Indianapolis Video Management

We've talked about how to make your online marketing videos talk-worthy or prepare them to go viral (on a moderate scale). It's important to integrate stories into all of your content marketing - on your site and across social media channels where dialogue, interaction and sharing occur.

Here are five ways to create and use video stories online:

1. Determine trending topics. Relevancy is key. Leverage interest around hot topics with new, creative insights. Remember that your story has to be consistent with your brand and messages and allow this to enhance your other online and offline efforts.
2. Source stories from customers. Let others tell stories related to your product and brand. Create brand advocates and highlight the real-world impact of your product or service.
3. Incorporate a human-interest element into your videos. People are attracted to people like themselves. Be authentic and help your audience put themselves into the shoes of your customers.
4. Allow for interactions and additions. Using social media outlets as distribution channels allows your audience to interact with you and your brand. It provides the opportunity to post comments, share with friends and become personally invested. 
5. Enable easy sharing quickly and broadly. One of the major attractions of social media and online video marketing is the ability for users to share your content when and how they desire. Using a video player, such as the one included in the Backlight video management platform, that includes share features encourages and assists with the sharing of videos.

Want more tips on making video content compelling?  Contact me and we can discuss the process we use for developing a video strategy for clients, and how we do our story development process to ensure we produce engaging, compelling videos.

Cantaloupe's Backlight video management platform was designed to help marketers publish, distribute and measure the success of their videos across the web. It's continuing to evolve and will soon become an even more powerful solution for our clients. Enough with the fluffy salesy talk, though.

As your Video Success Manager, it's my responsibility to ensure you are getting the most out of your videos and the tools at your disposal. I wanted to touch on one often underutilized feature of Backlight: the ads.

Video ads are more than just a place for your advertisement to display. They are truly calls-to-action that you can place in your video player as you wish. Use ads to underscore a point, drive viewers to take a specific action ("Register for our webinar!") or lead them to additional information ("Learn more about our solution!").

This empowers you - the marketer and online video content manager - to create, update and place these calls-to-action when and where you want without having to make edits to the video itself - the message, placement, duration and destination webpage are completely within your control.

Below is a sample video. At the 5-second mark, you'll notice an ad pop up and hang out for 10 seconds, then fade away. Clicking on the ad pauses the video and directs the viewer to Cantaloupe.tv's 'Request a Demo' form. (Feel free to request a Backlight demo while you're there.)

As an added bonus, Backlight's analytics tracking allows you to report on how many viewers engaged with each ad. 

You have powerful tools and information at your fingertips - are you taking advantage? If you need help using any of the Backlight features or would simply like a demo to see what all the chatter is about, drop me a note or give me a call at 317.594.9999!

This short series touches on tips for optimizing your online videos for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Some of these are second nature, but it's always worth the reminder.

Always Provide an HTML Link
Some video management platforms, including Cantaloupe's Backlight software, allow you to place calls to action within your online video as you wish. This is a great opportunity to drive your viewer to take a specific action, such as 'register for the webinar' or 'get more information on our new product enhancements'.

Using such features in the video management system also allows you to change your calls to action on the fly, rather than re-engaging with your editor.

By adding an HTML link behind these calls to action, you will drive more traffic to and within your site. This is especially important to do if you are distributing your videos outside of your website. Search engines view these inbound links as a popularity contest. The more (quality) inbound links you have to your site, the more popular and credible the search engines believe your site to be.

Plus, you want to make sure your viewers find their way to you, right?

Marketpath's Content Management System and Video Management Software from Cantaloupe.tv provide users a more engaging experience.


Content management solution provider Marketpath, Inc. has just announced the addition of VideoHere to its SaaS web content management solution. This integration offers Marketpath users the ability to seamlessly utilize video in their web pages therefore providing highly relevant and engaging content. VideoHere allows users to point-and-click to upload, customize, embed, and track videos in their web pages. It is licensed from Cantaloupe.TV, LLC, an online video solutions company that provides an end-to-end solution for marketing with online video.

