Streaming Video Hosting

“I'm shaking all over. I was just interviewed for my company’s online marketing video, and my mind froze. I couldn't remember even simple concepts. I was stumbling all over myself. I had stage fright. It was an embarrassment.”

Public speaking and being recorded are common fears. Never mind that the videos produced for you by Cantaloupe are not live, will be edited to present your best possible image and messages and the interviews can be shot repeatedly to capture you at your best, this can still be a nerve-wracking process. Relax.  

Below are a few common questions that often help the characters (interviewees) during our video production shoots.

When will I receive the script? I’m not good at memorizing lines, by the way. Our authentic story telling format alleviates the need for scripts. Our producers will ask you questions in a conversational style. Talk from your heart and as if we are your client, friend or employee.

Which way to wardrobe and makeup? Again, think authentic. We want to see you how you are everyday. If you wear a suit and tie to work, wear a suit and tie to the video shoot. If you wear jeans and carry a hard hat, that’s how we want to see you.

What if I don’t know an answer or my mind freezes during the interview? Let the producer know that you are unsure, need to consult the notes you smuggled into the room with you or need a minute to regroup. Our goal is to make you and your company look good.  
You know your material – you live it everyday. Whether the video is for a new product launch, an internal message to key employees or an opportunity to showcase your company to new prospects through interactive marketing - your streaming video is about you. Take a deep breath and speak from your heart. You’ll look mahvuhlus!

If you have other questions, please ask your producer, project manager or client success manager anytime.

I think you do. And if I'm wrong, tell me in the comments section. I'll approve it.

The reason I ask is because eMarketer says "Most of their (B2B Marketers') targets—businesspeople—don’t have audio turned on in the office. Talking heads or voiceovers that no one hears are not very effective."

I wish they had evidence to support that most businesspeople don't have audio turned on, but I think they assume it's an unquestionable fact. Of course company-issued computers don't come with speakers or have audio that can be turned on. Why would they let you have such a distraction?

I don't have evidence to the contrary, but does anyone else find that hard to believe? I would expect most SMB's to not bother regulating audio, and even if most people thought it prudent to regulate themselves and turn off audio, they'd still have the option to turn it on to watch an online video.

SMB's make up a larger part of the market, but I even wonder how many large companies don't allow audio. Can anyone speak from experience?

In any case, the feature discussed in the article - online video subtitles - is actually quite useful, but I think more so for video search engine optimization (Video SEO) than for accomodating users without audio. (although the statistics they present about increase in average video completion rates are quite convincing)

We haven't yet added captions to Backlight, Cantaloupe.tv's own online video platform, but it's high on our list. We may preach about using streaming video instead of text on your website, but we can't deny that the two play together well.

There has been a lot of talk about Obama finally bringing the age of digital communications to the White House, whether it's the hoopla around his Blackberry, questions about who has access to his email address, or the addition of streaming video to his weekly public addresses.

It doesn't seem any of that is going to change; however, what is going to change is White House's video hosting service, video management system, and online video player.

According to this report, the White House will no longer be using YouTube for online video hosting. Instead, they've opted to go with a generic video player using Akamai as the content delivery network.

Why the switch? It seems no one knows for sure, but the prevailing speculation is that the White House was unhappy with YouTube's privacy policy, which left tracking cookies on viewers computers, even if they never played the video.

Here is Obama's weekly address in the new online video player (You need to click through. Their new video player doesn't embed well)

Hi, my name is Justin.  Here at Cantaloupe we care about blah blah blah blah blah blah.

That's about how far people pay attention when they hear that type of messaging.  It's old and tired as two dollar...car wash.  This is where web video can really be a powerful agent for you.

Break down the walls of your business.  Don't tell people who you are and what you do.  Let clients SEE you as people, and SEE what you do. 

One of my favorite video magazines to date is RJE Business Interior's.  They knew that they have a great staff and decided to show that firsthand to the world (wide web).  Check out their magazine here rjefurn.com. 

Internet marketing is all about the truth, and nothing is more truthful than a streaming video about a day in the life of your staff.

