Each December, it is tradition for Apogee Results employees to volunteer their time to Coats for Kids in Austin, TX. The annual community project, now in its 26th year, collects and distributes coats to eligible children in Central Texas. Every year, the Junior League of Austin, Jack Brown Cleaners, KASE 101, and KVUE partner to bring the community together to ensure that the children of Central Texas stay warm (if that ever happens this year!).
Last year, with the help of sponsors and 2,600 community volunteers, Coats for Kids distributed approximately 33,500 new and gently used coats to young people in Central Texas.
Donations come in from individuals, businesses and groups, and may be in the form of new coats, used coats or monetary donations. Watch the KVUE Austin news clip for more information or to learn how you can contribute or for more information, visit Coats For Kids.
Apogee Employees are grateful for the opportunity to volunteer each quarter, and for those who were unable to attend this year, we thank the following people for representing us!
Today is the 9th annual Innotech Austin Conference & Expo and Apogee’s own Bill Leake and Alan LaFrance had a session on how to embrace and utilize video in order to help marketing efforts, “Video Killed The Radio Star (But Not Your Marketing)”. Here is a recap.
The presentation began with a few impressive statistics as to why it’s a good idea to invest in video marketing:
People that watch a product video are 60 – 85% more likely to buy (IR et al)
Over 800 Million unique users visit YouTube monthly (YouTube)
Over 1 trillion video views in 2011 (YouTube)
Video improved add-to-cart by 144% for a Retailer (Internet Retailer)
Videos are the fastest growing ad format in 2012 with 55% growth (eMarketer)
Next Alan talked about how to make an effective video and the example he used was the popular Blendtec YouTube series “Will it Blend?” Here are the main points of the segment:
Research and identify a topic and purpose – when you’re thinking of video content, do your research. Go into making your video with a relevant topic and purpose.
Plan out the video content – have a plan before you start video production. Create a storyboard/wireframe of your idea to effectively execute your video.
Use quality equipment – don’t use subpar equipment (i.e. Smartphone camera) to produce a video. Even on YouTube, people don’t want to see low quality videos.
Spend equal time publicizing as you do producing – don’t just spend all your time and money producing a video and no effort with promotion. With no promotion no one will be aware of your video and in turn you wont get results.
Listen – listen to what your viewers are saying about your video. Read the comments, you might be surprised by the insights you can gather. There might be information there that can help you better cater to your audience with your next video. People will tell you what they want to see and what they’re interested in.
Don’t be afraid to destroy stuff – don’t be afraid to take a risk.
Following these points we saw a great example of a company using video to successfully sale a product, Stacks & Stacks dog door. They might not have the cleanest website but they’ve implemented videos that show just how easy it is to install a pet screen doggie door, sizes available, and many other product insights. According to Internet Retailer, Stacks & Stacks improved their “Add-to-Cart” metric by 144% with this video alone.
Bill presented the next portion of the presentation and he quickly touched on 4 main points:
How are online videos online found?
The importance of YouTube
Posted vs. Hosted
YouTube Optimization
As far as how users discover videos online, there were some interesting statistics presented:
44% – discover videos randomly
43% – discover videos via sharing
43% – discover videos via video websites
39% – discover videos via search engines
27% – discover videos via marketing email
4% – discover videos via RSS & MRSS feeds
Since the launch of blended search, videos are becoming more prevalent in Google’s universal search,”58% of users who search Google were served video in universal search engine results pages”.
So you know the benefits of developing videos for marketing and where people discover them, but what are the placement options? - Well when thinking about videos, you have 2 basic options. You can post or host the video. Posting means that the video content is uploaded to video sharing sites, social media, etc. Hosting means that the video content is on your website.
The benefits of posted video SEO:
Existing Traffic – existing video website have a critical mass of traffic and users, which makes it easier to go viral
There is a better ability to rank on universal search (Google) and other search engines
Potential to dominate the traditional SERPs with “carpet bombing” by submitting to multiple video sites, which is due to weak duplicate content filtering at present
You don’t need your own website
There are also some benefits to hosted video SEO:
Control – you have control over related on-page text, encoded metadata, user experience, etc.
