Getting Your Video Indexed by Google: Is YouTube The Only Answer?
Part of my online toolkit includes LivePerson, software that allows me to chat with people who visit our website. LivePerson also provides a real-time view of who is on your website, and how they got there.
Many times during the day, I’ll catch somebody visiting the Living in Las Vegas Podcast website via a Google search for “Las Vegas Podcast”. From time to time, I’ll check out that person’s Google search to see how we’re ranking. . .and what other sites are being listed.
As I was checking out our ranking on Google this morning, I saw something fascinating. . .and VERY promising. Along with searching the web for “las vegas podcast”, Google also initiated on its own a video search for “las vegas podcast” as well. As the screen shot shows, Google found our latest video podcast episode, which is self-hosted.
This is huge.
I’ve experienced Google’s YouTube fixation. I have other search engine phrases that I’ve previously been ranked #1, only to slip down a spot or two because a YouTube video uses the same keywords. What I didn’t expect is that Google would be able to (or want to, for that matter) index a self-hosted .MP4 video.
When I clicked on the “Video results for las vegas podcast” link, I was further impressed.
For a select few videos, Google allows you to Watch Video Here. . .clicking it brings up the video on the right side of the search results, ready for play [see the graphic below]. Google also searches for other related videos and displays them as thumbnail graphics below the video being played. In our case, if found related videos on YouTube, LivingInLV.com, Ustream.TV and MeFeedia.com. [As seen below.]
Again, very impressive.
My guess is that the reason we’re seeing this happen is because our self-hosted videos are MP4 videos. We’re also using the jwplayer Flash player, which seems to be helpful as well. Regardless, this is GREAT NEWS! The fact Google is indexing this content demonstrates that when done correctly, embedded video does provide more content for Google to index.
What does that mean to you? Well, it doesn’t mean you should ignore YouTube. Google has much love for YouTube. But it DOES mean you should recognize that embedded video increases your probability of being discovered via Google.
Why That Corporate Video on Your Website is Not Helping Your Bottom Line
I subscribe to several marketing newsletter. And study after study report what is obvious to those of us who spend any time online. . .adding video to your website is becoming less of an option and more of a requirement. If done correctly, it’ll shorten the sales cycle and keep visitors on your website longer. Yet the vast majority of all these newly added videos aren’t really helping.
The problem with your typical corporate video isn’t with the technology. That piece of the puzzle is under control. No, the reason why most corporate videos found on websites today fail to shorten your sales cycle is because the approach towards creating a corporate video today is no different than that of 20 years ago.
Which, as I like to say, is not a feature.
Take a moment and think about it. When was the last time you watched a corporate video, including one of your own, where the video pulled back the curtain and gave you a real sense of what actually makes that company tick?
The scripted delivery, or paid spokesperson, or deer-in-the-headlights/teleprompter-reading presentation found in most corporate videos destroy any opportunity to demonstrate authenticity. And while the overly-produced corporate video, with its heavy graphics, impressive music, and beautiful “location” shots, may look and sound well enough, they create a distraction from the real people involved with the company and fail to deliver the reason behind any online marketing effort: to move your story forward by demonstrating the transformation you deliver to your customers.
A Vision That Mirrors What Your Customer Wants
As I spent time analyzing the current crop of web-based corporate videos, it reminded me that while nobody wants to be sold, everybody wants to buy. In order to gain the opportunity to help a client solve a problem through the use of your products or services, you must first establish rapport with that website visitor. In sales, most professionals equate rapport with relationships. And while most will claim that the key to sales is relationship, very few can articulate what the key to relationships might be.
The answer is credibility.
Without credibility, you cannot sell a non-commodity product.
That said, the people who visit your website in search of help are constantly worried about two things:
1. Who can I trust?
2. How do I ensure I’m making the right decision (or not making a wrong decision)?
In other words, your website visitors WANT you to be the answer to these two questions. They hope that by finding themselves on your website, they’ve ended their search for what you deliver. All you have to do is demonstrate your credibility through an online video that is natural, unscripted and educational.
After a great deal of research, documentation and testing, to solve this problem. . .to bring our clients closer to their customers and prospects with a focus toward shortening the sales cycle. . .today I’m happy to announce PodWorx’s newest offering. We call it Vid·EEE·o
Vid·EEE·o – Authenticity-based Website Video
The video you see to the right is an example of a PodWorx Vid·EEE·o.
Instead of delivering another boring video, filled with corporate speak and void of any sense of who you are, what you do, and how you’re helping others solve their problems, PodWorx’s Vid·EEE·o for Websites solution changes all that. This is due to our single-minded focus towards making the process of developing great video content Effortless and Efficient, and ensuring the ultimate product is Effective in bringing your company closer to a business relationship with your website visitors.
