Upload Video Online

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.” 

It is estimated that Facebook.com has over 350 million users and over half of those are over 25.  Facebook is the 4th most trafficked website according to comScore, so the next question for your company is “why haven’t you posted your company’s videos to this free resource?”    If Facebook is part of your online marketing strategy, then you should post your online videos there.

When using Facebook for your organization, there are two different ways you can manage your web video.  You have to first either setup a Facebook Page or Group.  Pages seem to be a better solution for companies since they can handle longer conversations with end users.  You can learn more about Pages vs. Groups here.

You can either load the web video directly to your page or share a link with your fans.  This decision is usually made by considering  whether you want the people on Facebook leaving Facebook and going to your web page to view your video, or allowing them to watch it right there.   You also need to track and monetize the video with a link.

In the example below you can see how media consumption is displayed within Facebook. By looking at the green line you are able to see web video views per day on your Page. With this, you can easily correlate the day that a specific video was posted and then relate those video views to that video.

Keep in mind that by posting your videos on the Facebook page, it allows fans an easy way to share video with their friends by posting it on their wall feed, hence encouraging viral sharing.

You can also share your videos with those on Facebook by posting a link to your video rather than uploading the video to Facebook. The best way for sharing video links on Facebook is to use link tracking software such as bit.ly. Bit.ly takes your existing link, shrinks it into a smaller URL, and then provides analytics on clicks and source of clicks. One weakness of this approach is that if the viewer copies the URL to share with others, you will not be able to track all the source of views.   It also requires the viewer to leave Facebook so they may be more reticent to view the video.   Want to see more online marketing video posting examples?  Become a Fan of Cantaloupe on Facebook.

 

 

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.”

You remember the Whack A Mole game you played as a child, right? You took aim randomly at where you thought the mole might appear and thwack thwack thwack with the giant mallet in hopes of hitting the mark... 

Do you ever feel like that's what you're doing with your company's online marketing strategy? Are you tweeting, posting on Facebook, uploading your video to YouTube and working to compile the largest email distribution list in your industry in hopes that you might hit the right person when they pop up? 

There's no shame in admitting that you're a Whack A Mole Marketer online. Just STOP IT! Stop wasting time and energy trying to hit the target blindly. Just like in the game, you'll find that you're hitting an empty hole while your mole (er, prospect) passes near by.

As you create your online marketing strategy, and your web videos as part of that strategy, think about who your mole is, where he is and what the mallet (message) looks like. Take aim thoughtfully and hit him on the head.*

*Our crack legal team would like to remind you that Cantaloupe does not condone the hitting of prospects or rodents under any circumstances. Play nice.

Many video upload sites Backlight, Vimeo, and YouTube (if you are a partner) allow you to upload custom image for your web video thumbnail.  Below is the easiest way to make that happen.







1. Get a Mac
Most likely you are going to have to deal with some video marketing, and you are going to be dealing with lots of media content, especially web video. Your life would be a lot easier if you own a Mac...I promise. Alright, off the soapbox..


2. Get Quicktime Pro (Mac or PC)
It's powerful and cheap. You can download it for $30 and you now have the power to convert your media into almost any format you like (I'll leave those details to another blog) Most importantly, for this blog, you can export a high quality frame directly out of your web video. -->






3. Open the file in Quicktime Pro and choose your frame
Hopefully, your video source has provided you with a quality version of your web video.  Scrub through and choose which frame you would like to be your image.



4. Export to Pict
File>Export and choose Movie to Picture in the drop down menu. I use .png compression.


5. Change file to .jpg or .png
The default file extension is .pict, which probably won't be recognized by the uploader.  Change the file extension to .png or .jpg


6. You can use Preview to adjust the contrast, crop and size.
If you'd like to tweak the image, Photoshop would be the best.  Preview is a free app on OSX that can give you a few options.


7. Upload!
Go to the site's uploader and upload your image! 






Justin Gutwein

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

A recent study by TubeMogul shows that a large protion of online video views are being driven by blogs. TubeMogul is a service that allows you to upload your online videos and then distribute them to over two dozen video sharing sites such as YouTube, Yahoo, and Google with a single click. As much as email marketing and social media may seem to be the best distribution channels to share your videos for viral marketing, this study is begging to differ.

