How to leverage video for your company

As part of the latest trend towards video, the question as to why and how to exploit video content - and to what end emerges? What do companies have to gain from this trend?

Seeing this as less than obvious i thought worthwhile to explore where the opportunities lay. what exactly does a marketing video look like? Ultimately, it's not just limited to an ad that can make be placed everywhere. Rather, the opportunity appears to be broader - emphasizing opportunities to engage with existing and potential customers via tutorials, webinar videos, reviews, public service announcements of all varieties, culture, and testimonials, and lastly via social media to detail such as instagram.

Perhaps the broader question is how companies can leverage video to create a responsive environment, through which consumers will opt to engage, respond, and add content of their own.


 http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2308065/8-video-types-to-add-to-your-content-marketing

Facebook video traffic overtaking youtube

The latest trend towards video can be seen in the shift towards video by Facebook, which saw its traffic towards native uploads exceed that of youtube content in january, making links to youtube posts a declining portion of its overall traffic. there appears on an ongoing challenge to grab market share on who is hosting and pushing up the most traffic.

along the same lines, facebook has also illustrated its commitment to video content, going to the extent to prioritize the content in the 'news feed' functionality. the purpose here is to clearly emphasize the opportunity.

taking video to the next level, facebook appears poised to push video into colloboration, a first for one of the major sites, in an effort to encourage greater sharing of video content. it appears all of the sites see video as an emerging winning trend in social media. i'm not so sure however,


http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/2351-the-rise-of-social-video-in-2015

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2015/04/01/facebook-lets-friends-collaborate-on-videos-with-latest-app-riff/

Trends including local

Digging into recent web trends, i focused the latest reading on 10 internet trends impacting marketers in 2015. Among the key themes are mobile and a shift to local. Notably, this shift to local has been an emphasis for professor kagan in recent months, emphasizing that while google had an opportunity before it, he saw a company like Yelp as having leverage over google in that it allowed for direct interactivity with local merchants while bypassing the google world. notably, this too is leveraged off the mobile theme, with yelp a primarily mobile phenomenon.

Among other trends identified is the broader shift towards the cloud, threatening the incumbent players to an extent previously unknown. while the article doesnt stray into the details significantly, the question remains how cloud can best be used to the users advantage, particularly as portability and sharing of data becomes so important.  from a marketing perspective, the angle of how to sell these products, and how to engage with customers becomes all the more important, particularly if ad sales are to continue to support online activities including cloud. it would seem the trends towards online spending will increase, the question is what are the limits of advertising dollars to meet an expanding pie of opportunities online?

http://adage.com/article/digital/10-internet-trends-impacting-marketers/295005/

Internet traffic all used up?

Looking deeper into the subject discussed in class around netflix usage, it appears of late netflix continues to dominate 35% of all internet traffic reflecting a massive usage of the internet's infrastructure for a single company. the question around whether this is fair is closely aligned to issues of free speech and 'equitable' use of the internet - the question that appears to come up from this all is there a way to make Netflix accountable for all this demand on the system - and are users implicitly paying for this infrastructure and the right to use their internet connectivity when they pay their monthly internet charges already - arguably yes.

Shifting to bittorrent, it's notable to see how tides have shifted in recent years, as this appears to have been the primary source of video downloads as recently as 2008, dominating traffic upwards to the same level of netflix. in some senses, this is a cautious datapoint for those who believe netflix or any tech company can continue to singularly dominate internet traffic.

notably, in asia, where netflix doesnt have the same popularity, bittorrent remains the focus of internet traffic accounting for about a third. arguably it's all for the same usage - whether legal or illegal. this begs the question of how content providers can evolve their business model to capture this market share. it's not just north america that is likely willing to pay a nominal fee for a premium streaming service i would argue. i'm curious to see what comes next.

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/netflix-streaming-eats-up-35-of-downstream-internet-bandwidth-usage-study-1201360914/

What's relevant from the F8 conference

Taking a riff off the PC term for F8 keyboard button, Facebook held its annual conference to discuss the way forward for the company last week. The emphasis appears to have been on its mobile messaging platform, and the potential avenues for expanion, particularly via third-party apps. While i'm not necessarily convinced off the bat, it's certainly intriguing to watch.

A further angle clearly identified was towards virtual reality and making the experience more real via artificial intelligence. While unclear what angle this would take, it appears facebook remains on the cutting edge of 'novel' websites.

from a conventional competitive angle, emphasizing the ability to leverage content from other sides continues facebook's march into video exchange and sharing, making it a go-to for all sorts of media, even from other sites.

www.techtimes.com/articles/42675/20150328/facebook-f8-conference-eveything-you-need-to-know.htm

Email Spam hits a new low

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Texas-AG-warns-of-spam-email-threatening-6097396.php


In Teaxs this week, spam efforts hit a new low with the latest efforts designed to trick unkowning recipients to give away money as part of threatening a generic law suit against them. While the email has several telltale signs that indicate the email is fake, the email is novel in that it includes both the recipients full name and email address, giving it the sense of authority and more importnalty the spceificity that the target is indeed targetted.

