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Video Seeding For Professionals

28 Jan 2008

I remember that whenever I had to do some ‘casual seeding’ for a promo video for an agency, I had a document with all the usernames and passwords of the sites I would dump the file to. It would take me up to a day to drill down that list, surf to the site and log in, upload the video, wait for the encoding and then bookmark the url of the clip to track the number of views afterwards. I know seeding promotonial clips has taken a downfall a bit, since not all communities are that keen on ‘being abused’ by ‘yet another agency that wants to score’ with a clip in the hopes it goes viral. So. Here is a solution that can make some people very pissed, but at the same time would come in very handy for an agency to start the seeding and save a lot of time.
In comes Hey!Spread…

First thing to do the ‘undercover work’ is to have some sleeping accounts. Just go to the sites listed below and register for an account. You better start making those on beforehand, even when you don’t have a clip to seed. You can put some ‘general’ funny clips on the account and pretend to be a regular user. It’s good to have a history on a site. The longer the better. It’s good to have some activity on that account as well, it will add up to your credibility. Write down all the usernames and passwords and then head over to the Hey!Spread website.

With a simple login, you get access to their service, name your movie, tag it and start the uploading. Hey!Spread will upload your movie to:

All the links above go directly to the registration page of the sites, so in case you don’t have a username/password on that site yet, you don’t have to look for the signup page.

Hey!Spread also allows you to add a watermark to the video file, in case you want to brand it for an official release or something. As soon as you start uploading your file, all you have to do is sit back and relax. The only thing you have to wait for is the processing time of each individual video site. When everything is uploaded, you get the URL to the location of the uploaded clip. Just copy-paste that list, put it in an e-mail or a Word document, and go check the views if you need to harvest the results.

As a bonus, you can use the Hey!Spread API which allows you to propose Hey!Spread in white label as a innovative and addictive feature to your users or clients. Allow them to mass-distribute video content over the best video platforms at any time, but still be the solution provider that came up with this brilliant plan for your customer!

Have fun.

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Social Networks, Tips & Tricks, Tools

The End Of Social Networking

20 Dec 2007

Urgh. Now it’s official I HATE SOCIAL NETWORKS. I’ve been relatively patient with the various networks that found their way to my PC screen. Time and again I have entered my data, favorite movies, favorite dish, restaurants, people I like and dislike. I’ve been part of social networks as soon as they started to appear and as it comes to ‘networking’ which is the entire point of social networking, I’ve done my share of participation. But recently, I have become very very disgruntled by this initiative called Spock. I never signed up for Spock and have ignored the dozens of emails of people who begged for my trust on this network. I saw no added value other than the fact that it bothered me already with dozens of requests before I even knew about it. What is the use of requesting trust and practically begging for it by sending out a blast of emails. Trust is something you need to earn, and people have to give it to you. Asking for it is like starting with a cherry and putting cake around it. Trust is the cherry, it needs to be on top.

Then very recently, somebody said: hey did you know the tags on Spock for your name are [list of all tags here, going up to 30 tags], and that just pisses me off. If I choose not to be on a network, by which law has this network the right to add me and to add tags to my name? Seriously, this is becoming a dangerous precedent. I’d like to compare it with the telemarketing lists of companies that call you to ask for your valued opinion or to offer you an extremely exceptional product. This is wrong. Very wrong.

It appears to me, Spock scraped my linked-in profile and added every word of my work history as a tag. Not only do I think linked-in needs to file a complaint about this, because Spock is leeching on their network, I also think that Spock is violating my privacy by taking data from a site I enrolled to, who specifically promised to take care of my data very well. Spock breaks this promise by nicking my data.

To me, this ties the knot for social networking. Screw it. I’ve had enough. I’m going to make everything private and send emails to every service I did not sign up for that holds my data, to kindly ask them to remove it. Other than that, I think the time calls to have an organization of some sort where you can enlist, a little bit like we have the Robinson list for emails and marketing actions. If you’re on that list, nobody is entitled to add you to their service unless they have specific approval.

