Swallowing the online video camel

Many companies either shy away from video altogether because they look at the cost of professional-grade production or they drop thousands of dollars into equipment and staging that is completely beyond current web capacity.

"You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel!"
Proverb describing doing stuff the hard way

 Over the past few years we have found remarkable success developing video content that engages customers and drives sales, but we're still finding that companies tend to focus on the wrong issues when it comes to producing content for online videos.  They still think, in my opinion counterproductively, it's television advertising... but that's another story. 

What I want to talk about today is the technical aspects of online video and why most companies are overspending on tech while ignoring content.

Digital camera technology has advanced faster than semiconductor tech over the past 10 years to the point that what was professional grade equipment back then is now low-end throw-away products today.  For example, some of the shots in the major battle scenes in the blockbuster film The Avengers was actually done by director Joss Whedon with a handheld iPhone.  (And I defy you to identify which shots they were.) But many companies either shy away from video altogether because they look at the cost of professional-grade production or they drop thousands of dollars into equipment and staging that is completely beyond current web capacity.

Lots of people have big, HD TVs and Google's Youtube even offers streaming in HD, but in order to see the benefit of 1080p HD video, you need a monitor that is a minimum of 42 inches wide and place now closer than 6 feet from the viewer.  I don't know about you, but my computer screen isn't that big and I sit a lot closer to it.  For online viewing 720p is considered HD quality on screens smaller than 32 inches.  It also happens to make videos 3 times smaller than 1080p and that is crucial to the success of your video.

A recent study by Akamai Technologies found that some users will wait no more than 2 seconds for a video to start playing, with each additional second adding 6% to the abandonment rate. That expectation gets even more hardline if the user has a good broadband connection.  The study further said video freezing will make the viewer less likely to the full video. If a video freezes for 1% of its total play time, 5% less of its total play time is watched, on average. 

You can't control the connectivity rates of your audience, nor can you control the processing power of your viewers computers, but the smaller the file size of your video is, the less likely viewers are going to experience loading and freezing problems.  And that means buying a $5,000 video camera and producing vids with a ton of special effects (e.g. green screen backgrounds that add a ton of graphic data) is counterproductive to getting your content into the brains of your audience.

Users will further negate the value of your tech if they have problems viewing your highly produced and expensive vid by changing how they accept your data.  For example, Google will allow the user to reduce the resolution down to as low as 144p in order to allow it to load and play faster, which pretty much throws your tech and production investment out the window.

Google makes it even tougher when you allow them to tack ads onto the front of your content.  They give bandwidth preference to an advertiser and then cut it off for the video producer... unless he, too, is an advertiser.  So you can have a 1080p advertisement and a 480p vid, and the advertisement will be sure to load but your vid will freeze.

So you may covet having a high-end video company producing your material, or purchasing professional grade equipment and studios to do it in house, but it is generally a wast of money, time and resources.  Concentrate on getting the content right and keep the rest simple.

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Me!Box Media Video platform can change how you value video

Got something new for you.  We recently hooked up with a company called me!Box Media that's offering a new video platform that allows a higher level of engagement than any other platform on the market.  The New Tech Press review of me!box is up for your consideration, but in the meantime, here's Joe Basques and me talking about the use of video in the B2C world. (me!box is currently optimized for desktop and laptop computers.  Viewing on handheld is sketchy but that is being addressed in the third release of the product.)

My day in social media

 Today I...

• Helped a young entrepreneur in Qatar refine his executive summary on a social media app designed to help charities raise money. (Linkedin)


• Conducted a staff meeting (Skype) and reviewed documents and reports with the team in Boston and Austin (Dropbox)


• Encouraged a young friend in Washington state who was in a sudden moment of crisis. (Facebook)


• Finished editing a series of videos to help local voters work their way through the California ballot without using divisive campaign rhetoric. (Youtube)


• Helped someone adjust their security settings on Facebook so she wasn’t blasting everything about her life to everyone on the web. (Facebook)


• Suggested several candidates for a senior communications executive to a major semiconductor company identify. (Talent.me)


• Put the early workings together for a fund raising project to help teacher take care of their cars. (Causes.com)


• Set up a video channel to broadcast my daughter’s wedding to people who cannot attend. (Ustream)

This is pretty much a normal day for me.  I do it all from my home office.

