes much of that business into the short-term. The result is a higher response from people who are interested in the company or its products at the moment. It creates a spike of activity that can cause a flurry of sales activity and help the business reach a revenue goal.
- It’s easier to track engagement: One reason given for live events is that the organization is able to gather a list of viewers through a registration process, while a piece of recorded material may be published in many places that are not trackable. This means that at least once, the live event is seen by the maximum number of viewers it is ever going to reach at one time, and you will know who they are. Later viewing won’t be as effective for lead generation.
- Live events let you try out ideas: Producing a live event can create a buzz around a big milestone, such as a product launch or partnership announcement. You can create a program involving a big-name guest or a controversial topic. You may want to present something that simply can’t be done in a scripted way. You can also decide that your live event will not be recorded, raising the stakes for viewers to register and attend.
There is a lot of magic behind the scenes during a live event as well, which is what Streaming Media East was all about. The technology runs the gamut from cameras, video capture devices, transcoders, specialized servers, content delivery networks, and hundreds of software applications. I found it highly enlightening, and the biggest lesson I can take from the event is that live streaming is big, and is fast becoming a cornerstone of Internet activity.
Posted on May 14, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
Drivel.
Drivel drivel junk garbage, waste-of-your-time blah blah pointless re-hashed drivel drivel.
Would you read the rest of this post if it kept going on like that? Better yet, if this was a white paper and later you received a call from my friends on the sales team, what would you tell them?
If you’re responsible for lead generation, it’s got to be a high priority that you’re not producing drivel. Putting out a lot of content looks like you’re getting it done, and the leads flowing in look like fantastic results. But these people filled out your form before they saw your content catastrophe. Then your sales team starts calling them, and the fun begins.
With every call, your sales team will discover that even though you’ve sent them great leads, they can’t start a conversation with anybody because your stuff was junk.
They’re hearing a lot of this:
- Diplomatic: “It wasn’t what I expected.”
- Annoyed: “I found it kind of unhelpful for my needs.”
- Honest: “It wasn’t written well. It seemed like it was just an ad.”
- Brutal: “It was the worst piece of garbage I’ve ever downloaded. You wasted my time.”
It would be better to bring in no leads at all than to completely burn these people. They now know about your brand, and they have a fairly negative opinion of it.
Lead generation is kind of a social contract. You deliver free material for an audience, but it isn’t really free for them, because they give you important contact info. Nor is it free for you, because you have to put in the work. This is the huge hidden danger with content marketing. You’re torn between quality vs. quantity leads, and there’s a constant need to feed the beast. A lot of content marketers are very good at filling the trough, but one of their top concerns is raising content quality.
Say it with me: The quality of the content equals the quality of the lead.
You can’t sell to someone if you have broken the contract by giving them drivel in return for their name. This matters whether you produce white papers, e-books, videos, animations, webinars, newsletters, or anything you think is worth a name.
What to do to improve content quality?
Have a point – It is best to avoid complicating your material. If you have a single topic to cover, it’s better to stick to it rather than add bits and pieces that aren’t relevant. If you want to cover several different topics that all seem to relate to one another, use a series instead of putting it all into one document.
Be clear - If the topic is about using a widget to improve the airflow velocity of composite wings, why not call it “Using a widget to improve the airflow velocity of composite wings”? Much has been said about the value of using funny or clever titles for all kinds of content, but your goal is to get people to read or watch, not to make them laugh or mislead them.
Support it – You’re making many points in your content, and it helps to show that you’re not alone. Use links to relevant and supportive pieces, preferably research material, to support the points and arguments you are making. It will raise your credibility and also the value of your content.
Fix the slop – It needs to be said: proofread, proofread, proofread. Have others proofread. And when they find mistakes, fix them without much ado. It’s not a novel, it’s business. Don’t cry over the loss of a very clever and funny line, just publish a correct piece and move on. It’s not a bad idea to implement some consistent content quality control practices too.
Be consistent – Your organization has a brand and a personality, and readers and viewers expect it to be pretty much the same whenever you produce material. It is better for them and for you if you and your copywriters stick to the story when they write about your organization and its value proposition.
Change it up – This would seem to differ with the above point, but as long as you have a consistent message, you don’t have to use one voice to make your case. Somebody else’s writing or delivery can be a breath of fresh air to your readers and viewers. Just as you use different types of content to appeal to different kinds of people, you can use different people to stylistically diversify your content.
Additionally, quality content is not just for private content meant for lead generation. Google’s most recent algorithm update, called Penguin, ensures that quality content will drive better SEO and site traffic.
By the way, this post contains a couple of split infinitives. Can you find them?
Posted on May 10, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
Here we go! Just a few weeks after visiting New York City for the DemandGen B2B Content2Conversion conference, we’re back! This time for Streaming Media East, the number-one event for online video business and technology.
The event is Tuesday May 15 and Wednesday, May 16 at the Hilton NYC, and we’re in booth #201.
Here are a few highlights:
- On Tuesday at 9:00 AM, Matt Frost, Senior Business Product Manager on Google’s Chrome team, will deliver the keynote address, discussing video strategy for the web platform.
- At 10AM, Michael Kolowich of KnowledgeVision will demonstrate our latest releases on the presentation stage. We think you’ll be excited at our new capabilities – Michael will cover the latest details at the demo.
