Over the past two years, and more specifically the last six months, more and more companies are understanding the need to have online video on their website.  A good website should be a place where a person can come and get good solid information on a company, product, or service.  A great website will tell an engaging story around the brand that will pull the customer in and make him or her want to get more information. Great video content can take your site to the next level.

But what makes great video content?

What is good video?  Just like anything else subjective, that depends on the viewer.  However, with the constant arrival of high quality production/camera equipment for both professionals and consumers, creating a good quality production video is not nearly as difficult as it used to be.  From homemade videos and basic talking head videos to more professional e-commerce pieces and live action mixed with animation, online video has a wide array of uses.  Now, more than ever, producers and users of online video really need to focus more on the message itself and make sure that is engaging.

Here are some examples of great video content I've seen used - hopefully this will spawn some ideas for how you can leverage online video on your website:

• President Obama - Even using cameras installed on computers will work for the right message, as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign showed.  David Plouffe used a series of videos made in his office to keep Obama’s fans informed of what was going on in the campaign.  While being just a very basic, low production video, Plouffe used PPT slides to emphasize certain points and utilized the fact that the information itself was interesting to viewers to make a more engaging video. 

• TED – A great website with an incredible array of videos of speakers on a variety of subjects, this is a fantastic example of the most basic video production can still be engaging and entertaining as long as the subject matter is worthwhile.  Nothing more than a camera following a speaker around on stage (granted, some of the speakers are among the brightest people on Earth).

• E-commerce – plenty of companies are trying to use video as part of their e-commerce strategy to get users to buy their products.  Zappos has been leading the charge, creating not only their own youtube video but also asking consumers to create their own videos showing their experience with their shoes. Lots of great press and interest in this campaign has made for a very successful period for the company. Diesel has a great video on their site of video utilizing tagging and e-commerce within the video.  For companies who feel they can engage customers with their products while being worn/used by others, this is another great example. 

• Viral videos – Everyone wants to have the next viral video ant there are some great examples of thses – from the homemade laughing baby video that has been viewed 115MM times, to the now famous music video for OK Go on treadmills, there are plenty of ways for companies to engage with consumers. 

Many of the top brands have their own YouTube pages to let consumers immerse themselves in the brand experience.  As we all know, YouTube is now the second most used search engine in the world behind Google – so use it.  Create your own channel – post videos, link them to your Facebook page and tweet about them. See what happens.

Another great way to engage in viral is of course comedy.  One of my favorite sites for this is Return of Terry Tate - Terry is a former NFL player who both creates his own viral videos (professionally done) and is also often used as a spokesperson in viral videos for brands.  Check out his website  - and if you have budget and want to do something hilarious, think about him.  I have seen examples of both external and internal company videos featuring Terry.

So, companies hoping to use online video no longer have to worry about huge production budgets for these videos.  Of course, the better the video looks, the more likely it is to be shared.  But, as I mentioned before, if you can create a great story to tell, you don’t have to spend a million dollars to tell it.

Here are some other great online video sites that you may or may not have heard of:

• Funny Or Die - www.funnyordie.com
• DailyMotion - www.dailymotion.com
• MyDamnChannel - www.mydamnchannel.com
• NextNewNetworks - www.nextnewnetworks.com
• Heavy - www.heavy.com

These are some of my favorites. Please feel free to share some of your favorite sites with me as well - I'd love to check them out.

Now that I have been back in the office for a bit, I wanted to think back on SXSW Interactive and some of the high points for me.  Overall, it was a great experience and certainly came away with a lot of information that will help us serve our clients better. 

While all of the panels and presentations I attended were great, the following were exceptional:

Privacy

 Danah Boyd, one of the world’s foremost authorities on social media and youth marketing, gave a great presentation around privacy in the digital age.  Danah gave the opening remarks at SXSW discussing concerns around privacy when thinking about youth marketing, specifically how it relates to social media.  While we’ll have to wait for the actual video presentation to come out, here is a link to the text content, unedited: http://bit.ly/cZUG0q. I also found a great video interview from SXSW - http://bit.ly/cjJVlR - where she discusses some of the same issues. 