The key to this study is that you still need a video content management system that can allow you to output your videos into the necessary formats, allowing you to upload your videos to a solution such as TubeMogul.

With Cantaloupe's Backlight Saas video system you are able to download your online videos directly to your local machine in the necessary formats to not only upload them to a solution like TubeMogul, but other social media sites as well.

Many of the video content management systems available right now will provide upload conversion, but do not allow for download conversion. Because you are sometimes faced with the fact that your videos were produced by a second party this becomes and extreme monetary value for your company.

Once you are able to output your videos in the necessary video format you can then not only embed your videos into your blog, but you give others the opportunity to embed your videos into their blogs from not only Backlight but multiple video sharing sites.

The more accessible your videos are the more people are going to embed them causing a higher rate of engagement. For more information about Cantaloupe's Backlight video content management system click here.

Looking for a complete blogging software solution for your business? Check out Compendium Blogware for all your business blogging needs.

I have been recently introduced to a website that is taking the college campus tour to a whole new level. YOUniversityTV has brought the college campus tour to online video. With campus tours in all 50 states, universities and colleges are being given the chance to engage with more potential student prospects than ever.

This is the beauty of online video production and online video content management systems, like Cantaloupe's Backlight, becoming easier to use and more affordable.

With the economy in a slump, traveling to tour a college that is 6 states aways is probably out of the question for many soon-to-be college students. With the use of a little internet video marketing and a video content management system YOUniveristyTV is taking the travel out of the equation and bringing the campus tour into the comfort of your home. They have even taken it one step further and are now letting user generated videos to be uploaded to the website, meaning that they are getting free and relevant content that they are then able to distribute.

If you are wondering how your company or organization can utilize online video to help you engage a broader audience contact Cantaloupe or sign up for our Eloupe webinar - Engaging Your Audience the Cantaloupe Way.

You have video and you have social media channels. How in the world are you going to use it and measure it? Let's talk about the three current big social media channels Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Facebook

When using Facebook for your organization there are two different ways that you can handle video. You have to first either setup a Facebook Page or Group. Pages seem to be a better solution for companies because you are often times having longer conversations with your end user and Pages are setup for this. You can learn more about Pages vs. Groups here.

With your Facebook page you can either load the video directly to your page or share a link to your video with your fans. We'll get to how you can monetize the video with a link a little later.

This decision is usually made by looking at whether you want the people on Facebook leaving Facebook and going to your web page with your video or if you are comfortable with your branding on Facebook and allow them to watch it right there. In the example below Cantaloupe has decided to use Facebook as another channel aside from mass email and their website so they post their videos directly to their Facebook page. This allows fans and colleagues to share your video with others very easily. The example that we are going to show here is the laughter yoga video that Cantaloupe produced and you can see how Facebook returns information for video plays on your Facebook page.

 
In the example to the right you are looking at Video Views inside of Facebook's Insights. The first spike on the left was the interaction with the video the day that it was posted. There was a drop off in the next few days so what we did was go into our Facebook page and share the video with all of our fans directly, therefore not relying on them to see the video post in their news feed. This sends each person that is a fan of Cantaloupe a direct message to their Facebook inbox allowing them to watch the video. Over the next two days you can see the spike in video plays that this created for this video. With only about 50 fans on the Cantaloupe Facebook page you can see that there were double that amount of video views. This tells us that the video was shared to others outside of the Cantaloupe fan base which in turn means the video was exposed to folks that we were not having any type of conversation with. We like to upload our videos directly to our Facebook page because you can then see the interaction that is being made with the video just on Facebook.

The other way to share your videos with those on Facebook would be to post a link to your video directing the end user to the page that your video sits on. The best way for sharing video links on Facebook is to use link tracking software such as bit.ly. Bit.ly takes your existing link, shrinks it into a smaller URL, and then returns data around the number of clicks and where those clicks came from. One downfall here can be that if an end user clicks to the video and then copies the URL from the page they are on to share the video with a friend you are not going to be able to tell that the friends video view came form this campaign or post.

Become a Fan of Cantaloupe on Facebook.

Twitter

We all tweet, tweet now.

You have 140 characters and it has to be text. How in the world can you share your videos with your Twitter followers and be able to monetize it? Here's how.

