YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day – Interview of Greg Jarboe


Video Optimization and Marketing is an extremely hot topic given the ability to gain traction through video on services such as YouTube without the investment of thousands of dollars. We recently caught up with Greg Jarboe, the author of: YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day and during our chat with Greg, we got it his insight on his Video Marketing book.

[Manoj]: Talk to us about the target audience of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day?

[Greg Jarboe]: This book is for veteran marketers. Internet marketers, search engine marketers, business marketers, sports marketers, event marketers, product marketers, and corporate marketers should read this book because they didn’t learn about video marketing in college—because there were no courses on this topic a couple of years ago—and their marketing jobs and marketing careers are rapidly being reshaped by YouTube.

This book is also for new YouTubers. Comedians, directors, gurus, musicians, partners, and politicians should read this book to learn how to market and promote their YouTube videos more effectively.

Finally, this book is for entrepreneurs. Do-it-yourselfers and small business owners should read this book to debunk popular myths and gain actionable insights from their YouTube and video marketing efforts.

[Manoj]: YouTube is the center of the video marketing universe, so how can users get on the right path of engaging the community?

[Greg Jarboe]: Chapter 7 of my book is entitled “Engage the YouTube Community.” And to get on the right path of engaging the community, the first thing you need to do to is follow the YouTube Community Guidelines. For example, everyone hates spam. So, don’t create misleading descriptions, tags, titles, or thumbnails in order to increase views.

[Manoj]: What are your thoughts on Tube Mogul?

[Greg Jarboe]: I recommend using TubeMogul to distribute your videos to other sites in Chapter 6 of my book. And I recommend using TubeMogul to understand your audience, measure industry trends, and get rich metrics for your site’s video player in Chapter 10.

[Manoj]: Chapter 9 discusses the concept of becoming a YouTube partner, what is the importance of this?

[Greg Jarboe]: YouTube’s Partner Program is a revenue-sharing program that allows creators and producers of original content to earn money from their videos on YouTube. You can earn revenue from relevant advertisements that run against your videos using Google’s proprietary technology. YouTube uses a variety of criteria to review applications, including the size of your audience, quality of content, and consistency with its Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. On December 10, 2008, Brian Stelter of the New York Times wrote an article entitled “YouTube Videos Pull in Real Money.” He wrote, “One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become ‘partners’ and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site.” Stelter interviewed Michael Buckley, the host of “What the Buck?” who said he was earning over $100,000 from YouTube advertisements.

[Manoj]: What metrics/indicators should users look at in order to best understand the performance of their Videos?


[Greg Jarboe]: Although it is useful to measure views and ratings, how many of these “outputs” do you need to make the cash register ring? In my book, I profiled half a dozen individuals and organizations that have used YouTube and video marketing to generate measurable “outcomes.” How did Barack Obama win the presidency of the United States? How did Monty Python increase sales of DVDs 23,000 percent? How did “Will It Blend?” deliver 700 percent increase in sales? How did Universal Music Group book $100 million in revenue? How did “What the Buck?” earn a hundred thousand dollars? How did Rob Zombie’s Halloween finish #1 at the box office?

[Manoj]: If readers could takeaway only 2-3 things from the book, what would you want those things to be?

[Greg Jarboe]: Most readers will want to learn how video marketing works. But I hope they also learn why most new videos don’t go viral. By looking closely at the successes and failures in a field that is less than five years old, readers can begin to understand what they can do to help millions of people discover, watch and share originally-created videos.

Nexus One – Android Powered Google Phone

The talk over the weekend has been all about Nexus One, Google’s very own Android powered phone. There was a lot of coverage and initial feedback about Nexus One on many popular blogs:

We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it. – Google Mobile Blog


This Weeks Must Reads in Internet Marketing

Christmas is only 2 weeks away and great content around the industry is still not slowing down. Below are some of the must reads of the week:

Yahoo and Bing Down in November, Google Up

Hitwise announced today that Google accounted for 71.57 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Nov. 28, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 15.39 percent, 9.34 percent and 2.65 percent, respectively. The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.07 percent of U.S. searches.

Percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine provider

Domain October 2009

November 2009

Month-over-month percentage change

www.google.com

70.60%

71.57%

1%

search.yahoo.com

16.14%

15.39%

-5%

www.bing.com

9.57%

9.34%

-2%

www.ask.com

2.62%

2.65%

1%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Nov. 28, 2009, and Oct. 31, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
*This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.
Source: Experian Hitwise

Satisfaction Holds Steady, But Still Disappoints

Our second weekly holiday benchmark is out, measuring satisfaction with hundreds of thousands of visitors to 110+ retail websites since Thanksgiving. (Read about satisfaction on Cyber Monday here.)

Satisfaction held steady from last week, meaning shoppers are similarly satisfied with the online shopping experience this week when compared to Cyber Monday. What’s troubling is that satisfaction is still down 3% since last year, and even last year (amidst the recession), it wasn’t anything to write home about. Comscore is reporting sales increases of 4% year-over-year, and we’ve been wondering how sales can be up at all (even a disappointing 4%) when satisfaction is down. After all, satisfaction as measured by the ACSI is a proven predictor of sales, financial success, and even stock prices.

However, when we look deeper at the Comscore data, we see that the Top 25 retailers are growing 13% while “Small and Mid Tail” retailers are declining 10%. As Larry Freed predicted based on the Cyber Monday data, only a small percentage of retailers who have really focused on customer experience over the last year are going to see sales increases, while the vast majority are actually going to lose revenue YOY. So while overall, sales numbers are increasing (a disappointing 4%), the overall increase doesn’t tell the whole story because it’s a few HUGE increases averaged with a lot of decreases. It’s becoming apparent that a lot of individual etailers will still be hurting January 1.

In short, retailers that are focusing on the customer experience despite the recession will increase online satisfaction and will therefore increase revenues.

Kevin Ertell has some ideas on what it looks like to improve customer experience in a way that could have a meaningful impact on revenue.

Follow Kevin and Larry on Twitter http://twitter.com/larryfreed and @kevinertell) for more thoughts on how the holiday season is shaping up.

Google Analytics Introduces Annotations

Annotations allows any user with access to a Google Analytics profile to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph. Building upon the concept of bringing Intelligence to data, capture the tribal intelligence of your company – which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers.

Google Friend Connect Integrates with Twitter

If you missed the announcement from last week, Google has opened up the ability to sign into Google Friend Connect via your Twitter Account.

…we’re bringing Twitter and Friend Connect even closer together. Now you can join one of over nine million Google Friend Connect sites using your Twitter login. Once signed in, your Twitter profile will be automatically linked and you can tweet your new site membership, share discussions from the comments gadget, and invite your friends via Twitter.