Last week, online content creators unleashed a yelp as YouTube released a dashboard to make it as easy as pie for users to create animation videos. Hop over to Mashable to check out the full story about the integration of three fun animation platforms tied in as part of www.youtube.com/create. The creative opportunities for message deployment, crowdsourcing and entertaining contests are endless with tools like these at your disposal.

As an avid content creator, I threw together the sample below as part of a personal branding presentation I’m doing with some co-workers at WSU’s Morrow Symposium next week. Hopefully, there is a wee bit of helpful advice for the flood of new grads hitting the industry.

Happy animating!

*This post also appears on the Weber Shandwick Seattle blog.

We all love good content. The perfect combination of text, audio and images delivered at the right time to the right audience is something content marketing pros strive for on a daily basis.

A huge chunk of campaign planning is typically devoted to developing the overarching storytelling framework and the crucial content that supports that framework. Without targeted content, you’re left with a great story but no actionable plan or vehicle for connecting that story with your audience.

A post last week on PR Daily highlighted the excellent video Old Spice recently published that provides the public with a “behind the scenes” look at their continued “Old Spice Man” campaign. Uploaded to YouTube on March 1st, the video has already garnered more than 500,000 views.

A similar successful “production capture” video was created last year around the Guy Walks Across America Levis video. I mentioned this in a previous post last year but I love the video and it’s great context for what Old Spice pulled off with their own effort.

Why Does It Matter?
In short, it’s a smart tactic and simple way to beef up your content framework to leverage your storyline beyond initial campaign execution. If you’re going to dump a lot of money into production, it makes sense to capture and tell the story about how that production came together and was executed. Both cases above demonstrate that there will always be a technical or brand enthusiast audience that craves more than the initial content/brand touchpoint. Give ‘em what they crave.

Note:  This post also appears on Weber Shandwick Seattle’s blog.

This past weekend, Mashable featured a post outlining some more recent examples of interactive YouTube videos. Being involved in the nonprofit marketing space, I’ve always found it interesting that more nonprofits haven’t latched onto annotations as an excellent storytelling tactic.

In my research, I stumbled across this post from Dan Portnoy on the topic. Dan posted a good example of how the use of annotations has helped the Union Rescue Mission with their Winter Shelters program. The team did a great job of using the annotations tool to provide a simple call-to-action at the end of the video that allows a viewer to continue to learn more while also providing a quick option for donations.

In another example, the Mashable post features the “Choose a Different Ending” video series below produced by London’s Metropolitan Police to create awareness among young people about the danger of carrying weapons.

The first person point of view and storyline help to put a user in the driver’s seat for role playing. It’s a fantastic idea and shows a thorough understanding of their target audience, using an interactive format (vs. plain PSA) to engage and educate on a channel kids are already visiting online. In addition, the simple, shareable format of the video makes it a fantastic education tool that teachers anywhere could use in their classrooms.

Annotations open up a host of storytelling ideas to convey your organization’s mission or position messaging into a creative format for a campaign. What ideas come to mind for how you might put annotations to use?

Note:  This post also appears on the Weber Shandwick Seattle blog.

Glancing through the post, the fourth item mentioned about SynchTube jumped out at me. Simple and sweet, SynchTube enables anyone to create a live chat room around any YouTube video with up to 50 other people. iTechMax has done a good job laying out some screenshots around the ease of setup.

Relevance to the PR and marketing world?

Other than SynchTube, your only option would be to invite 25 other users to watch your video in private mode. Even so, this option eliminates any opportunity for real-time group interaction. If you’re using YouTube as a hosting platform for a focus group, there are obvious reasons for wanting to keep the video private and having 25 users submit their unbiased feedback.

However, if your goal is to get real-time feedback and crowdsource creative in a public format, SynchTube is your tool.

Give it a whirl.

I’m a big fan of YouTube Insight.

As with most content published via social media, there is always a degree of trial and error – especially when it comes to video. It’s the reason so few videos ever actually do achieve “viral” status. Nonetheless, video marketing has become slightly more scientific based on the analytics you can pull from various hosting platforms. In particular, I’ve found the data from YouTube Insights to be incredibly useful for tailoring content to a specific audience’s interests.

