What Makes a Good B2B Online Video

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Paul

I spent some time with comic video whiz Tim Washer (also @timwasher) at B2B Forum last week, and he followed up with a few questions about how B2B companies are using online video as part of their content marketing programs. I shared some opinions with him, but why not share them with everybody else as well? I’d like to hear your answers to these questions, too.

What companies have succeeded/failed at using videos for B2B marketing?

There are numerous successes, and Tim’s list on SocialMediaB2B is a good starting point.

I would add Cisco to that list. Cisco has long done a good job of leveraging video in almost every kind of communications, from product announcements to contests to customer testimonials. Here’s one:

I like IBM’s customer videos a lot (example). Its Centennial video was outstanding, and it used video very effectively for the wholeWatson Jeopardy challenge. (Full disclosure: Both Cisco and IBM are past or current clients.)

Of course, you have to hand it to Corning for the most successful B2B viral video ever.

PTC’s “I Am a [Pro] Engineer” is a great example of how to use a theme.

The Ben Heck show on Element14 is perfect for its audience.

Google also does a great job. The Project Glass video is inspired. You might argue that this isn’t pure B2B, but it’s pretty damn good.

As far as failures, I don’t want to name names, and there are so many candidates that it wouldn’t be fair to do so. Here are some of the most common fails I see with business videos in general:

Long, monotonous monologues by talking heads. I believe three minutes is about the threshold for the audience’s attention span. If all you’re doing is reading a script, then video adds no value.
Scripted but poorly rehearsed stunts. Someone writes a parody song or a comedy skit and a group performs it without any attention to staging or even without any apparent rehearsal. The result looks amateurish, and I think that reflects badly on the company.
Poor quality lighting/sound/composition. You see this in a lot of do-it-yourself videos, particularly if they’re composed in a work environment. The content may be interesting, but the sound quality is poor or there are distracting images or noises in the background. It’s worth investing in a wireless mic and a couple of spotlights if you’re going to make video part of your public image.

What is the value of using a “non-messaging” approach to B2B videos, e.g. storytelling, entertainment, humor?

As I frequently tell audiences, storytelling is the most basic form of human communication. We instinctively relate to the experiences of others, and that’s why framing your point in the context of a story is so effective. Ronald Reagan knew this. He drove his critics crazy because of his ability to shoot down a well-researched and supported argument with a single anecdote.

The reason non-messaging is becoming critical is because people don’t have to listen to messages anymore. It’s become very difficult to interrupt people and deliver a message, particularly online. We have to attract them to come to us because our content is useful, interesting or entertaining. In a world in which people have developed ways to block nearly all messages, it’s the only way to get their attention. That’s why “content marketing” is now so hot.

Which metrics most accurately measure the success of videos?

Look for engagement metrics: subscribers, likes/dislikes, favorites, comments, shares. I really like YouTube’s “relative audience retention” metric, which shows a video’s ability to retain viewers during playback by comparing it to all YouTube videos of similar length. The point isn’t to measure whether people start the video, but whether they complete it.

Do you see any new trends developing around online videos and B2B marketing?

I think business videos are becoming much more professional. In the early days of YouTube a lot of companies posted videos simply because they could. The quality was spotty and most of them were too long. This is natural with any new technology. People triangulate until they get it right.

Now the technology to make good quality video has become affordable to nearly everyone. A lot of professional videographers have developed the skills they need for fast and high-quality online production and people are learning some basic best practices:

Have a story to tell and a script to work from.
Keep it brief.
Have good lighting and sound quality.
Rehearse and re-take until you get it right.
Keep the pace brisk. Even static images can look more interesting with panning, zooming and creative camera angles.
Use sound bites. Avoid monologues.
Identify people in the video.
Use attractive title and closing screens.
Edit aggressively to keep down the overall length and quicken the pace.
Use restraint with transitions and music. They should accent the content, not overwhelm it.

New Video Series Shows How Mobile Marketing Can Work for B2B

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Paul

Christina Kerley is a leading voice in B2B mobile marketing, and she’s starting posting engaging educational videos that show how mobile devices can be incorporated into the B2B marketing mix. For example, conference organizers can replace those thick (and expensive) packages of conference materials with a mobile app that delivers latest information to the devices users are already carrying and builds in goodies like QR codes that people can scan to download slides and get bonus information. Thought-leadership material that companies are already producing should be optimized for display on tablets and smart phones because business travelers often have downtime in transit to catch up on reading.