Justin Gutwein

With the launch of CloudFront earlier this week, Amazon continued its migration toward becoming a technology-focused company.  "Amazon is at its heart a technology company," said Andrew Jassey, senior vice president of Web services, during a talk at the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase. "We just happened to do retail first."  With its pay-as-you-go pricing strategy, Amazon's model sets it apart by eliminating up-front commitments and long-term contracts, which should appeal to smaller firms that specialize in interactive marketing and streaming video. 

While it is well positioned within the rapidly growing cloud computing market, Amazon's success and original focus center on the consumer retail segment, and my concerns lie in the strategic organizational shift outside its historically successful core competency.  CloudFront's customer base has grown quickly so these concerns appear misgiven but only time, and profits, will tell if the strategic shift is truly good for the company.

Now, I know instant messengers have been used by some marketers as a channel for reaching customers, but I only ever saw it used in a B2C environment, and then, only a couple times.

Why didn't it ever catch on in the B2B world as anything more than an internal communication tool? Why didn't we ask people for their IM name and put our own on our business cards like we do with email addresses?

What prompted this thought was Google's recent video feature addition to Gmail (Google adds voice and video chat to gmail)

I've used video chat internally with Apple's iChat, but Google's entry into this space spurred me to think about what relevance this live online streaming video feature has for B2B marketers. At Cantaloupe, the majority of our work is done in the space of website video firms. We're starting to see more and more branching out of where our clients want to distribute web video, but up to this point, the website has been the most popular place. Chat poses an interesting opportunity...

I know this will be a disappointment to all of you, but this post just contains questions not answers. I'm going to think a little more about this and post some more thoughts over the next couple days.

As anyone from Indiana can tell you, we're teeming with great universities in the Hoosier state. I won't begin to mention them for fear of leaving one out, but you'd be hard pressed to find another state with so many notable public and private institutions for higher education, each of them being known for their strength in a particular field.
One such school, Ball State University, has a communications program that's achieved much notoriety (and not just because late night tv show host David Letterman graduated from there).

At Cantaloupe.tv we're particularly interested in what they're doing with web video, a category within their emerging media studies. The latest is a series of student produced "webisodes" called "Evenly Odd."

"Webisode" refers to a type of online streaming video or if you prefer, online tv media, and as you probably guessed, it derives from combining "web" and "episode." (a naming technique I just found out that's referred to as a "portmanteau". Yes, despite my video ties I'm a geek for words)

Webisodes are essentially what we're creating when we create videos for online video magazines. The difference in the naming is that we liken our web video production to magazines, while "webisode" users prefer the tv metaphor.

It's great to see Ball State empower their students with skills for web video production, which will undoubtedly prove valuable in what is truly an emerging media. I wouldn't doubt that by the time these students have a foothold in their careers, online video production and online video will be the norm, and cable tv will be a relic of the past.

The answer is: enough that most marketers should be discouraged from using YouTube as their only means for distributing online video. If you market to business professionals and you're truly serious about your internet video marketing strategy then you have to find an online video platform other than YouTube for posting and distributing your video on the internet (might I suggest giving Cantaloupe.TV a look?)

DH Communications conducted a small, but intriguing survey on web video and the use of YouTube in the workplace. The sample size of the study is too small for me to feel completely confident in the figures (90 anonymous people), but it is the best fact based information I've found to date about the restricting of internet video use in the workplace.

Some of the key findings:

• Over 33% of companies restrict access to YouTube
• 90% of those companies that restrict access to YouTube DO NOT restrict access to streaming video on websites or blogs
• "Uses too much bandwidth" was the biggest reason for restricting access
• 63.3% do watch YouTube during work hours

I think it's also important to note that 75% of the respondents worked for small companies (less than 250 people), meaning it's not just huge corporations that are blocking their employees from YouTube.

If you are a B2B marketer this has to be the strongest argument for why you can't rely on only YouTube as your internet video player and distributor. Go ahead and put it out there if you have the time and inclination, but it should be an extra, not your whole strategy.

This blog post started out as a question, a plea for answers about communicating with text versus communicating with video. I may make a living off of selling streaming video, but as an avid reader I know video isn't always the best way to communicate your message.

But when is video the best, and when is text the better option?