You have control over monetization/advertising
Generate traffic to your website
Note: While you can currently dominate the SERPs with “carpet bombing” with posted strategies, this may go away with duplicate content filtering in the future.
Following this, we looked at the power of YouTube and how much it’s grown in the past year with some interesting stats:
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine
Third most visited website (800 million uniques, only 50 million less than Facebook)
60 hours of video is uploaded EVERY minute (was 48 hours in 2011 and 20 hours in 2009)
Over 4 BILLION videos are viewed each day (was 3 billion in 2011)
One of the best takeaways from the presentation was how to increase your chances to rank your videos / properly optimize them for SEO:
Online marketing is littered with fails; from the small business that fails to claim their Google+ Places page to the Enterprise level B2B that thinks social media isn’t worth the time, it’s easy to fail at social media marketing. Optimizing social media goes far beyond keyword research, search engine optimization and backlinks–rather, it encompasses all of those things and more. Join us for a lively webinar discussing common social media fails–and how you can avoid common social media optimization fails.
Online marketing is littered with fails; from the small business that fails to claim their Google+ Places page to the Enterprise level B2B that thinks social media isn’t worth the time, it’s easy to fail at social media marketing. Optimizing social media goes far beyond keyword research, search engine optimization and backlinks–rather, it encompasses all of those things and more. Join us for a lively webinar discussing common social media fails–and how you can avoid common social media optimization fails.
Apogee Results team representatives enjoyed an invigorating time at the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas yesterday (9/20/2012). Apogee Results joined volunteers from Dell and Razorfish at the distribution hub for central Texas. The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas serves 21 counties in central Texas.
If you’re interested in volunteering at the food bank, find out more information here:
Online marketing is littered with fails; from the small business that fails to claim their Google+ Places page to the Enterprise level B2B that thinks social media isn’t worth the time, it’s easy to fail at social media marketing. Optimizing social media goes far beyond keyword research, search engine optimization and backlinks–rather, it encompasses all of those things and more. Join us for a lively webinar discussing common social media fails–and how you can avoid common social media optimization fails.
It’s hard to believe that the Panel Picker for the 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival is already open–weren’t we just there like, yesterday?
Apparently things move fast in the world of SXSW. Like last year, we submitted a handful of panel/session ideas, and would appreciate a quick vote and share of them. Here they are:
It’s hard to believe that the Panel Picker for the 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival is already open–weren’t we just there like, yesterday?
Apparently things move fast in the world of SXSW. Like last year, we submitted a handful of panel/session ideas, and would appreciate a quick vote and share of them. Here they are:
Double the ROI of your B2B PR Efforts: Stuff Your Agency Either Doesn’t Know, or Forgot to Tell You
Tuesday, August 14, 1 p.m. EST
Speaker:
Bill Leake, CEO, Apogee Results
Description:
Online marketing is becoming an ever-bigger slice of B2B marketing budgets. In fact, it’s the fastest growing component, by far. But how much of this budget is being deployed properly? And is it properly integrated with your traditional PR efforts? Despite what your PR firm is telling you, most PR agencies fail to capitalize on the broader uses and implications of search & social to bolster their efforts, missing out on some easy opportunities to more than double the ROI on your existing PR spend. Learn how to get the most out of your PR efforts through effective paid media, search engine optimization, properly utilizing social media and just generally thinking outside of the traditional B2B PR box. Learn how to turn your existing PR investment into a content and lead generation machine.
Each December, it is tradition for Apogee Results employees to volunteer their time to Coats for Kids in Austin, TX. The annual community project, now in its 26th year, collects and distributes coats to eligible children in Central Texas. Every year, the Junior League of Austin, Jack Brown Cleaners, KASE 101, and KVUE partner to bring the community together to ensure that the children of Central Texas stay warm (if that ever happens this year!).