CK has some great examples in this video series, which now includes six segments, each six to nine minutes in length. She’s promising to add a couple of new chapters each month. Here’s an example.

CIO Challenges Educators to Stay Relevant

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Paul

Wichita State University CIO Dr. Ravi Pendse last month issued a provocative challenge to educators to rethink their tools and tactics if they are to remain relevant a decade from now.

Addressing a regional edition of the popular TED conference in Wichita, KS, Dr. Pendse, who is both the CIO of Wichita State University and an award-winning professor, said he chose the term “relevant” deliberately. In his view, educators who continue to rely upon lectures and chalkboards as the tools of their profession are becoming dangerously out of step with the ways in which young people learn. Educators must not only adopt the tools the students use but also adapt their curricula to the topics that interest those students.

“If the goal is to get people excited about history, shouldn’t we study the history of Google?” he asked. “Our young people are looking for complete convergence. If you can’t provide it to them, you have a problem of relevance.”

To illustrate how out-of-step some educational institutions have become with even everyday technology, Dr. Pendse asked audience members to exchange cell phones with each other. He noted the nervous rumbling the exercise created among the crowd. “It’s uncomfortable not to have those devices with you,” he said. “So why do we tell people in the schools to turn them off? We should be using them as educational tools instead.”

Facebook is ubiquitous among college students, but many higher education administrators don’t use any social networks at all. With the social network expected to surpass 1 billion members sometime this summer, “Wouldn’t a class be popular that studied the sociology of Facebook?” he asked.

Dr. Pendse acknowledged that his views aren’t universally shared, but he expressed little sympathy for educators who refuse to change. “I call them CAVE people,” he quipped. “That stands for Colleagues Against Virtually Everything.”

The analogy of the caveman may not be lost on an older generation that is falling further behind. By the age of 21, many young people today have played 10,000 hours of online games, Dr. Pendse noted. Educators may not approve of that fact, but they need to accept it and discover some of the virtues of video games.

For example, “They require creativity. They even have built-in assessment tools; you can’t go to level 15 without completing level 14. And young people are collaborating across the world to figure out how to get to that next level.”

If educators are to get to the next level themselves, they need to put down the chalk and pick up the mouse. “Technology will never replace teachers,”’ he said, “but we can use technology to help a much greater number of students learn from each other.”

You can see Dr. Pendse’s 23-minute presentation below.

Two B2B Social Marketing Initiatives Worth Checking

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Paul

A couple of notable B2B efforts have caught my eye recently that I wanted to share. One is Element14, a social community for engineers sponsored by an electronics distributor of the same name. I wrote in B-to-B magazine early this year about a Make magazine-like video series they started last fall that appeals to engineers’ passion for tinkering as well as for fun. Other new stuff that they’re doing (and this comes directly from the press release):

The industry’s first online design hub – the element14 knode – designed to help engineers accelerate design and development and bring products to market faster than ever before.

RoadTests – Allowing members to actually try out the latest new products for free and share their reviews with other engineers

Focused sub-groups – scores of technical forums ranging from LEDs, robotics, FPGAs, engineering student design teams, etc.

Over the last quarter alone, more than 500,000 people visited the online community, spending over 65,000 hours researching, collaborating and communicating with fellow engineers.

Element14 is trying to position itself as “Facebook for engineers,” and they’re doing a heckuva job. This is a commerce play, incidentally. The whole community is linked to an underlying catalog site. One of the innovative things about the Ben Heck Show is that each of his video hacks is accompanied by a parts list that you can order right on site.

When I first learned about Element14 a couple of years ago, it was a rather unremarkable document exchange engine. Over the last year, it’s evolved into a multimedia experience that bristles with value and fun. No doubt this wasn’t cheap, but it’s impressive to see a B2B community demonstrate this kind of ingenuity.

Update 12/6/11: Premier Farnell just announced that “The Ben Heck Show” has attracted more than three million views since its launch.

