No other tool in your marketing toolbox delivers the bang-for-your-buck like video content.

From our ebook Biggest Social Marketing and New Media Predictions for 2012, Jay Baer, social media strategist, coach, speaker and all-around good guy, shared that 2012 will be “the explosion in short-form multimedia, as companies start to truly embrace video and mobile photography.” With predictions like this, we asked: Could 2012 be the year marketers embrace video in their social marketing efforts? We think yes, and here’s four reasons why:

1. Video is Getting Bigger

Since May 2011, there are more than 48 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute.  And as of December 2011, YouTube boasted more than a trillion videos viewed this year alone. With 71% of all online adults participating platforms like YouTube, video sharing is up 38% since 2006, 28% of which share on a daily basis.

2. Video Sells to the C-Suite

If you think that video marketing is only suitable for end consumers, then think again. Senior executives watch videos to make purchase decisions. A Forbes Insights report points to 65% of senior decision-makers visiting a vendor’s website after watching a video. In fact, 83% of the surveyed senior executives report watching more online video today than they were a year ago, with 75% indicating they watch work-related videos at least weekly. Younger executives (those under 40) are more likely to make a purchase based on video alone. It is clear that video is becoming an essential way to connect with and sell to both senior decision-makers and end consumers.

3. Video is Essential for Inbound Marketing and SEO

Hosting videos on your site is a great way to attract and engage visitors. Visitors spend an average of two more minutes on websites that host videos than on sites that don’t. Video helps to increase a website’ quality score too. A ‘long click’, which leads to more time spent on site, results from higher quality content, ultimately enhancing user engagement.  In fact, video can increase your chances of getting on the first page Google’s search results 53 times!

4. Video is Killing the TV Star

A Bright Roll survey early this year reveals 65% of marketers plan to reallocate campaign dollars from TV to online video.  Over 25% see online and mobile video as the two areas that will see the overall largest spend increase this and next year. Most marketers report taking advertising budgets away from television and display. Marketers plan to spend more on video because it works – video drives sales.

For instance, meet Old Spice, the men’s body wash and deodorant manufacturer. About now, everyone has likely heard of the Old Spice campaign, The Man Your Man Can Smell Like. This one commercial, originally aimed for television, generated 5.9 million views on YouTube in the first 24 hours of its launch.  It got 20 million views three days, 1.4 billion impressions over six months. The ROI? Sales increased by 107% over six months.

GoPro, which makes mountable cameras, goes after current customers who are posting cool and interesting videos to YouTube using their cameras. One video, watched six million times in two days, showed a buck leaping across a mountain biker’s trail in Africa and knocking him to the ground. Quoted in a New York Times article, Stephen Baumer, GoPro CIO, said this: “The content ends up selling the cameras.” He went on to say, “these consumers, to our delight, are advertising on our behalf.”

Integrating Video into your Marketing Mix

We partnered with MarketingProfs to bring to our community of savvy marketers a new free white paper on Why Video is Essential to Your Marketing Mix. This resource focuses on examples from leading brands using video marketing to increase their visibility, attract new users and increase sales. You will learn how video can help you reach a specific audience, keep them engaged longer, and bring your brand to life in ways previously unimagined.

Here are a few of the examples shared in the whitepaper:

• Informative videos: WebMD is a great example of how video can be used to both inform and educate – their videos are of high-quality, focused on specific medical conditions and diseases.  The goal is to help consumers take better control of their health.
• Instructional videos: Iron Mountain, the leading information management and storage provider, offers fun, creative vignettes to their Facebook page. D-Link, a company selling networking equipment, has a library of short, instructional videos teaching both home and business owners how to use and set-up their products.
• Entertaining videos: Kinaxis, offering on-demand software for supply chain management, showcases a series of videos poking fun at the challenges associated with large supply chain environments. As of April 2010, the company had more than tripled its leads, and was able to increase the number of registered community members by 38%.

