Video Link: Sweet Dee Promotes The Bar with Crazy Paddy – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

One of my favorite shows on cable is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s about the on-going antics of four degenerate, self-centered losers who co-own and/or work at a bar in Philadelphia. Kind of a “Friends”-gone-horribly-wrong sitcom. I love watching it for two reasons.

The first is just that it’s one of those shows that is so, so funny for reasons that are so, so wrong in every way that I should almost be ashamed of myself for watching it.

The second is that one of the underlying themes is them attempting any shortcut they can to make more money from their bar. I like to think how I would have advised them in real life. Of course, they aren’t the kind of people who would listen to me.

The Problems with the “Viral Video Fallacy”

The problem in the video above is that both characters are trying to do all the wrong things in getting their video campaign started.

Right now I want to talk about how, in an earlier scene not pictured above, Sweet Dee has decided she’s going to “make a viral video”.

There are so many things wrong with both the phrase “make a viral video” and the fact that she intends to do so in order to promote a local business that I hardly even know where to start.

1- By definition, there’s no such thing as creating a viral video. We’ll get into the particular of that another time.

2- Making a viral video to promote a local business isn’t the best idea. It may work, but why not go after a method that’s 90% likely to fix the problem instead of the one that’s only 5% likely, all other things being equal?

3- She ends up attempting to make the cringe-worthy spectacle you see at the beginning of the video, one of those horrible, local cable commercials that make you want to turn your set off during sponsorship breaks.

How NOT to Approach Creating Video for Small Business

Which brings us to Charlie’s idea of how to fix the problem. His idea? If you want to make a video that’s successful in the way YouTube videos are successful, someone has to get hurt.

And yeah, in the video, this is so funny that every time I watch this episode again, I rewind this scene and watch the ball hit her in the face in slow motion. It cracks me up, and ironically is a clip that would make me want to watch “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” if I’d never seen it before.

Not because someone is getting hurt, but because I would just have to know what was going on there.

In real life, I don’t think people getting injured on film is funny. I understand WHY people think it’s funny, but I’m much more empathic than normal people are supposed to be and on some occasions will actually be in pain myself watching something like that take place. Unless of course I know it’s fake.

Regardless of that – laughing at pain doesn’t sell… anything. Not in and of itself.

Unless you’re a national brand with the kind of budget that can afford to put a commercial up that looks to sell by demographic, hoping to reach enough people that the odds will bear this wasteful model out, a video based purely on entertainment value isn’t going to do more than raise awareness and brand you.

And possibly to an audience that doesn’t want to, or simply can’t, buy your product or service.

Even if you are? Please don’t hurt anyone.

Seriously though, if you’re coming up on this week’s deadline in the video traffic challenge and want to submit in time to make sure your video gets listed, but can’t come up with a topic, here are some ideas.

5 Video Topic Ideas for Business Owners

1. Create a video version of your about page. This isn’t my idea. I saw it yesterday on Twitter and can’t find the post now.
2. Repurpose existing content: Take a blog post, article, or presentation and turn it into a video. You can do this with screencast video software or just talk to the camera.
3. Lisa Barone says “Show Your Product in Action” in an article on Small Biz Trends. There are 5 more tips in that article.
4. Shoestring Marketing says “Ask Customers or Clients to send in video” – two more tips there.
5. Do a short parody of a misled solution to a common customer problem. Xerox just did a great job with this in their recent commercial featuring Michelin. I thought it was funny even though I didn’t get it at first.

Have you got ideas for what kind of video to create that hasn’t been mentioned already? Do tell!

Resources:

List of Our Video Traffic Participants

The Original Video Traffic Challenge Thread

Network Solution’s Case Study on What It Takes to Make a Video Campaign both Viral and Successful

Fast Video Traffic Free Sample Chapter

Video Challenge Participants: Tomorrow is the deadline for the first video in the challenge. If you have your video up as a reply to the post announcing our Video Challenge Participants by tomorrow, I’ll help promote your video and the blog post where it’s published for an entire week starting tomorrow. If I pinged you on Twitter to alert you to this post, it’s most likely as a nudge to remind you.

If you left it for me elsewhere, please let me know where.

