Brad Jefferson says, “Marketers want to reach Generation Y, and for a good reason. This demographic, born between 1980 and 2000 and now known as “millennials,” will collectively spend more than $200 billion annually beginning in 2017, which comes out to $10 trillion over the course of their lifetimes. How can businesses connect with this purchasing powerhouse? Millennials aren’t as responsive to the TV commercials and print advertisements that worked for older generations. Instead, they want engagement. The good news is that they’re highly engaged with video. Here... [...]

Jami Oetting says, “You’ve spent months perfecting the script, storyboarding, finding the right talent, shooting, and editing. The end result? A blockbuster brand or product video for your client. With all that time invested, you can’t stop at just embedding the video on a homepage or sharing it on Facebook and hoping that someone watches. While great content is bound to be found, it’s also important to be proactive about gaining the attention of and educating prospects and those unfamiliar with your brand. Running a series of YouTube ads is one way to make sure more of... [...]

Gary Lipkowitz says, “Are you considering allocatingbudget to video? Whether it’s a one-time production in the tens of thousands or a long-term capital investment that may reach hundreds of thousands, video investments are often hard to evaluate and approve because they rarely generate a direct response. Your video project is likely top or middle of the funnel activity, meaning ROI is hard to prove. No matter how enthusiastic your team is about video or how much you hear in digital media circles that video is the next great tactic, you need some plain talk about what type of videos to... [...]

Karissa Bell says, “360-degree video has arrived on Facebook. The social network is beginning to add the immersive videos to the News Feed, the company announced Wednesday. The videos will be viewable from the web and from Facebook’s iOS and Android apps. The videos, first announced at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, are filmed with a special camera setup that captures q full 360-degree view of the scene. Much like the 360-degree videos on YouTube, you can change your view of the video by dragging you finger (or cursor, if you’re on a browser) around the screen or... [...]

Adam Toren says, “Social video marketing plays on the most important aspects of basic human nature: the art of storytelling. Where viral videos are all about numbers, social videos are all about connections and conversations. Here are three ways social video marketing can be good for your business. 1. Emotional connections drive brand loyalty. It has been scientifically proven that emotional connections build loyalty and influence purchasing decisions. Psychology Today reported that functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, neuro-imagery showed areas of the brain light up in scans... [...]

Verónica Maria Jarski says, “Keep track of social networks’ standards, formats, lengths, and sizes for video by using this all-in-one social video infographic from Italian company Communic Animation. Facebook, for example, requires videos to be smaller than 1.75GB and no longer than 45 minutes. The social network also allows for autoplay and frames up to 30 fps. Twitter allows native video mobile only, and lengths no greater than 30 seconds, according to Communic Animation. Google lets you connect your YouTube account to upload videos. To find out more about the standards of video... [...]

Simon Crofts says, “So you already have your content. Hopefully it was well researched and will have an amazing effect on your audience when they see it. But you aren’t happy just to wait for some magical social or viral result though, you want to give it a push, get it out there and see results now. Paid for placement is probably the way to go for this and in this short article I will introduce you to one of the options, which happens to be one of my favourites: pre-roll on YouTube. You might be thinking “I always skip those” but you might be surprised to hear that the view rate can... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Facebook’s native video momentum has been documented widely. The social network sees more than 4 billion video views a day — a number first reported in April and almost certainly much higher now. And lured by those eyeballs, brands have shifted their video posting on Facebook from YouTube to native, passing the tipping point last December, according to social analytics company Socialbakers. Now the same trend is hitting Twitter, albeit at a smaller scale. Recent data from Socialbakers shows that brands will soon be sharing more native video on Twitter than YouTube content.... [...]

Michael Litt says, “I’m going to start off with a bold assumption: You’ve stood in front of another person and had a conversation at some point in your life, possibly even in the last few hours. When we talk to other people, we watch their body language — how they hold their arms, where their eyes focus, how they use their hands — to look for indications of how interested they are in the conversation. Believe it or not, the people you talk to watch you for the same things! When it comes to B2B sales and marketing, more often than not, our conversations don’t happen face-to-face.... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Live-streaming app Periscope no longer plays favorites in the landscape-or-portrait video argument. Today the Twitter-owned network updated its iOS and Android apps to support shooting video in landscape mode, giving broadcasters the ability to capture wider vistas. People launching Periscope streams can now shoot with their phones upright or on their side. And viewers can watch in portrait mode or adjust to match the broadcaster’s orientation. “Either way, you’ll never need to tilt your head to watch sideways video,” the company noted in a blog post“. Periscope... [...]