We welcome your thoughts, reactions and feedback.  Let us know how do you approach the process of video creation and promotion?  What are your top video tips and tricks? Has video helped your company?  As we embark on 2012, we promise to continue to provide deeper dives into best practices, successes, and notable trends to help you, social marketers, do more and do better. Comment on this blog, on Twitter at hashtag #AwarenessSMM, on Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, or LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

With new social media platforms emerging at such a rapid rate, it has become increasingly important for existing platforms adapt to the changing times and pull out all the stops to stay above the competition. In recent months, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have all redesigned their platforms in an effort to gain new users while maintaining their relationships with current users. While each design has its pros and cons, Twitter’s new interface not only makes it easier for new users to understand what it means to “tweet,” but it also creates a more seamless experience for seasoned users. Let’s dive into some of the specifics:

Simpler @mentioning: Twitter’s new design allows users to @mention others right from the top of users’ Twitter profiles. This feature makes it much easier to initiate conversation with a person or brand when directed to their profile from an outside site. Goes to show how a small change can make a big difference!

Improved multimedia functionality: The new Twitter makes it much easier for users to share photos and videos. Twitter now integrates these multimedia items into the main stream, making broadcasting, viewing, and interacting with multimedia on Twitter easier than ever before.

Embedded Tweets: Twitter now allows users to grab embed codes for their favorite tweets. This means that rather than taking screen shots of tweets and uploading images to our blogs and websites, we can embed tweets so that users can interact directly from our site. Test it out below!

#protip Now you can embed a Tweet right on your WordPress blog, Posterous Space, or any website. Read more: dev.twitter.com/blog/tweets-an…

— Twitter (@twitter) January 5, 2012

Brand Pages: Finally, Twitter has brand pages! These pages allow brands to add a customized banner to their Twitter profile page. This customization increases brand awareness and gives brands the ability to promote a particular phrase, image, or promotion/event. In addition, brands are able to pin tweets to the top of their pages, drawing attention to content that the brand feels is most relevant to its audience. Check out the Jet Blue brand page!

What do you think of the New Twitter? What are some pros and cons you’ve noticed?

We all wish we had a crystal ball we can peek into and tell the future.  Short of counting on miracles to lead our way, the team at Awareness connected with some of the best and the brightest in marketing to ask them the difficult questions around what 2012 has in its social marketing store for us. 34 marketing strategists – globally recognized leaders such as David Meerman Scott (@dmscott), Brian Solis (@briansolis), Erik Qualman (@equalman) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), brand marketers such as Ekaterina Walter at Intel (@Ekaterina) and Michael Pace at Constant Contact (@mpace101), and marketing advisors and consultants from top agencies such as Edelman, Mindjumpers, Holland-Mark, and Raidious, gave us their time and shared their insights and prognosis for our eBook on 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions.  We can’t thank them enough for their thoughts and support of our community.

The 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions is organized in six parts:

-        Part One: Predictions for the biggest (social) marketing developments in 2012.

-        Part Two: The role of “big data” in (social) marketing next year

-        Part Three: Expectations around key new technology that will likely have the most impact on (social) marketing in North America as well as globally;

-        Part Four: The role of mobile in (social)

-        Part Five: The top challenge for marketers engaged in social next year

-        Part Six: The top marketing news resources these experts consult to stay abreast of news and developments in social marketing

Expert Spotlight: Here’s what globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott shared with us:

-        The Biggest Social Media Development in 2012: “Social media gives us the ability to communicate instantly, yet most marketers have not developed the communication skills to address real time,” observes globally recognized marketing strategist David Meerman Scott. “Marketers have been trained with a campaign mentality, spending weeks planning, designing and executing in a sequential manner. Social marketing is changing that. We now need the ability to react instantly to breaking news, changes on our websites and negative customer feedback. Marketers need a new mentality, infrastructure and workflows to meaningfully participate in real time.”

-        The Role of “Big Data”: “Data has been with us for a long time,” observes David Meerman Scott, “but it is only recently that marketers are realizing they need sophisticated tools to harness that data and make sense and use of it. As a result, marketing departments will add a new job function that will play a role similar to that of bond traders in financial institutions in that they will rely on instant, real-time data to make informed decisions. The marketing ‘bond traders’ will be analytics experts who will look at three types of real-time data: news feeds from sources such as Dow Jones, Reuters and Bloomberg; social data from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google +, YouTube, blogs and LinkedIn; and data from websites to answer key questions such as number of people visiting your web properties, content they are interacting with, the impact of reorganizing content and presentation, and speed of response to close rates.”

-        Key New Technology to Impact Marketing in 2012: Marketing analytics. “A modern marketer going into 2012 – 2014 will need an analytics team that understands, lives and breathes data,” says David.

