YouTube channels are nothing new. They’ve existed in some form for years, but it is only recently that they have become a major force for launching new brands and products. Thanks to things like increased exposure via Playstation and Apple TV along with mobile and tablet video on the rise. The YouTube channel has grown as a great place to launch a brand.

Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry Company launched on YouTube and Google Hangouts on April 1st and has already built up a huge following thanks to a big launch on YouTube. Felecia started out producing short films and games but ballooned into a small viral media empire. Geek and Sundry represents a huge leap as she launches various different products including internet publishing all funneled through her YouTube Channel. Day was able to take a little bit of buzz she built up thanks to her own site and build it into something huge using a YouTube Channel. And she did it all without spending much of anything on advertising.

One thing she did was do a large amount of cross promotion and build up her launch date in a big way. She found other websites and channels that had similar audiences such as Hardwick’s and cross promoted with them using giveaways on Twitter. Day used every form of social media including the brand new Google Hangouts to promote the launch of the YouTube Channel in a big way and it paid off with some great viral buzz that she fed continuously until her much publicized launch date.

Speaking of the launch date, Felicia Day held a massive launch day promotion that included a 12 hour streaming marathon on the brand new Google Plus Hangouts (Aside to YouTube and Facebook; make this more accessible. Streaming video is one thing you guys are lacking on and it’s going to make Google Plus look great in comparison.) This gave her some great buzz and even some trending topics on Twitter on her very first day of launch. She showed off her brand and made some great content for her YouTube channel while getting some great buzz all in one day and all without spending much. She made the launch of her new brand into an event and promoted it as such. She did it in a way any small business with a dedicated niche market can do. Remember, your niche audience is looking for things to talk about. All you have to do is find a way to get the ball rolling.

As I said, the new YouTube Channels are a good way to launch your brand and are great for SEO, but as just like the issues with streaming video, they still have some ways to go. As much as YouTube Channels are a great way to get your brand across there are still some drawbacks to putting your advertising dollars and your time into them as a launch pad for your brand. “They need to find an easier way for people to see them.” Hardwick said, noting the leaps they’ve already made as far as digital streaming to television goes. “YouTube needs to make your channel ‘one click away’ just like any other TV network. When that does all come together, Day, Hardwick, and anyone else along for the ride that develops a base there could be in for a major windfall.

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Targeting for peoples tourism dollars on social media is essentially the science of demographic targeting.  You have to think about the audience you want and what their habits are, if you want spring breakers and college students your strategy will be completely different from the ones catering to the over 50 crowd.  One thing that’s a little tricky is selling your place to kids, since they don’t have the purse strings and most of the time their social media access is limited, your best bet is to go after the women over 30 (known to them as “mom”) That’s why the movie companies put commercials for kids films on during Leno and female oriented shows, they learned long ago that the quickest and cheapest way to advertise to kids, heck to the entire family, is to advertise to mom.

One tourist destination that does an effective job of advertising to families is Medieval Times.  From radio to social media presence, everything is giving out the same message, “hey mom bring the kids.”  Their radio ads prompt you to go to their social media and are on message by getting in all the big keywords this demo looks for and they do it without being too long winded.  Their social media is tailored to moms and everything from the welcome page to the custom tabs is there to tell you just how much they want you to bring your family.  It isn’t subtle but it plays to audience’s that probably don’t have a lot of time to surf Facebook.

One of my first big social media jobs was working with a riverboat casino.  One of the first things we did was establish the Facebook page as the place to go for free stuff, the goal with that page was to not just get unique visitors, but to get repeat viewers, loyal viewers, and people who would stick around and write reviews.   A lot of advertisers want to put emphasis on their YouTube because it looks nicer to have a large stock of videos.  But in reality, as much as people tout the number of YouTube hits they get, having a large group of people who give you the thumbs up and never show up again is nowhere near as valuable as a smaller but very vocal group of fans who give you reviews and build content for you.  The smart social media advertisers that go after tourist see the value in building up reviews and cultivating a fan base as well as a unique identity that speaks to the fan base you want.   Pushing out YouTube video after YouTube video is ultimately no better a strategy than over spending to get what you want.