It’s unscripted – there’s no pressure to memorize a bunch of words or try to read off of a teleprompter. Instead, we simply shoot what feels like an easy-going conversation. In truth, the questions being asked of the “talent” are purposeful and designed specifically to draw out your story in a compelling manner.
It’s natural – it allows your personality to finally shine through online. Very few people can read and/or memorize a script and deliver it without coming across. . .well. . .“corporate-y”.
It’s compelling – The story that is produced, combined with the editing style and clean, white background, delivers a piece of media that immediately grabs the viewer’s attention. . .and keeps it for the entire length of the video (which is usually between 1-3 minutes). The call-to-action gives the visitor a logical next step.
It doesn’t require you to wear a mock turtleneck – It just looks that way.
Results – What to Expect
As with ALL PodWorx products and services, the deliverable isn’t the main story. It’s the outcome that matter. Here’s a few of my favorites:
- Become Approachable
The PodWorx Vid·EEE·o moves you closer to human enabling your website. This, in turn- Accelerates the getting-to-know-you phase of any sales process
- Reduces the chances of being skipped over due to lack of “connection”
- Extends Engagement Length
Because great embedded videos keep visitors engaged, a PodWorx Vid·EEE·o gives you an opportunity to extend the length of time a visitor spends on your website.- Increases the amount of time you have to move people from a passive need to an active need (to effectively sell or motivate)
- Decreases the risk associated with visitors only spending seconds on your website before “moving on”
- Establishes Your Credibility
Claiming your own credibility is the weakest way to establish it. The PodWorx Vid·EEE·o allows you to demonstrate your credibility, the strongest way to establish it.- Enhance your perceived expertise in the eyes of your customers and prospects
- Lessen the problem associated with trying to convince somebody why they should work with you
There’s much more to the Vid·EEE·o story than I can fit in a single blog post. I invite you to review the video on this blog post. And then I’d suggest you give me a call (702.395.5268) to see if your’s is a story that can be told using our techniques and strategies. If you recognize that your overall online efforts are not contributing to your bottom line as much as you hoped, and that demonstrating authenticity to your website visitors is important, we’ll help you do it right the first time.
Improving E-Mail Marketing Click-Thru Rates Using Video
The problem with many online marketing efforts is the difficulty determining the Return On Investment (ROI). For PodWorx, our podcasts and Live Streaming Video productions are designed to help our customers do one (or both) of two things:
- Make More Money
- Motivate People to Take Action on our Customer’s Behalf
For our latest Live Streaming Video production (QBS Live Mondays), I wanted to see how (or if) the additional of this video offering would effect the performance of the customer’s email marketing efforts. Specifically, I wanted to know if adding video would lift their email open and click-thru rates.
I compared the performance of QBS Research’s May 2009 Newsletter (emailed to their list on 5/5/09) with the announcement of the QBS Live Mondays show (emailed on 5/28/09).
The company’s May 2009 Newsletter had a 17.6% open rate and a 11.8% click-thru rate. The email announcing the QBS Live Mondays live show improved both measurements:
- Open Rate: 22.9% (an increase of 30.1%)
- Click-Thru Rate: 17.1% (an increase of 44.9%)
I should note that there were other links within the email other than to the video content. Interestingly, the links to the video content accounted for 64.7% of all the click-thru within the email. In other words, close to two-thirds of all clicks went to the video links.
As I continue to measure the effectiveness of our podcasts and Live Streaming Video productions, I’ll be sure to pass that information along to everybody reading this blog. If you have any questions, please leave them as a comment below.
How Adding Video to Our Podcast Increased Episode Downloads by 50%
The Living in Las Vegas Podcast has been a testing grounds of sorts for PodWorx. As a matter of fact, it was the early success of the Living in Las Vegas (LiLV) Podcast that brought about the launch of PodWorx in the first place! (Having already proven that a podcast can help a company make money, as it did for GreatRelaxationMusic.com, the LiLV Podcast cemented the concept that a podcast, when done right, can influence listeners to take action on your behalf.)
Anywho, I’ve used the LiLV Podcast platform for other testing as well, most recently to answer this question:
What effect does adding video have on an audio podcast?
Forgive me Father
Because of my workload, I’ve not produced as many LiLV episodes as I (or our viewers/listeners) would like. As a result, I was seeing an understandable decrease in the number of downloads per episode. I was not too happy about the decrease. . .but again. . .I understood. In appreciation to those listeners who stuck with the show, I wanted to offer up something new. . .an “inside baseball” look into what producing the LiLV Podcast looks like. So, the last couple of episodes have been produced as a live streaming video production, with live chat.
The feedback from the hundreds of people around the world who attended the live shows was gratifying. But what I was really curious about was whether or not adding the ability to download video on demand would positively impact the number of times a particular episode would be downloaded.
