Alec

McNayr

• David Hasselhoff
• Ask A Ninja
• Good Charlotte
• Spill.com Movie Reviews
• Independent Comedy Network

What do they have in common?

They all use Ning.com to host a private social network on their sites.  They give their fans an opportunity to upload photos, make comments, and engage as a part of the brand experience.

The best part?  Ning is free.

Why wouldn’t you create a ning social network?  Barack Obama and my University want to keep their social networks close, so as to tie data back to their main databases, which makes sense.

In any case, shouldn’t you be creating a social experience for your customers or prospects?  Aren’t they expecting it?  I mean, if The ‘Hoff is doing it…

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.

Ran across yet another company trying to leverage the online video market for college recruiting.

Live Video U (http://lvutv.com/) boasts 50,000 videos in their library, and seems to get permission to come on campus and stick a camera in students’ faces for quick, authentic takes on their own lives there on campus. Did a quick search for Pepperdine and didn’t find any videos. They must not be looking for UGC or else they’d have a lot more.

Looking specifically at LMU’s page, they seem to have 64 videos of individual interviews. That’s a ton of footage, but not unreasonable for one or two days of shooting. The videos are simple, short, and have nice color correction. They are all tagged (e.g., student athlete, environment, or school spirit).

The site also does a nice, quick link to all the YouTube videos tagged with LMU.

Combined with some simple “fast facts” and a link to Google Maps, Live Video U actually provides a nice template for a “one stop shop” for media for Universities.

For University marketers, your school should take a lesson from this site and embrace all the external media being created outside of your control. Flickr images, YouTube videos, and student blogs are all playing a part in the conversation around your school’s merits (and dirty little secrets).

What part does online video play in your marketing strategy? Is it a primary draw for your prospects, or does it take a backseat to other types of media? By putting video front and center, Live Video U is using it as strategic tool to bring traffic and then, interest.

Yes, big “b” as in “10.1 Billion.”

That’s the number of video streams watched during the shortest month of the year: February 2008.

(I was tempted to round down to “10 billion,” but that “0.1 billion” is still a hundred million views.)

Online video is big and your target market has fully adopted it into their online lives. What does that mean to your story, message, brand, PR, etc.?

Many Universities (including my own) uses video to some extent to attract prospective students, but are usually very fearful of putting their content fully in the public domain.

After all, if your video is on YouTube, it can be copied and posted anywhere!

Most marketers would see this a big plus, but for some reason, most Universities are a lot vested in how prestigious they are. They get scared when their content (especially academic-related) has the possibility of making it to MySpace, Facebook, or — even worse — a blog!

I therefore applaud Vancouver Film School for not just dancing around new media and YouTube, but actively using it to showcase their students’ work.

More than that, they’re using YouTube as an active tool for recruitment. A perfect fit.

I’ve spent two weeks thinking through what I want this first post to be.

Rather than writing something true or honest or compelling, I’ve thought through the navigation structure, searched for the perfect WordPress template to tweak, and even started Twittering to see what kind of cool widgets I could include on this blog site.

And in doing so, I’ve missed the point.

I am branching out on my own — focusing on my career as an online video producer and comedy writer — and using that experience, hopefully, to bring real exciting change to the marketing strategy of anyone who will listen to me. I think media has an opportunity to be authentic again. Not commercialized drivel, nor shameless plugs for advertisers.

A friend and I were talking today about how commercials are far less entertaining than they used to be, and how (like Napster-era music execs) TV executives and ad agencies bemoan viewers just Tivo-ing through their commercials. Even if we could go back to 1997 technology, would we want to? Are we satisfied by forcing our messages down viewers’ throats? There were a few creative high points — watercooler jokes — but all in all, TV commercials were distractions.

But the Internet is changing things, and there exists a real opportunity to create relevant content for a contextual audience. It’s hard work, and there is actually not much pay in it (right now), but it is the future of marketing content creation.

Seven weeks from now, I will be setting off on my own. Quitting a great job at a great University, where I have been welcomed and accepted and given great opportunity. I’m doing it because I believe that content creation (writing, shooting, printing, delivering, etc.) can be exciting again. And anyone can do it.

But not everyone can do it well. Or funny. Or have it solve a strategic marketing problem. Or feel really authentic.

These are things that I am good at. And, coincidentally, things that I want to get better at.

So this site, rather than bells and whistles (or the online equivalent: del.icio.us and twitter feeds), will be about interesting, honest content.

So, if you’re a fan of mine, or a random internet viewer who doesn’t care two cents about me or my thoughts, won’t you join my conversation?

I’m talking about online engagement. Have you seen anything online (video, typed, or otherwise) that has inspired you to come back again and again?

Perhaps you can help me add to this list. I’ve constantly come back to a few content creators (onilne or otherwise)

• Seth Godin
• NewTeeVee
• Prairie Home Companion
• Will Ferrell

Anything else?