Also, check out Social Media Quickstarter, a tutorial site aimed at small businesses and launched just this week by Constant Contact. The site is organized in “chapters” by platform – Facebook, LinkedIn, Ratings and Reviews, QR codes and the like – and presents really useful tutorials in a step-by-step format, many including video. There are more than 70 chapters, all of which can be downloaded and printed.

There are several aspects of this ever that I like:

Minimal branding – Constant Contact intentionally keeps the focus on the content rather than its brand. In fact, the company name is in almost comically small type at the top of the home page. One smart move was to prominently note that the resource is “Powered by KnowHow,” which is a training service the company offers. It’s a low-key approach to branding that uses the quality of the content to validate the service.

Value – Constant Contact says it surveyed small businesses to discover that many didn’t know how to get started in social media, but you didn’t need research to figure that out. There is a crying need for this kind of basic education. The value of Social Media Quickstarter isn’t as much in the content itself as in the fact that it’s all in one place. You can Google around and find much of this advice elsewhere but the company has conveniently aggregated it in one spot.

Simplicity without Condescension – Quickstarter manages to walk that fine line between teaching basic skills and talking down to its audience. Quickstarter doesn’t pretend to be a resource for the digerati. It answers the basic questions that millions of small business owners are asking, and it does so in plain language with lots of pictures and video. It respects its audience.

Two impressive B2B social media efforts by two companies addressing very different audiences.

Linked In Overview, from Social Media Quickstarter from Social Media Quickstarter on Vimeo.

My Video Interview About B2B Social Media on CMO Advantage with Ed Gaskin

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Paul

I spent a fun half-hour chatting it up with Ed, who’s a good friend and fellow media enthusiast. He told me how he spends most of his time these days working with inner-city gang leaders to mediate disputes. It makes social media marketing seem rather unimportant.

Groupon Relents

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Paul

Four days after its offensive ad campaign began, Groupon did the right thing and pulled the plug. CEO Andrew Mason posted an apology on the company blog that was a vast improvement over the explanation he had posted two days earlier. The controversy was an expensive lesson for Groupon; in accepting full responsibility for running the campaign, Mason presumably absolved the agency of any blame. On the other hand, it may ultimately work out to be a worthwhile investment.

Some cynics (including on this blog) have suggested that this whole controversy was scripted for the purpose of creating awareness of the Groupon brand, which it certainly did. I personally don’t buy that the public outrage was anticipated or planned. I don’t think Groupon could have enlisted so many celebrities to lend their names to a program that was designed to offend. This was a mistake, and the company ultimately did the right thing in apologizing and walking away. It gets credit for credibility, humility and fallibility, which are all endearing traits. Groupon may actually get more goodwill lift out of this whole controversy than if it had run tasteful ads in the first place.

The Video of the Book: Social Marketing to the Business Customer

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Paul

Check out the new video Eric Schwartzman put together for our book about B2B social media marketing!

Five Lessons From the Web 2.0 Summit

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Paul

I had a chance to attend the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and hear from some of the business leaders of the new Internet, including the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. Here are five key insights I took away.

1. Make Marketing a Service to Customers - I didn’t write down who said this, but the comment stuck with me long after the conference was over. The traditional role of marketing has been to create an image or deliver a message. Service had little to do with it. But in the new world of tuned-out customers, the only way to get make an impression is to be helpful, entertaining or memorable. This is one reason we’re seeing a race by B2B marketers in particular to give away tactics and information that were once their source of competitive advantage. It’s the only way to get prospects to pay attention. Marketers need to ask themselves a new question: “How can I help?”

2. You Need a Mobile Strategy, and Faster Than You Probably Thought. Forrester Research now predicts that smart phones will be the dominant Internet access device in the US within three years. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley sees smart phone shipments surpassing PCs in 2012 (Here’s the video of her terrific presentation). In countries like China, the PC was never even much of a factor. The speed at which this shift is occurring is breathtaking. Smart phones have eclipsed all other electronic devices in their rate of adoption (see chart below).

Google’s Eric Schmidt made an interesting point: smart phones are actually more useful than PCs because they know more about the user, including location, and can deliver a more personal level of utility.

This doesn’t mean PCs are going away. Rather, the plunging price of flat-panel displays will make PCs more of a dashboard for a user’s business and entertainment needs. However, the browser will be only one of several ways people will access the Internet.

