Digital Media

There’s a lot of talk about the current and future explosion of video usage in online magazines. Take a look at Steve Smith’s recent article, Magazine Video Streams Up 90% in 2010, for some exciting numbers from major technology provider Brightcove.

Here are three key points from this article that quantify how video viewing and production have increased in the past year:

If you’re trying to convince someone of the popularity of video in online magazines, these numbers are very encouraging.

Not sure where to start with your social media efforts? It’s always useful to read case studies of how other organizations are tackling similar challenges. On the one hand, it’s great when you can pick up a few valuable tips. On the other hand, it’s nice to confirm that you’ve already been doing things right.

That’s how I reacted to the lead article in the September/October 2009 issue of Spectrum, SHSMD’s bimonthly member newsletter, “Launching Our Hospital’s Social Networks: An Insider’s Perspective.” It tracks the steps that Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago took to develop a social media presence. Written by two of the hospital’s marketing professionals, Leigh Ginther and Laura Prusik, this case study presents an intelligent process and meaningful observations.

With all the hype about Facebook and Twitter, we marketers get that social media is the place to be. We’re repeatedly warned that if we’re not taking advantage of these new channels, we’re missing out on precious marketing opportunities. But with tight budgets, we need to prove that social media pays off before we can dedicate too many resources.

In his article Measure Social-Media Efforts to Grow Revenue, Lists and Leads, Dan Miller* boils this measurement process down to five manageable steps:

1. Set your goals (i.e. revenue, lead-generation, email-list-building, conversion goals)
2. Figure out how to measure your goals (i.e. what specifically are you going to track?)
3. Establish a baseline of activity
4. Create URL tracking parameters
5. Measure, study, analyze

It sounds easy enough, but you’ll need to read Miller’s article to get the details on specific ways to track activity and measure results.

*Dan Miller is professional services and sales engineering manager at Lyris.

Hospitals around the country are beginning to make better use of audio and video patient testimonials on their websites and service-line microsites. Granted, as an industry they’ve been slow to the party, but that’s largely because of their deliberate caution related to issues like privacy, Medicaid reimbursements, and other liabilities. All of that seems to be changing now, and you see plenty of examples of audio and video programs on hospital websites, particularly with the large academic medical centers. Here is a nice example from UCLA Medical Center.

For smaller organizations, the high cost of professionally produced video has been constraining. On the other hand, “cheap video” shot by someone’s nephew and posted on YouTube doesn’t necessarily do service to a hospital’s effort to extend its brand and build consumer affinity for its services.

There are, however, relatively inexpensive ways to produce and present high-quality audio and video. I think one of the best examples that may serve as a model for hospitals is the series called Patient Voices done by the New York Times. These are 2 minute patient testimonial audiocasts with 4-5 corresponding photos in a slide show. They are very moving even though their production value is modest. There’s no program introduction, no music, no voice over, no graphics other than the photos, and you can tell the audio edit of each was minimal. It’s just the patient telling his or her story.

For people facing life-altering or life-threatening conditions, hearing from other patients with similar stories is engaging and supportive.

DCP is working on projects like these for hospital (and non-hospital) clients. Call me if you want to know more about it.

The YouTube phenomenon is an oft-cited example of the explosion of video on the web. Now, an increasing number of studies reveal the effectiveness of video for creating “stickiness” on websites, for keeping eyeballs on your site longer and prompting them to return more frequently.

The data about the effectiveness of video, when combined with the demographics about broadband penetration (over 90% among “active” Internet users according to a February 2009 report from Neilson Online) makes a powerful case for marketers to integrate video into their web content toolkit.

Why are online videos effective marketing tools? They allow your prospects to see and hear firsthand what makes your organization unique, rather than having to sift through pages of text. Videos offer a personal touch and guarantee that your message is being communicated completely and accurately. There is no better way to share customer testimonials.

