I forgot that I had one more SES San Jose video interview in my arsenal, so here it is for your viewing pleasure! (See SES, I’m like a gift that keeps on giving.) I caught up with Jonah Stein, goliath blogger and SEO from It’s the ROI, to chat about the prevalence and impact of spam in social media, the notion of “black hat” social media and SEO, and to unveil a new term called “white knight SEO,” which “aims to protect users from scams by dominating organic search results with consumer protection information.”
Jonah Stein Discusses Social Media Spam and Coins “White Knight SEO” from 10e20 on Vimeo.
What do you guys think about social media spam? Is it becoming more of a problem as social media becomes more prevalent? Also, is there a need for “white knight SEO” or do you think for the most part that the engines are doing a pretty solid job of weeding out spam and shady listings on their own accord?
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I sat down with the (now bald) face of Google, Matt Cutts, to revisit the widgetbait madness of 2008 and see if anything’s changed in how Google’s been handling widgets. Surprisingly, Matt says that the use of widgets to build links and distribute content has died down considerably, probably because Google has adopted a pretty straightforward stance of what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to creating widgets.
Watch the video below:
Matt Cutts Talks About Widgetbait Guidelines from 10e20 on Vimeo.
I was surprised to hear that, as a whole, social media is pretty straightforward when it comes to building links and doesn’t seem to give Google too much of a headache. It makes sense when you think about it — social media is user-powered and Google always emphasizes that you should provide a positive and solid user experience. If your users are sharing your content social and linking to you via social media, that’s pretty much as editorial as it gets, right?
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Video Interview: Topher Kohan and the Shift from Print to Digital Media
Aug 21, 2009 by Rebecca Kelley | VideoLast week at SES San Jose I caught up with Topher Kohan, search engine optimizer for CNN, and interviewed him about the shift from print to digital media. He had some interesting things to say and is a big advocate of newspapers altering their business model and converting to an entirely digital publication platform. Topher feels that holding a hard copy of a newspaper is a good nostalgia trip but that everyday news will, for the most part, continue to be digested by users and readers from the Internet and other digital means.
The Shift from Print to Digital Media from 10e20 LLC on Vimeo.
What do you guys think? Should all print news publications throw in the towel and start offering up all their information digitally, save for the occasional commemorative publication when something monumentally newsworthy and historical occurs? How, in your opinion, can print publications have the best of both worlds and continue to operate successfully in both print and digital worlds? Drop your comments below, or tweet at us (@10e20)!
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YouTube Insight: Embedded Player Discovery
Aug 19, 2009 by Jake Matthews | Analytics, Social Networks, VideoVideo continues to be a powerful medium to work with online. YouTube recently eclipsed Yahoo as the 2nd largest search engine. Participating in video for the purpose of promoting your business is becoming more important each day. Whether it’s increasing brand exposure or simply getting across a “how-to” to your customer base, video communicates your message in a unique and lasting way.
In a post about video optimization and analytics last year, we discussed ways to gain more exposure for your videos and find ways to measure the successes of your efforts with YouTube Insight. Here we’d like to dig a big deeper to show that within YouTube Insight you can find where your videos are embedded on other websites, and it’s these websites that present further opportunity for marketing your business and content.
Knowing where your videos have been embedded provides the opportunity to find new, targeted communities and then possibly join or work in those communities where people have adopted your content. This is basically following the lead of your fans, a true “go with the flow” organic approach.
How do we do find where our videos are embedded?
In YouTube Insight go to > Discovery > Source of Views > Embedded Player
….and then you’ll be able to view the sites where your video has been embedded.
Oftentimes there will be video sharing websites that have picked up your content, but from time to time you find niche sites and communities that have picked up your video content as well. Click on those links and you’ll find pretty targeted sites/communities where your content may resonate well in the future and where it may be worth joining to discuss content and share yours in the future.
It’s important to note that sometimes YouTube Insight shows websites where your video may not necessarily be embedded, but where your video received exposure through the “related videos” feature of another embedded video. Additionally, Insight does not show the actual URL where your video may have been embedded; it only shows the domain name. Nonetheless, the Embedded Player feature in Insight will provide you with leads on targeted websites.
With the above example of a video about a BMW car, we were able to discover the following new websites:
- E90post.com,
- bmwfans.net,
- bmwtuner.net,
- e30club.ru
These are very targeted websites covering the area of BMW cars and for BMW enthusiasts to gather. Prior to working with YouTube Insight, we did not know of these four targeted websites nor did we know that the users would potentially be interested in this video content. Now there is an opportunity to “follow the lead” of your content.
There is a lot you can do once you know the websites and communities where your content is shared and adopted. Here are a couple of proactive examples:
- Find the page where your video is embedded and promote and tag that page in other social sites or link to it from a blog to increase exposure. Try using [site: domainname.com keyword] searches, which can help you locate your video since Insight only shows the domain and not the actual page where your video is.
