Social | Page 68 of 182

The Must-Know Tricks for Growing Your Audience on YouTube

March 26, 2015, 12:00AM

by Jessica Klein

When it comes to growing your audience on YouTube, there are several important things you have to consider. First and foremost, YouTube fosters an incredibly personal environment, where, unlike TV audiences, viewers will get to know you or your brand on a more intimate and interactive level. This means you have to actively and directly engage your fans instead of sitting back and hoping they’ll get engaged all by themselves.

Other than that, you have to get to know the video platform. It offers plenty of tools aimed at helping video creators succeed. From various analytics to subtitles, embrace what YouTube has to offer. Also, make sure that you have a holistic vision of your channel. Make yourself recognizable, and then just make great content. As long as you’re doing at least that, you’re off to a good start.

Once you’re off to that start, here are some other tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube:

The first step—get to know your viewers:

Ask Yourself the Right Questions

Start off by stepping into the YouTube viewer’s shoes when assessing your videos’ effectiveness. Think about whether your content will leave viewers with the desire to visit one of your stores/website, the ability to recognize your brand in different venues, and the drive to recommend your products (or even just your funny video!) to their friends. If you don’t think it will do any of the above, try something else.

Know Your Audience

Get to know what kinds of videos your target demographic like to watch and how frequently they’re on their cells. If they troll Facebook twelve hours a day, that’s another important thing to know (although, we hope they don’t)! The “Playbook for Brands” mentions some Google tools to help you answer these questions, like the YouTube Trends Dashboard, Our Mobile Planet, and Google Think Insights.

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This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

Measuring Branded Video Success

BY Robert Workman

March 25, 2015, 12:00AM

What goes into making a popular branded video for social channels Even with a successful formula, there are certain factors to consider — like the fact that Facebook video performs in a different way than YouTube.

A new report from digital video analytics company Tubular breaks this down in the infographic below, explaining how performance differs between YouTube and Facebook’s video service, according to DigiDay.

One example of this is Air France’s “France Is In the Air” video, which is located below. It’s become one of the more popular ads on YouTube, with more than 17.8 million views since its debut earlier this month. Meanwhile, over on Facebook, a new clip from Marvel’s forthcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron movie was highly popular, with 9.4 million views from a single day of posting last week.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=v-ahlbWNZPk

“There was obviously significant spend behind (the Air France Video), because you see there was only a tiny amount of (likes, comments and shares),” said Allison Stern, vice president of enterprise for Tubular Labs. Bigger paid promotion led to a smaller rate of engagement, according to the report.

Longer shelf life for promotional videos was also noted, with top examples — including Air France, along with Durex and Samsung — continuing to be popular. “On the YouTube side, you get repeat winners,” explained Stern. “You see longevity in the videos.”

Facebook ad campaigns are popular as well — and an interesting note in the report pointed out that the second and eighth most-watched videos for the week were for the social site itself. Promoting friendship through these ads could be a smart move for the site, since it relies so heavily on friends finding one another through it anyway.

There seems to be a larger engagement rate on Facebook than on YouTube, with the ability to not only like a video, but also comment on it and share it with friends. There’s a higher level of interactivity, compared to simply viewing and posting links from a YouTube-posted video, according to the report.

YouTube still has the lead in brand videos, though, with 30 percent of the top 100 videos for January 2015 coming from publishers, and 17 percent coming from brands, according to Stern. Facebook’s numbers are smaller than those, with 25 percent from publishers and a measly one percent from brands.

The infographic featured below breaks down the power of branded video across both sites. These include advertisements for Age of Ultron, as well as the premiere for the new film Pixels, Sony’s exclusive new series Powers, and other examples.

At SXSW, ‘Community’ Cast Kicks Off Move To Yahoo Screen

BY Lauren Arevalo-Downes

March 17, 2015, 12:00AM

To promote the premiere of the sixth season of Community, airing March 17 on Yahoo Screen, creator Dan Harmon and the show’s cast made a splash at SXSW.

After enjoying five seasons on TV, the show is now being resurrected by Yahoo to the delight of millions of fans. The sixth season now lives on Yahoo Screen, the company’s online streaming service, which will be the home to additional upcoming Yahoo Originals like Sin City Saints (premiering March 24) and Paul Feig’s Other Space (premiering this April).

At SXSW, Yahoo set up camp at Brazos House downtown, opening the doors Saturday morning. By Saturday night, the venue was decorated as a “Community College Dance”. All throughout the weekend, the official mascot of “Community College,” the very creepy “human being” wandered the streets, allowing fans to take official school ID photos and post on social with the hashtag #CommunityLivesOn.

The celebration kicked off with a live recording of Harmon-town Podcast, hosted by Community creator Dan Harmon. Later, Harmon joined writer-producer Chris McKenna on the red carpet, along with cast members Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Ken Jeong, Jim Rash, Paget Brewster, and Keith David. Everyone was introduced to the fans by Yahoo CMO Kathy Savitt before the sneak peek of the first episode of the new season was screened, closing out with the Community College Dance after-party.

The cast later discussed the big move to Yahoo Screen on a panel at the convention center. Among the big announcements made at the panel was the widely-popular news from Dan Harmon that a new paintball episode will air during the new season, a piece of info that garnered over 35k likes on Facebook.

Community premieres today with episodes 1 and 2 on Yahoo Screen, with all new episodes airing every Tuesday. Follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram.

Why 2015 Is ‘Prime Time’ for Social Video

BY VideoInk

March 13, 2015, 12:00AM

By: Hillel Scheinfeld

eMarketer is calling 2015 the “prime time for social video” estimating that online video ad revenue will grow to $7.7 billion this year with year-over-year increases over 13.9 percent through 2018. This increase can be credited to a few factors, including the availability of new social video advertising solutions, as well as increased video consumption.

Consumers love interacting with content on social media — whether it’s sharing, tweeting, posting, or pinning — sharing content on social media means that consumers feel this content is resonating with them. When consumers share positive feedback with branded video, they’re giving that brand their personal seal of approval and spreading the word about its products or services to other members of their network.

Users are sharing more video content than ever before. Facebook recently reported that its users share 75 percent more videos globally on the platform than they did at this time last year, and US Facebook users share 94 percent more videos than they did in the same time period. It’s an interesting and impressive trend, but certainly not surprising.

Your New Social Video Advertising Checklist:

1. Leverage new targeting capabilities.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat all feel like natural places to share video ads, as they are channels that naturally express users’ interests. By sharing or liking a particular video, such action, even if not intended, is a type of endorsement or statement about the content. As a result, social networks are able to create a profile of our likes, opinions, interests and more based on these simple actions.

Therefore, it makes sense that social networks are a prime location for advertisers to reach certain audiences where they spend a huge amount of time and are already posting and engaging with videos.

In order to increase the impact of the video, coupled with better targeting capabilities, networks like Facebook and others have rolled out new autoplay formats so brands may be able to increase the number of viewers, especially if the content is entertaining within the first 5-10 seconds. These first seconds are crucial for engaging consumers because as viewers become used to expecting this small preview, they are also less forgiving if it doesn’t immediately catch their eye. Research also has proven that people are less likely to watch an ad than personal content from someone in their network, so those first seconds must be engaging enough to draw interest, but not too commercial to throw off the viewer.

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