Which then brings me to another thing I’m kind of bothered about. I use social networks to add people I know, with experience in a certain field, so I can contact them when I need to. Facebook is ruining this for me. Last time I logged in, I had vampire invitations, zombie invitations, snowball fight requests, pillow fight requests and so on. As much as that seems funny, it’s totally useless and a waste of time. Other than the fact that most of the applications then ask you to invite all your friends to join, which I definitely don’t want to seeing the professional nature of some relationships, I still have my serious doubts about the sense it all has to make. Is social networking really all about recruiting a zombie army? About converting people to vampires? To me it isn’t. And I’m tired of it. I will kick out any entertaining application on Facebook and strip it down to a minimum, because the day this thing turns loco, I don’t want to bomb people I respect with a load of crap.

Today, when you look around, social networking is all about entertainment. The level of seriousness and of trust has dropped to the likes of an average show in NBC or Fox. Now people make lists of best friends, and when they did that, they invite you to compete to become bestest friend. And if you’re on the bestest friends list, you can go through a selection process and become part of an entourage… Jeez. I have better things to do. If you want to connect with me, you know where to find me. If you want to add me, sure give me a reason and I will add you. If you want to send me a private message with a question, go ahead and I’ll answer. But please leave me alone with all the other sideshows and gadgets. Really.

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Posted in Social Networks, Thoughts

NetCamp Romania

03 Dec 2007

On December 5th I’m invited to join a panel of very respectable people on a conference in Romania. I assume you too are wondering how I got in there, but hey :) Anyone who’s in that area, feel free to ping me.

Netcamp is a premier event featuring a series of presentations and discussions about the global world of internet – its implications, opportunities and risks. We witness a new and interesting context as the online medium offers us more choices, an increasingly personalized living and even more interesting business opportunities. We are just discovering a new world ahead of us – join us for an interesting journey in exploring and learning about ideas, practices, people and trends!

NetCamp is the first event in Romania aiming to explore the new business context and opportunities that we are facing within the internet landscape. My keynote will be called: The Internet Reality Check. I’ll post the powerpoint as soon as I’m back.

This context involves new applications, new consumer behaviors and expectations, new business opportunities and new infrastructure needs – a whole new set of variables opening a new paradigm.

TOPICS

The event will cover different principles related to internet, business development and marketing such as:
• User generated content
• The social web
• Communities
• New economic models
• Blogs and wikis
• New media
• Measurability – audience, traffic, return on investment
• Challenges & Issues
• Best Practice

UPDATE: Presentation Online:

| View | Upload your own

Download File

Note: The word FRAM, as used in the presentation, is a term that was coined to me by my colleague Kris, and it means: FRiend spAM.

Note: Even though you can do great stuff with it, I’m no fan of PowerPoints because they make you stick to a structure too much. The keynote was 45 minutes, and a lot more has been said than listed in the presentation. I’ll publish the recording, or link to it, as soon as the NetCamp folks put it online :)

UPDATE 2: Video Impression and ‘Aftertalk’ are online at MicroMiel

11 Comments

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Social Networks

Social Marketing Seminar

05 Mar 2007

Nedra Kline Weinreich from the Spare Change blog is organizing a new seminar, and I’m helping to spread the word. What follows is mostly aimed at people around the Washington DC area, or US citizens who are willing to travel there. Topics: How do you help people adopt behaviors that will make them healthier and better off? How can you create positive social change?

At Social Marketing University, you will move beyond the usual educational approach to changing health and social behaviors. Using social marketing, you will learn how to persuade individuals to take action for change by addressing the values, needs and desires that motivate them. It’s about understanding and connecting with your audience by applying the same effective marketing tools that companies like Nike and Apple use.

