Today’s marketing managers are starting to wake up to the realities thrust upon them by the Internet, but they are, generally speaking, still pretty slow on the uptake. There is a general awareness of the need to leverage social media platforms within the marketing mix. But the average marketing manager has not yet fully grasped how to choose the correct social media or how to integrate each platform to their overall strategy. Here, I want to talk about video.

We’ve been pushing the need for good video to our clients for years already. Just 3 years ago, I recall a large Israel based client saying something like, “Video? Do you really think our clients will want to watch videos on our website?” The answer was – “Yes!!!” The qualifying statement was, “If they are good.”

There is an abundance of really bad video content being uploaded to YouTube by companies. It’s not surprising – look at all the awful written content those same marketing managers are pushing out (many because of some SEO expert telling them to do so or doing it for them). But it’s not just a problem of bad video content. In the many instances where the content is quite good and interesting, it still has no strategy behind it and so does not do as much as it could do to contribute to the marketing goals.

When we built the video strategy for the Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute in Los Angeles
, our goal was to generate awareness and thought leadership for this new venture in the American healthcare market as quickly as possible on a tight budget with limited human resources — in a very, very competitive sphere.

In the case of Aviisha, we found their unique niche, which was to focus on the need of good sleep for overall health. We found that most Americans do not get enough sleep, that sleep disorders are a fast growing problem in America due to changes in lifestyle and weight gain and that most Americans and even many physicians, are not aware of the importance of quality sleep and the symptoms and conditions that can appear as a result of sleep problems. What better way to promote the brand and the position then with educational, informative and entertaining videos?
So as this new company’s management forges forward in establishing itself as a major player, we set ourselves the task of building the foundations for making that a reality. One important element, of many, is the Aviisha YouTube Channel.

We are just at the infancy stage – most of the animation series we produced just went up in the last 24 hours, so we will be closely monitoring the metrics on those. The animations are particularly entertaining and highly professional -thanks to V. Builder, a California based animation company.

Everything is tagged and set up to maximize SEO. But note, first we thought about the content our audience wants and will appreciate – then we thought about the SEO. Not the reverse! And for the most part, the SEO comes naturally, as it does for all the projects WebWhile strategizes for — more on that in another post when I get some time.
These videos will be fabulous linkbait (a good thing). You know how your SEO expert is telling you that they will run a link campaign and you trust him/her to be out there bringing you all kinds of links back to your website? Some of you ask how and what he is doing and others close their eyes and trust. Well, start asking. Because without good content that is truly worth linking back to – then you ain’t gonna get wonderful backlinks, no matter what any SEO consultant or link campaign service is telling you. There is no free lunch. CNN, Fox, major portals in your industry, halfway decent bloggers — none of them are going to link back to you because Makesh or Raji, the sub-contractors hired to get you links – asked. Would you link to something mediocre or awful just because someone asked? And don’t get me started on “link exchange”! Those days are looooong gone.

A great example of a YouTube channel belongs to the Mayoclinic. BTW, most of the videos are made with a flipcam and are not scripted. The now famous piano concert in the Mayo clinic achieved over 5 million views and countless backlinks for the Mayo Clinic lucky social media team – filmed from a patient’s cellphone!

More consumer oriented success stories can be seen on the Harley Davidson channel or Clinique makeup for example. A good failure example? How about the department store, Macys? I can’t believe this is all they could manage since going live 3 years ago!

We still have plenty of work to do, but I’ll try to keep you posted on how it contributes to our overall efforts and the progress we make as we grow the channel.

Just remember, that while lots has changed in the online marketing world in the last few years, the “content is king” motto still holds true today. You want your visibility to grow, your brand recognition to increase, relevant traffic – focus on good content developed under a sensible, solid strategy.