- Join the new found website and be transparent about who you are (representing your brand) and become a contributing, helpful and friendly community member so that more users within that community will begin to look back at your site or YouTube account for more video embed opportunities.
- Reach out to the user who posted the original embed and offer them an opportunity at exclusive video looks in the future, where they may access your content before others to share first. By befriending and empowering this user, you can begin to build real advocates for your video content.
There are many great software packages and websites to track your social and video campaigns and where your video has been picked up and embedded. However, if you are running a small, targeted video campaign and you’re focused solely on YouTube as a channel, sometimes finding successes and other “rooms” to build awareness and impressions is as easy as digging through your YouTube Insights panel and checking out the “Embedded Player” feature in Discovery. It can lead to a lot of great relationships and more exposure for your content.
Here’s a brief video recap of what’s discussed above 
Using Video Annotations to Raise Awareness and Website Traffic
Nov 17, 2008 by Jake Matthews | Video
One of the easiest ways to raise the visibility of your site with video on YouTube is to use video “annotations”. Annotations are short textual notes that you can post in the video player and publish to your videos. And while annotations don’t yet allow you to link OUT of YouTube, they do allow you type in a URL in text form without linking, which is 1 step in the right direction to tying your great video content back to your site/brand name.
There are currently 3 useful types of annotations:
- notes
- speech bubbles
- spotlights
What do annotations and speech bubbles look like? This video has a brief example of both.
Why are annotations useful?
- Write in your domain name or
- Write in further information about your brand or products.
- Write in addresses, locations, names.
- If you close sales over the phone, write in a PHONE NUMBER.
- Expand the commentary on the content that’s in the video.
- While you cannot link outside of YouTube, you can raise visibility to other video searches and pages within YouTube.
- Make specific statements at specific times within the videos.
- If the reality of what was filmed in your video is ever changed, revised, or disputed, EDIT the video to and make annotations to improve the accuracy of what the video portrays.
- Link to other areas of YouTube to show other content – cross promote your products, services and content on the site.
- Think about how often good YouTube videos get embedded on blogs and other sites. This is an opportunity to have a full on endorsement and make your statement elsewhere, right in the video content.
We’ve seen annotations cause a rise in traffic for websites, both in specific domain name and URL type-ins and in “BRAND NAME” searches, causing them to rise on Google and other search engines.
Annotations can be found under your video editing options. They are really EASY to work with.
Incidentally, YouTube is also offering closed captions and subtitles which can come in handy for hearing impaired viewers and for multiple language situations. These too can be really useful tools for your videos.
Annotations give you a lot more flexibility within your videos to raise awareness of your site, products, services and brand. Right now they are free to use, so why not use them on your video content?
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Video Optimization and Analytics: A closer look at YouTube Insight
Jul 15, 2008 by Jake Matthews | Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Video
Have you ever wondered how videos show up in web search engine results? How do videos get hundreds of thousands to millions of views on YouTube? Who’s watching my videos? Well, with a little hard work on optimizing and networking your video content and a helpful tool called YouTube Insight, you can be on your way to working with video and optimizing it for real business results.
YouTube Insight is a handy analytics tool that displays statistics for YouTube Videos. By using Insight you’ll discover statistics such as:
- how many views your video has over specific periods of time,
- the demographic and geographic breakouts of the views and
- how people are finding the video content (web search, YouTube search, embed, etc…)
Though Insight’s data is not always 100% accurate (YouTube states this when you are working with it) and can use some further development in features and functionality, it’s a great start to gaining “insight” to this ever so important media.
YouTube released the tool in March of 2008 and there was a certain amount of mention of the release, but it warrants a closer look. YouTube’s blog post about the release mentioned:
“Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time.”
This tool along with a couple of pointers on optimizing your videos can really supercharge your YouTube videos.
Get started with Video Optimization:
Uploading and promoting video content can drive bottom line business results. Increased site traffic and brand impressions can be achieved from YouTube and other video websites. Video results are showing up in Google and other search engine results more and more as Universal search results are served on various queries. The more you leverage YouTube and it’s Insight program, the more key market research and data feedback can be derived. The more you optimize your video, the better results and more data input you’ll see. So how does one get started?
Open and Optimize your YouTube Account/Channel
Start by setting up a YouTube account. You’ll simply need to enter name, email, password, postal code/location, date of birth and gender. These last three datapoints are key inputs to YouTube Insight. Keep these simple tips in mind:
Account Name: Make it the name of your company or get it as close as possible to your domain name. For example, if the name of your company is Network Systems International, Inc., name the account something like NetworkSystems and you’ll end up with nice YouTube URL like www.youtube.com/user/networksystems.
