Category Archive
for: ‘Social Media’

Must Read Blogs – One of Our Favorites

Posted Dec 1 2011 by in B2B, B2C, Current Affairs, Local Business, Small Business, Smart and Simple Solutions Conference for Small Business, Social Media, Uncategorized, Web/Tech, Weblogs with 0 Comments

Like most of you, I subscribe to a handful of blogs that I review as part of my morning rituals.  From IT gurus, entertaiment mogals and marketing leaders, each delivers something I find (or at one time found) worth my time. Without out a doubt, Jeremy Epstien and his Never Stop Marketing daily updates deliver something worth reading.  It’s more than just every now and then, it’s every single day. Sometimes he shares very personal stories and other times they are chunks of wisdom retold. Here’s a great example.

If you are serious about your business and have the desire to set in motion a few of the principals and knowledge Jeremy shares, it can make a difference in the level of success you and your organization will achieve.

How Are You Reaching Executives Online?

Posted Nov 29 2011 by in B2B, B2C, Internet Delivered Video, Mobile Video, Online Video, Small Business, Social Media, Testamonial, Video Delivery, Web/Tech, Webcasting, Weblogs, YouTube with 0 Comments

Here’s a great look at the when, where and how today’s executives view and digest online video. Of all the data collected, the one bit of information that surprised me most –  the length of a single video these decision makers are open to watching . While Varvid encourages our partners to keep videos under the 2 minute mark, this research tells us if the content offered is engaging and relevant, a large portion of viewers will watch for up to 5 minutes.  That’s solid information when you are creating an online video that generates results.

If you’d like to know more about how you can tell your story, share a case study, lend some professional expertise or simply get good video online, just ask us.  It’s what we do.

Facebook’s New Subscribe Button Means More Exposure For Online Video

Posted Sep 15 2011 by in Facebook, Online Video, Social Media with 0 Comments

Facebook has unveiled a new feature called the Subscribe Button that enables users to receive publicly visible status updates from people who aren’t on their friend list. This same feature will also allow users to customize the updates they see from those who are on their friends list, a further elaboration on the current basic feature of being able to block a particular friend’s updates from showing up on the News Feed.

A comparison of a subscription versus a page.

Facebook’s official announcement states that the new subscribe feature can be used to:

  • Choose what you see from people in News Feed
  • Hear from people, even if you’re not friends
  • Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends

As far as being able to choose what shows up in your News Feed, the Subscribe Button will give you three choices regarding the amount of content you’d like to see:

  • All updates: Everything your friend posts
  • Most updates: The amount you’d normally see
  • Important updates only: Just highlights, like a new job or move

The Subscribe Button also allows you to hear from people who you aren’t friends with, like celebrities, artists, political figures and journalists; which has much more accurate connotations than becoming their friend, or liking them. One way to conceptualize Facebook’s new Subscribe Button is that it’s very similar to following someone on Twitter.

This a huge move forward for Facebook in the individuals control over their own content aggregation. Instead of your news feed being full of your friends’ exclamations of joy about their day off from work, or woes about their procrastination habit, you’ll be able to receive more developed and curated content; like links to news articles, information on newly released films or music, or important political speeches or events. Additionally, any Facebook user who wants to share their public updates with a wider audience than just their friends list can opt in and add a subscribe button to their profile, so this feature is not limited to celebrities or organizations.

An example of Facebook's subscription option

What does this mean for video? Ostensibly, the new Subscribe Button is going to aggrandize the sharing of video via Facebook in a major way. In the past video has been limited to sharing among friends as posts to their wall, or via a private message. Now, users are granted a much higher level of control over who they’re receiving content from, and profiles who have a large number of subscribers will be able to push their content out to a much larger audience. Considering that Facebook is the 3rd highest ranked site for online video views (according to comScore.com) we can expect to see video sharing to increase drastically with the rise of the Facebook Subscribe option.

