Anyone who has ever worked with me, knows how much I stress the CTA for any video marketing campaign. Without it, all the hard work you put into your marketing efforts, go to waste. BUMMER.

Ever see the lower third ads that run on the the bottom of some videos? Most of them come from advertisers of products that are closely related to the video theme or at least video TAGS. Until last month, only certain partners and non-profit organizations could use this marketing feature. Now, Youtube now offers overlays to drive traffic to off-YouTube web pages for ANYONE.

Adding a Call-to-Action overlay to your video is easy.

First, run a campaign to promote your video on YouTube.

 

Next, go to the Video Details page under My Videos and fill out the fields in the section marked “Call-to-Action overlay.”

Finally, include a short headline, ad text, a destination url, and upload an optional image, and the overlay will appear whenever someone watches your video.

Of course you can check your click thru results in the awesome YouTube Insight Tool. 

Do you see the HUGE potential for this new feature? Go try it!

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• Web publishers can create a customized Informer, or cluster of multiple video news, to feature on their site – choosing from a variety of topics to tailor the content to their audience. Publishers can customize the appearance of the Informer to fit with the look and feel of their site, choosing fonts, text size, colors, etc. 
• To offer a broader selection of video content, publishers can select multiple categories from the list of 18 categories including auto, celebrity/entertainment, news and politics, comedy, music and sports. 

• Publishers can customize basic aspects of the visual appearance—from dimensions to quantity of videos shown—to achieve the best possible performance.
• Publishers can preview the layout to see a sample of how the Informer will appear on the site once it goes live.  
• A Web publisher can use Clipta’s Partner Network to promote video content by submitting news to Video Informer. The video content is distributed on partner sites to their Informers based on relevance. When site visitors click an Informer video, they are driven back to the original source – driving new traffic for publishers.
• Wordpress publishers can seamlessly upload video content straight from their site to the partner network via the Informer plug-in. If the plug-in detects a video on the site, it automatically pulls the title, description and link from the original post but lets the publisher select the topic category and still-frame image.
• Clipta uses a backend algorithm that distributes video news across the network and provides publishers with an easy way to determine the success of their Informers by monitoring its traffic. Publishers with Informers on their sites are guaranteed to receive a targeted visitor for every visitor they send to the sites in the network. While in private beta Video Informer distributed an estimated 3.5 million video informers per day within the partner network. 
• With Video Informer, Clipta can analyze consumer behavior and the video content that is being watched. Clipta explores publisher sites with video content and surrounding context in its partner network to learn more about the destinations that people frequent for video content and learn general video search practices among consumers to improve Clipta’s video search results.

Remember how popular webrings used to be? Various sites, joined together in a circular structure that generated traffic for each other. Well they’re still considered a form of Search Engine Optimization and Clipta.com is operating on this very principle; offering an easy to use way to drive traffic to theme related websites or blogs. I’m looking forward to tracking the success of the Video Informer. If you use video in your blog regularly, you should look into Clipta.com

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Inspiration from Kids at Play

The other day my kids and I were out and they were climbing what I thought was an ordinary tree. What I learned from careful observation of their play, was that this was not just a tree but a pirate ship! Nobel knights had taken the ship in order to rescue a princess- Hey, I bet you didn’t even know pirates were around during the Middle ages

I was so tickled by their creativity. It made me think about my business and why I started it. I’d worked in a corporate environment and left so I could work with PEOPLE and inspire them to infuse creative marketing strategies into their businesses and projects!

Look, I’m a geek. I’ll admit it. I’ve always been the type of gal who’d much rather spend a couple of grand at the Apple store than at Tiffany’s. SEO+Insight+Seeding+Social Networking…Sheez, I’m too geeky, even for myself! 

At first technology was just a means to deliver creative content and metrics were a just a way to prove that the internet was a viable space to spend dollars. Now it seems the more I know, the more obsessed I become with the online “FORMULA.” I have however, noticed that when money and time are tight, it can be easy to lean on numbers and actually FEAR being creative . People seem to want to copycat a working formula so much that creativity is squashed. YIKES!!! I’m not saying we should throw the online media formula out the window, but life is supposed to be LIVED and ENJOYED. Creativity infuses life into business. 

A million years ago, my company sent me to the Broadcast Design Association’s conference, where I had the pleasure of hearing Kevin Carroll aka “The Katalyst,” speak. His whole philosophy regarding inspiring some of the coolest and most successful brands on the planet was to infuse PLAY into the corporate culture. We can all get TOTALLY stressed out and forget how important it is to dream, play, create and celebrate.

My kids inspired me with their ability to make due with what they had, play all roles, share, fall, get up and laugh like crazy. That’s how I want to live my life and run my business.

In terms of how this applies to videos? Sheesh. Watch what people are watching. Get inspired . Be bold. If you have a video camera and an internet connection— shoot something! I have to give a shout out to my clients Sarah Newton and Lisa Warner. These ladies are amazing and have chosen to take on some pretty intense subjects. They are in the process of creating what I think will be some awesome media for their business and are having a ball! Don’t wait for the economic climate to change before you start to have fun doing what you do. Life is too short for that!

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