Directly from their Marketpath account, customers can easily manage a video library, add video to web pages, and track video metrics. Users can upload MP4, MOV, FLV, MPEG, WMV, and AVI videos to an online video library. Further, impressions, clicks, views, drop-offs, view times, and viral sharing can be measured so that marketers know how their videos perform.

“Adding video to web pages provides website visitors a more engaging experience and allows marketers to better meet their goals,” says Matt Zentz, CEO of Marketpath. “Studies show that 65% of viewers watch online video to completion, while less than 10% read a text-only site in its entirety. Keeping visitors glued to their content helps companies better deliver a message to their intended target.  VideoHere is a powerful tool to help ensure that our client’s audiences engage more deeply and longer on their websites.  And with Marketpath’s VideoHere integration, it is now just as easy to add video to your website as it has always been to add images and image galleries to landing pages.” 

Other added advantages of VideoHere are that an online marketer is able to enhance SEO efforts and also increase their social media footprint. VideoHere includes an out of the box tool that tags videos for search engines, and the video player includes features which allow the viewer to easily share videos with their network and post to social media outlets.

“Videos are delivered to viewers via well known and respected Content Delivery Networks, ensuring the best viewing experience possible,” says Stacy Billanti, Cantaloupe’s President. “Marketpath customers will now have an advantage over their competition by being able to effectively and easily use video in their websites. Further, they will have access to a video hosting library that is reliable and scalable to support large spikes in web traffic.” 

Strategy. Production. Publishing. Distribution. Measurement.

These five elements make up the Cantaloupe online video marketing life cycle. There's nothing magical in these five words. The magic lies in the execution of each within your overarching plan. From time to time, we'll focus on each of these and talk about how they impact one another as well as how they impact your goals and initiatives.

Today, I have a question for you: How do you know?

How do you know that your online videos are working? How do you know they are being watched (and watched to completion)? How do you know if your video - the one you poured your heart and soul into - is being shared with others? How do you know who is using your videos? How do you know if your calls-to-action are working for you? Perhaps I should ask if you feel it's important to have this information (if not, give me a call and I'll climb on my soap box).

Answer: Analytics. 

As you and your visitors navigate websites, data is being collected about your behavior. This is powerful information to a marketer who is now able to gauge whether and how effectively his message is being heard by the masses.

Just like with website navigation, analytics data can be captured that report online video viewing behaviors. Combine this information with open and click rates from your email marketing campaigns, you site analytics and your offline marketing data, and you have a wealth of information at your disposal. With this, you can make quality decisions to maximize your potential with clients and prospects. 

We'll talk later about making sense of the numbers and data your have at your fingertips and making the information from multiple sources work together. The first step, though, is collecting the information.

As you evaluate online video management solutions such as Cantaloupe's Backlight, ask yourself how you will know if the video or online marketing campaign is a success. Make sure the tools you are using to manage your online videos help arm you with information at the end of the day. 

If I look at it from another perspective altogether, I’d perhaps equate it to the fact that while I may not be an opera fan, I like the idea of living in a city that has an opera.  It’s about options. In other words, while I may not use a particular service, I like to know that it’s there. I can recognize its benefit without the need to use it, and it says something positive about the place, or site, I’m visiting. 

Is just having video on your site enough? In an upcoming post, we'll explore the best way to display your videos to optimize conversions and maximize user experience through online video management platforms.

A special thank you to Mark Robertson, online video marketing and search engine optimization (seo) specialist, for showcasing the power of video placement.

Video SEO: Phase 1 – The Basics

When spending time and money implementing a video SEO strategy, it’s important to implement techniques that will make the biggest difference first.  Start with the basics first: 

Submit a Video Sitemap to Google

Submitting a web video sitemap to Google is the best way to get your videos listed within Google search results.  Your videos will not only get listed within the video search results, but people can watch your video directly from Google. Now, with Google’s integrated search results, your video has a chance of showing up as a video result within the main Google search results.  Make sure to include all the basic metadata along with a video thumbnail location, player location, and “yes” for the allow_embed attribute within the player location row.  It’s also important to spend time setting targeted video titles, descriptions, and keywords within your video sitemap.