Measuring the Results
The answer, I’ve recently learned, is that adding video does increase the number of downloads per episodes. . .significantly.
Now, because the subject matter of every episode is different, some are downloaded more than others. But when I compared that last two episodes we produced that did not have a downloadable video option (64: Dining at Wynn Encore, New Year’s Eve with 20-Somethings and 65: Living the Loft Lifestyle in Las Vegas) with the last two episodes that did have a video download option (66: Learning About the Origins of Las Vegas at Springs Preserve and 67: Southern Nevada Art Gallery in Downtown, Re-piping the House, Miss USA, Britney Spears), I measured a 50.3% increase in episodes downloaded.
There were three download options available for each show: mp3 (audio), flv (video) and mp4 (video).The breakdown of episodes download for the last two shows looked like this:
- Audio Download: 33%
- Video Download: 67%
I have to admit I was a bit surprised by these results. I felt that video would certainly bump up the numbers but did not expect video to account for two-thirds of each episode’s downloads.
What This Means to Me (and You)
It is clear to me that in this Internet world of ours, even though we are all so easily connected, people want to feel a real connection with others during their online travels. And adding video to your podcast (or adding video in general), when the video is well-produced (content+technically) goes a long way towards improving the approachability of your website and further humanizes what can be a less-than-human(y) environment.
This means that if you’re even remotely toying with the idea of adding video to your podcast as a means of driving more downloads and bringing yourself closer to your website visitors, I’d advise you to do so. The increase in numbers is gratifying and besides, now your mom can finally see what you’ve been doing all this time!
By the way, for those who’ve recently added video to their marketing efforts, I’d like to hear what you’ve experienced. Are you seeing an increase in downloads as well? Is the effort the same, less, or more than with an audio-only show? Let me know.
Your Online Video: If the Sound Sucks, I’m not Watching
I’m pleased to see a measurable increase in online video. I’m seeing them more and more in podcasts, embedded in websites, and as a means of driving traffic to your site through Video on Demand sites like YouTube. We’ve begun using video to further improve the connection and approachability of PodWorx and as a means of creating a more intimate setting for out Living in Las Vegas Podcast audience. This is a good thing.
In a business setting, a well thought out video will decrease the time to close a transaction with your visitor by accelerating the mandatory “getting to know you” phase of any sales cycle. But with this exciting increase of online video, I’m seeing the same thing I saw with the initial wave of audio podcasts.
Terrible audio quality.
Those developing video content must recognize that the most important component to your video is not the video. IT’S THE ABILITY TO HEAR THE STORY BEING TOLD. If I cannot hear the story being told, or if the quality is so bad that it is distracting, you’ve lost me.
This means that if you’ve created this beautiful video, with clever transitions, lovely on-screen graphics, compelling on-screen talent, and story-enhancing music, but the sound coming from the talent is tinny, contains too much room echo, is too quiet or too loud and distorted, I’m not going to spend the time suffering through it just to watch the talent be, well, talented. Instead, I’m going to move on to the next item on my to-do list.
But here’s a hint – you already knew that.
Here’s why. Look at one of the most impressive pieces of video/audio technology we have at our disposal today: Skype. When using Skype to place a video-to-video call, what does the software do in the event the bandwidth available will not provide enough throughput for both the audio and video signal.
It degrades the video portion of the connection to ensure the audio is still as good as it can be. The smart people at Skype know that if you can’t hear each other, being able to see each other clearly would only make things MORE annoying.
So, be Skypish with your video. If you’ve done a great job with your audio podcast and you’re now bringing in a video offering, be certain the audio is at least as good with the video as it was with the audio-only product. And if you’re initial go-to-market plan is using video, don’t skimp on the audio side of the story. . .doing so will leave your “talent” with nobody for whom to perform.
What say you? Are you struggling to maintain great sound quality with your video? Are you wondering how to do so? Let me know.
Live Business Brief: Learn About Live Streaming Video Productions
As I mentioned in my last blog post [When it Comes to Live Video Streaming, Watch This Space], as we look to extend the amount of time somebody spends on our websites from tens of seconds to tens of minutes (so that you may have a reasonable amount of time to tell your story), I have discovered the hidden power of Live Streaming Video Productions. I am now ready to share what I’ve learned with you.
Having spend the last three months researching, testing, implementing and documenting what works and doesn’t work in the Live Streaming Video Productions space, I have developed a Live Streaming Video “Business Brief” that will bring you up to speed on the do’s and don’ts of this exciting new sales, marketing and ultimately organizational-enhancing technique.
For the details, visit the brand new Ask Scott Whitney microsite. Depending on the response, I may limit participation to ensure I’m able to answer each person’s questions. And because this is an invitation-only event, you’ll need to follow the easy instructions found in the video to receive the URL and password required for participation.
