Youtube Analytics and SMM ROI

Youtube Insight has existed for a little over a year now. Youtube Insight allows the uploader of the video to learn more about the web analytics of his viewers. It allows him to perform market research on the gender of the viewers, their age group, their geographic locations and even how they landed on the video. Was it done by a search or did it come from Facebook? Youtube Insight also reports the community engagement. How many people has set the video as their favorite, it reports information about rating, comments, etc.

A tool I think Youtube Insight lacks is web analytics about the sharing of the video. I think Youtube did a great job at improving the viral nature of a video by making it easy for viewers to share the videos through social media. However, I think it is unfortunate that Youtube does not gives information about how often it was shared and track how many times it was viewed based on that share. It is possible to have an idea because Youtube informs you of the sources from where the visitors landed on your video and you can make an educated guess but it would be much more favorable for marketers and corporations who spends the marketing/advertising dollar to have better information about the viral effect of their content. It would be a great tool to calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) of Social Media Marketing.

If a business is willing to pay to place an ad in a magazine because it approximates how many eyeballs might stumble across it I think the same business can be very interested to see how many times the video they created was viewed but also, how many times was their video handed to the next person and next person after that? Time magazine has the highest pass along readership and I am sure if marketers are willing to pay for an estimated number of a static picture, I am sure marketers would be very interested to see how many people shared the videos and how many more people have viewed the video on Youtube thanks to the share?

Don't forget that you can embed a hyperlink in the video description and with Youtube Annotations, you can improve the level of engagement from your users ie: have a call to action for them to check out your landing page by clicking on the link in the video description. After that, just open your Google Analytics and continue the tracking!

Just make sure that your link is associated with a campaign!

Here is an video overview of Youtube Insight:

Youtube Sampling - the future of Hip-Hop?

This Youtube clip is a song (or is it a music video?) created with samples of other Youtube Clips. One word: Phenomenal! The artist is Kutiman. Genius!

Copyright issues aside, I think this is a beautiful mirror of the new Web and its mentality. Long gone are the days of static text only web pages (yes, web pages and not web sites). It is all about mixing, sharing or in Hip-Hop terms: cutting/chopping, mixing and looping!

It is a great time to be living!

This post is a dedication to Pizza4all. A musico-visual pizza4u!

UPDATE:
If Kutiman made an e-musicovisual pizza, this would be the live musicovisual pizza version (by Playingforchange)

Dear Mr. President...

I don't care what you say, this is a great initiative.  I made a quick Google search about Pepsi's Refresh Everything and the opinion seems to be negative.

Meh, I like it.  I think it is a goog marketing initiative and I am not ready to deem it as a FAIL yet.  What about you?

MySpace vs Youtube: X-Men Origins Trailer

I stumbled on the new Wolverine (official) trailer today on MySpace (Thanks to Mafia Wars who got me to return to Myspace to play) and I got curious.  Since Youtube is the #1 reference for videos on the web I decided to make a quick search there and while I am at it, why not Google the new movie as well?  I was surprised to see MySpace beat Youtube by 3 days.

X-Men Origins published the MySpace Video on  December 12, 2008 and racked up near 1.7 million views after 4 days.

On the other hand, TrailerAddictHQ and Madblaster6 posted the Youtube videos on December 15, 2008 and racked up a combine count of over 60k views.

After I found the official web site of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie (which by the way took me over 5 Google search.  I had to search for "X-Men Origins: Wolverine official" to find it. "Wolverine Movie" doesn't even bring up the web page on the first page...), I thought it was interesting that the web site doesn't even have an embed of the movie.  Instead, it encourages the visitors to visit Myspace to watch the trailer.

I think it is a great marketing strategy of MySpace.  They have obviously established themselves in the artsy/creative/media sectors of the Internet/Social Networks/Social Media.  To quote Anna (0r) Simon Johnson (?) of kikabink:

When it comes to things that are NOT life or death: speed trumps perfection.

Of course, they were talking about softwares but I believe this is also true in Social Media Marketing.  Thanks to social media, sharing is very easy, therefore if you are the first, you have the monopoly and the advantage the longest.  Despite Youtube being the largest and the first video reference on the web, MySpace will have the most viewed version of this trailer because it has been shared many times before Youtube got the version.  This effect is also exponential and Youtube is playing against the odd in this situation.  The more the MySpace trailer is shared and embeded on the internet, the harder it will be for Youtube to match MySpace's visibility.