Just recently, I discovered that YouTube has now extended access to most of their analytics to the public. In other words, any person watching any video on YouTube can now look at various statistics including total views, comments/favorites/ratings, links, audience demographics, honors and more. This isn’t breaking news, but it also wasn’t something that was buzzing around when it was put in place in June. In my eyes, this is HUGE.

Think about the competitive insight that YouTube has just opened up. Rather than dig deep on details, I highly encourage you to hop over to this fantastic post by CJ Bruce that goes into details about how to maximize use of all the data provided. I’ve also included a quick graphic below so you can see how to access the analytics from any individual video page (note, not a channel).

Cheers,
Scott

2,770 still frames and a 14 day road trip later, the creators of this spot put together a catchy, creative masterpiece that has garnered over a million views since its posting on July 20. Being a photographer myself, the creation of a stop motion, time-lapse visual struck me as unique.

As ABC news reports, the project was shot on a “shoestring budget” but Levi’s did in fact sponsor the spot. According to the film’s producer, Blake Heal:

“We came up with this concept, and we didn’t have the money to do it,” said Heal. “We looked for a sponsor, and we thought Levi’s would be a good fit. So we pitched it to them, and they loved the idea.”

Think about that for a minute. A major, major brand was pitched on a low-budget project that has garnered huge Internet buzz within one week. An incredibly low investment/low risk opportunity for a brand and yet another telltale sign of the powerful possibilities that can surface by being open to new ideas and strategies in social media.

I also love that the team was smart and captured this “behind the scenes” spot to help provide context around the creation of the video. The inclusion of the Google Map pinpointing shoot locations is another nice add-on with tied in photo documentation.

In poking around, I was actually quite surprised to see that no effort was put forth by Levi’s or the filmmakers to create an official blog, Facebook page, Twitter account or YouTube channel. I’m also a bit surprised that Levi’s hasn’t capitalized on the building buzz around the spot. A wall post on their page merely states:

These filmmakers came to us with an idea a few months back. 2,000 miles, 14 days, and 1 pair of 501′s later they have this wonderful piece of artwork to share with the world. Blake, Sam, Peter, Michael, Benji, and Brian… Go Forth!

Given the low front end investment, Levi’s would be wise to brand out a custom tab on their page, embed the video and use Facebook ads to target specific demographics to drive Facebook users to the page. A triple win in my book as Levi’s could A) increase their fan base B) utilize the spot to offer some type of discount code for visiting or interacting with the custom tab C) give these filmmakers that provided you with killer content an extra boost.

My nonprofit mind also can’t help but wonder if a there was a missed opportunity to do more with the spot. It’s a wonderful artistic piece but it seems that there could have been endless potential for Levi’s to ramp this effort up with a strong cause marketing campaign. Why not partner with TOMS for a creative tie-in and partnership?

I think it’s time Levi’s ramp up for round 2…Guy Walks Across America…AGAIN. The attention level is certainly there:

Blog Buzz for Guy Walks Across America

In the meantime, if you’ve latched on to the walking theme and want a bit more insight about America outside of a two-minute spot, I’d recommend checking out this fantastic photo blog documenting a walking journey across the states…or more…http://imjustwalkin.com/.

Cheers,
Scott

A lot of the tips and insight are applicable regardless of your company or organization’s mission, so be sure to take a look.

Cheers,
Scott

Here are a few resource guides that I would highly recommend checking out:

I realize I’ve already mentioned both these guides, but it’s worth another mention. Key for any marketers looking to figure out the baseline purpose and intent of utilizing Facebook as an effective marketing tool.

About Face – A free white paper on Facebook pages (By Advance Guard)

Free ebook – How to Use Facebook for Business (By HubSpot)

The Journalist’s Guide to Facebook (On Mashable) – good idea for PR folks to check out what’s being presented to the the journalist side.

Very timely move by Twitter to launch their own guide and the Mashable guide is equally as stellar, linking to past posts on the site with plenty of great graphics – love you for this Mashable!

Twitter 101 for Business (By Twitter)

The Twitter Guide Book – How To, Tips and Instructions (By Mashable)

YouTube already does a great job of laying out their own internal guide, but here’s a great resource for maximizing the new channel layout.

How To: Customize Your YouTube Channel (On Mashable)

Blogging

This is tough to list resources for because the fact of the matter is that your best solution to learning how to blog is to immediately subscribe to Copyblogger, Remarkablogger and Problogger and read every post each of them have ever written. Time consuming? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.