Profile Information: Fill out as much of your profile information as is possible. You may even get into hobbies and interests. You may include in the profile information (in hobbies and interests) some keyword rich descriptors such as your company mission statement or core competencies. Most importantly, include a link back to your website in the website field. Viewers who are intrigued by your videos will explore further and click over to your website to see what you have available there. Suddenly you’re developing new traffic to your site!
Upload video content: A YouTube account and campaign is only going to be as successful as the input of the video content and how well optimized and networked the content is. If your videos are junk and you don’t spend time promoting them, chances are they are not going to be that popular, nor will you receive a lot of views which will in turn make your Insight data sample much smaller and not as useful for marketing insights. To maximize views on your videos, start with good content, but also optimize and network your videos. A couple of tips on optimizing video:
- Optimize the Video File name. For example if the video is saved on your hard drive as VideoXYZ123, rename your video to something descriptive and keyword rich. So for example if the video is say a “how to video†about “How to fix a flat tireâ€, make sure you name the file something along those lines, like “how to fix flat car tire car repair†This will maximize the changes that your video will be picked up by search engine spiders. More and more, Google and other search engines will include the file name in the algorithms when ranking content. So your video vs another “how to†video (that is named with something generic rather than keyword rich) may perform better and get better search traffic.
- Optimize the Title of your Video – Every video will have a title on YouTube, so use keywords that you’d want this video to be found for in search.
- Optimize your tags. When setting uploading video be sure to fill out the tags line with very descriptive keywords of your video content. Think like your target audience to capture more searches, separate keywords and mash them together – use different combinations and try various spellings. Tags are important as this will help you video to be displayed more often next to other videos with similar content and increase your views/exposure within YouTube itself.
- Identify your video with your brand. It is important to identify SOME of your video content with your brand by using logos or graphics- you may overlay your company name or domain name in your video. In some cases, this can be done in obnoxious ways, so don’t let it “obstruct” the message or usefulness of the video. You may also want to provide a certain amount of video content that has no brand labels in it, to let it live and breathe in the raw.
- Network your profile and your video – Keyword search for similar content on YouTube and interact with those that have uploaded it and commented on it. How do you interact?
- Post Video Responses. Maximize your traffic through comments. Instead of commenting in text all the time, POST A VIDEO RESPONSE. A video response allows you to post your video in the comments section of other users video comments section. This will draw a targeted, direct view of your video by someone who viewed related content. Try posting your video response to the most popular videos (with 10’s or even hundreds of thousands of views) on YouTube in your content area ; chances are you’ll get more exposure from those popular comment sections.
- Comment on other similar videos and then invite / add the person who uploaded that video to be your friend. Also, if there are other viewers who commented “awesomeâ€, go see their page to see if they have uploaded similar content as your subject area. If they have, perhaps they too would be interested in your content and you can add them as a friend as well. If anyone comments on your video, give them a thumbs up and invite them to be a friend. If they accept, be sure to go back and compliment if you see something on their profile that is of interest in your subject area.
The heart of the matter: Video Statistics and Data for Marketing information, research.
Once you’re familiar with posting videos and optimizing you can begin to dig into Insight. Think of YouTube insight as Google Analytics for Video, except it’s a bit more basic.
You can access YouTube insight from your profile page under > Performance Data & Tools > YouTube Insight. Also on this page you’ll see main datapoints.
- Views: How many times were videos accessed and watched:
- Popularity: A measure of your video’s strength as compared to other videos in a similar category.
- Discovery: HOW viewers found your videos.
- Related: Related videos in YouTube. After being played, YouTube shows yours as “related.
- YouTube Search: Keyword searches on YouTube.
- Embedded Player: An embed of your video on a website (other than YouTube).
- Google Search: Keyword searches on Google web search. For this video example, YouTube Insight shows over 25 keyword combinations for which my video has been found in Google Search. This is very exciting data and useful for keyword research and reoptimizing tags on this and other video content.
YouTube Insight indicates that one video in this account is showing up at position #6 on 1st page in Google web search for the keyword “BMW S50 Motor“. That’s productive keyword optimization and search result penetration:
- Geographic: Aside from the US, a fair amount of views have come from United Kingdom, France, and Poland. Indeed marketing your content in these countries may be of benefit to you in the future. With a handy drop down, you may view specific regions or states within countries. You can even see down the region and state level in the US.
Demographic: For this particular video, 40% of views are between ages 35-45. 88% of views are by males. For an early stage business this can help define who is the key market:
It is critical that businesses get involved in video optimization for reach, search results and branding. Video is not going away and is one of the most powerful mediums of communication in today’s day and age. By using video you can increase your brand’s reach through keyword search and social networking.
For marketers to measure video results, YouTube Insight is a decent tool to add to the analytics kit. And though it needs some more developement, it can certainly bring light to the effectiveness of videos and even empower you with new keyword, demographic and geographic information for your products and services.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed for updates on search optimization tactics!