- At 10:30, breakout sessions begin, including Video Platform Deployment in Higher Education with Andy Page of Cornell University, and if you want your MTV, attend Technical Setup of Live Streaming Production with Rob Roskin of MTV Networks.
- At 11:45, check out a review of YouTube’s New Content Channels with Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3, and learn Techniques to Make Your Videos Go Viral from Dan Greenberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Sharethrough.
- After lunch, I’ll probably attend the discussion Original Web Series at the Tipping Point led by Ran Harnevo of AOL, or maybe the informative HOW-TO: Video Player Development
- Across Multiple Screens with Lisa Larson-Kelley.
- Want to make a living on YouTube? Jenni Powell of VidCon will talk about how, or you can attend Optimizing Video for HTML5 and Flash with Robert Reinhardt of videoRx. Considering that I haven’t seen a TV ad in years, I will probably check out a couple of sessions on Internet TV in the afternoon.
There are a lot more panels and sessions throughout the day and on Wednesday! See the full Streaming Media East Program!
A note: One thing I love to do when visiting NYC is run in Central Park. With all of the paths and boulevards crossing it, it’s possible to map out 5k, 5 mile or even 10k runs. I’ll be out there before each day’s events (weather permitting) so if anybody wants to run, contact me @knowledgevision.
Posted on May 9, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
This is going to be a little “Inside baseball” today. I’ve struggled with ways to improve the webinar experience, often because I had attended one and became both incensed and inspired. I was so sick of finding myself subject to yet another bullet-point-palooza accompanied by a droning voice that I kept trying to see if I could improve upon that.
I used more animation in my slides and went through them more quickly. I tried to use a friendly radio voice. I experimented with presentations that were a series of HTML pages instead of slides, so I could immediately forward the link to the audience. I included links to documents they could download, like a related white paper or case studies. I storyboarded graphics so they could be developed in Flash.
I think animation is great, but I wasn’t really satisfied even with that. I imagined producing a video where I could directly engage the audience like a speaker at a live seminar. I could grab slides and place them on the screen like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. I could open images, expand them, and tap them to open a link or make them go away.
Who Does Online Presentation Right?
A UK charity known as the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (or the RSA) comes very close to perfect with their brilliant animated whiteboard videos. Companies like SitePal and Voki host talking avatars for websites and online learning tools. I said this would be inside baseball, so I should definitely include KnowledgeVision and its cloud-hosted, integrated video and slide presentation platform.
But that isn’t the half of it. The point of a live webinar is to directly engage people and answer immediate needs. A webcast, white paper or e-Book lacks that opportunity. A live event sounds like a solution, but it forces viewers to wait, raising the chance that they’ll forget or move on.
The Best of Both Worlds
To answer these concerns, Michael Kolowich, CEO of KnowledgeVision, devised the Instant Webinar. This is a two-part event that is a recorded webcast that can be viewed immediately, then a live discussion on a specific date. The point here is to let viewers see the content as quickly as possible, then use the event date to host an open discussion instead of a half-baked Q & A that is treated as an afterthought.
To wit: Our first Instant Webinar, Think Outside the Frame: How to Repurpose Content Into Video That Works is available now. In it, Michael Kolowich and Andrew Gaffney of DemandGen Report cover the reasons to make webinars a more user-driven, interactive experience instead of a traditional linear slideshow. They talk about:
- How to best use the area outside the video frame
- How to improve interactivity with branching navigation
- Why it’s better to include shared documents, links and polls
- The importance of online video analytics
- How to beef up video with infographics and images
- How to produce the quality of video your audience expects
- What kinds of presentation tools are out there (ooh, ooh, pick me, I got one!)
Michael also talks about repurposing existing text-based, graphics, slides and videos for integrated presentations, as well as trying out software tools, finding the storytellers in your organizations and several other tips.
The Instant Webinar and Beyond
The bottom line is that, like me, you’re probably trying to find ways to make webinars more interesting. The Instant Webinar is an excellent example of the “Candy bowl” concept, where you give content away in the hopes of raising awareness and engagement.
Like e-Books, white papers, webcasts, slideshows and blog articles, the Instant Webinar will find its place in the realm of content marketing, and it will go well beyond lead generation. It will enhance learning, increase thought leadership, and build community.
Posted on May 8, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
Video: You’re doing it right. You have product showcases on YouTube, funny videos on your blog, Flash animations on social networks, webinars on your website, so you put the time in to create and publish videos. They help customers understand what you do and they raise interest from the people you want to reach. They add value.
At least that’s the theory.
Video is certainly more interesting than text, and you can be very creative with it. But sometimes you have to wonder, “Does video really add anything to my business?” Here’s how to know.
Analytics is really important for your long-term video strategy, whether you are in e-commerce, B2B marketing, sales, e-learning, or public relations. You know all about online tracking. You track unique visits, referring URLs, entry and exit pages, bounce rate, clickthroughs, form fills, and of course a lot of other metrics. Depending on your organization’s needs, certain stats are more important to you than others.
With video, it’s a little different. You can track the raw data of video in much the same way: views, referring sites, length of time spent watching, etc., but you can also track engagement metrics such as shares, ratings, likes, and other actions taken after viewing. These are known as active and passive video metrics that give you two different ways to see how well your videos perform.