You have your video placed on your website, so all you need to do is grab the direct URL to the video and shorten it with bit.ly. Once you have the shortened link all that is left to do is tweet your message with the link included. Below is an example of how you can measure the number of clicks on that link.

This graph is showing the number of clicks on a video link that was sent out via Twitter by Cantaloupe. The bar to the left is showing the number of clicks on the video link the first time that it was sent out. At the time Cantaloupe was pretty new to Twitter so 10 clicks was acceptable. As time went by and Cantaloupe started to gain more followers we decided that it might be a good idea to send the same link out again. The result is the taller bar to the right. Because there were new followers the number of views doubled from the previous post.

Ok, so they clicked the links but did they watch the video? The way to measure this is to log into your video content management system and check the number of views your video has prior to posting your link to Twitter and then checking those numbers a few times after posting the link. By comparing the change in video views and the number of clicks in bit.ly you can then begin to measure your success. The one good thing about Twitter is that most of the time the interaction is going to be immediate so the comparison between the clicks and video views becomes less of an assumption.

Follow Cantaloupe on Twitter @cantaloupe_tv.

YouTube

You have your video on your website, why would you need to post it to YouTube?

Simple. Numbers.

There are millions of video views on YouTube each month and when using a video content management system like Cantaloupe's Backlight, posting your video to YouTube can be done easily. By posting your video to YouTube you are giving access to millions of people that may have never even knew you existed. So, if they are on YouTube searching for a solution and your video comes up the conversation starts there. By setting up a YouTube channel you can store your videos in an orderly fashion as well as brand the channel with your companies branding and website URL allowing users to quickly engage with you.

The example for this again is the laughter yoga video that Cantaloupe produced. After getting the video up on our website and sent via mass email we posted the video to our YouTube channel. We were able to create some buzz among the laughter yoga world and even had a few laughter yoga websites embed or link directly to our video. The video helps them show what it is they do and allows us to get in front of new prospects.

In this image you can see that Cantaloupe has generated 210 views on this video from their YouTube video channel. You can also see the different websites that are linking to your video.

So, people are watching my video on YouTube but I want to know if we are getting conversions to our website from this. To solve this you would just need to use your website analytics and look at the referring sites to your website. You should be able to filter them down to the number of referrals there are from YouTube that you can then use for conversion rates.

Subscribe to Cantaloupe's YouTube Channel.

So we've covered the three current, big social media channels and how you can monetize your video content through these channels. I'm sure that there are more channels to come and there will be different ways to monetize your video through these channels, but for now why not get started with these?

Exposure leads to prospects that can in turn become customers. Internet video marketing is advancing quickly and the sooner that you can get your foot in the door and start building an online presence with your videos, the farther ahead you will be of your competition.

Learn more about how Backlight can help make your social media video monetization easier.

Follow Cantaloupe through Social Media:

Not only is Bluelock one of our clients, they are also a leader in "cloud computing," which at Cantaloupe we clearly get since our very own online video platform brings all kinds of cool things to the cloud like a video hosting service, video conversion online (many types including but not limited to mov conversion, mp4 conversion, flv conversion, mpeg conversion), video analytics, video uploading etc.

Well here is an example of how Bluelock has leveraged their videos to further their demonstration of expertise in the field of cloud computing. Using Backlight, they've embedded their videos into a community site specifically for networking around cloud computing.

What's really cool about this is that because the videos are embedded using Backlight, Bluelock maintains control over the messaging in the videos.

What do I mean? Check out the 56 second mark in the first video. Bluelock has inserted a video "ad" with a link back their website. This is the perfect way to convert otherwise casual viewers into potential customers.

There's no shortage of ways that Backlight can help you get more use and value out of your videos. Check out a demo today to see what Backlight can do for you.

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.

One of the problems with using YouTube as your online video platform for marketing your organization is that you give up control. You not only give up rights to the ownership of your content, but you also give up control of what's displayed around or with your content.

What do I mean?

Well let's take an example of where you upload your video to YouTube, someone finds it, actually watches it on YouTube's site. A prominent feature on the video page is the "Related Videos" section displayed to the right of the video.

Most of the time, these videos are harmless or even helpful, but every now and again you might get something you wish wasn't "related" to your video. We actually had a prospect who had this internet video show up next to his:


It gets even worse...

He used YouTube's free online video player to embed the video on his website and this video even showed up as a "related" video at the end.