A lot of tourist sites have taken advantage of sites like Pinterest, Epicmix, and Foursquare.  Sites like that, along with Facebook are great for building a buzz and using your loyal fan base to bring in visiting tourists and people looking for weekend entertainment.  Foursquare is especially good to use as a tool for giveaways along with your Facebook because it’s big with smart phone users and they’re an increasingly growing tool for people visiting different regions.  (Twitter doesn’t seem to work well with tourist and entertainment attractions but it’s always good to keep up, especially considering all the new regional and demo targeting taking place)  Above all remember that you don’t have to overspend or spam with videos to get your audience, just remember to be succinct, build your social media look around the audience you want, and keep that audience in mind as you choose when and how you advertise.

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We’re seeing the same thing now with digital distribution and sites like the Warner Brothers owned Hulu.  Even Fox and Disney are getting in on the act by creating web specific series to bolster their web traffic for other ventures.  Netflix is also getting in on the content end and that’s huge considering they’re well over 30 percent of the digital distribution side.  If their recent revival the of cult hit Arrested Development can get the ball rolling Netflix could join the other major content creators as the 7^th biggest studio in the country.

Netflix isn’t the first to try something like this.  In the late 90s Steven Spielberg and the fledgling DreamWorks Company tried with the launch of Pop.com.  Pop.com was supposed to be a springboard for discovering new talent without having to take the chances of giving them an expensive TV or movie deal.  It was all original content made specifically for the web.  It was a brilliant idea that predated Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix.  The problems Pop had were the same that early adopters of DVR and QR codes had, there just wasn’t an audience ready and the technology hadn’t pervaded the marketplace.  The number of people with high speed connections was still a fraction of those still on the slower dial-up.  (Remember the days when it took a half hour to load a video.  That was miserable.)  DreamWorks’s vertical integration plans were a little too ambitious.  The structure wasn’t in place for a company to use digital streaming and web only content to bolster the rest of their business.  Sites like Google and Yahoo didn’t have SEO in place to help support those kind of sites.  (Anyone remember Lycos?)

To their credit, Warner Brothers was touting this formula for nearly 20 years.  They made an effort to use their TV to bolster both their music and movie divisions.  Even though their TV station interests haven’t really panned out (RE: WB Network, CW) with Hulu they were one of the first to utilize digital streaming as a genuine means of distribution.  It paid off big as the Warner Brothers owned Hulu is second only to Netflix, and gaining fast, as a means of digital distribution.

What this means for a small business and their digital advertising dollars is actually a good thing, the more content that is out there the more advertising they need to squeeze in and sell.  It won’t be long now until Hulu becomes more small business friendly by offering you demographic targeted advertising and metrics that you would have to pay top dollar for (much like Facebook, Twitter and Google are starting to do).  You could find yourself looking at a whole different level of digital advertising that used to be the exclusive domain of big corporations.  The more content they create the more they need you.  And these guys are getting ready to create a whole lot of fresh content.

Ultimately, vertical integration of entertainment content benefits small business especially in the digital age where distribution is only the cost of the bandwidth.  Keep watching these guys, it won’t be long till everyone benefits.

Warner, Fox Partner for New Digital Initiative

Amazon May Join Netflix and Hulu and Produce Original TV Content, Report Says

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Convergence – a word often over-used in these times. Experiential brand building has met digital data. Media is becoming friends with creative. And software is now another critical touchpoint in the mix. Traditional and digital have converged, but there is more work to do. Creative is still playing catch-up and math men are still very much driving media. Brand experiences are still disconnected from activation. True “convergence” will arrive when great creative, driven by media performance and technology, reaches consumers at every touchpoint in consistently positive ways.