Some video metrics are fairly obvious. You track these just like you track any other piece of content: total views, unique views, average time viewed, time of day, and so on. But while these are great short-term metrics for video, they aren’t the metrics that best relate to the uniqueness of video, no matter your business focus. Video is different, because it is meant to help viewers retain information in a way that text cannot. That’s why some metrics are more important.
The 8 Metrics That Really Matter:
Play Rate. This is a measure of whether the video was actually viewed once it loaded. This helps you determine how prominently your videos are presented on a hosting platform, and whether the still images appear inviting. It can tell you whether or not the platform is optimized for viewing videos and whether your choice of preview image is working.
Player Load Times. If your play rate is low, it may be because the player takes forever to load once the viewer clicks on it. This may not be available depending on the hosting platform but some platforms allow you to include a script that tracks load times per view. If platforms are consistently slower than others, it will negatively affect your total views.
Playthrough Rate. This is the pulse of your video strategy. Views alone don’t tell you how well video performs, though they do tell you how well your videos are found by search engines. Once people find your videos, the percentage of time they spend watching them tells you whether you’ve given them what they were looking for. For thought leadership videos such as webinars, interviews, and video blogging, it’s important to track how long people last.
Conversion. This is critical, especially in conjunction with Playthrough Rate. This helps you know if viewers are quitting your videos early to make a purchase, or if something about the videos is boring them to tears. In e-commerce, the point of the video is to nudge buyers, so higher drop-off rates are probably okay if they lead to a sale. REI’s product demos are a really good example of using video to improve conversion rates.
Video SEO. You should know which keywords are driving video views. The reason video SEO is so powerful is that video itself does not include keywords, but you get to choose keywords in your titles and tags. It’s almost as if you were back in 1998 again. The best part of this is that you can test video SEO to a granular level, and you can even A/B test a video using different approaches.
Sharing. How many people share your videos, and what influence do they have? Most video hosting platforms such as YouTube, and your own WordPress blog with various sharing plug-ins can give your videos share-ability to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other social networks. They can also provide tracking for the reach of a share on each network and whether those shares drove more views. This helps you understand not only how well your video is received, but how well it inspires action.
Distribution. This is about which video networks are driving the most views and visits back to your site. Because you can host your videos on many platforms or link to them, you can easily determine which web properties bring in more total viewers or more likely customers. For instance, Ooyala’s Custom Analytics for video gives you highly detailed feedback on videos hosted on its platform. The point of distribution is to make your video part of a smooth experience.
Content Detail. You have many types of videos, but which ones deliver the best results? The granular level of tracking available lets you track whether your shorter or longer videos perform best according to your goals. You can also track the performance of videos that show your product or not, that feature a man or a woman presenting, that are set in a use case environment or a neutral setting, and a lot of other varying details.
As you may have noticed, some of the metrics above are not going to be easy without a dedicated video hosting platform. Whether you host your videos on YouTube or Vimeo and/or have your own accounts with BrightCove, Kaltura or Ooyala, these 8 metrics will go beyond the very limited Total Views and help you understand how video impacts your organization and your efforts.
Posted on May 2, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
Mobile devices have been with us awhile now, and are finally poised to take over hardware use in the US. One of the key takeaways from the B2B Content2Conversion Conference was offered by Christina “CK” Kerley, who said the mobile revolution is really a revolution in access. People want content at all times, no matter where they are and what they are doing. More than ever, that means if you want your organization to be found, your online video content has to be accessible for mobile devices.
While much of the world has already become used to using mobile technology as their primary source of information, the US has been slow to adopt mobile in this way until recently. The rise of smartphones and finally, tablets, have put mobile technology in a format Americans prefer. That’s why tablets will overtake desktop PCs in 2012, and 22% of US adults now own a tablet (I was part of that January 2012 spike).
How Do Viewers Use Tablets?
A few things become clear with tablets. First, people prefer to pick one up so they can go from one room to another more easily. According to Nielsen, TV viewing and tablet computing go hand in hand, but it isn’t just about going to the kitchen during the ads. Tablet users are reading news, using social media, browsing, and watching videos. And Forrester reports that tablet users are replacing a lot of what they used to do with PCs and smartphones.
But the bottom line for tablet users is video. A report from Dacast shows that video is growing faster than other types of content with mobile users. Beyond that, Ooyala reports that viewers are twice as likely to finish a video on a tablet. Cisco, a company that knows what online users are doing, reports that mobile video exceeded 50% of all mobile traffic in 2011.
What Does This Mean for Online Video?
First, it is clearly time to consider how your website looks on a tablet as opposed to a full screen, but even more importantly, video is a big part of tablet use. How can you optimize videos so they work well on the tablet and also meet the expectations of users?
Be searchable – Despite the availability of apps, the browser is still the tablet app of choice. This means that viewers are going to find your videos by searching keywords, and the same rules apply: Videos are better for search engine returns, provided you tag them with the most relevant SEO keywords for your video and your audience.
Be current – Since people are reading news on their tablets, your video material should be up to date and in line with current events. This kind of approach is already a big hit with vendors who follow trending topics on social networks and tag their material to be topical (if appropriate, of course).