Now, you were telling me that social media is just superficial and a waste of time and that you can operate much more efficiently without it.

(Oh yeah.  I wrote a blog post, too) 

Good content takes work.

Continuing on with our discussion on what makes good content, I want to give a big shout-out to Don Tuite from Electronic Design who provided, in a comment with an outstanding example of what it takes to make a good technical news story.

Don pointed out that when he does a piece, he does a fair amount of editorializing, but that is tempered by a lot of information from many sources.  That speaks to the issue if truth in content.  An opinion is not necessarily untrue and passes the test when it is backed up by information from both sides.  To get to that point, however, requires a helluva lot of work.

Don's outline of his process took not only days of research and discussion, but time to put it straight in his own head and then write down his perception of reality.  If lucky, he gets to do that 20 or 30 times a year.  There are about 5 editors in the industry like Don so we can count on about 150 stories with that kind of effort over the course of a year, tops.

And there are about 1500 of those kind of stories out there, every year.  We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg regarding what options there are for Don's industry.  And there are about 100 other related industries.

Do you see where the problem lies?  There are not enough objective journalists to filter all the material so it becomes the responsibility of content producers outside of the ranks of journalism to start becoming better at creating real content, based on truth. 

The audience has the responsibility of keeping up on what Don and his peers produce and then filter through all the news releases and marketing documentation that has not received the same careful scoping that a journalist will give it.  That raw data feeds the monster known as the World Wide Web and overwhelms millions of people through web search, RSS and email.  Corporate communicators can make that job easier by creating trustworthy content, not just trying to boost their product.  If they become know for producing trusted content, when they do boost their company, it will more likely be consumable to the audience.

And once communicators start solving their credibility problem, they need to start understanding where their audiences are going to want to consume that information.

In my previous post on this I said that journalists use subjective filters to stem the flood of data.  I know one editor that will not accept emails from anyone he does not already know and trust.  Another can only be reached through direct messages on Twitter.  There are many who refuse to take emails, and phone calls and rely only on search tools.  Each journalist has chosen one or more ways to control the flow of information, just as a matter of survival. The audience, likewise, is increasingly using modern media to filter out the dross.  These new filters are as arbitrary and subjective as the journalists, maybe even more so.

There was a phrase I heard many times in various forms while working as a PR pro: "(1) We don't really need media relations or PR help because (2) our customers are engineers and (3) engineers talk to each other."  Part two is still true of these folks and Part three was true to a degree 10 years ago. Part one has never been true but is even a bigger untruth today.

Media relations is a very big need in the engineering industries because engineers are talking to each other more than ever and they are doing it over social media.  The Society of Automotive Engineers released a survey in 2010 that showed engineers have widely adopted social media as a means of discussing and investigating engineering options and products  I'm not talking about email and bulletin boards.   

The survey reported that, "In North America, 70% of respondents use Facebook versus 59% globally; and 67% of North American respondents use LinkedIn as opposed to 46% globally, according to the findings. YouTube is more popular among mobility engineers globally -- 45% said they use the site as opposed to only 29% in North America."

This isn't about those "damned kids," either.  Age did not play a significant role in determining one site over another.

Those engineers are sharing content they have found that they consider valid or needs discussion.  What they are not sharing is most of the marketing content being produced by the companies targeting their business.  

In 2009, The Napier partnership (a British PR firm) did a study on usage os social media by engineers and did an update in 2011.  They found social media usage grew dramatically among engineers in the electronic design industry but, at the same time, those engineers were increasingly dissatisfied by the quality of the content.  In other words, they were tired of press releases and marcom brochures. 

And that's the point of this post.  Your customers want real information, vetted and/or created by qualified communicators (preferably journalists) who spend time finding the real story.  If you lack the time, skill and resources to create that kind of content, you need to hire some one who does.  Don't wait until your publicist sets up a meeting at a trade show; don't crank out another press release; and don't fret over the hyperbole of another brochure until you do.  And once you figure that out, you need to figure out where those customers are getting that stuff.  I have an idea for you that I normally charge people for.  I'll tell you about it next time.