Relevance – another word that is over-used in these times. But it has good intentions. At a very basic level we all want to be relevant, to be heard, to have relationships that are more than fleeting. As marketers and agencies we know the challenge is to build these relationships with customers, and again data is important because it’s the fuel that drives the engine. But great creative is still how we craft the message that touches us as people. It gets really exciting when we realize that technology allows us to have an intimate yet widely broadcasted conversation with each person. Not only can we target the right consumer at the right place with the exact right message, but we can create experiences that keep consumers intact. I just hope we as marketers and advertisers can avoid abusing these wonderful abilities, because it’s all very uplifting when done right.

We’ve created a creative campaign platform for marketers to embrace and take advantage of these challenges. Take a look! www.theLiveAds.com

One reason the competition amongst tablets will ultimately help small business advertising is that, with things like Kickstarter, we’re now seeing these companies try and go for them as a source of income, particularly niche market advertisers.  Kickstarter proves that if you curtail your product to help small businesses you get more natural SEO and more of a grassroots buzz.  This means that companies like Apple. Sony, Samsung, and Lenovo don’t have to spend nearly as much as they would otherwise to get up there on search engines.  For that reason above all, the fact that the manufactures get more off your buzz combined then they do off the others, they will cater to small businesses wanting to expand via digital advertising.  The Nike shoe app isn’t getting people talking any more than they already are about the Nike smartphone app or the Nike Facebook page but having an app that services small businesses like Kickstarter is going to build buzz all on its own.

Another way the Tablet wars benefit small business is that they are quicker to develop more practical applications that help consumers at a local level.  Let’s face it, just like with a Plasma TV or your DVD player; they all largely do the same thing.  Every tablet computer is going to have the capability to watch Hulu and Netflix, surf the net, and send email along with all the basics.  What is going to separate them is how they help you personally.  Things like GPS (one of the glaring omissions from some of the first tablets) and QR code readers benefit small business in a huge way.  It’s only a matter of time till, seeing how Tablets can help small businesses, Foursquare makes a huge leap into Tablet marketing and that will be a huge boon to small business and to whichever manufacture embraces it.

The tablet wars will also help small business by pushing the new tech in streaming video.  The more streaming video advances as genuine alternative to traditional TV the more it will benefit small business.  The faster they develop and dive into new streaming technology the more it could influence cable and internet providers like ATT and Comcast to go that direction as well.  Ultimately if the tablet wars help push streaming video, and it looks as if they will, then you could soon see a lot more regional advertising on sites like Netflix and Hulu.  You watch commercials before you see a movie in the theaters, why not when you stream one from Netflix?

Ultimately competition is good with any new technology, whether it’s TV, video games, computers, or music downloading, it’s been proven that the times with the most new leaps in new technology have been amongst the most competitive.  That’s when they take chances and throw things at the wall to see what sticks.  Ultimately the winning dog in this fight could very likely be the one that caters to small business the most.

The Tablet Wars Get More Interesting

Smartphone meets tablet as makers look at big picture

A lot of people think of Kickstarter as being synonymies with charity but the winner of $1 million in just one day was the Double Fine Video Game Company.  These 2 guys asked for $400,000 and now have $600,000 profit before distribution and even better they own 100% of their intellectual property.  They’ve already made a profit, not to mention the press and SEO benefits their social media pages got from this entire thing.  Ladies and Gentleman, this is the future of small business.

Kickstarter’s like this are essentially selling a product before it’s even made, I helped a good friend Kickstart a small business and I used the phrase “extreme pre-ordering,” (quite possibly my favorite phrase I’ve ever come up with.)  People have used Kickstarter for everything from Bookstore’s to clothing lines, to pretty much every small business you can think of.  Just like everything on the internet with 1500 new pages being uploaded every second a lot of it is just dumb luck but there are a few things you can do if you want to use Kickstarter to get a new small business off the ground and pump up your SEO in the process.

One thing that works great for SEO and Kickstarter is that they’re very supportive of videos.  Having a video explaining the product you want to Kickstart will give you a much bigger chance of getting on the front page of the site, and that’s worth a lot in hits.  Also, utilizing sites like Digg, and obviously your other social media is essential.  The more the link is out there the more it might show up in searches and the more people will see it.

