The Insider's Guide to Social Video

The other day, I was honored to be asked to speak on a panel with other brand marketers at the Brand Innovators Chicago Summit.  The goal was to provide a perspective on how to utilize online video to create entertaining and engaging content.  More importantly how do we, as marketers, get our communities to share these videos with their audiences?  

If you're in marketing and working in the digital space, there's no doubt that video has been a topic of conversation at some point.  It's hard to keep track of how quickly the entire social landscape is changing let alone focus on one platform so I wanted to share some quick highlights I found while researching the most recent stats.

The following are from comScore's August 2012 data:

• 188 M U.S. Internet users who watched video content in August
• 37.7 B, yes Billion, online content videos
• 9.5 M video ads viewed

So, the question that now remains is not why we have to put video content out there but what?  

First, the video has to strike an emotion and be on target with the messaging your trying to communicate with your audience.  It could be fear, joy, surprise, sadness, whatever but the point is that it must resonate with people to be memorable.  Second, if you want to make a video "viral" it needs to be supported with paid media to capitalize on organic shares and views.  I'd say less than 1% of all videos truly go viral through 100% word of mouth.  

A few of my favorites are listed below.  Happy viewing and feel free to share!

DollarShaveClub.com - Our Blades are F***ing Great

The Hottest @ Abercrombie & Fitch Guys, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen

Google Chrome: Dear Sophie

Oh Starbucks: How I Love You So Much

For those of you that know me, it comes as no surprise that I'm a huge Starbucks fan and have raved about their loyalty program and app since its launch.  As I mentioned in the Walgreens post, Starbucks pioneered the use of the barcode scanner on a mobile device to make using the loyalty program a breeze.  

Perusing through my emails this morning, I opened one from Starbucks announcing new features to the program that make it faster, tastier and quicker than before.  Make your calendars for Tuesday, October 16 to take advantage of these new benefits.  

• Users now only have to accumulate 12 stars as opposed to 15.
• Stars will now include purchases on both food AND drink.  
• The reward is loaded immediately onto your app (or physical card for those non-app users) meaning we no longer have to wait for snail mail! 

With the changes happening less than a week after Apple announced their new iPhone 5 I can't help but applaud Starbucks on the strategic timing of their upgrades.  According to CNET, over 2 million orders have already placed.  Coincidence?  I think not.  

Internet 101

If you turn on the computer and fire up Google Chrome, Gmail, Facebook and a bunch of other websites that help us with our daily lives only to not get connected, I'm sure a few choice words exit your mouth as they do for many of us.  

In recapping the first week of my MKT 595: Internet and Interactive Marketing class we started at the very beginning - How the Internet Works.  For most people who are connected online they could not even begin to explain how it works.  I don't necessarily have much more of an understanding than most but here's a little tutorial you can throw this around at a cocktail party and sound like an IT wiz.  

Internet: A global network that links computers through an IP address. 

IP address: A unique identifier that links one computer to the other on the Internet (network).  

Domain Name Service: The process of translating IP addresses to domain names.  As humans we'd much rather remember Facebook.com than a bunch of numbers.  Telephone numbers are hard enough these days.  

World Wide Web: The WWW is an application that actually lays on top of the Internet and is a series of interlinked documents which we better refer to them as web pages.  

Web Servers: Servers that host web pages.

Web Browser: Software that is used to view web pages like Microsoft IE, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.  

This may solve your next Internet crisis but hopefully makes you feel a little more aware of how things work in our ever connected online lives.  

Remembering 9/11

Last night was the first night of my Accounting 555 class with Dr. Mark Frigo.  I have to admit Accounting wasn't one of my favorite undergraduate classes and aside from budgeting and monthly allocations I haven't had to work with T-accounts for years.  

Thankfully I've heard nothing but positive things about Dr. Frigo and after last night's class I can tell he's truly one of those teachers who cares and wants to make learning the information fun.  I'm really looking forward to his class this quarter.

More importantly though was how he kicked off the orientation.  Prior to arrival, Dr. Frigo sent an email dedicating our first class to Todd Beamer, Kellstadt MBA Class of 1993 and Hero of United Flight 93.  Todd is one of the passengers who fought to take control of the aircraft from terrorists.  
Sharing something as tragic as this is never easy to do.  However, I commend Dr. Frigo for  living the motto, "We will never forget."

Walgreens Launches Loyalty Program

Say it's finally so!  As I perused my Facebook news feed over lunch I came across a post from Walgreens announcing their new loyalty program, Balanced Rewards.  I'm sure most people could care less but I may have flashed a little smile.  

One might ask why does this make me happy?  For one, I'm thrilled that I'll now start to accumulate free money when I have to purchase those "must haves" like toilet paper and shampoo which are frequently from Walgreens.  I mean who wouldn't want to be rewarded when you literally pay money to put trash in garbage bags to be thrown out?!  

All joking aside, Walgreens is a retailer who's made leaps and bounds in the social space and it's great to see a loyalty program being integrated into their social efforts.  When I opened my Walgreens app on my iPhone sign up consisted of entering a zip, phone number, and DOB while the rest of my registration info pulled from my existing profile.  The best part is that unlike other loyalty programs who may have been first to market, you don't have to have another key fob on the ring.  Much like Starbucks, Walgreens has incorporated a barcode that can be scanned right from your smartphone.  

The one downside of the launch is that it appears the program has not rolled out into their stores yet.  On the flipside, kudos to Walgreens for generating the buzz early.  I'll let you know if my smile comes back in store in 10 days.