Aaron Booker to Host Social Media Webinar January 26th

Posted Jan 12 2011 by in Aaron Booker, Social Media with 2 Comments

Aaron Booker, Founder and CEO of Varvid, will host a webinar on January 26th, entitled “How to Harness Social Media to Serve You and Your Customer“. Co-hosting with Aaron will be Frank Gurnee, Vice President of CharTec, one of the country’s leading Hardware-as-a-Service providers.

Frank Gurnee, Vice-President of Chartec

Aaron and Frank have been in the game a long time – long enough to see the rise of social media and its growing influence on the business community. Combining their decades of business acumen with the secrets they’ve learned from being inside the industry at the start of “Social”, Aaron and Frank will be updating the old business playbook for modern concerns. Topics will include the best social media tools available today, how to create content that is worth distributing, how to brand your voice, and the benefits of living by Aaron’s mantra: “Create once, and publish many.”

Click here to reserve your spot in the webinar.
“How to Harness Social Media to Serve You and Your Customer”
January 26th, starting at 10am PST.

30-60-30: Stuart Crawford’s Social Media Strategy That Works

Posted Dec 10 2010 by in Social Media with 2 Comments

Social media is still a major buzzword in today’s business environment. It can make or break a business’ reputation in the span of a single tweet. But it seems like many businesses is are still struggling to find the best way of utilizing it. As Stuart Crawford of Ulistic says: “Consider Your Tools.”

30: Spend 30 Minutes per day READING

  • Read blogs, read local newspapers, read medical journals – anything that is current, and relates in some way to your chosen vertical of specialization. Read

60: Spend 60 Minutes per day ENGAGING

  • This is, in Stuart’s words, the Secret Sauce in the social media sandwich. Doing this, above all else, will help your social media success skyrocket. GET KNOWN, BE VISIBLE. Get on forums and answer questions from the communities you serve. Know your community, and make sure they know that you’re there, you’re knowledgable, and you’re ready to help them.

30: Spend 30 Minutes per day CREATING CONTENT

  • This could be as small as a blog post or product review, or as big as an article for your business community’s newsletter. Publishing your own content which brings value to your community will increase your positive visibility.

Interested in more from Ulistic, visit:  www.ulistic.com

The Rise of Video in the Workplace

Posted Nov 8 2010 by in Cisco, Social Media with 0 Comments

Cisco’s Connected World Report is an international study that shows how and why workers in the IT industry access their online information. While the main focus of the study was on the disconnect between corporate IT company policies in relation to the behavior change in IT workers due to developments in social media, the  results also reveal that most IT workers see video as a rising technology.

The study shows that, globally, more than two-thirds of IT professionals (68%) believe that video communication will play an important role in their company’s future. This opinion was most popular among workers in China (85%), Mexico (85%) and Spain (82%), suggesting that video is considered to be on the rise as a means of enterprise and consumer communication.

While two-thirds of IT employees are aware of the capabilities of video, not all employees who wish to use video communications while at work are able to do so. The study shows that about two in five employees globally (41%) said they cannot use video at work. Even more astonishing is the fact that more than half of employees in Germany (55%), the United Kingdom (55%), the United States (53%) and France (60%) claim they either do not have access to, or are not permitted to use video as a communications tool.

Interested in the full scope of the study? Check out the MarketWatch article here.

B2B vs B2C Social Media and Video’s Rise to the Social Media Forefront

Posted Oct 28 2010 by in B2B, B2C, Social Media with 3 Comments

A recent study by business.com titled the 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study reveals that in North America, more B2B companies are incorporating social media tools into their marketing model than B2C companies.

The results show that:

- 74% of B2B hosted a blog compared to 55% for B2C, 75% of B2B companies use Twitter while only 49% of B2C get their tweet on, and 66% of B2B participated in online discussions,  much higher than the 43% of B2C companies that have an engaging online presence.

-81% of B2B companies were more likely to be integrating company-related profiles on social networks into their strategy, in comparison to 67% of B2C companies.