Be social – The way a lot of tablet users get to the current news is through social platforms. That means your videos should be widely disseminated using these tools, as links and as direct uploads. If there is finally a reason to make sure your B2B company has a Facebook presence, this is it.
Be HTML5 – According to Gartner, the biggest share of the tablet market still goes to the Apple iPad. And you know these devices don’t like Flash, so that means avoiding Flash output in favor of video hosting platforms that are compatible with the Apple iOS.
Be concise – Most value and branding videos are a minute long, and a lot of in-depth videos top out at 3 to 4 minutes. Even though tablet users are more likely to finish a video, that doesn’t mean you should test their patience. Keep your videos to the length of a pop song, and if you can’t tell your story in that time, use a teaser video instead.
Be simple – If you create interactive webcasts for your business, remember that viewers may be using a tablet without keyboards, so it’s best to involve user interfaces that emphasize buttons and links rather than a lot of typing. Let people navigate around your videos with a design that anticipates the touchpad.
If you use online video for content marketing, the rise of the tablet is definitely a trend that will help you reach a lot more people in settings they prefer. The key is to match their needs and interests by making sure your presence is optimized for tablet viewing.
Posted on May 1, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
You know the difference between Mozart and Beethoven? Both are indisputably among the most influential giants of music, but while Beethoven composed about 120 works, Mozart created five times as many. Beethoven rewrote, scribbled, erased, crumpled and threw out more works than he created, but Mozart seemingly could drop his pen on the page and brilliance would emerge.
Annoying, right?
Most of us pursuing a content marketing strategy undoubtedly feel more like Beethoven much of the time. You’ve probably noticed the same thing whether you’ve fully invested your company in content development or you’re still writing your first few articles. You’ve discovered what Beethoven knew: Content isn’t easy.
Sometimes you have to recycle.
Both composers did it. Like the western musical scale that has only 12 notes, there are only so many words and ideas that surround your industry. If you stick to a brand identity, it means you have a narrowly-defined set of discussion options. It’s a real stretch to turn bicycle rides and trips to Scandinavia into a salient point about Java software development practices or aluminum storage containers.
But like Beethoven and Mozart, you have different media. Mozart would take a melody from a piano concerto and adapt it for clarinet in another work. Beethoven would transpose an organ theme for a string quintet. You have the printed page, as well as email, blogs, articles, websites, graphics, interviews, and online video at your disposal. Somewhere there is an audience waiting for you to recreate previous work for a medium they prefer.
One of these media is still growing: video. 65% of executives watch video before reading text, according to a recent survey by Forbes. If you’re still thinking about starting a long-term online video strategy, or if you’re already creating videos, here’s a new e-Book that can act as a guidebook to creating video from existing material.
Reuse, Recreate and Repurpose: 5 New Strategies for Today’s Video-Enabled World
There is no need to create new videos out of nothing. Your content already exists. You already went through the process of approving and publishing it. You also know that online video raises engagement. However, you may still be struggling to add video to your content marketing strategy because of limited time and budget to create them.
That’s why KnowledgeVision and DemandGen Report created the e-Book: Reuse, Recreate and Repurpose: 5 New Strategies for Today’s Video-Enabled World. It provides an overview of how you can add video cost-effectively by using existing content. These techniques will save production time and match the successful brand messaging you’ve already published.
The e-Book covers these 5 key points:
1. How to identify existing content to re-use in online video, by determining if your material is a natural fit for visual presentation. Maybe your product or feature lends itself to demonstration, or you have thought leaders who can present well and get attention.
2. How to plan the right type of video for your content strategy by matching the expectations of your audience. How do customers interact with your brand? Are the benefits of your product or service easily defined?
3. How to build a script for your video using published content that is perfect for your brand’s personality. Can your product or service be described in plain language, and can you turn your message into a story?
4. How to match your existing content’s message and brand fit. What kind of environment best showcases your brand or product? Can your product be shown in a recommended use case?
5. How to find opportunities to use your recreated video content, using the web properties where people interact with your brand. You can offer a learning opportunity or valuable thought leadership, and can also generate leads.
What would Beethoven have done if he had the Internet, online video, digital recording and electric guitars? No doubt he’d be watching Mozart churn out video after video based on earlier works. And he’d get started on his own, even if he found it harder to create the perfect piece.
Whether you’re more like Beethoven or Mozart, you’ll find that using the tips in Reuse, Recreate and Repurpose: 5 New Strategies for Today’s Video-Enabled World will help you create videos that ring true with your audience and expand your reach.
Posted on April 25, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
At KnowledgeVision, our VP of Sales, Joe Pappalardo, has a saying: “What’s the pain?”
I hear it all the time in the office. It is rule number one when we talk to clients and potential users; find out the pain. They checked us out and took our call, which means they have pain. Nobody takes action unless somewhere, somehow, there is pain.
That’s what the B2B Content2Conversion Conference hosted by the DemandGen Report is about: addressing the customer’s pain. Everyone who attended the sold-out conference did so because something about their marketing is causing them pain. It needs to be easier, faster and better.