I could give you my opinion, but I don't want opinions, I want facts. Surely someone has studied this? I've scoured the internet for a long time and turned up nothing until just now when I took one last ditch effort to find something to help me write this post. What did I find?....

Recall of Information Presented in Text vs. Multimedia Format a study by Eyetrack III

The experiment was simple. They presented the same news story in both text and multimedia (video) to different people and then gave them the same quiz to test what they recalled. Here are their findings:

• Overall, we found a slight, marginally significant difference in how test subjects correctly recalled story information that was presented in text vs. using multimedia. When asked to recall information about names and places, participants who received information in text were more likely to answer questions correctly.
• However, information about a process or procedure that was unfamiliar to them was more correctly recalled when participants received it in a multimedia graphic format.
• Users who received information in text form seemed to have better recall of specific factual information.
• There was no significant difference between men and women when it came to recall of information presented in text or multimedia format.

This study isn't the end all be all. In fact, I think it focuses on a very narrow purpose of communicating and we communicate for a lot of reasons. For one, it only focuses on journalistic storytelling, and two, it only measures the recall of information To that point, the report says:

"It also is important to remember that information recall probably is not your only goal. User satisfaction and overall understanding also are important to any good piece of journalism, and these aspects were not tested in this study."

Still more work to be done and there's probably a better book (or video?) out there that sums up the differences. If not, then perhaps it's time someone produces one.

What kind of expert in internet video marketing would I be if I didn't share with you that Google can now automatically generate text from the audio in your internet videos and make it searchable?

The truth is, I've been sitting on this information for a couple weeks now. I just haven't been sure what to make of it.

The benefits are obvious. Search engines still rely nearly 100% on text to create relevant search results. Up until now, optimizing web video for search meant including the right text with the video. The obvious next step was finding a way to use speech recognition technology to convert the audio content that is already there to searchable text. The next step after that is making the image content searchable. (Which is well on its way. Here's an article)

What's been holding me back from talking more about this is I don't know what Google plans to do with this technology. Right now, your streaming video is only audio searchable if you upload it to YouTube (and actually, for the time being they're still testing the technology only on political videos).

YouTube is an amazing tool and has pioneered the online video industry, but it isn't always the best answer when marketing online with video. For one, the video quality output is too poor to use to put video on websites. And while YouTube does offer some video analytics, it's not as robust or as useful to business marketers as it needs to be or as you see with other video platforms.

At this point using YouTube for video marketing is a little like using hotmail for email marketing.

But at the end of the day, Google Audio Indexing (aka GAudi) is a monumental advancement for not just video marketing, but for search engine marketing as well. Everyone interested in either area should take 5 minutes and check out GAudi's FAQ page.

Any rational, data driven marketer will wonder at some point in their career if there is any data to support the best day and time to send out an email.

The answer is yes there is. The bad news is, if it's generally available to everybody, then its practically useless to you.

A recent article in a SubscriberMail newsletter highlights the problem:

"...vacation days, summer hours and busy weekend schedules tend to put a dent in the performance of emails sent on Friday through Monday. However, this knowledge has scared many email marketers completely away from mailing on non-peak days, leading to three days of crowded inboxes around the world during the middle of each week."

They also point out that the biggest obstacle to getting your email read isn't picking the right day or time, but giving the most relevant, desired content.

With that in mind, are you doing anything to differentiate your email marketing? Have you thought about adding online video to the mix to see if streaming video is a more desired medium for consuming your content?

It's amazing to me how the many years of being taught how to watch TV when the networks wanted me to has been so quickly defused by the new age and ease of online video. 

My mind never sleeps when it comes to thinking about the the value of internet video marketing and it's place in the countless online marketing tools today's marketers have available to them.

Whether you consider blogs, email marketing, SEO, online advertising, streaming video, social networks, or even Twitter just to name a few, marketers have innumerable options - and that's just online.

So when one takes a step back and really considers why he/she should use video marketing, he/she has to ask, what can video do for me online that nothing else can?

Rather than embark on a tiresome bullet point list, I'm just going to give you one today.

Video finally brings the notion of "our people are our product" to the internet age.

What do I mean? Well it's as simple as thinking about buying clothing online. Would you ever consider buying a pair of shoes online without first seeing a picture of them?