One mistake people using Kickstarter make is assuming their audience isn’t consumer minded.  Kickstarter has a reputation of being a place for hipster’s to try offbeat ideas that they don’t think would get money in the mainstream.  That’s changed as the site got bigger but even so a niche audience has largely the same mind set as other consumers, they’re just a more ravenous fanbase.  They still won’t buy a product from a company they don’t have confidence in.  Double Fine made sure to have a detailed business plan right there on the Kickstarter page.  The more detail you include, the more people are going to trust you with their money.  Getting people to buy a product that doesn’t exist yet is a huge leap.   Double Fine knew this and they took their page seriously.  Even including a picture of the creators with Cookie Monster shows them in a professional light.  The trick is giving as much detail as possible while still projecting yourself as a fun brand that people want to actively be a part of.  In this respect, it’s like selling stocks, but with just a little bit more showmanship.

Another project that recently broke the 1 Day $1 Million milestone is a high-end aluminum Elevation iPhone Doc.  One thing these guys did beautifully was include user reviews of the prototype, they sent out a few to some magazines and users with social media pull and they got back some great reviews, not only does this give them a much higher SEO profile, it alleviates some people’s fears regarding types of projects.  They clearly have a tested prototype and a business model in mind.  They just needed a little extra boost to get going.  They invited consumers to be a part of something big and that gave them the push they needed to skyrocket past their goal.

On Kickstarter Two Projects Pass The $1 Million Mark In A Single Day

While the promoted topics weren’t really targeted regionally at first, over the last year they’ve started to become a great place for regional and local marketing to get the word out in a major city for a major event very soon.  In the next year Twitter will make some huge strides in making themselves accessible to local businesses.  They’ve talked at length about just how in depth their targeting can be, and unlike Facebook and Myspace, it can change up to the minute.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is a great place for short term and event marketing.  With Facebook you have to take some time to build up your event page, maybe even a few weeks.  With Twitter’s promoted items you can have your event scene and get a following built in a few days or even a few hours (although you should still give it some solid time to build).  Twitter has taken its big advantage, the fact that their feeds move a lot faster than other social media sites, and developed an infrastructure that takes full advantage of the fact.  The result is that Twitter is one of the best places on the web to promote a marketing event.  I’ve talked a lot in the last few weeks about what the major video game retailers, like Gamestop, have been doing on social media.  That’s because, more than any industry I’ve seen, they’re taking advantage of the new things Twitter has to offer for businesses.  Twitter is offering a level of demographic targeting unheard of before, and they’re able to do it in a timely manner.  Once they really start rolling out the regional advertising and promoted topics they could very quickly unseat Facebook as the place to spend your time and advertising dollars.

Another advantage of Twitter in 2012 is that they are working to overcome the idea that they tend to skew toward a younger demographic.  In the past, advertisers had a difficult time advertising toward kids largely because they aren’t the ones who control the cash flow.  A lot of big companies eschewed advertising directly to kids and instead focused those ads on the adult women demo (i.e. Mom). They’ve forgone advertising to kids altogether, the logic being, to “cut out the middle man” and not rely on kids to convince their parents to fork over their cash.  Thanks to social media and digital streaming this has started to become antiquated thinking.  By targeting specific demos with ads that are easy to vary and easy to send to different people virtually whenever you want you give kids something they can take to their parents directly instead of relying on them to sell your message on their own.  Also, just like with Facebook, the Twitter audience will start getting a bit older and more and more of the over 25 crowed will join in.  In 2012 Twitter could find itself the far and away most diverse social media platform as far as age groups go.

One thing I talked about at length some time ago but I haven’t mention in a while is the notion of a Flash Sale.  Basically you tell your social media followers you have a deal going on in the next “x hours” (or minutes if you want to see who is really paying attention)  It’s a great way to spread your message virally and will establish your Twitter as the place to go for awesome deals.  With Twitter being friendlier to advertisers and growing in demos in a big way it would be a great time to try one out.  You could also get a great gage on how much your customer base is online and just what kind of audience you have without all that expensive and time consuming focus grouping.

