Great (spoof) social media case study - 8 yr-old’s birthday party

via Chris Reed

Brilliant CGI - ‘Sword Dance And Shadowgraph [video]

This is brilliant. And the screenshot doesn’t do it justice, so if you made it here, watch the video!

It’s called “Sword Dance and Shadowgraph,” and is a live interactive CGI performance filmed in Tokyo, Japan. The performer is Taichi Saotome, with a Katana in his hand and defends himself from shadow enemies projected on the screen behind him. 

The fight is beautifully choreographed and is a feast for the eyes, enjoy!

Youtube SEO - Tips For How You Can Beat The Competition

SEO remains a one of the most important online marketing disciplines for organisations using the web. As a result it’s a fierce competitive landscape to feature on the front page of results on Google, Bing or Yahoo. 

But you may be neglecting the power of the third biggest site in the world - Youtube and video SEO (VSEO).

Looking at the most popular websites in the world, 8 out of 10 are what we would define as ‘social’, this has impact on the SEO landscape. Here, I want to draw the attention to #3 on the list - (Google-owned) Youtube.

Why Video?

Look at how Google prioritises video search results above for Lady Gaga. Results 4 & 5 below 3 for her official site are videos and let’s face it far more appealing to click on than the text-only links. 

It’s also compared differently to normal text-based HTML pages, therefore you can use this to your advantage to optimise your content to a specific search keyword or phrase.

OK, so if you think Lady Gaga is an unfair test, let’s look at something uber-competitive, say weight loss:

See here that Google still ranks video on the 1st page of results. 

In fact, Forrester Research conducted a study which estimates that “any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index.” 50 times…

The Facts

Youtube is bigger than Yahoo and Bing in terms of traffic. It’s search engine could be considered the 2nd largest search engine on the web.

Other facts that are found out about Youtube is that:

• We watched more Youtube videos on September (14.2 million) than we made Google search queries (10.6 million).
• There are 1.5 million Business-Oriented search queries in Youtube every week
• All videos will be transcribed, indexed and searchable in the near future (and we can see it in Google search results even now) which makes Youtube an even more powerful search engine.

Tips to Optimise for VSEO

Here are a few tips on getting started with optimising your video content on Youtube…

Video Title - Include appropriate keywords in the name of the video, and use the word “video” when appropriate.

Tagging - include keywords that contextualise the content of the video but also include phrases which will be made around the topic. 

Annotate - Take advantage of YouTube’s captions and annotation features. You can add notes, subtitles, descriptions, and links directly over the top of the video. Place a call to action over the video that says, “Join us on Twitter”.

Seed - seed your video across social media including Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Digg etc. Build those backlinks!

Participation - encourage comments and discussion around your video (i.e. a call to action in the description), and also consider using your video to post on other videos.

Playlists - Kind of VSEO for Youtube search - Youtube puts playlists high on its internal search, so think about building a playlist of other videos around your chosen topic and place your video at the top of the playlist.

Thumbnail - maximise click through’s by choosing a thumbnail with a compelling image. Even think about this when shooting the video to ensure there will be an appropriate image for this. 

Always remember that Youtube has a search algorithm that includes the optimisation of the following: 

1. title
2. description
3. tags
4. number of views
5. rating

That’s it - so get posting videos. I’m off to create a video for this post! 

Banksy Does The Simpson Intro Video

Ace tongue-in-cheek parody of the classic The Simpsons intro as designed by the master Banksy himself. Good to see Groening and co. having a great sense of irony…

Nike Write The Future Campaign Video

Nike Write The Future from Wieden + Kennedy London on Vimeo.

An epic three-minute film ‘Write The Future’ which launched online via Facebook and YouTube on Friday 21 May 2010.  The film showcases how one footballing moment can be met with heroic achievement or defeat, sending a ripple effect across the globe. The film had 12,000,000 views in one day - and tripled Nike Football Facebook Fans from 1.1 to 3.1 million.

‘An immediate candidate for best soccer ad of the year, and maybe of all time.’ Adweek

Pretty impressive. 

Is This The Ultimate Music Chart?

New music aggregation service The Ultimate Chart integrates the most popular music from the likes of Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, VEVO, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and many more.

Developed by LA-based media tracking and technology company BigChampagne, they claim to “collect more relevant information from more sources than anyone ever has” 

At time of writing the top 10 artists are:

1 - Eminem

2 - Taio Cruz

3 - Katy Perry

4 - Lady Gaga

5 - Taylor Swift

6 - The Arcade Fire

7 - Justin Bieber

8 - B.O.B.

9 - Usher

10 - Enrique Iglesias

Seems reasonable enough.

You can look at the top 100 artists and songs on their site -

http://www.ultimatechart.com

How 10 Social Media Sites Looked At Launch

Using the wayback machine internet archive, below is a selection of pioneering web 2.0 sites, and what they looked like at launch. Budding web entrepreneurs can take heart here, as the designs are a far cry from what we recognise now. But how they have grown….

Facebook

myspace

Youtube

Wikipedia

Twitter

Blogger

Digg

Tumblr

Flickr

Technorati