Of course not and online retailers like Zappos.com know this, which is why they offer not only one picture, but at least 8 different views, including a bottom side view.

Let's say you're firm is a consultancy, or a law firm, or an agency, or any other service firm where the primary thing being sold is the knowledge, helpfulness, and skills of people. Then, what would it mean to show the bottom side view of your product?

I can promise you one thing. It'd be difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate all views of your people-based product with just pictures. Unlike shoes, people have expressions, they have tone of voice, and they have gestures. All of these are critical attributes about your product.

So if you say people are your product, have you brought your product to the internet age with streaming video on your website?

With the seemingly endless buzz around the iPhone, online marketers can't avoid the pressure of pausing and considering how this affects their strategies.

• What's it mean if people are reading my email on their cellphone instead of their inbox? Can they still respond to my call to action? Can they even read what I've sent? Do I still get accurate tracking?
• What about my banner ad?
• Does my attempt at interactive marketing fall flat on a 2.5 inch screen?

For Cantaloupe especially, streaming video on the iPhone has been a big challenge and one a lot of our clients have questions about. Right now, the iPhone doesn't play Flash (which makes one wonder what YouTube is doing), but it does play QuickTime.

The challenge is, QuickTime files are 100 times the size of a flash file.

But is the sky falling? Is noone watching our video marketing because they're only browsing the internet on their iPhones and Blackberries?

That's not the case. At least not yet.

What prompted me to even think about this was a blog post over at Chacha. Chacha is a human powered search engine you utilize by texting a question from your mobile phone. People often ask them, if people have the internet on their phone, why would they use Chacha? Brad Bostic, a co-founder of Chacha, responds:

The reality is that much less than one percent of mobile phones in the US are iPhones. The fact is that more than 90% of the more than 250 million handsets in the US are not only not iPhones - They are not even smart phones at all.

So the takeaway - while mobile computing is becoming increasingly important, your internet video marketing doesn't need to be optimized on the iPhone today. Unless your target market is exclusively iPhone users.

Internet video marketing: yes, it’s new (or somewhat new) still and yes it's gaining traction.  But is that traction justified?  Are all these marketers just buying into a new trend or does online video actually work?  Well, Video Ad Benchmark research from Double Click, a leader in digital marketing technology, proves that it does work.  While many advertisers and marketers toy with the idea of using online video advertising, others are actually taking action and reaping the benefits. 

Video ads don’t only beat out image format ads - they smash them.  Videos have a much higher click rate (meaning people click on the video to watch it) than image ads.  When I say much higher, I mean that video ads are clicked on five times as often as image ads. 

Actual click-thru rates (CTR) for video ads are anywhere from .4% to .7% whereas GIF and JPEG ads only average about .1% CTR. That’s a difference that can make a huge difference in your bottom line.

Now let’s turn to actual interaction rates.  8% of video ads generate interaction from viewers.  And on average, video ads plays at least 2/3^rd’s the way through – that means you’re getting a pretty decent amount of face time with your viewers via streaming video.

What does this have to do with Cantaloupe TV?  Well, even though we don’t necessary regard our videos as “ads,” but more as stories, these high rates of viewership and interaction show that even blatant video advertising is being consumed.  It also shows that video is more engaging and interactive than normal text and image layouts.  You make the connections, but I think this research is simply reiterating what we’re been saying:  online video works.

According to Lehman Brothers' Internet Databook for August, online video advertising is projected to grow 63% this year making it the hottest sector in online ad spending. That's quite a jump. I haven't seen exact numbers on what's fueling it, my best guesses would be:

• Increase in tv media online. A great example is the website for the Beijing Olympic games and the prominent placement of live streaming video and videos of previous events
• Continued growth of high-speed, broadband connections among households
• A greater acceptance of internet video as a marketing channel

What this number doesn't include as far as I can tell is the growth of online video marketing, that is, the people using video to market their companies outside of advertising.

It would be interesting to see what the growth number is there...

News is the most popular genre of web video according to a study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project.  So, if they’ve figured out how to work the online video viewing arena, why not look at what they’re doing right?

An article released by USC’s Online Journalism Review outlines what works for online news video. 