I’m told the smart thing to do is to

make one of those squeeze page thingees

and get more people on my list by making them sign up to my newsletter,

THEN make the landing page my Fast Facebook Traffic guide or the one about getting more leads, fans and customers from your Facebook page, before

finally giving away the video for free.

And sometimes I do that. I use my free content to generate leads. Anyone who thinks that’s wrong is welcome to provide for my family or keep walking.

Free is known to have a price – time investment, and email address… but that’s not what I’m doing today.

Because I also believe something is to be said for being more open and accessible with your information and giving out as much value as you can beforehand.

I’ll let you watch the video, then I’ll come back to why I’m giving this away at the bottom of the page.

If you can’t see the video below, because you’re reading this via feed or syndication, you can take a look at today’s newsletter about the Basic Facebook Strategy video.

Hope you enjoy this and find it useful.

So where were we? I was saying how great it is to give things you could charge for away, right?

It’s not to destroy the competition that creates products that aren’t as good as the free tips you give away. Not everyone puts a value on free unless they trust you. So that’s not it.

And there’s more benefit than just the good feeling it gives you. When you invest the hours and hours it takes to produce a 40 minute video, edit it so it makes sense to people, then make the format digestible to a web browser, and give it away completely free, you provide assistance to the world.

I believe that comes back to you, especially in the days when you’re absolutely aching for a break, or help or… some form of good luck to come your way after almost 6 weeks of not being able to work at full speed because you were sick or unable. That’s the spot I’m in today, and it always comes back to – give until it hurts.

But it’s not the spiritual reward that makes this a valid tip. It’s not the belief that I have that any good you put into the world will come back to you ten-fold.

Yeah, I hope you buy my products. I believe $8.88 is reasonable for techniques that over the past four years have put over $100k in my pocket

Now, that could be taken as me making a testimony to my own greatness. And I’m pretty arrogant about the things I’m good at, so that’s probably true.

Or it could be taken as an extra free traffic tip – giving away valuable information that others would charge for, because you believe it’s the right thing to do for that situation. Also true.

Because the real tip here is that when you put valuable information into the world, when you do a service that you are in no way obliged or even expected to do, you can’t go wrong.

Your reputation will improve, no matter how high it already is. The information you share speaks to your expert status and functions as a free trial.

And if nothing else, you helped someone. People don’t easily forget that.

Back to belief systems though – I am certain this small deed will come back to me. It may not come from where I’d like or hope, but somehow, it always returns, greatly multiplied.

Recently, Google announced the availability of Unlisted Videos on YouTube.

From the YouTube post:

Melinda teaches high school in the Bay Area and recently reached out to us with a problem. Her students just finished a video history project that she wanted to share with their parents and classmates. But she was concerned about posting the videos publicly because she didn’t want the whole world to find them (frankly, neither did her students). Melinda told us YouTube’s private sharing options — a 25-person cap that’s limited to other YouTube users — didn’t work for her. She needed a better option to privately share her students’ talent.

I can think of three things you can do with an unlisted YouTube video, and one reason why you should be cautious about having one. What could you do with an unlisted YouTube Video?

1. Make special content just for subscribers. (Eliminates the problem of “I can’t see the video. Everyone can see YouTube.)
2. Create easter eggs for your customers. (I believe that each channel of information to your customers should be unique in some way. And hidden benefits encourage people to pay closer attention.)
3. Share videos that you’d rather people link to than republish. (You can already do this by using the option to block embedding, but with an unlisted video, they have to come to you, and no one can happen upon it.)

So why be cautious? Well, the point of publishing on YouTube, rather than, say, Screencast.com, is for the video to get as much exposure as possible and even go viral, with the most number of people able to access and view it as possible. If that’s what you want, an unlisted video is not the way to go.

Do you know of any cool implementations of Unlisted YouTube videos? Do tell.

I’m sure you remember our last traffic tip, where we learned how to use slideshows to attract visitors to your site. If you’re stopping by for the first time, it may help to read that tip first.

What we’re doing now is taking that tip and with a few slightly more technical tweaks, take it to the next level. That next level is slidecasting. 

What’s Slidecasting? 