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Online advertising budgets: 5% for Facebook in 2012

The biggest change coming that missed 2011 by just a tick is Digital Streaming Integration.  They had some stumbling but 2012 could very well be the year that digital streaming takes over some portion of your local cable.  With the number of people relying on their X-Boxes, Playstations, Internet ready TVs and Blu ray players instead of traditional cable is growing daily. (Myself included) It’s hard to ignore the notion that cable is old fashion.  This year the NFL, ESPN, Major League Baseball and Fox Sports are all making deals where you can watch all their content via subscription. HBO and other major networks are putting the majority of their content on Hulu.  Digital streaming will cement itself as a viable alternative and more.

Twitter Targeting is getting more and more specific and will become a great place for regional business to get into this year.  The major video game companies have used it to great effect over the Christmas season so it shows that Twitter can be even more of a hub for niche marketing than Facebook if used right.  Soon regional and local business will use Twitter to target specific demographics in their specific region.  This could make Twitter the perfect place to do flash sales (something I’ve been a huge proponent of for small businesses wanting some big social media traffic).  They’ve already expanded their profile pages in anticipation.  Keep an eye out for big Twitter news in the beginning of 2012.

Don’t count Google + out just yet.  They still have 65 million users and 20% of those were in the last few months of 2011.  It’s also emerged as a great place for business-to-business marketing and more adult oriented consumer products.  Twitter’s problem is that they’ve always seemed young and that makes it harder to market to them considering, ultimately, kids don’t control the purse strings. (Ever notice how kids movies tend to play during shows women 35 and over enjoy. They’re targeting mom).

Foursquare is another one to watch.  Here is a fact for you; roughly 10,000 smart phones go active everyday.  With all those new users, mobile marketing is now as important and necessary as having your social media and SEO up to date.  One mobile site that would be good for a small business to follow is Foursquare.  Foursquare has actually been around for a few years but it didn’t have the mobile Internet to get things going until smart phones really blew up.  Now even Facebook is trying to adapt its model as one of their features but that hasn’t really taken off just yet.  Foursquare is getting more and more fans everyday and could rival Twitter in social media use if they play their cards right in 2012.  Start some exclusive giveaways for people with a high number of check-ins and encourage people to talk you up and you could be at the front of a site that’s really exploding next year.

QR Codes have been a prickly area for a lot of business.  I worked with one in April that wanted to put them on their tray tables and displays in their restaurant.  The reality is that it wasn’t easy to scan and view them online.  It doesn’t take an ad wizard to know that people don’t want to work to see your advertising.  But with some new tech springing up and mobile Internet getting faster and faster it’s a lot easier.  QR Codes are going to be a huge deal very soon.  They can also be a great way to gage your customer’s mobile marketing potential.  Use them to reward loyal customers that use your Facebook and Twitter.  Remember the more you give them the more likely they are to talk and the better your SEO will be.  (See, everybody wins)

Not for profits on social media are also on the verge of getting some big boosts in the coming year.  With sites like Kickstarter making national headlines it’s only a matter of time before Facebook, Twitter, and other sites make special considerations for charities using social media to raise funding. I’ve actually been working with some non-profits on social media for years and I’ve been a little annoyed with the lack of consideration on the part of some of those sites.  But 2012 looks like a great year for non-profit groups to get what they need using social media.

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It was the great entertainment mastermind Justin Bieber who openly came out against one of the many huge copyright infringement bills threatening to cripple sites like YouTube and Daily motion.  In all seriousness, even though he might not fully grasp what he’s saying his people sure do.  They understand that videos that might use unlicensed material are the bread and butter of YouTube.  (And without YouTube they wouldn’t have a client or a fan base.)  They might not want to admit it but that’s the main reason people come there, not the small array of TV shows, tie in exclusives, and movies they have.  If bills like that are passed it will set streaming video back to the 90s and cripple the new developing tech that is replacing cable.  (Of course there are some people who want that to happen.)