The Right Medicine
Everyone we met had pain. In some way, they need a better way to develop content, distribute it, gather leads, and gain customers. Of course, KnowledgeVision was there to talk about online video presentations and how they meet pain, but a lot of other vendors were there to address customer needs for data gathering, resource management, lead generation, email marketing, and public relations.
All of the attendees were looking for a solution to fix their pain.
I met marketing professionals from companies large and small, who needed better and quicker ways to come up with video material from their existing written content, or wanted to escape their expensive production and distribution methods. For a lot of them, the event may have provided the medicine for their existing pain, but also opened their eyes to new ideas, and thus created new pain.
(There, I got to use the word “thus”.)
The Doctor Is In
The conference covered a huge array of topics:
- Keynote speaker Ardath Albee spoke about creating a lasting content marketing strategy.
- Matthew Papertsian from SiriusDecisions talked about the different buyer personas and buying stages.
- Ruth Stevens and Mac McConnell covered lead segmentation and nurturing campaigns.
- Amanda Batista of DemandGen Report spoke about meeting buyer expectations.
- Michael Kolowich of KnowledgeVision talked about numerous alternative content formats that marketers use for lead generation, and also covered 3 tips for building a video marketing strategy.
- Tom Miale from MultiVu, a PR Newswire company, spoke about the importance of reaching the audience in about as many ways as you can think of.
- Christina “CK” Kerley covered one of those ways: mobile, with some jaw-dropping stats about how many more people are reached by mobile than the Internet, social media, and television. For instance: “95% of all mobile text messages are read within the first 3 minutes.”
- Jeanne Hopkins of Hubspot talked about managing the nurturing part of the lead funnel.
- Elle Woulfe of Eloqua talked about aligning content to the buyer stage.
- Jon Russo of B2B Fusion led a brilliant panel featuring Julie Fajgenbaum of American Express, Heather Teicher from LivePerson, Candyce Edelen from PropelGrowth, and Amanda Maksymiw from OpenView Labs, who shared their harrowing war stories of content marketing and lead generation.
- Finally, Jim Lenskold discussed the real pain we all have: How to quantify the impact of content marketing.
In short, the pain felt by attendees mirror the presentations given by the speakers, who are leading marketers themselves and face a lot of the same challenges. This is a great strength for people in the content marketing realm because they acutely know their patients’ pain.
Anytime, Anywhere, Anyway
For me, the biggest takeaway at the Content2Conversion conference was nailed home by Christina “CK” Kerley, who said the mobile revolution is really a revolution in access. People want content at all times, no matter where they are and what they are doing, which is why they seek information using mobile devices. The truth is that content must be highly varied and available in many different places, because it’s about being found, and we never know what avenues people are using and what they will expect.
When it comes to conversion, the key to all this content in various places is that it gives you the ability to know exactly where somebody first met you, and what kind of content they discovered. Knowing what your customers were looking for when they found you will help you meet their pain.
Posted on April 23, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
If you’re getting started with online video for content marketing, the first thing you learn is that people want more. Once you cross the starting line, there’s a lot more ground to cover. I’ll cover the reasons why you need a long-term strategy for video, and how you can meet this challenge.
The Starting Gun
You know how it feels when a brilliant idea strikes you. You’ve just come from a product development meeting where the product team showed off their next product, and everyone came away upbeat about the launch. You’re jazzed about what this means for the company’s growth. Sure, the marketing team is now under the gun, but you’re excited enough to try some things you’ve never tried before.
These days, this often means getting people from development, sales and support in front of a camera and capturing their excitement about the product. You can use the video on your website, landing pages, at events, for email campaigns, and your social sites. When all is said and done, you’ve got a great piece of rich content that will attract prospects for a couple of weeks, or at least a few days. Then what?
The Long Haul
Once you’ve started down the video road, it’s important to keep going for several reasons:
- The audience expects it. People who come to your site to view the video on your new product will start to wonder where the others are.
- Sales isn’t the only reason. Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C realm, videos can help support customers by going into detail about how to use the product.
- You’ve picked up new skills. Now that you and your organization have crafted a script, recorded a session and produced a video, it would be a shame to do that once or just a few times a year.
- It’s marketing. Online video is more than just a trend. It works. It drives better search engine results and engages an audience in a more memorable way.
Set The Pace
Once you decide to start creating videos for your business, take a moment to map a course you can actually follow. It takes time to research the subject matter, draft scripts, gather and create supporting materials, develop video animations, line up people and resources, and contract any outside help. Be realistic. If it’s going to be highly painful to try to produce one per week or month, plan on one or two in a quarter. Once you decide on a production schedule, you can plan specific topics and launches to cover.
As part of your online video marketing efforts, it is also a good idea to consider different types of videos. Short, attractive videos appeal to people who don’t know much about your brand, while longer videos are more in-depth and aimed at people who know who you are, what you do and what the benefits are. Like the energy gels and drinks favored by runners, short videos can provide short bursts of energy, while long videos are more like overall fitness, allowing you to support consistently useful material over the long term. The types of videos you produce should match your ability to deliver them according to your production schedule.
The Finish Line
The truth is, there is no finish line. Once you’ve embarked down the road to video marketing, you should keep going, enriching the value your brand brings to your customer base and establishing a wealth of thought leadership. The right pace, planning, and resource strategy will help you establish a highly-regarded, video-enabled online presence.
