farfromfearless
You Tube Flu, Everyone’s Got the Video Virus
Scene 1: Intro/background
Online video has become increasingly popular in recent years thanks to sites like YouTube, increased bandwidth and a progressive school of thought that people crave video… Duh. To me the concept is simple, people love people. In the dark ages of web 1.0 the utilitarian nature of the internet yielded most users the practice of basic information gathering, email, movie times, or the occasional IRS tax law look-up. I believe that this is where much of the scrutiny related to the internet being “impersonal” originates. Now, most users have the ability to stream, share, save and stalk thanks to larger servers and increased bandwidth; because of this, that “impersonal” aspect has been replaced by the online counterpart of seeing your roommate sail off his skateboard into a large and painful bush.
Scene 2: reflective hypothesis
My thought is that back in the day those online users who were hip to the groove could hang out and read, read and read with slight glimpses of the occasional low quality image. Today people can see someone tell a story of when they went canyon jumping in Switzerland instead of hoping the author has the descriptive writing chops to accurately describe the experience. It seems to me that your average user can absorb much more information and entertainment, in less time, from a reasonably well made video, than a collection of blog posts or news articles on the same subject. Engagement of sight, sound and your mind’s recollection and comparison to past experience makes video, in general, much more appealing to your standard homosapien.
Scene 3: Movers and Shakers
Currently, one of the biggest issues related to social media, and video as a part of that is, “How do we track ROI?” This issue was addressed very well at last week’s Social Media Breakfast, sponsored by HubSpot, and was continued on HubSpot.TV, a weekly series airing Fridays at 4. The main take-away is that you really can’t track ROI of social media and viral video using the metrics and practices of traditional media, there are parallels but the nature of media is innately different. One of the key speakers at SMB10 was Matt Cutler of Visible Measures, a Boston Start-up that has situated themselves as an independent measurement company that tracks user engagement and viral spread of video. This model is a giant step in the right direction toward refining the metrics that many of our marketing decisions rely on. To quote HubSpot, quoting Matt Cutler, “What’s happening in the world of viral video is that numbers are now beginning to compare very favorably with traditional media buys — and that’s real ROI.”
Scene 4: Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It.
In the future we will start to see improved technology and more refined metrics for testing effectiveness and ROI. Now that the precedence is set and the demand for better measurement techniques is at an all time high, web evolution will continue and our mindset will shift to accept a new set of comparison principals. The higher-up “check signers” will put more faith into their online marketing efforts and things like $2 million Super Bowl air time will be a thing of the past.
In the spirit of Viral Video, I now present to you, my roommate sailing off his skateboard into a large and painful bush. (he’s ok, incase you are wondering)
4 people have left comments
Grace Boyle said:
Good points. I have found with agencies or businesses looking to leverage or grow through using social media their concern is how to track the success and value of their time spent. The more we can get our brains around gauging ROI, especially with viral (essentially free) press that YouTube videos can offer the greater growth we can expect for social media.
Geoff Livingston of The Buzz Bin agrees saying, “…there is still a very large contingent of social media types that tout conversation instead of measurement. Quite frankly, asking companies to invest tens of thousands to millions of dollars on a conversation — while factually accurate — flies in the face of reality. Instead of convincing them, this conversational chatter only scares companies away. Until we can demonstrate consistent results, organizations will resist social media adoption.”
Ref: (http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2007/11/07/the-measurement-meme/)
Grace Boyle said:
In addition, Todd Defren (Shift Communications) was present at the Social Media Breakfast and his blog post summarizes the ROI for social media from a different perspective. He isn’t quite “anti-measurement,” but that measurement isn’t always worth the trouble so it’s important to “know your objectives in advance.” Here’s the article: (http://twurl.nl/x6er73) What do you think?
Adam said:
Grace, that was a great post by Todd Defren, thanks for the link. Defren seems to share the general consensus as the rest of us in the online marketing world with excellent examples and concise alternatives. I do like his point about “clear objectives” and what I think is there will always be some metrics you can measure, for example Defren states, “For one start-up client, “new users” was the metric we were asked to improve. They came to us with a base of 5,000 alpha users, and our outreach to traditional and social media outlets led to an additional 200,000 users in just two weeks! How’s that for ROI?”
As Defren and others point out there are a lot of things you can never quantify, but this is not a new thing. To be honest, how can you test ROI of a TV commercial during the Friends series finale? Revenue fluctuation, same year sales? None would truly be accurate. The only way this would be quantifiable is the response to a call to action, “visit this website [insert microsite URL here]” but even then, not really measuring total reach. This is part of the reason marketing is almost always the first thing to go during a downturn in business.
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