Category: youtube

The Best Social Networking tools

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We often wonder which are the best social networking tools to promote our business. In many ways it’s all and none.

There’s no shortage from which we can shoose from a business perspective: My space, Facebook, Bebo, Youtube, Blogging, Twitter, Live streaming TV, Ranking sites like Technorati, delicious and Stumbleupon, Virtual world spaces like second life.

The list is endless. In fact wikipedia lists the most notable (well over 100) here.

The best ones to engage and use aren’t those necessarily with the most people, the most features or the most anything. The best ones to use are those which you use properly. The way in which they were intended. There’s no point having your brand or startup on any of them – unless you engage the crowd in the conversation ‘they want to have”.

What does this mean?

It means be there often – turn up, and talk.

It means listen to them – it’s their place not ours.

It means share the information people want to have shared in ‘that’ forum.

It means, give first to them, and expect nothing back.

It means learn from their wisdom.

It means show your personaility and have an opinion.

It means create value to them, whatever value means in that forum.

It means be part of a dialogue, not a monologue.

In real terms all these tools are, is a personification of yourself, startup or brand. Don’t engage in behavior you wouldn’t engage in while in the real world. We mustn’t act like an Amway Sales Agents on line. If it’s bad form in the real world, it’s bad form in the on-line world.

If we just put our brand on all of these spaces and don’t get involved – it’s a waste of time for all parties involved. We are much better off embracing one or two forums and using them often and consistently. Going there, isn’t the same as being there. They are not shortcuts to brand fame. In fact, they take longer, but can be of greater value.

Given that the web is a conversation – we must embrace it and have manners. If we’re patient it’s worth the effort.

Quirky fact

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Fact: The average youtube video only gets watched for 6 seconds.

The average Youtube video lasts for 5 minutes. It’s a rare event indeed for a video to get watched until the end. That’s why most view counts are so low, only those watched until completion count.

With almost 90 million videos on the site;

Start up blog says: Review your Youtube videos. Make it clear what they’re getting in first few seconds, or they wont have the patience to ever find out.

Barenaked Ladies embrace new world

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s an example of an organization who’ve embraced the new world to absolute advantage.

 

Rock band the Barenaked Ladies, achieved a reasonable level of commercial success in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. A song of theirs you may know is ‘One week’ – you can click here to watch it and jig your memory.

 

Their success enabled them to do what most bands can’t – secure a record deal with the large record label Warner. But in 2003 they sacked them. They thought they could a better job – and they have. They just cut out the middle man and began to have a direct relationship with their passionate fans.

 

Here’s some of the cool stuff they’ve done:

They have a ‘dynamic’ websites & myspace– not static pages

They blog ‘daily’

They include fans in ‘every’ film clip

They built a permission database

They provide ‘free’ downloads of their music

Allow ‘free’ sharing of their music (Youtube / File sharing)

They sell their records direct and collect all revenue

They have ‘band days’ and ‘invite only concerts’

They provide photos of the days events

They run cruiseship holidays for fans

(Yep, 300 of their fans socializing, eating, relaxing with them for a week or so, where they provide the entertainment for them every night)

 

 

The net result is this. Their fans feel like they have a real connection, which they do. Their revenue per album sold is now approx $6.00 to the Barenaked Ladies, versus the previous $1.00 while with Warner. They have pure creative control of their work and don’t have to worry about being dropped by their record label.

 

Their site link is here: http://www.bnlmusic.com/default2.asp

 

Kudos BNL.

Mass customization

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a few categories or Industries which have been revolutionized by Mass Customization:

 

T-shirts (Threadless & Neighborhoodies)

TV (Youtube & Joost)

Handbags (Elemental Threads)

Journalism (Blogs & podcasting)

Newspapers (RSS)

Job Seeking (Aggregation & feeds)

Book publishing (Lulu)

Tourism (the web in general)

Luxury goods (fractional ownership)

Music (itunes)

Networking (facebook & social apps)

 

In fact there’s just too many to mention.

 

But the real question is this: If it hasn’t hit your industry yet, why not and what are you doing about it?

Game Changing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Sometimes we convince ourselves in the early days of our start up that the fun stuff is most important. Yes it’s seriously important, and it’s partly why we decided to leave the cubicle.

 

But the biggest reason we left cubiclesville was because we wanted to win. We wanted to do something, change something, prove something and achieve success which other corporate plankton couldn’t claim on our behalf.

 

That said, we ought ask ourselves this:

 

Is what we are doing Game Changing?

 

Will what we are spending investing our time on today be the thing that ensures we win the game in our web domain, category or industry?

 

 

Fact: When Youtube launched there was over 450 other video sharing websites. Youtube won video sharing for these reasons:

 

1.      They had the simplest user experience

2.      They had the most videos uploaded

 

That’s it.

 

So – are we investing our day on Game Changing activities, or just passing time?