Free online video hosting services and players like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc. are cheap and quick to implement for embedding single videos, but like most online tools created for individuals, they don't fit the needs of businesses and organizations.

For that you need an online video management tool like Backlight. Designed and developed with marketers in mind, it's perfectly suited for organizations who want to grow their businesses through the power of online video. Check out other ways that Backlight can make it easy to execute on your online video strategy.

In case you missed it, Cantaloupe sent another installment of its Cantaseries Video Magazine earlier this week. (Cantaseries is our ongoing web video marketing series where we feature an interesting, heartfelt, inspiring or just otherwise entertaining story. We use it to keep in touch with clients and other Cantaloupe fans.) 

This latest web video story was called "Laughter Yoga." I won't waste any time telling what that is, because the video itself is worth a million...laughs?. 

I have to say, it's a behemoth at over 7 minutes. Sounds crazy considering how often we preach shorter content for the internet, but more of the results on that in another post.

Basically, I wanted to share with you something else cool we saw yesterday. We sent "Laughter Yoga" out through our latest release of our online video management system Backlight 2.0.

One feature we've been very focused on is video search engine optimization. Our goal is for our clients to know that when they upload a video and embed it using our system, that they're taking advantage of the best practices in Video SEO.

Yesterday, we saw a small part of that in action with Laughter Yoga. It's a small confirmation, but if you go to Google's video search and type in "Cantaloupe Yoga" you get the following result: 



We're probably not going to convert a lot of people with the search term "Cantaloupe Yoga" but it's a start. Another cool thing is that our ads, or calls to actions" if you well, stay within the video (check out the 0:56 mark and the 5:35 mark) so if people find us there we can direct them what to do next.

This is all very exciting for us here at Cantaloupe. We're looking forward to bringing this online marketing practice to all current and future clients.

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.

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.  

Think about how nice it'd be to have a  web service software that allowed you to -

1. Show a video with your web cam and upload it to your website without help from developers
2. Create internet video landing pages
3. Rearrange your video magazines at the click of a button
4. Click one button and upload all your videos to YouTube and other internet video aggregators
5. Optimize all your videos for google video search and other internet video search engines
6. To store your website videos
7. To burn your website videos to a CD for use at tradeshows
8. To search your entire collection of videos so you can easily find the one with Brian the CEO talking about how his ski trip inspired the second generation product
9. Have more video analytics than you know what to do with

That list is alright, I have a ton more things I'd like to see in an online video software. I haven't even shared my best, but what would you like to see?

Update 7/28/08: A reader's comment (and thanks for commenting by the way) prompted me to clarify this post. The web service portion of Cantaloupe's product does some of these things (tracking and storing videos for instance) and we're currently gathering feedback for future developments. We'd love to hear from you.

Let's say you're looking at incorporating internet video into your online marketing mix, (In which case, I would like to say good for you, you're clearly ahead of the curve when it comes to thinking about the importance of your website). To do so, you're basically going to need four things:

1. Video production
This one is obvious. You can't have the online video without the video.

2. Video organization
This one might not be so obvious, but it's important to consider. The most effective online video strategies involve multiple videos, and at Cantaloupe, we recommend posting new videos to your website on an ongoing basis (it keeps the website fresh and gives people a reason to come back to see what's new). Over time, you're going to generate a lot of video content and the better it's organized, the easier it becomes to use videos in your sales process or in other places.

3. Video distribution
No, we're not talking about just uploading your video to YouTube. In fact, YouTube isn't even the first, second, or third place Cantaloupe recommends looking to distribute your video. With the majority of people turning to websites to learn about companies, the first place to distribute your video is on your website. The second place is a proactive component and it involves emailing your database each time you have a new video to remind them to check it out. The third is what I call referral distribution. It's pretty much a given these days that online content should be easy to share and pass around.   

4. Video tracking
So web video seems like a good idea, but how will you  even know if it is working? Like with everything else online, you need to be able to track your videos.

One of the many unique things about Cantaloupe is that all of these are part of every video magazine we produce. When you consider the alternative, which is trying to hire different parties for each of these steps or doing part of it yourself, it really saves you a lot of time and hassle to have everything in one place. And for us at Cantaloupe, we like knowing that you're fully armed with everything you need for a successful internet video experience.