I am aware that this is a simple trailer but it is important to understand that this is true for any campaign and once the campaign becomes bigger than the media, in this case Youtube vs MySpace, Youtube will have to wake up and understand that it cannot just sit back and expect to be the #1 video reference of the web by default.  I believe that Youtube Live establishes Youtube as an entertainment powerhouse in mind shares but Youtube must also execute web strategies to maintain it's position.  Vimeo and other video sharing/streaming websites are far behind Youtube and might never be able to overthrow the giant but MySpace is showing how it can be done if Youtube is not paying attention.  I believe this is good for social media competition because it will force Youtube to step and it makes sure that the giant cannot be lazy.

I give Myspace a thumbs up and I will keep my eyes open to see if MySpace will step up and become more aggressive.  I am curious to know if they have anything else under their sleeves.  Is this the beggining of a great rise for MySpace in becoming Hollywood's #1 social media outlet or is this a simple fluke?  I stumbled on the video because MySpace proposed it to me.   I hope it wasn't simply an advertising initiative from the motion picture's marketing team and if it was a fluke, I hope that MySpace wakes up and build on this great door that just opened to them.  I leave you with the trailer of the movie (which by the way, I am super psyched about, I really hope marvel develops a sub genre in Hollywood!)

09/01/09 UPDATE:

I removed the MySpace video because it loads automatically and really annoyed me.  I'm guessing it is also very annoying for anybody visiting this page.  I couldn't find a way to edit the code to not make it load automatically (if you know how, please tell me). So I replaced the video with a Youtube clip.  So much for a MySpace advantage huh?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer [True HD]

BURGER KING® WHOPPER® VIRGINS

Great piece of propaganda?

Builds up hype about what is better and never really revealed the results.  Use the documentary format but did not have a documentary structure.

Am I the only one who saw the same people voting multiple time?

Sways the audience towards how great the whopper is.  Where was the Big Mac outside of the taste test? When they were going in villages?

I have mixed feelings about this video... advertising genius or just crap?

Comments?  On a social media perspective, they allow embeds, downloads, share it on Facebook, Digg, Reddit or e-mail.  It's done pretty well... No official Youtube though.  

That is a major lack.  A quick Youtube search shows that their hype worked.  People upload the teaser and somebody uploaded the full video.  Appropriate it!  Now you have people discussing your video and you do not have that discussion in an environment you can control better ie: your own Youtube channel.

As for me, the video makes me hungry.  I am going to grab a quarter pounder at McDonald's now.

Social Media Marketing in the Music Industry.

Lately, I have been addicted to Jason Mraz' song "I'm Yours". I decided to "Youtube" the song's video clip and it hit me how social media is powerful and how under utilized it is.

Jason Mraz has a great thing going on right now, a lot of people are making covers of his song and posting the videos on Youtube. Why aren't the marketing team behind him utilize that, appropriate it and build on it?  It's FREE!!! It is also much more powerful than displaying print ads about the album.  People can actually experience the song.

A quick look at Jason Mraz' official website, show that they are aware that social media exist, they have a Youtube channel and I like their idea of the Polaroid book and their idea with the cell phones, Jason Mraz details in a photo, but that is barely a decent effort. They get a B for effort and A for creativity but come on. How did you have the great idea of using your public and engage them in participation by allowing them to display their (low quality) pictures on the screen but aggregate them so poorly?  A quick google search for these pictures doesn't show up in the first pages...

Let's focus on Youtube for this blog post.  The marketing team should embed all the best covers his fans are doing on Youtube and leave a text comments on the respective Youtube clips to thank the fans and let them know how great it is that they are doing covers then link to the jasonmraz.com media section of the website where all the clips can be aggregated, that will drive even more traffic to the websites.  This will create a much bigger following and will also strengthen the exposure of Jason Mraz.  The website is Jason's home on the Internet, it is a controlled environment where the marketing team can expose their best marketing messages.  Drive the traffic there! Bring them into your home.

Set up a contest! Encourage your audience to submit their best cover over Youtube, supply them with the instrumental. Ask visitors to vote for the best cover and have the winner win tickets to his next show with a VIP pass, an autographed CD whatever.  How many of these cover artists' friends do you think will go to the website and support their friends?  The bigger the exposure, the more chances these visitors will want to attend Jason's next show in town.  

Have Jason Mraz make one quick webcam clip to comment and thank all the covers out there and have them linked to the covers as a response to these youtube cover clips.  Chances are, these artists have a Myspace page.  Friend them up!

That's it for now, I will add more in another blog post.