Sustainability

On Sunday the keynote speaker was Valerie Casey, founder and executive director of the designers Accord, a global non-profit coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working to create positive impact.  Referred to as a “Master of Design” by Fast Company and a “Guru You Should Know” by Forbes, she spoke on the interactive industry’s role in the sustainability movement and how, according to her, the interactive community had been absent from the conversation.  It may sound harsh, but it was a great call to action for our community as a whole.  Here is a link to a recent post on Fast Company about her presentation: http://bit.ly/bq5IWx.

 Convergence

Dan Shust was kind enough to post a Slideshare of his presentation on some new innovative ideas that may (or may not) happen over the next year (check it out here http://bit.ly/ck03Y4). This was a great overall series on trends in convergence, covering Internet TV, web semantics and other goodies. 

Will I Go Next Year? Yes.

All in all, SXSW Interactive was a fabulous conference with a lot of coverage on every topic imaginable. Of course, there is an infinite range of opportunities for great networking at dozens of events around Austin. I look forward to seeing you all next year (P.S. book your hotel room early).

As the social media world continues to expand rapidly, brands are still trying to figure out how to utilize it.  User-generated content, seeded marketing, and viral videos are only the beginning of social media. New technologies for access and interacting with social media are starting to emerge. One are that has been rising in popularity lately is Facebook Connect. The question is, how can marketers best use Facebook Connect to create more immersive brand experiences for consumers (and sell more)?

The best marketing is a conversation between you and your buyer, where getting customer interaction and feedback is the goal.  Few areas do a better job at providing this feedback loop as Facebook. A great tool for getting your brand message in front of consumers is Facebook Connect. 

For those of you not familiar with Facebook Connect, it is a powerful set of free APIs (programming interfaces) developers can use to enable users to bring their identity and connections anywhere on the Web – for example, to sign on to different websites without having to use separate usernames and passwords. Developers can access a user’s identity, social graph or activity stream – which can all be used to create more engaging experiences on your website.

How Are Organizations Using Facebook Connect?

There are a lot of great examples out there for how organizations are leveraging Facebook Connect. In general, Facebook Connect can be utilized as a way to get feedback from consumers on what they like to (and not like to do) in association with your brand. That is, what type of brand experiences they are most comfortable with? While some brands have a hard time hearing “dislikes” from consumers, it’s this process of interaction and feedback that helps true market leaders develop more powerful offerings.

Here are some recent examples of brands leveraging Facebook Connect in interesting ways:

• RedBull Connect – This site gives users access to information and articles from several Red Bull websites. This is a nice repository for everything related to red Bull without smacking users in the face with its advertising.  Consumers can comment, post, and interact with others without being forced to buy a Red Bull while, at the same time, red Bull always being part of the equation.

• Citysearch – The Facebook Connect portion of this is minimal; this is a good example of utilizing FB Connect to grab user information without implementing it for advertising.  The site personalizes your location when you connect with FB and automatically creates your personal profile and connects you with other Facebook friends on Citysearch - allowing you to share restaurant and other local recommendations via your Facebook feed.

• Pandora – Pandora uses less of a full-blown Facebook Connect microsite, and more of an application, but it is still a nice use of Facebook technology. The application can be used to share songs or a station with your Facebook friends.

Beware of the Doghouse  - I love this idea (the husband is in the doghouse with the wife, gets posted to Facebook, and needs to buy her a present to get back in her good graces).  JCPenny did a great job promoting it ). I like the opening video and way they get their message out. While interaction with the site is a bit confusing, and posting and viewing content is not as intuitive as it should be, it’s a very entertaining idea.  

Some other great examples from the entertainment industry include: “Watch Your Town Get Blown Up by Darth Vader” by Adidas and Discovery’s “Frenzied Waters” experience.

Facebook Connect is a great way to interact with your customers, but there are a few questions you should ask yourself before you go down this path. For starters, who are our customers and why are they likely to interact with your brands on Facebook? There’s no right or wrong answer here, but there should be some obvious reason why they would want to interact with your brand through Facebook.

Second, are you trying to entertain your customers, or are you just trying to get access to their information so you can send them stuff? You should seek first to entertain. This will make it much easier to get the access and data you’re looking for later.

Facebook Connect is a great way of interacting with your customer and getting access to user information to drill down on demographics.  The jury is still out on how it might translate directly to sales but if you’re looking to talk with your customers and they are on Facebook, this is a great way to do it.

How is your organization using Facebook Connect today? How could you be making it easier for consumers to interact with your brands, while providing you with better insight into your audiences? Facebook Connect could be a good place to start.  Contact Definition 6 Today!