Traditional SEO Techniques Still Apply

Create descriptive, relevant video titles, descriptions, and keywords.  It’s best to have one place to manage video metadata so that you can easily update it as you continually optimize your videos for search.  Think about your target audience when setting your keywords and other metadata.  Take advantage of the description and keywords HTML meta tags on your video pages.
Just as with traditional SEO, links back to your content are also very important with video SEO. Link to your videos from your website, blogs, partner sites, forums, etc.

New Content is King

Posting new video content on a regular basis not only keeps your online audience engaged, but also affects how search engines index your videos.  Newly published videos show up much higher in video search results on Google.

“Contextualize” Your Videos

Embed your videos next to relevant HTML content.  Consider including video title, description, and keywords in close proximity to the video player embed code.  Since search engines cannot read video content yet, this contextual text content enables your video to be indexed properly.

Create a Descriptive, Unique URL for Each Video

Just like traditional SEO for web pages, you need to create a unique URL for each video.  This doesn’t mean a unique URL to the video file, but a unique URL to the HTML page where you embedded the video.  Also make sure to make the URL descriptive.  For example: http://www.cantaloupe.tv/videos/backlight-video-platform-overview-video.html

Stay tuned for more tips in my future Phase 2 posting, or, download our free video SEO white paper here. 

Leading Indiana news provider and video services and software provider combine to offer viewers dynamic video content

Cantaloupe.TV, LLC, has just announced a partnership with the leader in Indiana business news and video content, Inside INdiana Business, to provide an enhanced video experience for its online viewers. Cantaloupe.TV is an online video services and software company headquartered in Indianapolis, IN. The partnership allows Inside INdiana Business to provide leading edge video viewing capabilities through its website via Cantaloupe’s online video platform, Backlight.

“Cantaloupe offers an outstanding video management, hosting, and analytics platform for our viewers,” explains Gerry Dick, President of Grow Indiana Media Ventures, the parent company of Inside INdiana Business. “It is easy to integrate into our website and allows our viewers greater access to high quality videos. Our partnership with Cantaloupe will enhance our position as the Indiana leader in video content.” With Backlight, Cantaloupe offers a software platform that takes the guesswork out of online video, making it easier for media companies and businesses to manage their video library, incorporate video content in their online properties, and track its success.

Cantaloupe worked closely with another one of Inside INdiana Business’ partners, Bitwise Solutions, for the rollout of Backlight. “We recommended Cantaloupe’s Backlight product as a good fit to incorporate into the customized media website solution built by BitWise Solutions. Integrating the Backlight product into the website not only extends the video capabilities desired to benefit site visitors, but also allows Inside INdiana Business to continue making the updates themselves,” says Curt Franke, Vice President of Business Development for BitWise Solutions.

“Inside INdiana Business is a natural fit for our online video platform,” says Stacy Billanti, Cantaloupe’s president. “The user will be able to view and engage with videos easily, and Inside INdiana Business will be able to point-and-click to embed videos into the website, upload pre-roll advertising video, track video activity, as well as manage all of its online video content in a single library.”

Calls to action are an effective way to leverage your web video when your purpose extends beyond simply entertaining or branding alone. As you develop your web video strategy with your producer, remember to focus on the goals of the specific video and of your interactive marketing campaign as a whole.

Calls to action are just that - they prompt your viewer to take a specific action that - ideally - will lead them to buy your product, engage in your service or evangelize for your brand. Three simple ways to include calls to action are:

1. The web page content surrounding your video. Put the video in context and tell your visitors what you want them to do next. (Remember, though: people don't read. At best, they skim) 
2. Spoken within your video. Your "characters" should remind the viewer what to do - call our customer service reps; attend Tuesday's webinar; whatever. This is harder to change, so proper planning is important.
3. Embed visual calls to action within your video. Much like Cantaloupe does at the 17-second mark in this CantaSeries video, small, non-obtrusive calls to action can be overlaid on the video to engage your potential customers in a unique way. Plus, these can be changed with a click of the mouse, when using the right video management tools.