Posted on April 19, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
I’m a believer in animation for content marketing. At the simplest level, it can add some pizzazz to PowerPoint, and at its most extensive, animation can illustrate an entire brand idea better than video. One reason is that there is no limit to what you can illustrate. If you want to show planets spinning around a star, race cars flying around a track, or dragons attacking a medieval village, it would take some doing to create that using video. But a clever Flash developer can create some really impactful material showing those ideas in short order.
At a previous company, I used animation all the time. The marketing department created a ton of short, one to two-minute videos for the website, blog, social networks, sales presentations, live and recorded webinars, and trade shows. A lot of work by the company’s exceptional designers went into them, and they had no shortage of places to use them.
My favorite was a Flash piece built as a graphic novel. It stopped people in their tracks in front of the trade show booth. It also supported several webinars as well as held a prominent position on the website. It encapsulated, in just about two minutes, everything the company was doing at the time.
Another set of animations were used to highlight graphs during a webinar on mobile technology. These were simpler. In a nutshell, standard images that are normally used to support a data point were shown to expand and draw themselves as I talked about the purpose of the data or concept.
Some companies like Hubspot are able to push the envelope with their hilarious music videos, but the rest of us are limited in budget, time and a crowd of employees willing to dance for leads. If you want to gin up some great dynamic presentations that can be shared by your audience, and will raise interest in your brand, what kind of criteria should go into your decision to animate?
Is your product visual? If you have a software tool or a manufactured product, it can be shown in graphic detail. However, it is important to use the product for sales enablement materials and demonstrations, but only sparingly, if at all, for content marketing efforts.
Can your topics be visually displayed? If you can illustrate the various concepts met by your solution in a graphic that builds, expands or morphs to capture the interest of the audience, this is a good way to employ animation in your materials.
Do you have visual imagination? If you are able to visualize your business concepts in a way that will readily appeal to viewers, this is a chance to put that talent to good use. It’s time to start building storyboards that will help designers and developers build your ideas.
Do you have access to visual talent? If you have great developers in-house who are able to design and build animated graphics, this is a boon to your visual marketing efforts. As long as you have the vision and ideas, you can also contract with designers from outside the business, provided you have the budget.
Do visual images appeal to your audience? Finally, graphics and animation won’t matter unless your viewers appreciate visual images and dynamic content. A lot of decision-makers still focus more on written text than on visuals, especially if the images define an abstract concept instead of a tangible product.
Animation can be a truly rich addition to your online video content, able to showcase topics and ideas that cannot be covered by a talking head or a static slide. It brings life to research graphics and charts, and it can illustrate intangible concepts in a way that words cannot describe. You can edit and update animations more easily than video, and you have complete control over how the images appear.
If you decide to use animation for your content marketing and sales materials, you will very likely find your efforts worthwhile.
Posted on April 18, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog , No Comments »
Andrew Gaffney, Editor and Publisher of the DemandGen Report, talks with KnowledgeVision’s Tom Bishop about the B2B Content2Conversion Conference on April 23 & 24 in New York City.
Posted on April 11, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog, Microsoft PowerPoint, Online Presentation Platforms, Online Presentation Strategies, Presentation Tips & Tricks, Thought Leadership, Using Online Video , No Comments »
If all your webinars are laid end-to-end, you’re gonna need a lot of drinking water!
But seriously, you’ve created and delivered hours upon hours of online presentations. Some of them got a lot of people interested in your business. Some of them, not so much. Is there a magic formula for matching the expectations of your audience?
LinkedIn is a great place to find people complaining about the terrible webinars they’ve viewed. I took the liberty of reading some complaints there, because I knew it would be a rich well of ideas for what to deliver in a webinar, and what to avoid.
There were also viewers who lauded webinars they enjoyed, and more importantly, they were willing to share the names of people and organizations that impressed them the most. Dan Zarella and HubSpot are mentioned many times, as are 451 Marketing, another Boston-area firm.
Frankly, these people follow a set of unwritten webinar rules that are easy to glean from the LinkedIn comments. These are the expectations that webinar attendees have when they log in to witness your presentation.
The Rules of Webinars:
Rule # 1: Don’t Pitch
This one is absolute. Webinar viewers will never, ever pay for a pitch, and they’re fairly irritated if a pitch is part of a free webinar. While viewers understand the quid pro quo behind a free webinar, you’re still better off without the pitch. Right off, you will tell them who you are and where you’re from, and why you’re presenting. Then get right to it. Present on some high-concept issue facing your industry and your audience, and offer ideas. Viewers will come find you if the content was worthwhile.
Rule #2: Offer Quality
They say you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, so don’t try. But if your content truly is a bolt of fine-woven imported silk, make sure to present it as a rich tapestry. Even for free, viewers want something that is polished and well-presented. There is no reason to stumble over your notes, display broken graphics and videos, and suffer technical glitches and leave dead air. It doesn’t make the presentation seem any more ‘human’, just bad. Viewers do not give a pass on bad content or production just because a webinar is free.