Visual stories are the most viral.  The more actual action coverage and footage, the better.  When you’re making an online video story, focus on the actual footage of what’s going on and then weave in the messages.  Capturing captivating footage can be the deciding factor between whether or not viewers pass along the video.  Tell your story through actions, not just words - then maybe you'll reap the benefits of viral marketing.

Exclusive, in-depth coverage bodes well.  In your video story, include the interview with the cancer victim that your organization saved or the wife of the CEO who can tell you just how passionate the CEO really is about his work.  It will have a much greater impact.

Breaking news vs. breaking analysis.  Online news video is best when they are able to analyze what happened after the news broke, not when it broke.  Streaming video can air hours after the coverage broke on TV, giving them the advantage of going in to greater analysis of what happened and putting the right people with specific knowledge on camera.  This is how video stories should be shot as well.  Show the actions, analyze the story, and weave in the right messages from the right people.

Short content works best on the web.   Cantaloupe TV has been saying that all along.  Most videos should be 2-3 minutes long.

Pull your audience in.  Let your audience rate, comment and share your videos.  They’ll feel more connected to your story.  This is interactive marketing at its best.

 

 

This is actually the title of a section from "The McKinsey Way" a book that delivers insight into how things are done at world's top strategic consulting firm. The point of the statement is that McKinsey doesn't sell. It doesn't make cold calls. It doesn't knock on doors. It doesn't pound the pavement, yet it's the "top" strategic consulting firm.

How then, does McKinsey get new projects? In the words of the book, it markets. It markets by sending its own quarterly academic business journal to all of its clients. It markets through networking whether it's being on non-profit boards or attending conferences. This passage in essence, sums up the way McKinsey sells:

"But sometimes the right way to sell your product or services is not to barge into your customer's home with a bunch of free samples. Just be there, at the right time, and make sure the right people know who you are."

This too, is the essence of online video magazines. It's about using video on websites to have an ongoing conversation. It's about authentic storytelling that peppers in the marketing message in a subtle fashion, masked behind an engaging and entertaining streaming video. It's about looking like the expert (re: McKinsey's quarterly business journal) rather than forcing your sales pitch down someone's throat.

"Just be there, at the right time, and make sure the right people know who you are."

With the increased ease in uploading and creating streaming video content for the Internet, its no surprise that regular (text) blogging has sparked an interest in video blogging (a.k.a. vlogging).  Talk about getting personal, right?

No longer are bloggers using their writing to create a relationship with their followers.  They are sitting down in front of a camera and talking, telling their true feelings.  Now followers can really get to know this person and understand their thoughts and feelings.  Honestly, if the vlogger puts up a video every day, their visitors get to see them more than some of their extended family and probably many of their actual friends.  This is Internet relationship building at its best.  What is your company doing to build relationships over the web? 

Cantaloupe TV doesn’t do video blogs – but what we do is very similar.  Our Video Magazines give our clients the ability to build relationships online with their database.  Our clients don’t do a video every day or every other day, but they do them monthly or bi-weekly and it’s their own personal way of telling their stories and passions in a professional, authentic way.  Our goal is to put our clients in front of their database and to bring about an emotional connection.  Relationships have always been a huge part of the sales puzzle so it only makes sense to have a marketing plan that addresses it.  

This article says what I've been trying to say all along, that the reason your website is so important is because it's your chance to deliver your best presentation.

And the reason video magazines are a great tool is because they allow you to deliver your best presentation again and again. That means the presentation not only conveys accurate information, but that it moves, it entertains, it intrigues, it motivates - or in the words of Seth Godin, it Sings it!

If you're just talking about your website as your best sales person though, you could still argue that there's something impersonal about selling via the web. I know for most of us, selling is a personal relationship activity, especially in the B2B world.

What's great about streaming video is that you can put your best sales person on your website. Or even better, each sales person can put her or his best sales presentation on your website. How great would it be to set up a sales call with a web video? One that puts the prospect at ease and starts building trust and comfort before you ever actually meet them?

How does this work? Here's a test, watch this video and see if you don't start to feel like you're familiar with Jon DiGregory even though you've never met him. (Hard to believe this video is only two years old...)