Don't make your visitors think about what to do next. Lead them where you want them to go with calls to action in and around your online videos.

Do we really need to talk about this one? Sadly, some of us do. (Not you, of course; some of your competitors need this reminder, though, so bear with me.)

Placing a video on your website is a fantastic way to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) results. We all get that. Just having a video on your site will help some, but there is more you can do in order to get the most bang for your buck. 

To get found by Google and other search engines and to get elevated to the top of the search results page, you must properly tag your videos. You can do this manually in the code of your web page or you can use tools, such as those provided in the Backlight online video management system, to optimize the video and embed code.

It doesn't matter how great your video or product or messaging is if you aren't found by your target market.  To learn more about enhancing your SEO results with video, click here to download our white paper "What everyone needs to know about about video SEO."

Delivra, one of the original email software and services providers, today announced that it has integrated Cantaloupe.tv's new VideoHere(TM) online video platform with its own email marketing platform, giving marketers an easy way to add and manage videos within their email marketing campaigns. This platform also closely tracks which members viewed the videos and for how long.

VideoHere joins other video solutions in Delivra's suite of email marketing solutions but at a price point that makes it affordable for every marketer, according to Neil Berman, president of Delivra. "VideoHere is the kind of plug and play video integration tool that our clients have been asking for. The affordable system -- starting at just $50 a month -- is easy to use, feature rich, and provides insight into the success of each video.

The integration with VideoHere enables Delivra's clients to insert videos into their email campaigns with one-click, without the need for programming. Marketers can link video play buttons to a pre-built landing page developed by VideoHere or a marketer's custom-built landing page. Marketers measure video performance with detailed tracking of video impressions, views, times completed, times shared, days viewed and drop off rate. The video player allows advanced sharing of videos via email, Twitter, Facebook and by embedded links on websites or blogs.

To learn more and to get started watch our short video.

About Delivra
Delivra offers permission-based email marketing software and personalized services at an attractive price. Delivra has clients nationwide of all sizes and in all major industries. Clients include Del Monte, American Legion, National Geographic, Butler University, US Rowing, Harris Connect and Samsung. Founded in 1999, Delivra is a privately held company headquartered in Indianapolis. For more information, visit www.delivra.com.
 

Last month I spoke at the Marketing Sherpa’s Email Summit.  It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed talking with folks in our booth and at my talk which was titled: “Demystifying the Use of Video in B2B Email Marketing.”  See this link for copies of the slides.   I thought I would share some of the most common questions I encountered when talking about online video at the conference so you all could see what is on marketers’ minds these days.

Top four questions that we received at the summit.

Question 1:
“Can I play video right within my email campaigns?”   Often asked this way too:   “Can I embed video directly in my emails?”
 
Answer:
What is the value here? The only answer I received when I asked folks "why?" they wanted to embed in the email was that it skipped a step (of having to go to a website and then click again to play). I challenged them to tell me why they wanted subscribers to stay in their email rather than going to their website which is usually where they want them to go. Also, with the auto-play feature, the video automatically starts playing when you click through to the website, so, we are really not skipping a step.

Also, you want to do all you can to ensure your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox don’t you?   Embedding video directly into your message greatly decreases the chances that your email will be delivered to your subscribers, as most email servers will block large embedded files or flag the message as SPAM.  Even if your email does get through to the subscriber, it is very likely that your video will not render properly in their email.  For more details, see Dusty Koekenberg’s blog post below dated January 13, 2010.
 
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Question 2:
“What length of video is best?”
 
Answer:
Two to three minutes. However, it is about relevancy. My "BMW minded" brother wouldn't watch 5 seconds of a 25 second video on quilting. But.. would watch a full 15 minute video on the new 7-series.
 
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Question 3:
“Do you just put a link in the email or some type of graphic?”
 
Answer:
Pictures are worth a thousand words.   Our video management product Backlight allows you to output a graphical representation of the video with a awesome looking play button... So, the end user feels like they are clicking the video itself.
 
