Alec

McNayr

It’s super cheesy, but laser-focused online content. I love it.

I have to respect The Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston for choosing a spokes-student and going with it.

Their “online series” That Bauer Girl may not be a viral hit (the first video has about 3,000 views), but they only need it to serve as one piece of media among the hundreds any potential will be looking at. It feels fresh, honest, and authentic. Rather than another boring fluff piece, it gives prospects something to talk about.

PS — the millions of searches for Jack Bauer can only help this project…

I’ve been using Twitter off and on for about four months now, and have found it a good tool to keep in touch with my peers and writers I like. I don’t use it to keep people updated on every little thing I do (I’m not that narcissistic), but I have found it effective to keep tabs on what people in my circle (and industry) are talking about. Then, when I meet them in person, I have something to talk about. That’s cool.

It’s a nice, personal service and allows for fast-spreading messages.

But is it really a marketing tool? I think not. I hate it when spammers try to “follow you.” They’re fishing for followers. Then again, if you have a ready stream of content to share (@cnnbrk) or you are constantly moving around the country (@BarackObama), it seems to be tailor made for you.

In thinking about Twitter and the Pepperdine community, I’ve had quite a few conversations about using it to reach out to the few Pepperdine alumni who are active on Twitter. Honestly, the numbers probably aren’t there to make it worth anyone’s time. I’m not going to post tweets 10 times a day to reach 10 people. That doesn’t scale.

I found a few links dealing with universities and Twitter; great ideas here and good discussion on the comments. I won’t replicate it. Go check these out:

• Using Twitter for Higher Ed
• Twitter as Alert System?
• Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing (.eduGuru)
• Do You Twitter? (uwebd)

An Experiment

What these links don’t cover is using Twitter simply as an RSS aggregator. Using Twitterfeed, which renders RSS entries into a twitter account’s status updates, I created a Twitter account called PepperdineFeeds.

I set up six RSS feeds to push content to the account:

(more…)

I bought my first computer in 1996. I was getting ready for college and I bought it with money I had received from my grandparents for my high school graduation.

The computer had a whopping 16MB of RAM and a giant 15-inch monitor. It barely ran Windows 95. Get this: it had a 500MB hard drive. There was barely enough room to load Microsoft Office, much less all the documents I had to create for class. What did I pay for this beauty? $1100.

Cut to today: I just bought an 8GB USB flash drive for $30. Sixteen times the memory for 3% of the cost.

Here’s what that means to me (and to you). I think nothing of storing and managing hundreds of gigabytes of photos, videos, music, and media. And because I have lots of photos, I expect others to have the same. There is no excuse for a brand (organization, product, service, etc.) to not have a lot of great multimedia to engage me.

What does your organization offer the casual web surfer? Videos? Hi-res photos for download? No? You are risking missing your customers’ expectations.

Case in point: look at charity:water. It’s a non-profit that sells $20 bottles of water to raise funds to build water wells around the world. And then they deliver videos, photos, and a full experience back to their donors. The instant feedback loop draws you in, doesn’t it? It’s easy to see that your donation makes a direct difference in someone’s life.

Does your brand generate enough media to fill an 8GB flash drive?

Are you worried if it doesn’t?

Don’t hide your brand experience behind the walls of your computer. Give it away as a gift to loyal customers who are excited about you.

Amazon has an “affiliate marketing” program, where they pay others for driving traffic (and sales) to their site. If I read a book review on Seth Godin’s site, let’s say, and click on a link on his blog to buy the book, Amazon pays him a portion of the sale. Probably no more than a dollar or two, but if you get enough clickthroughs, it could become a nice passive revenue stream.

The problem is getting enough a) clickthrough opportunities (a lot of content), and b) audience (a lot of viewers).

Non-profit software developer Participatory Culture Foundation (creators of Miro, a video player) has an awesome idea for generating revenues: their fans give them credit for all Amazon sales, regardless of where they clicked through from.

Check it out at iheartmiro.org. They simply ask you to download a FireFox plug-in that makes sure that every purchase you make at Amazon is attributed to them.

This is an ingenious move for an organization with a large number of passionate fans. This would be a perfect tactic for any non-profit with a nationwide base. I wonder if anyone else out there is doing something this slick.

Yesterday I was walking around the Best Buy on Pico and saw a small corner devoted to set-top digital boxes, made to deliver Internet video to your home television.

“Surely, none of them can expect to compete with AppleTV, right?”

I was right. None of those brandless products will compete with Apple on style, function, or content. But today, Netflix revealed its plan to roll out a device to auto-deliver movies and TV episodes. Much like Tivo box owners guarantees the company a long run of subscription revenue, I’m sure Netflix is hoping that this device will lock down users for years.

For creators, this means that Netflix offers yet another opportunity for distribution of low-budget and independent fare. Something to be aware of as they start to sell them. Netflix could turn the corner and reinvent itself as a vertical content channel.

NewTeeVee reports that online video views jumped 9% month-over-month in April.

For those keeping track, that’s 7.6 billion streams.

Do you find yourself watching more videos online?  I feel a slow creep of noise into my online video watching experience.  The YouTube “top viewed” page used to be my first place to see “what’s going viral,” but now I tend to spread my time across Hulu, CNN, and what’s forwarded to me.

I love two things.

The Office and Kristen Wiig. She is the future of SNL.

Double Your Video Exposure With Social Media:
UNICEF did it and now so can YOU

Stephen Cassidy began posting the videos to UNICEF’s own MySpace page and then to other video-sharing websites — all for free. In less than a year, the number of views on the video-sharing sites exceeded views on UNICEF’s homepage — doubling the exposure at no additional cost. more

Financial News Sites Bank on Video
Big financial news sites cue up Web-beats-cable sell

Yahoo Finance recently launched Tech Ticker, a tech-stock-centric blog that produces daily, bicoastal video segments. Yahoo claims TechTicker is pulling in 150,000 to 230,000 unique viewers per day, and sometimes close to 500,000 when featuring a big, news-making guest. Forbes.com took a major plunge into video in 2002 and now averages 2.5 million total viewers per week, per internal data. more

Colleges Putting Their Own Spin on YouTube

Frostburg, like a growing number of schools, is trying to elbow its own messages onto such sites as YouTube to promote themselves, create a virtual community and drown out embarrassing clips. more

My alma mater Pepperdine (who uses “alma mater” in real life, anyway?) finally nabbed a proper YouTube account and started putting videos online.

My favorite? The video of last month’s graduation in Malibu, where the seniors were given custom Dodgers hats to put on when longtime announcer Vin Scully took the stage.

Totally unfair, if you ask me. When I graduated in 2000, Tom Selleck gave us his advice, but we didn’t get little Magnum PI moustaches!

EduStyle is hosting its first annual web design awards contest, judged by public ballot.

The nominees across the categories seem heavy in the Boston, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, and Biola areas, so I wonder if the results are skewed because those schools employ the heaviest users of the site. It could also be that their designs are truly original and compelling.