OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS
Videos are good for your online business whether you post them on
your Web site to boost your e-commerce performance, or upload them to
YouTube for search-engine benefi t, or in the hopes they ’ ll become
a viral success story.
• Online jeweler Ice.com found that visitors who chose to view product
videos were 400 percent more likely to buy than those who did not. Ice.
com also credits video with decreasing returns by 25 percent. 10
• With proper optimization, video increases the chance of a front-page
Google result by 53 times. 11
• Among the benefi ts of online video, says eMarketer senior analyst Jef-
frey Grau, are “lower numbers of abandoned shopping carts, reduced
return rates, and higher sales.” 12
But of all the potential benefi ts of online video, the brass ring is “going
viral.” When a video goes viral, it becomes exponentially more popular
thanks to the amplifi ed word-of-mouth power of online social networks.
The favorite example is those Blendtec blenders. The “Will it Blend?”
YouTube spots generated a 650 percent increase in traffi c to the Blendtec
Web site, around 10 million page views and coverage on the Today Show
and the Tonight Show . Not to mention a signifi cant jump in sales.
“When George approached me about actually fi lming extreme blending
challenges and putting video clips out on the Web, I thought it would be
fun, but I never imagined that it would take off like it did. In fact, when
George said we were going to post videos on YouTube, I didn ’ t even know
what YouTube was,” admits Blendtec president Tom Dickson. “‘Will it
Blend?’ was not designed as a sales campaign—it was designed to be a
branding campaign. The fi rst six videos we produced and posted cost us
about $50, and now they have been viewed by millions. This campaign put
Blendtec on the map in just a few weeks.
While the Blendtec story is often repeated, many new viral sensations
are unfolding every month. A snapshot of some of the popular viral videos
of 2010 reveals that most of them are big brands ’ big-budget television
ads—but there ’ s always a smaller brand or sleeper hit emerging:
• Lego World Cup—a stop-motion depiction of the United States versus
England soccer match, starring Lego fi gures
• Adidas Originals ad—remaking the old Star Wars cantina scene
• A leaked iPhone 4 ad
• Samsung business-card throwing
• Heineken “Men with Talent”
• Greenpeace public-service spot
Who knows what will be the next Blendtec-style phenomenon? But one
thing is for sure: it can ’ t be you if you ’ re not uploading anything.
YOUR COMPANY BLOG
A great primer for anyone planning a company blog is the book Naked
Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with
Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. If nothing else, your blog is
an unparalleled means for expressing your company ’ s perspective in your
unique company voice.
“The most valuable and powerful tool a business has is its voice,” says
Ben Cohen, the iconic founder of Ben & Jerry ’ s ice cream and a lifetime
proponent of socially responsible business.
Authoring a company blog may be the most time-consuming single
piece of the social-media program outlined in this chapter. Yes, fi lming and
editing YouTube videos can take a big investment of time, and in some
cases outside resources. And yes, posting and direct-messaging to Twitter
every few minutes, as the top twitterati do, can add up to a ton of hours.
But writing frequent, high-quality blog posts that make a difference—and
that have the potential to spread—is a big job.
Scoble and Israel point out that in comparison to traditional corporate
communications platforms—public relations campaigns and advertising,
for instance—blogs are positively cheap, easy, and quick.
Authors, when asked how long a book or a chapter should be, often
answer “as long as a piece of string.” And so it is with blog posts—there is
no correct answer as to the ideal length.
The best traditional blogs still require relatively long-form posts—al-
though readers reward the best, most thoughtful, and most original posts
by Digging and spreading the word. Glenn Allsopp, a viral marketing
blogger in South Africa, analyzed average post lengths of the most popular
blogs (as measured by Technorati) across eight industries, and saw a great
deal of variation, with posts on celebrity gossip blogs or sites dedicated to
tech gadgets or political news opting for lots of shorter posts—from about
180 to 465 words a post, but with a frequency of several posts a day. 15
In industries valuing depth over immediacy, expect to spend more time
researching and writing, and plan to write longer, more signifi cant posts.
In Allsopp ’ s analysis, blogs about investing, marketing, and self-improve-
ment averaged about 1,200 to 1,500 words per post. But, Allsopp notes,
these blogs typically see a posting rate of just one to seven posts a week.
That said, attention spans are getting ever shorter. The trends we ’ re seeing
on offl ine and online media alike, for shorter-form media, will likely continue,
accelerated by the success of microblogging platforms like Twitter. However,
there is no substitute for quality—whether blog posts get shorter or not.
Allsopp also performed an interesting analysis of the most popular blog
posts across several industries (as measured by external links), and there
he found a number of common themes. Admittedly, his analysis revealed
less about what makes a great blog post than what attracts external links.
Some of the impact here may be that blog headlines that match common
search phrases (like “best places to live” or “hot growth stocks for 2010”
or “how to write a cover letter”) tend to perform well in search-engine
results, so are therefore seen by more people, so are therefore linked to by
more people.
Not every post you issue can be a “top 10” or a “beginner ’ s guide.” That
said, here are some tips for blog topics and headlines:
• Tips
• How to
• Contests or giveaways
• Comparisons
THIS IS YOUR COMPANY BLOG ON STEROIDS
Blogs as a phenomenon were certainly overhyped a few years back.
Douglas Quenqua wrote in the New York Times that according to a 2008
survey, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the Times tracks.
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