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Question 4 :
“How often should you send out a video to your database?”
 
Answer:
Generally, once a month.  However it is an evolutionary process to find out what works for each company. If you juggle paying for the production and doing some video yourself (less professionally done vlogging for instance) then perhaps you can get away with a more frequent delivery. Also, the audience plays into this decision.  Younger folks are probably are OK with more frequency while CEO's are not.

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Send me an email at getjon@cantaloupe.tv with other video email questions you want answered, or, visit our website at www.cantaloupe.tv.  Also, stay tuned because we will release a White Paper on this topic soon!

Cantaloupe.TV today launched its new breakthrough video platform, VideoHere(TM) to web application providers at the Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Summit. VideoHere is a turnkey online video management system that providers can embed in any web application, uses no APIs, and requires no IT investment.

"VideoHere gives the end user their own online video management platform all within the web application they already use," says Stacy Billanti, President of Cantaloupe.TV, "and this is all done using scalable and reliable cloud-based technology." This product is particularly relevant for marketing applications including email marketing software providers, blogging software providers, and website content management systems, as their customers are demanding the ability to use video in their marketing communications to create more compelling online content. Further, web marketing application companies need to focus on their own platform development, and they don't have the expertise, time, nor development resources to effectively build and maintain online video capabilities.

VideoHere allows end users to point and click to upload, customize, embed video and play buttons, and track video viewership. Email service provider Net Atlantic, Inc. has just announced the addition of VideoHere to their suite of email marketing solutions. This integration offers Net Atlantic email marketing users the ability to seamlessly utilize video in their email campaigns. "Adding video to email campaigns will improve lead quality and increase conversions for our customers," says Bill Reich, President of Net Atlantic. "Studies show that video email campaigns increase click-through rates by 2 to 3 times, shortening the sales cycle and increasing revenues." "As video becomes pervasive across online channels, web application providers will need to offer video management capabilities seamlessly to customers," shares Stacy Billanti. "VideoHere offers a powerful extension to their existing suite of services, provides them with a competitive advantage, as well as allows them to generate incremental value from this new offering."

The Cantaloupe video team specializes in producing authentic web video stories for one-to-one marketing. Cantaloupe also provides online video management platforms, Backlight(TM) and VideoHere(TM), which are easy-to-use and powerful tools allowing marketers to integrate video into email marketing, websites, blogs, and social media.

Learn more about VideoHere

With video becoming a highly sought after internet currency, the questions around video and email are becoming more prevelant. How do I do it? What are best practices? Can I embed the video into my email directly?

Can you do it? Yes. Would I suggest it? No.

How would you even embed video in email?

HTML5 has added a <video> tag that allows advanced browsers to automatically recognize and play a video file without the use of a custom Flash, Quicktime, or WMV player resource. While there are some browsers that already support HTML5, email clients are another story!

Because email clients often use the HTML engines of browsers to render HTML emails there is an assumption that this video tag will allow you to embed your video directly into your emails allowing the enduser to view your video there. Think again! A study conducted by CampaignMonitor shows the real story.

In the image below you can take a look at the different email clients and which (1) actually allowed the different types of video files to be rendered:


I'm pretty sure that the number of red (X's) tells you right away to stay away from embedding video directly into email!

So how do you email your videos out?

There are three approaches to this that we have taken here at Cantaloupe. You can either embed a link to your video, a thumbnail from the video with a link included on the image, or an animated .gif that mimics the look of video in your email. With these methods the enduser would click on the image or link and would be directed back to your website where you have embedded your video.

There are multiple advantages to this approach. One, when the enduser is taken back to your website they are being surrounded by your brand and other call-to-actions. I realize that most email campaigns are heavily branded, but the amount of messaging and call-to-actions that can be included in an email do not equal that of your website.

Secondly, by bringing the enduser back to your website to view the video in your video content management system you are able to track the time of view and other interactions that the user may take on the video. If you are letting the user view the video directly in the email you would lose this tracking.

