Month: August 2011 (Page 2 of 2)

I am at BlogHer today — Saturday — and in the session on Video Blogging!   BlogHer was held in San Diego this week with nearly 3,500 woman bloggers in attendance!!  Women who blog are influencing purchasing

Vidoe in blogs could be as simple as adding video to a current blog, or hosting a show online using video.  Video is the most trusted media online today so experiment with this form of communication!

For Social Business, here is one of my first videos.  Your comments?

Top 5 Tips I learned in the session:

1.  Tools.  Make sure you use a good camera and great audio system.  People will tolerate an ok picture but the audio must be understandable.   While many people use the iPhone for video, most said the best was the Canon 5U

2.  Great links that were discussed that I was not aware of!   Biglive — for charging for your videos, youtube.com/playbook for great video tips like SEO; trafficgeiser.com & Tubemobile both for ways to watch traffic.  Also use “smoosh it” plugin on @wordpress to smoosh your older and current photos on blog to complement your videos.  Cool one!   Steps to get your link right for promotion of all your videos, not other recommended videos from YouTube:  upload viceo to youtube, go to your channel, click on the video you want to promote within your channel, and then use the url at the top from that click, not the suggested url.

3.  Drive to integration of your online prescence.  For the videos, have consistent opening and closing and include where you “live online”.  So your twitter id or your blog.  Unless you “live” in YouTube, make sure you are getting them over to your homebase!  At the end of a lot of videos, it freezes on the last screen.   So give them something to remember. 

4. People Driven.   Remember, there are people behind all these networks.     It is all about understanding what people are looking for, and how you can assist them.   You have to engage people 1:1.  Add value, provide good content consistently, and have active engagement w/ audience & reach. 

5. Livestreaming.  Using gaming techniques — like join the conversation at 2PM, create a scarcity to your livesteam. Check out ustream and livestream. 

We concluded with the monetization of videos.   For example, in beta, there is an application, so that you can get paid for your videos.  One example was a person who does training and in a private password protected site, she posts her training videos for those who attend her class as a differentiation!   There was a discussion of using blip as well to make money.

Anyone out there with more tips of videos?

All:  I have been doing a LOT of meetings with companies starting their Social Business journey and the top 3 mistakes that I see people begging advice on is the below!

1. Social Media and building communities is not a PR, Communications and Marketing task only. It needs commitment and engagement from the whole team.  That’s why it is Social Business, not just Social Media!

2. Social Media is risky.  How do I eliminate the risk?  The answer is, you can’t!   There are ways to mitigate the risk but the risk is there as it is in many cases.   I recommend a Repuation Manage proactively monitor this online but that you have a Risk management plan.

3. You can not outsource Social. Some of our leaders asked me “who writes your blog?”  They wanted to hire external ghostwriters for a blog etc. I recommended not to do it because the success of the Social channels depend on personality and authentic writing & communication.  This needs to be personal. 

Today, our Social Business word of the week is Engagement.  

My thought is that Engagement is the Energy of Social Business.

Engagement is about your connection with your clients, influencers, and others.   Your emotional connection with your client or employee usually created by exceptional experiences that are integrated, interactive and identifying.  A Social Business  connects people to expertise. It connects individuals whether customers, partners or employees as networks of people to generate new sources of innovation, foster creativity, and establish greater reach and exposure to new business opportunities.

It establishes a foundational level of trust across these business networks and thus a willingness to openly share information, developing a deeper sense of loyalty among customers and employees. It empowers these networks with the collaborative, gaming and analytical tools needed to engage each other and creatively solve business challenges.

How do you engage?