Martin Beck says, “Like Snapchat and Twitter, Instagram is getting into the content curation game. On Saturday, Facebook’s visually oriented social network introduced a new way for people to follow major events, kicking off the effort on Halloween, the most Instagrammable of holidays. If you opened the Instagram app in the US during the weekend, you were given the opportunity to “Watch Halloween’s Best Videos.” By tapping on the prompt, you were taken to a video-only feed created by Instagram’s community team. Within the feed, videos were displayed full-screen without the usual... [...]

Lauren Colman says, “The alignment of an organization’s sales and marketing efforts is a crucial strategic imperative for companies that desire sustainable growth. Despite the evidence of improved business performance, it’s still a rarity to find an organization that has and maintains full alignment. The good news is that the issue is getting far more attention than ever before, and more organizations are making progress. A major cause for the overall lack of progress is that while the issue of alignment is getting more strategic attention from executives, it’s still getting very... [...]

Mike O’Brien says, “Video is getting bigger and bigger, but where is it going? According new research, programmatic video buying and branded video content are just two areas marketers should focus on in the future. Since last year, digital video ad spend has swollen 42 percent to 7.46 bn, a number that is expected to nearly double by 2019. With all that projected growth, it’s difficult to predict where video will go, though new research has made it easier to digest. On Wednesday, AOL released its annual State of the Video Industry Report, which surveyed 295 agencies, brands and... [...]

Jenny Karn says, “Video content has exploded on Facebook since the company changed its News Feed algorithm last year to favor the format. Analysts are even predicting that Facebook will actually deliver two-thirds as many video views as YouTube in 2015 — an absolutely stunning shift. Video has long been an important component of the social strategy toolkit, but the current ranking and action policies make it an absolutely vital format for maximizing organic reach, which means advertisers and agencies need to pay attention. If you’re looking to jump into the Facebook video world,... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Last week two Twitter accounts, Deadspin and SBNationGif, were taken down after the NFL reported them for sharing its footage. The footage was, of course, in the form of Vine video, that most popular format for ‘real-time’ sports clips. With many sports fans now accustomed to searching Twitter for ‘Vine Rooney goal’ or similar (insert joke here, UK soccer fans), these DMCA takedown notices are a big deal. So what does this mean for publishers and users? And has the NFL just blocked its own punt? Are Vines/GIFs not free marketing for NFL? This was... [...]

David Nield says, “Facebook is going big on video, including 360-degree VR-lite video. Now, in a new blog post, the company has explained a little more about what’s going on behind the scenes with its new support for immersive video clips. For the uninitiated, 360 video is filmed in all directions at once and lets the viewer experience the action in front, side to side or from behind. You don’t get depth perception and the ability to move around as you do in true virtual reality, but it’s a start. It’s also the most accessible form of VR right now: If you don’t... [...]

Jill Schiefelbein says, “I’ve created a lot of talking head videos for my business, and I’ve had a lot of success with them. But making a video that’s all you come off asnot all about you is a challenge. If you use videos in any part of your business—be it for marketing, relationship management, staff communication, or training and development, here are four tips to make your talking head videos more conversational. 1. Ditch the scripts and memorization If you’re reading off of a script from your computer or a teleprompter, people can tell. That’s not conversational. That’s... [...]

Jack Simpson says, “Each month we publish a round-up of the best branded Instagram videos we’ve seen in the past 30 days or so.  These posts always seem to go down well, so I thought I’d put together a list of all the things I’ve learnt about Instagram branded videos from the countless hours I’ve spent trawling the site for examples. So, read on to find out more, and don’t neglect to read our other posts on 20+ Instagram stats marketers need to know and why Instagram should be the channel of choice for marketers. Bring out the visual appeal of your brand This one is not limited... [...]

Rebekah Iliff says, “In the past decade, perhaps the biggest shift in Internet technology has been the rise of video content. From commercially produced material to the explosion of self-directed content via smartphones, video is everywhere. New technology will continue to drive this further, both in terms of accessibility to quality video hardware and software as well as bandwidth to upload and download content. What’s more, according to leading digital-asset company, WebDAM,“visual IQ” is rising faster than any other form of IQ as human behavior adjusts to process and make sense... [...]

Martin Beck says, “No one likes filling out forms on mobile devices. But Facebook is aiming to make that clunky process easier — and more likely to help businesses pull in the customer information they crave — with a new ad product that automatically fills out forms based on Facebook user data. Called “lead ads” and in testing since June, the ad unit is now available to all advertisers, Facebook said today in a blog post. The basic idea is this: When someone clicks on your lead ad, a form opens with the person’s contact information automatically populated, based on the information... [...]