-        Role of Mobile on Marketing in 2012:  “Mobile devices are certainly important, and next year is going to be about the ability to add location to the mobile experience,” shares David.

How does David stay in touch with the constant changing landscape of marketing?  “Conferences,” he says“…talking to the people who are implementing innovative ideas, CMOs and CEOs, public relations and marketing agency leaders.” To read what other experts had to say about 2012, download our free eBook 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions.

David Meerman Scott

About David Meerman Scott (@dmscott ): David is a marketing strategist, seminar leader, and keynote speaker. His book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages. David has live and worked in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Boston and has presented at hundreds of industry conferences and events in over twenty countries. Read his blog at http://www.webinknow.com.

Let us know your thoughts.  What do you think is in store for us marketers in 2012?  Where do you see the biggest opportunities?  What do you think will keep you up at night?

Let’s continue the discussion in the comments below, on Twitter at hashtag #2012Awareness, on Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, or on LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group. To a successful 2012!

Mike Lewis
@bostonmike

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

10 years ago, I watched the news in Mr. Golden’s 8^th grade science class. I remember going to lunch and seeing half of my grade crying. I remember getting out of school early and looking up at the sky to see smoke in the air, even being miles away from New York City. I couldn’t help but think back to two weeks earlier, when I went to the very top of the World Trade Center for the first and last time. Everyone has their own 9/11 story. 10 years after September 11th, social media provides us with an outlet to share our stories and remember the impact of that fateful day.

Facebook teamed up with the National September 11^th Memorial & Museum to create the 9/11 Memorial application. This application allows you to update your profile picture and dedicate your status to those who sacrificed their lives during the September 11^th attacks. Since September 11th affected so many people’s lives, it is impossible for us to know every personal story and truly understand the magnitude of this event. This application helps us recognize those who have lost their lives on 9/11, even if we didn’t know them personally. Michael E. Brennan, this is for you.

YouTube created a channel dedicated to the 10^th anniversary of September 11^th.  On this channel, YouTube asks users to submit a video answering “What is your strongest memory of 9/11?,” “How did 9/11 change you and/or America?,” or “What did you lose or gain because of 9/11?” These submissions make up a collection of personal stories, reactions, and memories from that day.

#GodBlessAmerica and #September11 were both trending topics for the majority of September 11, 2011 on Twitter. Using these hashtags allowed Twitter users to share their personal experiences as well as a pay tribute to those who have lost their lives on this day 10 years ago.

Did you use social media to share your memories of September 11th?

How do you think our response to 9/11 would have been different if social media existed in 2001?

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Hurley went on to point out a few fundamental tenets that contribute to YouTube’s success:

• Speed matters: Videos should load and play back quickly.
• Clip culture is here to stay
• Open platforms open possibility: Content creation isn’t our business; it’s yours. 

YouTube has added a tiny Post-IT style note next to its logo to commemorate this feat.  It’s important to note that this billion number includes views from embedded players on other sites.  In recent social media news YouTube is often drowned out by the frenzy over Facebook and Twitter, but it’s hard to ignore 1,000,000,000.

Since College Basketball’s March Madness is almost upon us, I felt it only appropriate to put together a Social Media Madness bracket in the hopes of answering: Who is or who will become the king of Social Media?  Is it Facebook? Twitter? Or is it a “Cinderella Player” like Livemocha?  Fill out your picks here Facebook’s Bracket Builder !

We are down to the Sweet Sixteen.  For each company I list their strengths (key wins) and weaknesses (key losses) and point out how your company or brand can leverage these social media offerings.  This week we discuss the winners and losers of Region One and detail out this week’s Region Two match-ups. 

Digg is a social bookmarketing site.  After content is submitted other people “Digg” what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page.

 

Key losses: For how succesful they’ve been they do not get much press.  In Thailand where they have a solid market share users are starting to use Facebook, even though Facebook isn’t tailored for the Thai market specificly.  Is this a sign of things to come?

Business Use:  Very important for Global companies to test and play in the Latin and Asian markets where Hi5 has significant market share.

This is today’s social media Goliath.  After opening its network up beyond college students in late 2006 Facebook has quickly risen to the top and is why it’s this tournaments’ overall number one seed and the hands down favorite to win it all.