On the smart phone, that access will be by applications. Apple opened the iPhone to developers only three years ago, and already more than a half-million apps have been delivered. Other platforms are just ramping up their own app ecosystems.

There is a huge free-for-all coming in mobile apps, and nearly every business needs to be thinking about how to participate. Consider item 1 above. How can you use a mobile app to provide service to the customer? Whether it’s a coupon, shopping tip, reference source, comparison engine or something else, you’ll need to address the needs of this rapidly growing mobile audience.

3. Social Is the Killer App. While you’re pondering question 2, consider this one. Mark Zuckerberg was poised and mature in a nearly one-hour interview with John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly. The Facebook founder acknowledged that great power carries great responsibility and pledged to be more responsive to the privacy concerns of members.

One memorable point he made is that “social” is a powerful feature of software. Several Facebook applications, like photo albums, were functionally weak in their early versions but were a huge hit with members because they were easily shareable, he noted. This is an important point to remember. Loading up on features quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. Adding the ability to share, reuse, mash up and comment creates a whole different level of value.

BTW, Zuckerberg reminded me of a young Bill Gates in looks, mannerisms and the clarity with which he sees complex issues. Like Gates, he has an uncanny ability to find a logical path to a decision or point of view. It will be interesting to watch his star rise.

4. Simulations Are A Powerful Incentive To Engage. Did you know that 320 million people have played a Zynga game and that the company now employs 1,300 people? Have you ever even heard of Zynga? If you’re a B2B marketer, you probably haven’t, but I’ll bet your kids have. Farmville is a mega-hit on Facebook and Zynga has nine other social gaming applications based on classic games like poker and Battleship. Founder Mark Pincus said the company has peak usage of more than three million concurrent users. Yow.

Why should you care? Because simulation games are not only a great way to learn but also an excellent tool for modeling business processes. Consider Cisco’s myPlanNet, a game that challenges players to build a business as the CEO of an Internet service provider. It has racked up more than 75,000 Facebook fans and 50,000 downloads for what is essentially a B2B training and marketing tool. Check out the wall posts on Facebook. It’s not the usual gaming trash talk. Players are learning how the Internet works.

IBM recently released CityOne, a game that simulates sustainable urban planning. These are tools that put real problem-solving scenarios in a gaming context and they are having enormous success. Can a sim fit in with your digital marketing plan?

5. Everything on the Web. Steven Berlin Johnson gave a brief but provocative talk about the rate of change in publishing. “For the first time in 20 years, the link and the URL are losing market share,” he said, noting that there is no standardized way to link to the page of a digital book.

Johnson proposed an idea he called “Web redundancy:” Every digital content asset should have a corresponding linkable version. “Unless [publishers] embrace Web redundancy as a strategy, all those extraordinary words will continue to live in the remote continents of the unlinkable,” he said.

I was reminded of all the press releases I continue to receive by e-mail that have no online corollaries. This is old-media thinking. Why ask the reporter to rewrite your words when it’s simpler to link to them? Why forego the search engine optimization benefits of an inbound referral, especially when tweets and links are the means by which people increasingly publish information?

This year’s Web 2.0 Summit was streamed in its entirety. The conference, which is in its seventh year, is a great way to tap into the trends that will define the next 12 months. If you can’t fork over the $4,200 (and thanks to John Battelle and my friends at Procter & Gamble, I didn’t have to), it’s worth tuning in to the YouTube archive or watching the streamed coverage from next year’s event.

I had a chance to attend the recent <a href=”http://www.web2summit.com/web2010/”>Web 2.0 Summit</a> in San Francisco and hear from of the business leaders of the new Internet, including the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. Here are five key insights I took away.

1. Make Marketing a Service to Customers - I didn’t write down who said this, but the comment stuck with me long after the conference was over. The traditional role of marketing has been to create an image or deliver a message. Service had little to do with it. But in the new world of tuned-out customers, the only way to get make an impression is to be helpful, entertaining or memorable. This is one reason we’re seeing a race by B2B marketers in particular to give away tactics and information that were once their source of competitive advantage. It’s the only way to get prospects to pay attention. Marketers need to ask themselves a new question: “How can I help?”