Join Nedra Kline Weinreich for this two and a half-day training in the epicenter of social marketing — Washington, DC. By the time you leave, you will have an effective social marketing strategy for your own program and the skills to implement it immediately

You Should Attend if You Are:

Someone who wants to create health or social change
A professional at a nonprofit/NGO, public agency or other organization working on health or social issues
A commercial marketer who wants to apply your skills towards changing the world for the better OR
A student interested in the field of social marketing

You Will Receive:

Two and a half solid days of dynamic training in an intimate setting with noted social marketing expert Nedra Kline Weinreich
Your own copy of “Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide” (a $51.95 value!)
Continental breakfast and afternoon snacks
The opportunity to purchase one-on-one consulting time with Nedra at a special discounted rate to help your organization implement your plan

You Will Learn:

How social marketing uses commercial marketing tools to create behavior change
How to think like a social marketer
How to segment and understand your audience
How to develop a strategy using the 8 Ps of the social marketing mix
How to follow the social marketing process to develop an effective program
How to use audience research techniques to build and test your strategy, including an in-depth discussion of focus groups
How to design effective messages and materials
How to work with the media to get your message out through news and entertainment programming
How to use cutting-edge technologies to put the new media to work for you
How to get the most out of your social marketing budget — even if it’s small

Social Marketing University

March 28-30, 2007

Cafritz Conference Center, George Washington University

800 21st Street, NW, Third Floor

Washington, DC

READERS OF THIS BLOG GET $75 OFF REGISTRATION IF THEY USE “COOL75″ AS DISCOUNT CODE !

2 Comments

Posted in Marketing, Social Networks

How Revolutionary Are Social Media

14 Feb 2007

There’s an upcoming event about the consequences and challenges for public relations, journalism and marketing which will be held on the 15th, 16th and 17th of March 2007 at the Artevelde College Ghent (Belgium). On the 15th, the event will be in the Dutch language, the other two days the main language will be in English.

A year ago, EuroBlog 2006 showed that interactive social media technologies – weblogs, podcasts, wikis, real simple syndication, folksomonies, social tagging, personal networks and other species of social software and services – were beginning to impact on communications in many different ways. The 2007 symposium will present insights from EuroBlog 2007, the second pan-European quantitative survey on the usage of social media by communication professionals, draw new theoretical insights and respond to industry feedback by identifying and presenting examples of best practice.

A must for every communication professional !

The EuroBlog conference, which will be held on 16 and 17 March of 2007, is to take place during a larger event, starting on the 15th of March already: the Chair Jos Willems, organised by the Communications Management and Journalism departments of Artevelde College in Ghent (Belgium) and named after the man who started the college over 40 years ago. Artevelde College and Euprera are organising the EuroBlog 2007 Conference together.

If you’re interested in social media and the impact they have on the field of communications (be it in pr, marketing communications as well as journalism), the EuroBlog conference is a must, especially considering the fact that on 16 March the results of the EuroBlog 2007 survey, conducted in co-operation with Euprera, will be made public.

Participants and top speakers from across Europe

Participants at EuroBlog 2007 are expected, as last year, to consist of researchers from all over Europe (including many involved in the Euprera network of academics from more than 30 countries) as well as communications executives from major companies, institutions, agencies and service providers specialised in the field of online campaigns, interactive media, digital communication and issues monitoring.

Speakers include a wide variety of top researchers and practitioners from nine countries. Keynote speaker at the Chair Jos Willems on Friday is Neville Hobson, managing partner of crayon (the first virtual communication agency), podcasting guru (For Immediate Release) and blogger on www.nevillehobson.com.

The number of seats at the Chair Jos Willems is not unlimited. So register quickly and make sure you do not miss out on this unique opportunity to sharpen your knowledge on social media as well networking with a fine selection of people with whom you share professional interests.

English speaking people, go to the page ‘Information in English’ on the site where you will find more details regarding the programme, the location, the registration fees and so on.

Keynote speakers on Thursday and Friday

Tom De Bruyne
Senior Strategic Planner i-merge
Clo Willaerts
Marketing and Communications Manager Skynet
Luc Van Braekel
Entrepreneur and famous blogger
(pdw)
Former journalist, tv producer and blogger
Neville Hobson
Blogger, podcasting guru and co-founder of crayon, the first virtual communications agency

About Jos Willems

Jos Willems is the man who started the college which, almost forty years later, would bring about the Communications Management and Journalism departments of Artevelde College in Ghent (Belgium). He was also one of the founders Euprera, of CERP Education and CERP Education & Research.

See you there!

1 Comment

Posted in 2.0 +, Social Networks, Technology

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