Here are some interesting statistics:

• Most users consume video. 80% of Internet users watch video, moving to 88% by 2012. (Ad Age Web Video Report)

• People are spending more time watching videos online. According to a survey by comScore, 73% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of nearly three and a half hours of online video during the month of February 2008, with Americans viewing more than 10 billion videos online. According to the Nielsen Online VideoCensus, the time per viewer spent looking at videos online jumped 49% in May 2009 compared to May 2008.

• Videos drive people to action. Of the people viewing marketing-oriented videos, over half will take some action after viewing a video...including 12% who will buy the product being offered. Typically only .5% to 2% of visitors to a "text only" web site will purchase a product. (Online Publishers Association and Adweek)

• People spend more time watching videos than reading text online. 65% of online surfers will view video advertisements to their completion. Less than 20% read "text only" sites to completion. (Online Publishers Association and Adweek)

• All demographics are watching videos.
Who Watches Online Video
      Men 63%; Women 51%
      Ages 18-29 76%
      Ages 30-49 57%
      Ages 50-64 46%
      Age 65+ 39%

• People share links to videos. 68% of people who watch online videos pass links for these videos onto their friends. (Online Publishers Association and Adweek)

• Video is highest performing advertising unit online. Pre-roll video outperforms all traditional display units on brand lift, brand recall and lift in purchase intent. (Ad Age Web Video Report)

Now, with the cost of video production declining significantly and with the option to host your videos on other websites, web videos are viable for more organizations. DCP is expanding our video web services. Contact us if you’re interested in finding out about our video offerings.

I was surprised by a few statistics quoted in the recent DMNews article, Boomer women get social. According to Facebook, since September 2008, the fastest-growing age group on the site is women over 55. And according to Forrester Research, more than 60% of boomers—both men and women—are regular consumers of social media.

This data motivated me to investigate Facebook demographic trends over the past few years. According to iStrategyLabs’ 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report, in the past year there has been a 276% growth in 35-54 year old users and 194% growth in the 55+ group.

This means that the percentage of Facebook users who are 18-24 years old is rapidly declining:

• In 2007, 62% of Facebook users were 18-24
• In 2008, 54% of Facebook users were 18-24
• In 2009, 41% of Facebook users are 18-24

So what does this trend mean for marketers? In this article, you’ll gain many interesting insights from Carol Orsborn and Mary Brown, the co-authors of the book Boom: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer – the Baby-Boomer Woman. Some of the key points are:

• “Boomers interact differently online than younger generations.”
• “Content is key to drawing this audience into social networking conversations.”
• “Boomers take more time making connections, with longer emails or texts.”
• “Content is king—it leads to social networking, not the other way around.”
• “Boomers are outspending younger consumers two to one.”

The bottom line is that our social media marketing strategies today need to target all age groups, and organizations targeting women over 35 years old should consider social media as a viable vehicle.

Saw an interesting factoid this morning that I thought was worth sharing.

According to this article (from foliomag.com) titled How Much is a Magazine's Content Worth?, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez notes that of the 133 million blogs tracked by Technorati in 2008 only 7.4 million of them (that's 5.5%) had been updated in the previous 120 days. 

As in four months. 

I think by any measure, it's fair to say that a blog which hasn't been updated in four months is no longer a blog that has any meaningful presence on the web.

Allowing for the fact that some, perhaps many, of those blogs may be similar to the one I launched ten months ago (The Offel Family blog) -- in other words, launched as a purely personal endeavor and of virtually no interest to anyone except my mom -- there is no doubt that many of them were launched by organizations seeking to engage in a dialog with their customers.  Yet now almost 95% of them are floating like virtual ghosttowns on the ethersphere.

Gonzalez goes on to make a number of salient points about traditional publishers using the web to propagate content.  But the phenomena of abandoned blogs got me thinking about the broader question of valuing content on the web and making the commitment to invest in "doing content right."

As we have started to do more and more interactive work for clients, including developing online magazine microsites, we are finding ourselves at the receiving end of a blank stare when we pose the question,"How much are you budgeting for ongoing content development?"

