This is a write up of the creative session at Brighton SEO, September 2013
Our panel for the session are Phil Nottingham, Danny Ashton, Tony Samios and Paul Madden
Phil is Distilled resident video expert and has promised memes and swearing, so excited for this!
Phil opens with the premise that there’s a misconception around video that you need big dollars to get results which is not the case!
Video is not content but a means to an end. Use video only when its the right form of content.
1. Increase traffic
2. Brand awareness
3. Links and shares
Know your customer conversion funnel and think about how and where you can improve that with video.
KW research can be helpful as well as defining customer personas and of course what competitors are doing.
Kit and production can actually be quite affordable but nothing beats having the right lighting. Greaseproof paper FTW. Gents need to stop it with the check shirts. Good sound is more important than the picture.
Get the microphone as close as possible to the persons face.
OK – Phil speaks 1million mph so it’s a list from here on…
Supplement footage with stock stuff
Placeit.breezi.com is great for hacking up screenshots on devices for nice shots of person using app.
Get designer to build animation effects
Outsourcing can devalue the authenticity at times
Out of the box is not always a solution for bespoke specialist sources
Re-cut and edit a library of video
Marketing video
Implement rich snips (Video schema) one example biz saw 14% inc. traffic post-imp.
Tom Antony built a split test snip test called serpturkey.
PUT YOUR TRANSCRIPTS IN THE HTML!!!
Best paid transcription service is speechpad
Twittercards for video in TWitter
YouTube KW Tool FTW. (Idea generation). > Measure enagement not views in YT.
Poor performing vid? Mark as unlisted so as to not impact overall account metrics.
People hate YT ads. Ensure you force engagement in first 5 seconds.
Pay for ads=Free overlays!
YT does not drive much traffic to site (low CTR).
Main value is brand awareness.
Embed links go to YT or Vimeo, so use e.g. Wistia to embed video to your own site.
Put on YT afterwards if you want to get the engagement there after initial traction on your own site.
Outreach with value prop for embed link e.g. Hi we’ve got a nice HD version of that video of ours, can you switch.
Unruly – cistom share buttons speak to Jonathan Lucas at Unruly. (5K min spend).
Interview customers for links or authorities. Ego bait 101.
YT API – custom playlists for content creation.
G+ Hangout on air
Where should I host my vid? It depends! On objective.
Conversions – self
Brand – YT
Links/shares – self then YT.
Please check out Phil’s slides as there are some cracking tools and links to free stuff I just couldn’t get down.
Danny Ashton – The Rules of the Game
Danny is head of outreach at NeoMam STudios and advocates lifelog seduction for content outreach with 6 fundamentals
1. Vulnerability
Recommends Contagious by Johan Berger (Which I would also recommend to anyone in marketing.)
Gives example of asking an audience member for live feedback on an infographic – made himself vulnerable as open to criticism. Being vulnerable opens up more possibilities for conversation. Real conversation. In OR terms asking an expert for topic feedback is akin to this.
2. Honest Communication
E.g. picking up in a bar – if you lie you can’t develop a meaningful relationship, there’s only one kind of direction that can go. Applied to outreach – choosing a persona “sweetiepie247@gmail.com” ain’t gonna get you a meaningful relationship. Be honest. Put name, agency, company. Your reputation increases and can open more doors going forward.
3. Affinity
To inform outreach targets. Find people, places, events that have natural affinity with content piece.
4. Overcoming Fear
Our internal dialog naturally keeps us safe, but is therefore automatically inhibiting. Our comfort zone. To explore different new and exciting opportunities means getting out of that zone.
5. Rejection
Don’t cry into your pinot. It’s not all about you. Get up, evolve the pitch/content if lacking and try again.
6. Confidence
Don’t do what you have always done.
You can get Danny’s slides here.
Tony Samios is talking to us about Actionable Content Marketing
Identify objectives by understanding your own capabilties and competitive landscape.
Understand the audience to identify their content preferences (personality types)
Tony recommends a detailed classification of customer personas, looking into each of their needs at different stages of buying process. This then informs key messaging and content types AT EACH STAGE!
Filling gaps – trying to discover key insights, getting in the customers shoes and importantly giving content that people need.Tony shows a great example of a cute kid Vine.
Style and process is very important. Monitor and measure over time. Build an army of contributors to keep the flow of content coming. Reuse and repurpose content for max efficiency.
Example of personality test for Ticketmaster – what kind of festival goer are you? Got 10,000 more facebook fans as a result. It was a quiz which 18,820 people took, which got a lot of engagement and sharing.
Also showing the conflict of Pinterest piece for First Choice is still live and generated lots of engagement, links etc.
…and then plays the best x-factor video of all time, of all time…
Do use an editorial calendar and stick to it.
It should be about engaging in meaningful conversations with people to create compelling brand stories, which is the real goal for us as marketers.
Paul Madden
Paul is speaking from experience as a former spammer and now link analysis tool LinkRisk under the heading… Seemed like a good idea at the time…
Paul is now a carbon neutral linkbuilder and removing the shit he once built.
Let’s go back in time…
Article marketing, Xrumer, comment spam.
Being whitehat for years doesn’t mean that a site is safe there’s so much shit out there.
You must use a good link analysis tool e.g. LinkRisk to assess your site to make sure you don’t have any shockers like freeseoarticlesubmission.com or lincdirectory.info (what shiny beauties).
Things to look out for:
article sites
obvious paid links
forums
Reinclusion examples from Google feedback that the LinkRisk team have seen…
Yell.com
Dmoz
Legitimate forum chat
Obvious scrapers
…thanks Matt 
Google are NOT doing this very well at the moment.
Links that are nofollowed. Links that don’t appear in data sources. It seems there’s no team orders and there’s a lot of luck of the draw as to which quality rater you get.
Look at propensity for disavow (by someone else).
Post from Nichola Stott on State of Digital
Creative Content Marketing Strategies