Rule #3: Be Interesting
Why are you the person making the presentation? Are you the resident content expert? Can you show why your credentials make you the right person for the job? This is critical, especially if the webinar is not free. The presenter should be able to build a rapport, set a positive, engaging webinar ambiance, and make people feel like they are the only ones present. If you’re giving the talk because you have nothing better to do, and you’re planning to read the slides in a bland workaday voice, find someone else. The presenter is the presentation, not the slides. Without a decent voice, the right credibility, or both, you’re going to deliver a terrible webinar.
Rule #4: Follow Up
By ‘Follow Up’ I don’t mean just sending a transactional email with a link to the video. That isn’t good enough anymore. You, the presenter, and not your sales team, should be the face of the followup effort. Everyone expects to get a sales call, which is why this tactic stands out. Make sure to write to everyone, offering a summary of the presentation, the slides, video, any handout documents, and asking for direct feedback. If the group is small enough, you might even call each attendee personally. The follow-up should be done within a day of the event, and probably right away.
Rule #5: Make It Sharable
Viewers want to share great content because it associates them with the latest thinking. If any part of your presentation is online, encourage viewers to send a link to others during the presentation and afterward. A short video summary of the topic is a good idea, because it is easier to appreciate and send to others.
Rule #6: Use Substance
If your webinar topic can be summarized into a two-paragraph email, why is it a webinar? Your presentation should involve a concept that takes a half-hour to present. You should use graphics because you need them. You should use a long series of bullets to break down complex ideas. That doesn’t mean you can’t summarize the topic. In fact, you should. Several times. Repeat to your attendees what they will learn, what they are learning, and what they should have learned.
Rule #7: Go Live
There’s a reason people have signed in to your live event. It’s because people want some live Q&A, and in fact it may be the primary draw. A photo or, better yet, a video of the presenter creates the feeling of being there. Using graphics and shareable content make it better than a conference call. Viewers also want a way to engage and connect through real-time chat boxes and polling boxes. During a live presentation, you should be able to gauge the average experience level of the audience, and the live setting allows you to match it. Viewers want to engage with you in a live setting. If they didn’t, they’d watch your recorded webinar instead.
Rule #8: No Loose Ends
Tie everything up before the webinar ends. If you’ve reminded viewers to ask questions during the presentation, try to answer them. If you’ve promised to cover something in detail, do so. If you’ve advertised the webinar according to certain criteria, make sure to match the expectations you’ve set.
Webinar attendees can be a bit picky about what they want from a webinar. But the concept is not new. Webinars have been around for quite awhile and viewers know exactly what they want and expect. Stick to these rules, and more often than not you will be recognized as someone who delivers high quality webinars full of big ideas. That’s what we’re all looking for.
Posted on April 4, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog, Microsoft PowerPoint, Online Presentation Platforms, Online Presentation Strategies, Presentation Tips & Tricks, Thought Leadership, Using Online Video , No Comments »
Content. The concept has been central to communication since the first cave-dwelling entrepreneur tried to show off his new invention: the wheel. The instant he was asked what it was, why it was needed, and how it was different from all the other round rocks lying around, he needed an answer. He needed content.
Since then, we’ve been focused on the whats, whys and hows of just about everything, and that means churning out content. Whether we’ve been raising royal coinage for sailing voyages, fomenting revolts, entertaining audiences, or selling dish soap, we’ve needed content.
So why is that word suddenly top-of-mind now?
The truth is, we’re all looking for the most efficient way to put companies, organizations, products, ideas and concepts in front of people, and not just anyone – the right people. The trend is driven by technology. Specifically, search technology, which is not just at the core of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, but also the social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.
Search has gotten so much smarter since the days when all we had to do was slap up a website and fill it with meta tags. It now focuses on relevance, activity, and population, and marketers have been scrambling to keep up. Now we’re all content marketers, firing barrages of words across numerous web platforms, hoping the right people will see them and send the embedded links to their friends, who will like our funny little videos and google our site. At some point, we’d like somebody to follow a link to where we can sell them something. Right? Right?
The product is almost an afterthought now, in a land of publishers. And maybe that’s as it should be. Frankly, the web is a much more interesting place today, where you can ignore the tech specs, ads and signup forms and instead read and watch tons of informative, funny, thought-provoking high-concept articles and videos that you can easily spread to others.
Who’s selling anything in this paradigm?
Well, a lot of great companies are rising on the content wave, because they know how to turn content into revenue. Specialized software firms, publications, and consulting firms have capitalized on it, as have many traditional firms that focus on some component in the marketing value chain. They create and discover better ways to make specific content campaigns trackable, so marketers know exactly which piece of content, in which channel, is delivering the greatest return on their efforts.
One such company is DemandGen Report, a publication that helps Business to Business (B2B) companies align their digital marketing and sales efforts to drive revenue growth, through better management of their demand generation efforts. That means content and conversion.
Andrew Gaffney, Editor of DemandGen Report, has said that B2B marketers struggle to manage content marketing strategies to drive demand. DemandGen Report is producing the B2B Content2Conversion Conference, to be held on April 24 in New York City, to address these challenges and help B2B marketers produce ‘killer content’. This educational daylong event is focused on strategies for mapping, developing and utilizing content marketing to nurture the buyer relationship and enhance conversions, and will include the First Annual B2B Killer Content Awards. The event will feature author and industry expert Ardath Albee as keynote speaker.