If you want to be technical, it’s podcasting but with a slideshow instead of a regular video. Since a podcast is an RSS feed with enclosures or attachments (most commonly audio), technically a slide with audio doesn’t qualify. But we’re going to go with the general use of the term, which is an audio-enabled slideshow. 

So how do you create a slidecast?
 

It’s surprisingly much easier than it seems with the tools we have available. All you need is a slideshow (have a look at our last slideshow article if you don’t know where to start), and an audio to go with it. Then you can create the slidecast by synching the audio to your presentation with free online resources, or you can invest in programs to help make a slidecast that’s ready for even wider marketing.

Getting Your Slidecast On (As Talking Slideshows)

The first option is the easiest: record an audio to go with your slideshow separately, and sync it to the existing slideshow using online tools. Few mouse clicks and – Bob’s your uncle. 

(Your uncle, not mine – have you SEEN my name? I have no uncles named Bob, trust me.)

SlideShare can help you do this, MyPlick supposedly has a similar feature, and Slideboom even supports your efforts to do this within PowerPoint before you upload. I hear their plug-in is neat, too.

Getting Your Slidecast Out (As Video Presentations)

Okay, now we’re getting a little more crazy with it. You can also make the Slidecast into a video. 

Why would you want to do that? 

Because it’s an easy way for the camera-shy to get in on that whole video marketing thing. For all we know in ten years, the web will be mostly video. If you think I’m crazy, remember that the internet started out as as ARPANET, just a bunch of shared text files on a handful of computers, then NSFnet in 1986. 23 Years later? 

YouTube.

God, I’m old. 

Anyway.

Now is the time to start producing videos (well, two years ago was the time but you’re still good). And this is the easiest way to get your foot in the door if you either don’t want to be on camera yet, or feel that your information is best conveyed in pictures. You can either use a program to do this, or record your synched audio slideshow made at one of the sites above with screencasting tools or screencast software.

Adding audio to Keynote isn’t as easy as Apple makes it sound, but it’s not like it’s harder than doing it in Powerpoint. However, if you can afford it, Camtasia works with Powerpoint to create a video version of your slideshow. (there’s a free trial), a PowerPoint plug-in will help you, or if you’re on a Mac, use a program called ProfCast, which will let you record Keynote while it’s playing, as you narrate in real time. It exports the result as an MOV file, which makes it perfect for uploading to any video site, or creating a video podcast to promote.

Or, you could just do it the easy way and use Amit Agarwal’s tutorial on using AuthorStream to create your slidecast video. It’s called How to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to Video Files (with Sound).

Yeah, yeah, I know, why didn’t I tell you the easy way first? 

Well, what fun would that be?

Okay, that was funny. Still, TV spots in local markets are relatively cheap and you don’t even need to know how to produce them if you use a service like SpotRunner. There’s one critical thing you have to do to make sure that they work. And heck no, I’m not going to tell you about it here. That’s how I got in trouble the last time.

I’ll have more tips for driving traffic that Aren’t free, but quite effective, whenever the hell I get around to re-launching my post-retirement blog. In the meantime, go see the latest post for your chance to get into the free, private members site where I’ve pre-launched my hidden tips blog.

See you the next time I feel like showing up here. I miss you all!.

This morning, I read today’s TechCrunch’s article on VideoEgg and how they have introduced some smart options for web video advertising.

photo credit: pfala

I won’t go into all of the details of it here, but VideoEgg has come up with several options that don’t lean on pre-roll and post-roll. In addition, to emphasize engagement, you don’t have to pay for the ad unless the person watching it takes an action. If they don’t interact with the video ad, it costs you Nothing. Think of what that can do for your branding.

The way the ads are displayed in the examples, you can also see how the ads, muted but playing when the visitor arrives, can be served on regular web pages.

That got me thinking about the series I did on Web Video last year (and earlier on web video and traffic), and how publishers may now be at the tip of a movement that makes the ability to generate income from web video content a reality.

Right now Video Egg isn’t taking the average web publisher – they are specializing in those who run social networks, popular Facebook apps, some gaming sites and large-audience video publishers with their own flash player.

But the possibility that VideoEgg’s concept, or one like it by another advertising network, could allow you to place these eye-catching, targeted ads within your site’s content is exciting.