Here are a few of these great Youtube Covers:

Notice the great annotations.  Unless the marketing team is behind it, you have free advertising.  The fan is a free postergirl and encouraging viewers to buy the album.  How great is that?  Capitalize on it!  The video has been viewed over a million times.  That is over a million hits that could of been driven to the controlled marketing environment web site.

Here is a list to all the covers of Jason Mraz - I'm Yours song on Youtube.  Anybody knows how I can embed a list of related videos from Youtube?

Tendances intéressantes des média sociaux au Québec (Google Trends)

Facebook : bleu, Myspace : rouge, Youtube : orange, LinkedIn: vert

Comme vous pouvez remarquer, d'après les recherches Google au Québec:

• Youtube et Facebook sont très populaire au Québec
• Myspace est en train de crever
• LinkedIn est mort
• Facebook est plus populaire en Anglais que Youtube et en francais c'est le contraire.
• Myspace semble être présent plus à Montréal, Trois-Rivières et Québec que dans les autres villes québecoises (presque nul).

Je n'ai pas les images mais d'après la même recherche, savez vous qu'au Rouyn-Noranda ses recherches sont plus populaire qu'à Montréal (Mtl est 3e derrière Hull)?

C'est intéressant de voir comment populaire sont les sites internet au monde, mais à l'échelle nationale/locale, c'est pas toujours la même histoire et en tant que Montréalais je trouve qu'il n'y a pas assez d'attention porté vers ce qui se passe sur le Web au Québec.

Je trouve aussi intéressant que Facebook était plus populaire que Youtube en Avril au Québec... je ne suis pas sur pourquoi. Est-ce que quelqu'un sait?

Suivez votre instinct - Youtube Interactif

Samsung a lancé un vidéo sur Youtube le 25 Juillet 2008 pour leur iPhone Killer : Instinct… et alors? Le vidéo est intéractif. Oui, oui, je suis le héros de ma propre histoire Youtube! Tout come les histoires dont vous êtes le héros, à la fin de chaque vidéo, vous avez le choix de faire X ou de « suivre votre instinct ».

Génial comme concept marketing, je suis épaté! Le coté production des vidéos est minable et le contenu est très « friandise » (aucune substance, mais agréable). Le vidéo est tourné style point de vue alors ça veux donner une impression de vivre l’histoire. J’ai choisis de « suivre mon instinct » (C’est ça que j’ai fait!) et j’ai eu la chance de «frencher» une belle fille et même de me retrouver avec deux beautés bisexuelles ou du moins, bicurieuse! Donc, comme vous pouvez voir, j’ai bien rigolé car c’était un vidéo dans l’univers d’une pub de bières.

Vous pouvez construire votre propre histoire en commençant avec le premier vidéo.

Le concept de pouvoir cliquer dans un vidéo Youtube est nouveau pour moi mais pas pour Youtube, l’annotation Youtube existe depuis Juin 2008. Cette technologie est géniale et donne un grand pouvoir à la pub et au marketing. Imaginez le futur de la pub vidéo (je ne veux pas dire télé parce que je ne serais pas surpris si l’Internet remplacerait la télé dans quelques années. Le monde écoute déjà de moins en moins la télé).

Que pensez-vous du vidéo Youtube de Samsung pour l’Instinct?

Qu’est-ce que vous pensez du pouvoir de l’annotation Youtube pour le futur du Web, de la pub et le marketing? ou tout simplement de sont impact pour le Web 2.0?

"Alphonse Ha" SEO success!

Today is a great day! After typing my "Alphonse Ha" into google.ca, the top for results are to my Facebook Profile, my LinkedIn Profile, my Blog's July archive, and my post about Jaiku. I have 7 results in the first result page of Google after working on my SEO experiment for a week. If you noticed, I have not started blogging consistently before my July 2nd post. It is a shame that I don't remember when I started to inter link my profiles for SEO. I wonder if there is a history of my profile changes in blogspot?

In order to celebrate, I will not post my most popular video on the internet (who appears twice on the first google results page):

a.d.i.d.a.s.: all day i dream about shoes



Disclaimer: I am not aware that this post will contribute to my SEO success /sarcasm

What the "/$% is a Wiki????

Here is a great youtube video that I found that helped me understand what Wikis are and their use.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Created by Commoncraft, their slogan is: We use video and paper to make complex idea easy to understand.

"We made this video because wiki web sites are easy to use, but hard to describe. We hope to turn you on to a better way to plan a camping trip, or create the next Wikipedia. "