Also speaking at the conference will be KnowledgeVision Founder and CEO Michael Kolowich. KnowledgeVision is a venture-backed technology company whose on-demand software is used to build rich content presentations using video, slide decks, PDFs, and live websites. He is also editor of “Rich Content Daily,” a continuously-updated online digest of the latest thinking on rich, interactive content for marketing and learning. KnowledgeVision will exhibit at the B2B Content2Conversion Conference.
The conference will feature numerous other notable content-delivery and marketing industry leaders such as Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing at HubSpot; Jim Lenskold, President of The Lenskold Group; Elle Woulfe, Director of Marketing Programs at Eloqua; and Julie Fajgenbaum, Vice President of Brand and Social Media for American Express OPEN.
The B2B Content2Conversion Conference is at the nexus of the current trends in content development, online video presentations, campaign management, lead generation, and return on marketing investment. The companies involved are, like KnowledgeVision, at the forefront of the biggest B2B marketing trend since the wheel. Visit the conference, and learn how to make your content matter.
Posted on April 2, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog, Content Marketing, Corporate Storytelling, Microsoft PowerPoint, Online Presentation Strategies, Presentation Tips & Tricks, Thought Leadership, Using Online Video, Video Marketing , No Comments »
Ever get to a movie at the scheduled time, and it just begins?
Of course not. Usually, you are treated to instructions about not smoking, talking, and texting. Then there might be a public service announcement or two. Finally, you are invited to hit the concession stand, which you’ll probably have plenty of time for because of what comes next: The trailers.
A trailer is an extended advertisement for a movie, usually shown in theaters. At a big movie opening, you’ll probably see ten of them. They last up to two and a half minutes, and tell you almost everything you need to decide whether to see an upcoming film, or at least a series of explosions and car chases. Sometimes they give the whole story away, and sometimes they inspire audiences to wonder by showing almost nothing.
Trailers often take on a life of their own as well. Avid fans consider them part of the moviegoing experience. Trailers are often art in themselves, and a critical part of entertainment marketing.
Why don’t we apply this technique in business as well?
If you have a long-form online event coming up, maybe a webinar, an on-demand webcast or a live demonstration, you’ll make sure to advertise it in many ways. You’ll send email, post to websites, invite attendees through social campaigns, and your summary material will be mostly text-based.
But if the event itself is visual, shouldn’t the summary be? Here are 5 tips to producing your own trailer for your online video events:
Script - Create a text script that summarizes the primary points you will make in the webcast. The script does not have to be strictly followed when reading it on camera, but is more like a guide for keeping the short presentation focused. This will also help you develop the 30-second ‘elevator pitch’ that you can use for other event advertising materials as well.
Example: “Watch our upcoming webcast to learn how to fold laundry, mop your kitchen floor and write a best-selling novel all at the same time. Reserve your seat today at wonderwidget.com.”
Quotes – Take quotes from the script that help to illustrate your main points. It should cover the topic, but also provide a little bit of the flavor and personality that viewers will experience during the event.
Example: “Our guest presenter says, ‘Wonderwidget’s stealth technology is a big deal – it keeps it from being stolen. Who wants to wake up to that?”
Secrets – Don’t give it all away. A good movie trailer makes the audience want more, just like a great book keeps you turning the page to see what happens next. Leave the viewers with just enough information to decide to attend your event, but not so much that they feel like they don’t need to.
Example: “If you really want to grow a thick, lustrous head of hair in 6 weeks, just give us a half-hour and we’ll show you how.” (I’d click that)
Graphics – Include graphics that show the concepts the video will cover. If you include research, show a slide or two of your charts and graphs that will appear during the event. Imagery that helps to set the mood or support the main points in your script go a long way toward showing viewers why they should sign up for more.
Length – Make sure the video is short – anywhere from 30 seconds (preferable) to a minute and a half, maximum. Most web videos that are longer do not get watched at all, until viewers are in the later stages of a dedicated information-gathering effort. Your short video is meant to appeal to people who may be ready for the full presentation, but still need some persuasion.
Just like a good novel keeps readers turning pages to find out what happens next, a great trailer leaves the audience with the impression that the movie will change their lives. Your B2B video summary should work to get people interested in seeing your presentation in its entirety, in all of its silver-screen glory.
But I recommend leaving out the explosions and car chases.
Posted on March 20, 2012 by Tom Bishop , Posted in Blog, Microsoft PowerPoint, Online Presentation Platforms, Online Presentation Strategies, Presentation Tips & Tricks, Thought Leadership, Using Online Video , No Comments »
“Hi, I’m Kelly from YourLogo. You recently attended our webinar, Attract Business with YourLogo. How did you like the presentation?”
Prospect A: “Well, Kelly, I’m sorry – I only saw a few minutes before our Sales VP called a meeting.”
Prospect B: “Kelly, I kept it on but I wasn’t really paying attention. Sorry.”
Prospect C: “Katie, is it? It was fine, but my connection went down somewhere in the middle.”
Prospect D: “Oh, I logged in but the install needed a password I don’t have. Sorry, uh, Karen…”
I’ll bet you or your sales team have heard every one of these after a webinar. Are they excuses? Probably not. It’s likely they actually happened. Poor Kelly has to call on all the people who joined the webinar to determine whether they were ready to buy something, or were gathering information.
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