Because I’d never run for president. Cool though, isn’t it? Click on it to make one for yourself. If anyone knows how to do this flash trick, contact me ASAP. I have at Least one job for you.

(If you’re reading this via feed, and can’t see the video, you’d have to click through and watch it for this to make sense.)

I have to give credit where credit is due – thanks for sending this to me, Mark. I almost didn’t post this because I’m so mad that I didn’t think of it first… And congratulations to the winners of the basketball contest.

But boo Celtics. BOO!

(If you’re an AdSense Publisher, this video will show you how to get started.)

On Monday, Google announced on the Inside AdSense blog and later on the official blog, the debut of AdSense Video Units.

The last time I heard the words “AdSense” and “Video” together, I was excited then because I thought that they were saying that they had enough inventory, as well as the technology, to splice AdSense Video Ads into videos, I assumed through YouTube somehow.

I’ve soon learned to keep my premature AdSense Video in Video Content fantasies to myself. Why should I dream of things that make sense?

My fantasy is, of course, that I could provide all my premium tutorial and/or entertainment content for free through ad-sponsored video, after developing a wide enough video audience to boast a targeted audience of tens of thousands. Kind of like my own mini-TBS. And this may be a step in the right direction. (I’ll tell you why I say “may” momentarily.)

The announcement as phrased makes it seem like it’s going in that direction at least.

Video units enable AdSense publishers to display videos from several YouTube content partners. The video units are ad-supported, and the ads are relevant to both the video and the site content, as well as unobtrusive. AdSense publishers and YouTube content partners will receive a share of the ad revenue, so video units enable both groups to earn incremental revenue.

This is potentially quite empowering to AdSense publishers and YouTube publishers alike, as far as the possible revenue. In fact, the thing that bothers me about this isn’t the fact that there’s possible ad relevancy issues. When I watch Boston Legal, stuff pops up that isn’t exactly relevant to the content of a comedy-drama about a bunch of emotionally challenged, lovable lawyers. No system is perfect. I’d be more inclined to target demographics than content when it comes to video.

The thing that worries me is that, while splicing some type of advertising into YouTube videos is a step to actually being able to match video ads with video content, something about the way this stepping stone is being implemented feels like a step in the wrong direction.

It first crossed my eyes when I looked at the story as reported on CNET. I saw the screenshot of the setup and said to myself … “Ermph”.

Not ugly, but not really appealing either. And the banner ad seemed so… 1998.

I’m not being a Google basher – and I think hateration (I can’t believe I just used that word) for the sake of being a hater is counter-productive. For sure, I’m going to put this to the test and report back to you.

Still, this just feels a bit off to me. I can’t quit put my finger on it, but it feels incongruent.

You can get some links to other naysaying on AdSense – Video Unit mixing from the mathewingram.com/work blog if you’d like to read more perspectives.

And video publishers will also want to hear Jim Kukral’s take on what an opportunity AdSense Video Units can shape up to be for video publishers, which is very close to my vision, only, of course, you have to be one of the selected partners first.

But let’s also not forget that the syndicated content provider isn’t the only one who benefits here. Publishers have a share in that revenue. Game on, as Jim says.

Indeed. I have about six sites to put back into testing mode based on this.

Here are some more links to stories about this:

Search Engine Watch Puts It Simply
SearchEngineLand Has a Bit more Depth and links to help pages
Wired talks more about the content provider side.

Below is a list of how-to and strategy articles for Traffic Methods I’ve taught for free at this site.

Some of them date back as far as 2004, but I’ve only added the ones that are still relevant today. Depending on your browser, you may have trouble with some of the audio or video posts. In that case, you’ll find downloads for them in our audio and video podcasts.

[ add to iTunes audio | add to iTunes video]

I put this together for a Facebook friend tonight, to help him get his traffic started at a minimal cost. Hi Khuram!

Click the titles to go to the corresponding page for the tip. In future you can get to this page from the “How to Get Free Traffic” Tab.

Enjoy!