2. You Need a Mobile Strategy, and Faster Than You Probably Thought. Forrester Research now predicts that smart phones will be the dominant Internet access device in the US within three years. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley sees smart phone shipments surpassing PCs in 2012 (<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yL9yrttESI”>Here’s the video of her terrific presentation</a>). In countries like China, the PC was never even much of a factor. The speed at which this shift is occurring is breathtaking. Smart phones have eclipsed all other electronic devices in their rate of adoption (see chart below).
<a href=”http://gillin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Meeker_Smartphones.png”><img class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-2432″ title=”Meeker_Smartphones” src=”http://gillin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Meeker_Smartphones.png” alt=”Smart Phone Growth” width=”500″ /></a>
Google’s Eric Schmidt <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKOWK2dR4Dg&p=2737D508F656CCF8″>made an interesting point</a>: smart phones are actually more useful than PCs because they know more about the user, including location, and can deliver a more personal level of utility.

<a href=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4087/5186226125_66e1323508.jpg”><img class=”alignright” style=”margin-left: 9px; margin-right: 9px;” title=”Mark Zuckerberg at Web 2.0 Summit” src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4087/5186226125_66e1323508.jpg” alt=”Mark Zuckerberg at Web 2.0 Summit” width=”299″ height=”199″ /></a>3. Social Is the Killer App. While you’re pondering question 2, consider this one. Mark Zuckerberg was poised and mature in a <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRUOl03nZIc&p=2737D508F656CCF8″>nearly one-hour interview with John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly</a>. The Facebook founder acknowledged that great power carries great responsibility and pledged to be more responsive to the privacy concerns of members.

4. Simulations Are A Powerful Incentive To Engage. Did you know that 320 million people have played a <a href=”http://www.zynga.com/”>Zynga</a> game and that the company now employs 1,300 people? Have you ever even heard of Zynga? If you’re a B2B marketer, you probably haven’t, but I’ll bet your kids have. <a href=”http://www.farmville.com/”>Farmville</a> is a mega-hit on Facebook and Zynga has nine other social gaming applications based on classic games like poker and Battleship. <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81F1qSOq3cs&p=2737D508F656CCF8″>Founder Mark Pincus said the company has peak usage of more than three million concurrent users</a>. Yow.

Why should you care? Because simulation games are not only a great way to learn but also an excellent tool for modeling business processes. Consider <a href=”http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/sp/myplannet/index.html”>Cisco’s myPlanNet</a>, a game that challenges players to build a business as the CEO of an Internet service provider. It has racked up <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cisco-myPlanNet/153538644090″>more than 75,000 Facebook</a> fans and 50,000 downloads for what is essentially a B2B training and marketing tool. Check out the wall posts on Facebook. It’s not the usual gaming trash talk. Players are learning how the Internet works.

IBM recently released <a href=”http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8/cityone/index.html”>CityOne</a>, a game that simulates sustainable urban planning. These are tools that put real problem-solving scenarios in a gaming context and they are having enormous success. Can a sim fit in with your digital marketing plan?

<a href=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4131/5181217508_9e1c9f2be7.jpg”><img class=”alignleft” style=”margin-left: 9px; margin-right: 9px;” title=”Steven Berlin Johnson at Web 2.0 Summit” src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4131/5181217508_9e1c9f2be7.jpg” alt=”Steven Berlin Johnson at Web 2.0 Summit” width=”250″ /></a>5. Everything on the Web. <a href=”http://stevenberlinjohnson.typepad.com/about.html”>Steven Berlin Johnson</a> gave a <a href=”http://www.web2summit.com/web2010/public/schedule/detail/15397″>brief but stimulating talk</a> about the rate of change in publishing. “The the first time in 20 years, the link and the URL are losing market share,” he said, noting that there is no standardized way to link to the page of a digital book.

This year’s Web 2.0 Summit was streamed in its entirety. The conference, which is in its seventh year, is a great way to tap into the trends that will define the next 12 months. If you can’t fork over the $4,200 (and thanks to John Battelle and my friends at Procter & Gamble, I didn’t have to), it’s worth tuning in to <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/user/OreillyMedia”>the YouTube archive</a> or watching the streamed coverage from next year’s event.