If you have a blog, you know how exciting it is to receive a comment. It confirms that someone out there is reading what you have to say and they too have a strong opinion on the topic. That’s what blogs are supposed to do—inspire people to share their opinions. But why would a traditional newspaper allow anyone to comment on news stories that appear on their website?

According to Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer, “The ability to comment on news stories at Web sites for established newspapers, such as The Chronicle, USA Today and the Washington Post, has invited a wave of input from would-be pundits, class clowns, provocateurs and regular Joes.” In his recent article, "Comments on news stories a double edged sword", Kim introduces us to two regulars who comment on SFGate articles about 16 to 28 times per day, on average.

This recent trend is a major commitment for newspapers since comments have to be monitored carefully. The more politically charged the article, the nastier the comments can get. Perhaps that’s why not all newspapers offer it. NYTimes.com, doesn’t typically allow comments on news stories. The Austin American-Statesman has had to shut down the commenting feature several times when comments got too vicious.

Then why do newspapers bother to allow online comments? The answer is simple. Enabling readers to voice their opinion so easily is the best way to energize and engage them and it helps newspapers develop even stronger relationships with their audience. Statistics prove that online comments keep readers on the site longer and boost page views by 5 to 15 percent. The commenting feature builds social communities, makes a website more relevant and current, and can generate more money through advertising.

According to Ryan Kim, “SFGate averages almost 4 million page views a month for comments. Prior to turning on comments for news stories in the summer of 2007, there were only about 30,000 page views a month for comments, mostly on staff blogs.”

Some of DCP’s clients are starting to add the commenting feature to their online magazine websites. Soon we will be able to report the direct benefits of this capability.

Over the past year, I’ve read dozens of articles and blog entries about blogging. Typical subject lines would include: Should businesses blog? Can a business make money from blogging? Is blogging going away? Each article, in some way, questioned the viability of blogging. Then I read this WSJ article by Mark Penn, America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire, and I felt the need to blog about it.

The questions posed in America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire come from an entirely different perspective. Rather than pondering if you should blog, this article reports data on a new profession that “could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture.” Read it to find out who is blogging, how much bloggers are paid, and potential implications from America’s position as the blogging capital of the world.

Here are some interesting quotes I’ve pulled from Mark Penn’s article:

• “In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.”
• “The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income.”
• “Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall.”
• “It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products.”
• “Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.”
• “Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites.”

After you read this article, you’ll be looking for ways to voice your opinion and participate in this cultural revolution.

Here at DCP Dialogue, two esteemed staff members were cooking up posts dissecting what a tweeted publishing world might resemble. This post got Alexander Graham Belled and was a little late to the blog patent office.

So here’s another take on Twitter. I’m going to skip the how-do-you-advertise-with-social-networking question and instead look at the content side of this brave new Internet. Namely, what good is Twitter and how will it be used.

In case you don’t know Facebook’s humble origin story it starts on a college campus (OK, that college was Harvard, but the humble part is coming) with the concept of ranking undergrads by “hotness.” I you were a Harvard student, you logged onto “Facemash” and were given the choice of two undergrads with the instruction to pick the hotter. You were never given the choice to poke either student or pelt them with a rabid vampire sheep, so you can see why the humble Facemash never took off.

If you were an early adopter of Facemash, you never would have guessed that it would grow into the social network behemoth it is today. Not only does Facebook play a huge role in the social lives of a growing number of people, but it got credit for tipping the scales in President Obama's favor last November.

Now the social network du jour is Twitter. Although users can only post updates onto their accounts in 140 character snippets, Twitter has been used in a variety of ways. Take this short list:

Swiss Mountain rescue assistant

Suicide prevention resource

Tax preparation software advertiser

Whether or not Twitter ever moves any tax preparation software, take this much from all the recent hoopla, whatever creative new web application is thought of next, bet that people will find even more creative ways to apply it to their lives. Who knows, rebuttals during the 2012 presidential debates might be capped at 140 characters.