Traffic from Social Media Web 2.0 Traffic

1. Free Excerpt from my PDF guide on Facebook Marketing (Which is really UnMarketing, and that makes it FUN. ) [ Facebook UnHyped Networking for Traffic pdf excerpt|280 k]
2. What is Social Presence Marketing?
3. 11 Reasons Why Facebook Rocks – The Shorter, One Page Version
4. Keyword Data for Social Networks
5. 5 Popular Social News Sites That are Self-Promotion Friendly
6. Social Media and Bookmarking – Cure All for Traffic Problems or Another Over-Hyped Question Mark
7. Four Ways to Use Google to Be More Social with Your Visitors
8. Five Ways to Get More Out of Your PlugLife

Non-Traffic Social Media Extras for Better Understanding
Interview with PlugIM’s Ryan Knowles
Video – What is Web 2.0?
It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin: Understanding the Difference Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in Layperson’s Terms

Traffic from Article Marketing

1. Traffic Method #227 : Write Exclusive Content for Major Publications
2. Why Article Marketing Still Has Teeth as a Free Traffic Technique
3. Increase Your Web Traffic with these 7 Article Writing Tool
4. 9 Reasons Why Articles Don’t Produce the Traffic and Sales They Should
5. Sales from Aricles Part One : Your Topic
6. Sales from Articles Part Two – Write Your Topic
7. Sales from Articles Part Three: Make Your Site Ready
8. Sales from Articles Part Four: How This Works
9. Sales from Articles Part Five: The Resource Box
10. How to Make Article Marketing Work for You
11. How to Make Article Marketing Work for You Part Two
12. LSI and Article Marketing
13. Using Article Marketing to Get On Google News

Traffic from Ezines

1. Introduction to Ezine Promotion
2. Audio Post on Increasing Credibility with Ezines
3. A Short List of Places to Promote Your Ezine

Traffic From Forums/ Discussion Boards/ Groups

1. Where to Find Forums
2. Why You Should Use (Not Abuse) Forums to Increase Your Traffic
3. Build a Successful Forum or User Generated Content Site with these 7 Community Building Tips
4. Google Groups | What’s New | Why Care
5. 7 Steps to Increasing Your Web Site Traffic with the New Improved Google Groups

Traffic from Freebies

1. Traffic Method #228 : Host a Free Tool
2. Why Would You Want to Give Something Away Free?
3. The Right Way to Use Freebies to Entice
4. Audio About the Top Three Secrets to Using Giveaways as Promotional Vehicle
5. The Free T-Shirt

Traffic from Blogging

1. Technorati Traffic Quickie- Accompanied by Video
2. How Long Does It Take to See Traffic Results from Blogging?
3. That Tag and Ping Thing
4. [audio post] How Blogging Can Bring You More Traffic from Google
5. Increase Your Website Traffic with The Blog Virus – Part One
6. Increase Your Website Traffic with The Blog Virus – Part Deux
7. [audio post]How to Catch and Spread The Blog Virus : Part Three
8. Increase Your Traffic with the Blog Virus Part Four
9. Traffic Method # 225 : How to Get Better Traffic by Using Commenting to Form Relationships
10. Three Technorati Traffic Twist Tips
11. 3 Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic with FeedBurner
12. 4 More Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic with FeedBurner
13. [audio post] 03.10.05 – Clip from Blog Optimization
14. “I Don’t Really Like to Talk About My Flare”
15. Keeping Blog Traffic

Where Does Blog Traffic Typically Come From?

16. More Blog Promotion Resources
17. Getting More Blog Traffic From Other Sites
18. Does How or When You Blog Matter?
19. How to use your blog to help you make more sales
20. Free Excerpt : Lucrative Keywords for Lucrative Blogging
21. Blog Traffic Methods And Blog References
22. More Visitors to Your Site Through Your Blog

Web Video for Traffic

1. Can Web Video Help Your Traffic?
2. Web Video | The Numbers Make Sense Part One,
3. Part Two
4. Web Video | Broadband Users will Want Broadband Content
5. Web Video Traffic | What About the TiVo Effect? Part One,
6. Part Two
7. Web Video Traffic | Blog of the Day More Web Video Traffic and Broadband Research Sources
8. Traffic Thursdays | How My Friend And I Ended Up On Chris Pirillo Live
9. Traffic Thursdays | The List of Video Sharing Site Lists
10. Traffic Thursdays | What Are Your Live Video Options If You’re Camera Shy?
11. Traffic Thursdays | 5 Reasons Why I Wish I Could Skip Straight To Live Video
12. Traffic Thursdays | Blog Post of the Day (Live Video Post from Marshallk)
13. Traffic Thursdays | Adsense Video Update
14. Web Video Traffic – Viral Video Tactics from the Article of the Day