With disclosure of personal information seemingly an every day event with hacking scandals, it appears such personally tailored information and emails are likely to become the norm, perhaps requiring a new level of caution from readers.

Google and Amazon Competing now?

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/10/google_amazon_competition_how_amazon_prime_delivery_hurts_google_s_ad_business.html


Taking a different twist on how google's advertising dependent business is exposed, recent comments from Chairman Eric Schmidt suggest it is actually Amazon that is their biggest competitior as the companies are both fundamentally search engines to buy products and services ultimately. While they are competing head to head on daily delivery of goods today, the reality is that 1/3rd of consumers are biased to simply start their search of a new purchase on Amazon, higher than Google. For google and its declining click-through prices, this represents a competitive threat if they can continue to grow both their product offerings, and expand the size of the pie with which consumers go to one site versus another for the aim of buying on the internet.

This approach effectively sees Google as the dominant player - without any real competition from others like Yahoo and Bing - but rather sees a challenge to the business model overall, with delcining ad revenues, should consumers be increasingly to skip the google search process altogether when getting ready to acquire products (via Amazon or a comparable site).

In some respects, With Google largely dependent on advertising revenues tied to selling products and services is a further problem for the information company; is there not a better complement to their business model to leverage improve the diversity of their business as well?

Subverting the point of blocking ads?

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2015/02/microsoft-and-google-among-companies-paying-adblock-to-let-ads-through/

Looking at the latest on Google/Microsoft deals with Adblock to 'undo' the effectiveness of their ad blocking product looks to subvert the whole model/purpose of ad blocking software. While the Pro version of the software appears to continue to offer a mechanism to block all ads, I would think that any future alterations of the product would enable a 'real' adblocking competitor to enter the market. If the product is doing what's its supposed to do, better products will prevail.

However, the trend also points to a consolidation of advertising power back to the top marketers, benefiting from preferential treatment with the software. While not necessarily raising questions around anti-trust activity per se, it certainly does entrench the top leaders all the more. The question is whether other smaller participants will choose to follow as it appears the Ad Blocking policy appears to be in part an attempt to make advertising more 'palatable' - and less distracting

Is Google Saturated?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-nears-saturation-point-will-incremental-marketing-dollars-go-elsewhere/

Following our class session, the article here explores whether google's forum is just too saturated with ad dollars such that the incremental dollar is going to alternative platforms like Bing? While sales avenues like Google Shopping appear to be doing well, can the traditional sales venue compete against cheaper alternatives indefinitely? That's not entirely clear to us either. The platform appears superior for the time being at least.

On the positive side, the offset appears to be that at least the effectiveness of dollars spent is improving as evidenced by improved click-through rates. This appears to be a widespread trend though, rather than specific to google.

Among other datapoints of note is the trend around regional vs. national shopping. Google appears to have gone back on the ability to target retail sales regionally, in contrast to what would have been perceived as more high-value more-targeted marketing strategies. We suspect prices could yet trend lower on the back of this result.

The broader question remains what will the company do over time to accommodate to competitors, like Bing, or less conventional competitors like Facebook. The article appears to suggest diversification of its shopping offering to other venues like travel are next on deck. We'll see, but professor's point around controlling information appears the more daunting point rather than really seeing a saturation of dollars. More targeted, effective marketing campaigns would appear to be always worth a further investment.

What Students Dont Learn in College About Marketing

The article explores what many may have long suspected: there is a discrepancy between skills taught in school and those needed in the fast-evolving world of digital-anything. In this particular case, the example of digital marketing is clear. This is a constant struggle in any role which requires specific knowledge of software but also understanding of relevant channels for marketing.

the articles goes on to cite specific examples of content creation and distribution that are largely ignored in conventional marketing education, such as search engine optimization, the use of social media for business purposes, and adopting specific marketing software platforms.

The broader question remains whether it is the specific software or the underlying knowledge and approach that remains the most relevant for most students. Will the knowledge from understanding a specific software stand the test of time or is the broader concept of meshing social media as a viable avenue for marketing that will prove useful in future paradigms? I would argue the latter.

The question of digital knowledge is also tricky - as this is effectively kicking off a life-long learning process. Learning to code (anything) is a challenging undertaking, but with new languages and platforms emerging every few years, understanding one language and moving to the next simply requires re-learning the newer (seemingly more powerful) syntax at a later point in time.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3041253/3-key-digital-marketing-skills-students-dont-learn-in-college