What’s the explanation for the higher social media use by B2B’s compared to B2C? This informative E Marketer study says that a substantial 60% of B2B marketers claimed they use social media to create a “thought leadership” for their brand, while 49% said they participate in order to generate leads, 46% to monitor and maintain customer feedback, 35% to satisfy their advertising needs and 29% to collect social data about their particular market. All this data points to one thing: that Social Media use in the B2B world is extremely popular now, but what does this mean for the future?

Because of the huge buzz around social media, it’s easy to forget that social media marketing is only a few years old. The truth is, companies are still getting a feel for these technologies and few, if any, have completely harnessed the full potential of these nascent social media tools.

In an interview referenced in the Mashable article titled What the Future Holds for B2B Social Media Marketing, Autumn Truong, the manager of social media and corporate communications at Cisco believes that B2B marketing is about to see a few shifts in essential strategy, with video, mobile and engagement models at the forefront of this new movement. It’s quoted that “she seemed especially excited by video’s potential to tell a story and spur new engagement.” Which isn’t news to the Varvid Crew, as we’re including Cisco’s HD Flip cameras in our new VENUE Packages. So, whatever the future holds, it’s all going to be captured on video.

Facebook and Microsoft Team Up to Improve Bing

Posted Oct 18 2010 by in Social Media, Varvid Team, VENUE Packages, Video Delivery with 0 Comments

Last week, Facebook and Microsoft held a press conference at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Mountain View to announce the major changes in Microsoft’s search engine Bing.  The buzz on the web is attributing this partnership a strategic move by both companies to compete with a common opponent: Google.

The plan is for Microsoft to incorporate the social aspect of Facebook into Bing, allowing people to not only seek out relevant sites, but also for social opinion, which is being incorporated into the search via Facebook. This will be done by using the “like” feature that has become so popular for Facebook users. To put it into perspective, the “like” feature is currently being used on over 2 million sites. This statistic, matched with the fact that there are currently a little over 500 million Facebook members, indicates an abundance of untapped data that will offer Bing a search potential that isn’t available to Google.

The angle that Microsoft and Facebook are taking on this new idea is that, until now, search results have been limited to keywords and haven’t taken popular opinion into account. The internet has evolved from a web of documents into a web of social relations just as they exist in the real world. The structure of the internet has become rife with digital representations of people and places, and social media has provided an outlet for people to express their opinions of both the real world and the representations. Microsoft and Facebook look to capitalize on this by enabling Bing to blend social information in with the “web of documents”.

This is great news for anyone in the marketing world, especially those involved with Internet Delivered Video, as this new social aspect of Bing will allow people to find videos much easier. It’s recently been reported that Facebook holds the number two spot for online video content property, meaning this partnership will not only align Microsoft and Bing with the most popular social network in the world, but they are also teaming up with the site that has the second highest online video viewership; talk about two birds with one stone. In searches of the past, people relied on keywords and descriptions to get their videos out into the world, but this new “social opinion” aspect of the Bing search will allow users to find relevant videos that have become popular in their network, without having to match exact keywords! For those trying to get a product or service recognized on the web by using video, this means that a video can be popular in certain niches without being popular for everyone on the web. Every successful marketer knows the secret to making a sale is to avoid being broad and hitting a wide audience with generic advertising, and the true key to success is to go after particular subgroups or smaller markets that have a high interest in their company’s service. With the implemented changes Facebook and Microsoft are making to Bing, videos will be able to reach the “right” viewers more efficiently than ever before.

If you’re interested in an accessible and affordable means of creating internet video content, check out Varvid’s new VENUE Packages.

Is Social Media Just a Fad?

Posted Oct 14 2010 by in Social Media, Varvid Team, VENUE Packages with 0 Comments

In our hectic world of ceaseless technological and online innovation, new technologies often become obsolete in just a few months. It seems like many products and ideas do well mostly because they’ve gained popularity, and not because of their actual utility or usefulness. It could be said that most contemporary ideas and products have their “15 minutes of fame” and then dissipate into oblivion.