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Looking for a new way to attract talent to your organization? Follow P Diddy’s lead and turn to YouTube.
So far Diddy has received over 10,000 applicants who have all responded via a taped video that is then uploaded to YouTube. Want the job? Be sure to follow these guidelines:
1. Upload your video interview to YouTube and sell yourself
2. Keep it to 3 minutes or less
3. Tag it as “diddy assistant”
So what are the benefits of this?
Get people who are familair with new technology. Would he really want someone as his assistant who can’t make a simple video and upload it?
Exposure to a massive amount of people and weed out unqualified applicants quickly. First impressions are everything…
Your employees will see that you think outside of the box – and you will attract people who also do.
Potential job hunters – get those video resumes ready as we are going to see more and more employers try things like this in the future.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed!
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6 Steps to Becoming a Star in a YouTube World
May 14, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Social Networks, Video
The Wall Street Journal had a good article today about how to be a star in a YouTube world. What conclusions did they come to?
It turns out that success in the new-media world depends on a lot of the same things as in the old-media universe. Just as in Hollywood, becoming a hit takes talent, effort, timing and some luck. Sex appeal is just as valuable online as off. And getting noticed by the “mainstream” press also helps build buzz.
Here are their 6 steps to success:
1) Be consistent. Whether you are doing videos, podcasts or writing blog posts – consistently feed your audience their content.
2) Get in early. It takes more to get noticed now. Just starting something today? Find a way to be one of the first to do something.
3) Find a niche. Just like getting in early, finding a good niche that isn’t overly crowded is a huge plus.
4) Work your network. It’s called social media for a reason. Build up friends and use word of mouth to promote yourself.
5) Act like a pro. The most popular content (i.e. lonelygirl15, AskaNinja) looks more polished then the rest of the pack. Put a little extra time into making it look like you really care.
6) Beauty sells. Look around at the majority of movie and TV stars and you’ll see that people who are unusually attractive stand a much better chance of getting attention. This same thing holds true in a YouTube world.
I would also add:
7) Use other social networks to promote yourself. Create good video content and use sites like Digg, Reddit and niche social media sites to promote your videos and ultimately yourself.
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Google owned YouTube is going to start sharing revenues with users. They said they were originally against it because they wanted video lovers not money lovers. Now they realize that the money lovers can probably create some killer video. Co-founder Chad Hurley made the announcement today:
We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.
One major YouTube competitor Revver already has a revenue share plan in place that shares ad revenues with users and this has been a major selling point of their service. From their About page:
Sharers earn money too! Help spread Revver videos and earn 20% of the ad revenue. The remaining money is split 50/50 between the creator of the video and Revver.
I can see it now – all the MFA (Made For AdSense) website owners are dusting off their video cameras and webcams so that they can get ready to start uploading their MFY (Made For YouTube) videos…
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Vidmeter can supposedly tell you. Launched in late December (I think the 30th to be exact), Vidmeter crawls the top 10 video sites (Break.com, Daily Motion, Google, iFilm, Metacafe, Myspace, Revver, vSocial, Yahoo, and Youtube) and ranks the videos to determine the most popular.
First, Vidmeter’s software automatically records the numbered of views and comments from the top listed videos once per hour. Their editors then merge similar videos on multiple websites (for example an SNL skit that was uploaded multiple times).
It then automatically ranks videos for the day by counting the difference between that day’s view total and the previous day’s view total. The most viewed videos are the most popular and ranked highest. The final step is the latest view and comment counts are set as the “all time” counts for the videos and they are ranked accordingly.
The accuracy of the view counts has been questioned due to the disparacy of the different services and their definition of a view. From the WSJ:
For instance, every time someone clicks play on a video at vSocial Inc., a site that aims to sell premium video services to businesses, it counts as a view, even if the video playback is stopped immediately, and even if there were multiple clicks from that same computer on the same day, Chief Executive Mark Sigal told me. Yet on Revver, a site that shares ad revenue with users who upload videos, a view is only counted if the viewer watches all the way through and downloads an ad at the end. The site also tries to put a cap on multiple views from the same computer by monitoring Internet protocol addresses, a spokeswoman said.
With that being said – it’s still strikes me a useful tool to get a quick and dirty idea of what’s hot in video right now (for free). As a marketer, there are a lot of interesting parts about a site like vidmeter:
- I can get a good general idea of what’s hot today without having to sift through a whole bunch of sites. This helps to adapt our own video initiatives.
- I like the honesty. Let’s face it – sex sells and if you look at a lot of the top videos they are definitely adult only. A welcome change from Google or Yahoo’s lists of the most popular search terms.
- Great to see quick results.
- It’s a great example of building a cool site and giving people a reason to link to you.
Since it’s Friday – check out the top video of all-time (or for the 7 days they have been tracking):