If you are not currently getting tracking on your video content find out how you can start using Cantaloupe's Backlight video management system.

What's the future?

I would say that in the next few years the ability to embed video directly into email will become more advanced, and once the email clients begin to allow this content to be rendered, there will quickly be solutions that allow you to track video within emails. Until then, your best bet is to use images and links.

At Cantaloupe.tv we feel that sharing is something that you learn at an early age. We also know that sharing is one of the easiest ways to get your message in front of hundreds of prospective clients in today's interwebs. To test this, we deployed some Cantaloupers to 'road trip it' to Friendship, IN. In the two part online video series below you will see just how amazing sharing can become when you actually try surviving from it. Honestly, Friendship Rd. leading to Friendship, IN isn't something we could actually write a script for...

With Cantaloupe's online video management system, Backlight,  we make sharing your online video content as much fun as it is to travel to Friendship, IN. I almost forgot, we make it easy for you to share those videos with your social media channels too...starting with email -- http://www.cantaloupe.tv/exacttarget/integration

It took less than a week for two of our videos from our video newsletter to rise to #2 and #3 in Google's video search for "Indianapolis video production"

Check it out for yourself.

I have to find out if our clients are having the same results or if they're even getting the full use out of Backlight and it's video SEO capabilities. As a video management system, it's such an easy tool to use and it's the perfect answer for so many internet marketers who are trying to figure out how to use video online.

("Backlight Tip" and "Clarian" are ours and the cool thing is if you click through to the actual video, it leads you to our blog)

I just want to congratulate Denise Meyer and team at Interactive Intelligence for successfully launching their first video playlist using Backlight. You can check it out for yourself here.

These are some very powerful videos and I'm glad our online video platform could embed them on their website. I'm not currently in the market for a call center software solution but I found myself watching this whole video all the way through. (Note how easy it was for me to grab Interactive Intelligence's video from their website and embed it in my blog using their online video player)





If you haven't heard, Backlight is Cantaloupe.tv's new online SaaS video management system that makes it easy to upload all your videos, convert them to web-ready formats, embed them on your website, and then analyze the online video tracking.

Check out our website to learn more about Backlight.

As a runner, I don't think I've ever seen a more inspirational advertising campaign than the New Balance LOVE/Hate. I think it has something to do with the subtlety of the inspiration and their ability to make tangible the psychology of running.

Instead of showing blood, sweat, and tears or flashing up words like "pride" and "toughness" and "win" they show runners going through the psychological hurdles we all go through, like the challenge of leaving the comfort of your bed to train, or the fact that the first mile alway seems like the hardest.

I caught one of these traditional video marketing pieces (ahem...tv commercials) and wanted to share it with a friend. I searched on Google. No luck. I did a Google video search. No luck. (well, I got some YouTube results but they were poor quality) I went to New Balance's website. Still nothing, but they did lead me to their Facebook page...

There they are!

New Balance has done a great job using their facebook page to distribute online video, but they could be doing a better job with video search engine optimization. At Cantaloupe, we think Facebook is a great way to get some extra eyeballs (we're starting to see quite a few leads for our own business come through our facebook page) but we're still more optimistic about the power of video search.

The key to both video search and distributing video on facebook, or any other social networking site, is having a tool that makes it quick and easy to convert video online, manage it, embed it, and distribute everywhere you market. If you haven't seen it yet, Backlight is a tool to help you do just that.

You'll notice a few changes in Backlight designed to make it easier to manage video tags & ads, and layout links & images.  You'll see that the "Library" and "Ads" links have been removed from the main navigation.  You'll find new "Manage Ads" and "Manage Tags" buttons at the top of the videos section as well as "Manage Links" and "Manage Images" buttons at the the top of the layouts section.

Updated navigation:




These new placements make it easier to understand that tags and ads are used for videos while links and images are only used when building layouts.

Buttons at the top of the video page:


Another nice feature is that you can create/edit links and images when in builder mode.  This allow you to make on-the-fly changes as you are building layouts.

New option to manage links in builder mode:


Feel free to let us know what you think about the new changes.