The Newbie Guide to Blogging

SEO

Yes, a bit older guide (published Nov. 13, 2008) but stands the test of the time and is definitely the most user-friendly SEO guide I’ve come across.

Search Engine Optimization Guide (By Google)

I realize I’m just hitting on the main platforms here so feel free to add your suggestions with links to additional guides below!

-Scott

However, I’ve found that the viral videos that stick in my mind usually result from some form of  surprise activity that catches people offguard or in the case of today’s post subject, immediately uses pathos to drive viewer attention.

Over the past month, I’ve been tracking the video below posted by Lee Aase, social media manager up at Mayo Clinic, that shows an older couple playing a song in the Mayo atrium. Lee posted the video on April 7, 2009 on their Sharing Mayo Clinic blog after the video had been viewed 1,005 times on YouTube during the six months prior. Since posting the video and using Mayo’s various social media outlets to spread the word, the video has tracked as follows:

April 7 – 1,005 views
April 13 – 26,973 views
May 3 – 187,956 views
May 4 – 228,055
May 10 – 555,675
May 11 – 608,141
May 13 – 776,352
May 17 – 1,170,609
May 19 – 1,352,890

Wow. This is the content marketers dream about.

David Mullen and I have both shared similar thoughts about how PR and marketing firms need to relinquish the notion that firms can create viral videos on a whim for clients. This is a perfect example of how outside elements and timing typically work together to cause videos to become “viral” in an organic fashion. This is not a video concept Lee or someone else sat around trying to drum up to leverage attention around Mayo. Rather, Lee was smart about quickly identifying solid content and finding the right channels to tell as many people as possible about the video.

Let’s break down a few other elements that have made this video go viral.

1) It’s Heartwarming. In digging deeper into the backstory behind this video, we come to learn about Sharon, her reconstructed jaw and extremely positive experience as a patient at Mayo. Sharon was on cloud nine that special day and stumbled upon Fran and Marlow Cowan churning up some tunes on the piano. The Cowans have been married for 62 years (Marlow is 90, Frances is almost 84). The couple grew up entertaining crowds together.

Despite your age or how much bad news is being thrown your way about the economy, crime, etc. you can’t help but smile after watching the Cowans remind us all how important it is to embrace the day.

2) It’s Raw. No special effects or creative video work here, just a good capture of a very special moment that adds to the honest, personable nature of the video. In watching, you feel as if you’re part of “the moment.”

3) It’s Short. Clocking in at 1:14, it’s a quick view which is critical to engaging new viewers who come across the video via email links from friends, coworkers, etc. A small psychological factor but one that plays heavily into the decisions we make in consuming online video.

4) Social Savvy. Lee is one smart man. I’m going to bargain to say that he immediately dispersed this video to the entire Mayo staff after posting on Sharing Mayo as well as took advantage of using their social media platform to spread the word through Facebook, Twitter, Mayo’s own YouTube channel and other outlets. And then he told them again.

5) Bridged Online With Offline. Lee also knows media relations and there’s no better way to spread the word about a good story than by letting as many people as possible know about it. The Des Register Star recently ran a story about the Cowans and bloggers (count me in) have run with sharing the video as well. UPDATE: The Cowans were also featured on Good Morning America!

I’m quite excited to continue to watch the views shoot upward. Given the significant proportion of people that choose to go to Mayo as a result of word-of-mouth, this video will continue to be a huge marketing tool. Just take a quick glance at the feedback comments on the original blog post as a great example of where to find Mayo’s biggest advocates and supporters. I would also imagine Lee is working with closely with Sharon to track YouTube Insight info on the video to analyze trends around who is viewing the video and how they are discovering the spot.

Congrats to Sharon on her new health and capturing this great video and congrats to Lee and Mayo for smartly pushing things along to help tell the Mayo story.

-Scott

UPDATE:  Also see Lee Aase’s post providing a full internal case study analysis.

Why are Overlays Useful to Nonprofits?

One of the drawbacks to YouTube has been that they ordinarily restrict any links through video annotations within YouTube to help keep viewers engaged on the site. Having the freedom to provide your own copy and desired URL to link back to a Web site or other online location provides a nice actionable option for viewers.

If you’ve got a nonprofit channel, be sure to give this a try around an upcoming effort that requires online support.

-Scott