Is this how social media can be characterized, as just another fad or technological phase that will soon become antiquated? This video “Social Media Revolution 2,” based off of the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman, provides a very strong case that social media is here to stay, and provides a lot of supporting evidence that we’ve only witnessed the beginnings of what’s rapidly becoming a worldwide social media movement.  If you like this video, you should take a look at Varvid’s VENUE Packages, which can enable you to make your very own personalized, professional videos to post in emails, on your website(s), display in your blog(s) and become a major force in the Social Media Revolution!

Social Media, Branding, and Video

Posted Sep 28 2010 by in Internet Delivered Video, Social Media, Video Delivery with 0 Comments


This week, entrepreneurs and innovators from around the world gathered in San Francisco to discuss the future of technology and business at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. At the conference, entrepreneur Joe Kraus had this to say about building a brand: “The hardest thing to create is a consumer habit.” The implication here is that since it is the hardest thing, it is also the most valuable thing to have. And certainly, many of the world’s biggest corporations have understood that for years; that’s why Costco makes you sign up for a card, why the only criteria for buying a media player other than an iPod is “cheaper than an iPod”, and why people is some regions refer to all carbonated beverages as “Coke”. Consumer habits, which we all have, go almost completely unnoticed all the time. They may even keep us from purchasing a better product for our needs because we prefer the brand we know. Next time you’re at the grocery store, think about why you’re buying the big-name cereal over store brand. Is it really the taste, or is it force of habit? This begs the question: what is the role that brands play in our daily lives?

With the rise of social media in the last several years, the line between ‘company’ and ‘marketing’ has continuously grown thinner and thinner. Now, more than ever before, it is mandatory for businesses to forge a distinct brand to ensure that potential customers will instantly recognize the company name and logo, the services they provide, and easily grasp (and communicate for themselves) the “essence” of what a given company is all about. In a post written by Philip Keightley from socialmediatoday, he makes a strong case for the importance of “the brand” in our current world of social media.

Online social media and search engine optimization (SEO) are so imperative that companies like Ulistic structure their entire business model off the idea of being completely dedicated to teaching businesses about social media and SEO. In Keightley’s blog, he explains how in the past only the largest companies had the resources to distribute corporate publications or magazines. But now, as the business and online world has adapted to innovative social media, everyone has access to platforms for broadcast and conversation, and we have all become “publishers” of sorts.

With this new social media paradigm, many businesses have the opportunity to create a strong voice without massive amounts of capital, something that wasn’t available 10 years ago.  This change causes a lot of excitement among potential entrepreneurs and investors, as they know any good idea can find it’s way to an online audience. But, along with the potential for everyone to have a voice, social media has also created a lot of “noise”.

Too much noise.

We all experience this “noise” when we’re online, a seemingly never-ending onslaught of information, logos, and sales pitches. Yet, how do we muddle through it? We go with what we know and what has worked in the past. Consider this quote by the 19th-century psychologist and philosopher William James: “Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.”

This is where branding becomes extremely pertinent to anyone trying to reach potential clients online. Consider this blog by Sandy Miller about custom branded communities. Even if your company is new, by forming and maintaining a professional looking brand, you’ve created something that can easily become associated with brands that potential clients already do “know”. Think about which advertisement you’d be more likely to click on: one that has been designed by a seasoned graphic artist or a flashing square that says you’ve won a million dollars. The reason why the former advertisement is more appealing  is because the professional look and feel communicates a strong brand, and instantly seems more reliable.

Here at Varvid, we are firm believers that the number one way to create a strong brand is the use of video as central part of any marketing plan. Consider our culture’s fascination with television and movies, and how there’s a sense that someone you see on film seems more legitimate than some random joe you meet on the street. Internet delivered video is a direct, concise, and simple way to combine your company’s logo, brand, and message into an appealing and interactive medium that potential clients and customers are familiar with and know they can trust. In an online world filled with “noise” and mediocre brands, video is the ultimate way to forge a distinct company brand and optimize your online presence.

(Top image taken from: http://sierrafriend.com/)

Page 1 of 3123»