In a lot of ways, just like how piracy was a growing pain on the music industry’s way to massive changes the same can be said for the piracy of TV and video.  Making it illegal now would take away a huge portion of the content that these sites have and the bulk of people’s reason to come there.  In the next few years people will accept these sites as the place to go for the newest stuff and they will pay for them. Similar to how people accepted iTunes very easily as an alternative to the free illegal download sites.  It will come and it will happen in the next few years and if they let some of this piracy go they will make money off things in the long run, similar to the kind of money apple is making now.

Obviously I’m not advocating piracy.  Stealing is wrong but sometimes, not always, it’s necessary for new mass communications technology.  If the case of Napster v. iTunes isn’t enough for you then you can go back just a bit further to another industry that was plagued by pirates and emerged a few years later stronger for it.  For a long time the Adult Entertainment industry has been the canary in the coal mine for new mass communications technologies.

Before the major film studios started putting things out on home video, adult entertainment was there.  Before Sony pictures became the first studio legally allowing people to buy and download movies the adult entertainment industry did it across the board.  They also had major piracy problems but because they embraced new technology instead of sticking with the antiquated versions they came out the better.  Both these examples show (Yes I know that sounds like a term paper transition) that piracy is actually less about getting something for free and more about getting things that are convenient.  It’s about the path of least resistance and if they can settle on a reasonable price point for streaming video services they won’t have to worry about piracy, those customers will come back.

Ultimately this does effect what happens to your advertising dollars.  If everything keeps going up the way it is, soon the streaming sites will become friendlier to regional advertising.  Justin.TV is already doing some of that and they are also getting some interesting exclusive content from sites like Geekweek.com.  (Making them a great site to watch for niche advertising)  If this kind of legislation gets through it could make YouTube look like MySpace very quickly.  If you have a YouTube channel that is a pretty big part of your digital marketing you might want to take a look at some other streaming sites or just keep a look out for this sort of thing.

Game consoles credited with video streaming explosion

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Nobody does social media for sports fans like Buffalo Wild Wings, even going as far as to create a holiday for them, complete with special offers and incentives to keep them coming back (Happy Footballica!), little things like that are a great way to bring in this kind of niche audience that is always looking for some new giveaways.  They even coincide their sweepstakes (they refer to them as challenges, never miss a chance to get your audience in the right mode, every word counts even if you have unlimited space.) with whatever is going on in sports.  Their challenges end on Sundays during football season, meaning that people on their Facebook pages are checking them out at the same time they’re watching the Bears game.

One great thing you can do with social media marketing to sports fans that you can’t do with other forms of marketing is time everything to the minute.  You can’t schedule a radio or tv commercial specific to what is happening but you can do a social media update talking about specific details.  Log on to Facebook at halftime or sporadically during the game and you could very well get people who view your page as unmissable game time material.  Just like Buffalo Wild Wings, you can easily convert Facebook fans to loyal customers if they think you’re an indispensible resource for up to date info.   It doesn’t matter if it’s at the local or national level.  Sports fans will find a good page and go there with a passion.

One thing that has really blown up on social media for sports fans over the last few years is fantasy leagues.  Running a fantasy league is easy and you can really just use NFl.com’s page and link it to your Facebook.   Even though you can’t gamble through Facebook you can still give prizes for your leagues winner at the end of the season (word your rules very carefully when you post them to avoid problems) post some updates and news about your fantasy league, even if it’s just with your employees.  People will get into it and start talking and within a year or so you could have a huge following for your fantasy league and make your draft a huge in house event.

One company doing something similar is EA Sports.  They have updates every week on the latest sports stories and post all the predictions before the games start.  EA is setting themselves up as the Fantasy Footballers dream site and it’s paying off big in SEO and eyes going to their official site.

Ultimately there are many different ways to get the social media savvy sports fan to your page.  The good news is they are looking for the newest stuff and are always hungry for more deals, giveaways and info.   The bad news is that you have a lot more competition.  It might take some time but if you make a genuine and enthusiastic attempt to give fans stuff to do on your page they will stick around and give your product a boost.  Don’t be afraid to get your employees involved at first.  If your page looks busy it will entice people to join in.  Be aggressive, these people want more info, you aren’t going to scare them off easily.

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