Updates will include posts about:

• Search Engine Traffic Tips /Linking for Traffic – not including Search Related Tips [current version]
• RSS/Podcasting [current version]
• The Increase Your Website Traffic Series
• The “Traffic Method #” Series

Late last night, Google decided to give us Google Video users a break, possibly in part to banter over the issue among bloggers. They even admitted they were wrong.

Gasp! Don’t they know that they’re a large, publicly traded company? You can just go around… doing right! It’s almost.. un-evil…

Enough kidding. Here’s a quote:

When your friends and well-intentioned acquaintances tell you that you’ve made a mistake, it’s good to listen. So we’d like to say thank you to everyone who wrote to let us know that we had made a mistake in the case of Google Video’s Download to Own/Rent Refund Policy vs. Common Sense.

To recap: we decided to end the Google Video download to own/rent (DTO/DTR) program, and are now refocusing our Google Video engineering efforts. The week before last, we wrote to Google Video DTO/DTR program customers to let them know that videos they’d already bought would no longer be playable.

We planned to give these users a full refund or more. And because we weren’t sure if we had all the correct addresses, latest credit card information, and other billing challenges, we thought offering the refund in the form of Google Checkout credits would entail fewer steps and offer a better user experience. We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad.

The blog post goes on to say that anyone who ever bought a video will get a full refund, the credit they gave will still be usable, and, you can play your videos for another six months.

I have another suggestion to add for those of you who have videos from Google video that you paid for and want to keep indefinitely.

You can:

1- Download them in Video ipod format, which gives it to you in mp4, as opposed to in the Google video player, which you can then convert, or play in iTunes or Quicktime. It won’t be in full quality at full screen, but it’s something.

2- If you’re on Windows (even on a Mac), get the Real Basic Player Beta version 11, which will allow you to download and keep the video, though not convert it to other formats. Their beta is open, any Windows user can download it, as long as they surf from a computer while running Windows.

3- Get the Veoh.TV beta player, which also allows you to download video from the web. When I got access a few months ago, the beta was closed, but it doesn’t appear to be asking for a serial number any more, though it hasn’t been officially announced. I didn’t go through the whole process, so if anyone knows, please reply.

If not, I’d join their group in Facebook and see if you can gain access. In the meantime, if anyone knows how to access their invites, let me know. I might have some I don’t even know about.

News about Google video discovered via Om Malik’s post on NewTeeVee.

VideoJug: Splashcast Media Vs Kyte

Splashcast media is like that professional, good looking interface for building a multimedia channel that your mother told you to marry, but doesn’t seem as popular. Kyte is the hot performance artist, who obviously has a source of funding, and has many of the same skills as Splashcast. Kyte isn’t so polished, but man is it sexy…

From the Splashcast Home page :

SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.

PC World says that it’s one of the 25 Sites to Watch … a lot of professional outfits use them… Their technology powers the Rocketboom Facebook app. But for some reason, no matter how much I want to fall in love with Splashcast, until recently I was finding myself to be a Kyte person.

I talk more about this in the video, and have become a bit less enthusiastic when I couldn’t update my Kyte channel this weekend. Maybe it’s the live chat feature, perhaps it’s the live trackback on their front page… but I just love Kyte. They really need to do a better job explaining what Kyte is and does though – I had to see it three times before I got an epiphany moment.

In the video, I mention that I can’t find the RSS button on Kyte, but if you look on our Website Traffic Reality Channel you’ll see the button right there below “Share”. So, now they have everything… except Marshall Kirkpatrick, which is a big plus on Splashcast’s side.

All smiles and winks aside, when you’re picking the site you’re going to go with, the question is going to be largely wrapped around who you feel will best represent you. I haven’t tested them head to head regarding uptime, ease of use, or anything besides who is prettier and who is trendier… I really just want you to be aware of your options, test out both and make up your own mind…