I look forward to presenting you with this fascinating content. See you at the session!
When it Comes to Live Streaming Video, Watch This Space
2009 marks the year of business-based online video. There is no question about this trend.
Because the time a visitor spends on your website is usually measured in tens of seconds versus tens of minutes, you’ll find that online video, with its ability to capture a person’s attention quickly using both sight and sound, is becoming a top five imperative to those who expect their online presence to do more than act as an e-brochure.
Not surprisingly, the power and immediacy of live television has made its way into the online video world as well. Say what you will about the “old media” of television, millions more people seek it for entertainment and education than do those online. This has lead many companies to begin putting into place Live Streaming Video as part of their marketing/branding/online revenue-generating practices.
For quite some time now, I have been working out the details of a professional-level Live Streaming Video concept that, according to the feedback we’ve received so far, is right on the mark. In the next week or so, I will announce a free training event that will walk the participant through each of the areas to consider when preparing to launch your own Live Streaming Video event. (Not surprisingly, the free training will be. . .wait for it. . .via our own Live Video Stream.)
Keep an eye on this space. I will announce the registration for the free training on this blog. Hope you’ll join us.
How to Connect a Tricaster to Ustream.tv in Five Easy Steps
One of the first things we wanted to do with our new Tricaster was to be able to live stream from the PodWorx studio to Ustream.tv, the free online video streaming service, using the Adobe Flash Media Encoder that is integrated within the Tricaster system. After hours (okay, actually a couple days) of “try this, test that”, we finally discovered and documented a easy-to-follow and repeatable method to initiating a live streaming video event using our Tricaster and Ustream.tv. Here’s the scoop:
1: Test the Windows Media Streaming Capabilities
Before testing the Ustream.tv connectivity, I wanted to make sure that our Tricaster, which is behind a router/firewall, was able to stream to folks outside of our network.
The Tricaster manual does a nice job of walking you through the Port Forward/find your external IP address process. You’ll have to decide what port you want your video to stream from–I used 8181 because it was a port number not being used by any other computer on our network. Once you learn your true outside IP address, write it down.
Once that’s done, from within the Tricaster Live Production console, select the Record/Stream tab and select a “pull:” Stream Type. In the Port field, I used 8181. Click the Stream Live Output button. It will turn red when streaming has begun. The Location field fills in automatically once you started streaming (which you should be doing now). More importantly, the IP address that is auto-entered IS NOT the IP address to the outside word (if you’re behind a router).
On a different computer, fire up Windows Media Player. To load your stream, you’ll want to go to File, Open URL (CTRL-U) and enter your stream’s IP address with port. (On some versions of WMP, right-click on the top bar brings up the menuing system.) Your URL will look something like this: http://25.345.343.33:8181
In our experience, it takes about 10 seconds to buffer the video and then viola, you’ve got a streaming video!!
Now that you’ve proven that you can stream outside your network, you’re ready begin your Ustream.tv stream.
MORE TRICASTER / USTREAM.TV INFORMATION
Since originally writing this post, both Ustream.tv and NewTek (the Tricaster manufacturer) have changed their configuration. As a result, most of what was originally written became obsolete. Subsequently, we’ve received several requests to provide phone-based assistance in this matter. To that end, we offer the following one-on-one Tricaster/Ustream.tv connectivity session by clicking the PayPal button below:
For
$495$225, we will:
- Analyze your Ustream.tv configuration for mistakes/omissions
- Test your existing Ustream.tv configuration with our Tricaster to ensure connectivity is possible with your existing Ustream.tv configuration
- Provide you step-by-step direction to configure your Tricaster for Ustream.tv connectivity
- Provide Tricaster and Ustream.tv step-by-step direction for launching your live streaming video
- Provide answer to any questions you may have about Tricaster and/or Ustream.tv configuration
Furthermore, if we are unable to deliver each of these items, we will refund your money. No questions asked. Guaranteed.
All of this will be accomplished in one hour or less. In other words, in one hour or less, you will no longer be dealing with connectivity problems. Instead, you will be streaming your content to Ustream.tv, with no more worries on how to do so.
Have a question about how this works? Please give us a call. Our number is 702.395.5268.
Finally, congrats on your Tricaster investment. I can tell you, it’s a great tool! We’ve been making money from our Tricaster investment since late January of 2009 and, with the exception of a few “features” we’ve had to work around, are pleased with our Tricaster.
Live Video Streaming Podcasting Q & A
We have been spending much of the last couple weeks planning and implementing some new video capabilities within the PodWorx studio. To test our streaming video capabilities, we will be offering a live Q&A session meant to answer any of your podcast questions.
More information (date/time) to follow.
