lundi 27 février 2012
How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos For A Global Audience
Consider this: You upload a video to YouTube. The video is in English, but it’s got international appeal. Sure, people from North America, Australia, the UK, South Africa and other English speakers around the world will be able to watch and enjoy. But what about those that don’t speak English—how will they be able to discover, let alone understand, your content? And what about those that are hard of hearing?
You don’t have to sacrifice those views, or leave those viewers in the dust. Here are four tips for reaching all audiences, care of YouTube.
Cater Your Content To a Global Audience
If you want to reach a global audience then, first things first, you need to be producing content with global appeal. A video about a trend or topic that is only interesting to Americans isn’t going to take off outside of the United States.In the Creator Playbook, YouTube suggests, “Make use of subjects or themes that have cross-cultural and global appeal such as animation, dance, animals, or strong visuals without dialogue.” They also suggest focusing on trends that are popular in different specific regions around the globe, tying in content related to tent-pole events happening internationally and more.
Caption your videos
Language is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to getting audiences in different countries watching your videos. Captioning your videos can help make your videos accessible to an international audience, as well as for the hearing impaired.YouTube makes it easy to upload captions or to create captions on your own. You can even use YouTube’s CaptionTube to let fans create captions for you.
If you do caption your videos, make sure to include an annotation or message in your video to let viewers know that the video is captioned so that they can turn on captions if they aren’t already activated.
Add multi-language metadata
Let’s say you’ve created and uploaded a video that you think would be great for a Spanish-speaking audience. If you write your title, description and tags in English, these Spanish-speaking viewers (who are probably performing their YouTube searching in Spanish) aren’t likely to find your videos.If you have a video that you think would be good for viewers speaking a couple of different languages, write your title, description and tags in both languages. Use the language of your primary audience first, followed by the secondary. This will help viewers discover your content.
Cross-promote with International YouTubers
If there’s a specific global market that you’d like to get into, try finding YouTubers from that region that are similar to you in the types of content they are producing. Reach out to them to see if they’d like to collaborate. When you collaborate with other YouTubers you introduce them to your subscriber base and vice versa. If they’ve already built a subscriber base in the region you’d like to get into, you can gain access to this audience through the collaboration.YouTube suggests that to find similar YouTubers around the globe, “Change the country setting at the bottom of the YouTube homepage to explore worldly videos and channels.”
Do you cater your YouTube videos to a global audience? What tricks have you used to help make your videos accessible and to reach the widest audience possible?
07:02 0
dimanche 26 février 2012
Social Commerce [VIDEO]
07:03 0
13 Ways to Create Products in Real Time
Guy Kawasaki explained in his post, The Art of the Little Bet, that you can make small investments today and build working models of your ideas or iterate on product designs. Companies everywhere are doing this with rapid prototyping tools such a, 3D printing, laser cutters and CNC routers (CNC = Computer Numeric Controlled), and even the medical community is printing bones, organs and tissue.
Here are a mix of technologies and websites to help you learn more about taking your idea into a real product.
MakerGear
MakerGear sells do-it-yourself (DIY) 3D printers—ones you can build or have them build it for you. They also run a good community forum. Founder Rick Pollack is a true entrepreneur and inventor, having solved many early problems in 3D printer technology to create products that help others keep their printers working.
Epilog Laser
Epilog Laser is one of the market leaders in the laser engraving and laser cutting space. They offer everything from hobby lasers to large scale equipment. They have a neat guide entitled "How to Start an Engraving Business" that might interest small shops looking to expand.
MakerBot
MakerBot is considered the 800-pound gorilla of DIY 3D printing and founder Bre Pettis is often in the news with updates on the cool things in the space. His passion and enthusiasm for emerging technologies is infectious. MakerBot Industries sells a variety of 3D printer kits and assembled units.
RepRap
RepRap is the open source grandpa in 3D printing. It will sound like science fiction, but one of the memorable things about the device is it can replicate itself. A person with a RepRap can print most of the parts to make another one (minus the motors and steel rods that make up its frame). Like the well-known Linux operating system, RepRap started as a collaborative, open source project and continues to grow and evolve.
Full Spectrum Laser
Full Spectrum Laser, based in Nevada, has been making the news lately with innovative contests and an affordable hobby laser cutter series. They run an active customer forum filled with tips and ideas to use their laser devices.
PrintrBot
This is the newest 3D printer to hit the market in the last few months after a hugely successful project on Kickstarter. Printrbot raised almost $1M to create do-it-yourself kits and assembled printers. The design is based off the RepRap as are the others in this list, to some degree.
Let's say you don't want to buy a printer or laser cutter? There are service bureaus and new specialized sites that can help you create something without the hardware investment.
Shapeways
Shapeways is based in Europe, but has a new presence in New York City after getting a healthy $10 million venture capital investment. Using their platform, you can upload a design and have it 3D printed in plastic, metal, ceramics or glass. If you’re looking for an easy to digitally manufacture your own goods, Shapeways is one to look at. They even have a cool sample kit so you can touch and see the materials (plus it comes with a discount coupon when you order).
Ponoko
I've consistently been impressed with Ponoko that calls their technology the "Personal Factory." They have fun promotions offering free materials or some unique giveaway to get you started in the personal fabrication realm. They have a design process that truly guides your idea from concept to finished form. They offer 3D printing and laser cutting for just about any material from cardboard to acrylic to metal. Visit to check out their great gallery and how-to information.
Ponoko also co-sponsored a national initiative known as 100K Garages in combination with ShopBot (creator of a well-known CNC Router). You can find a "fabber" or fabricator shop all over the USA. The website is being remodeled, but the interactive Google map still works.
Edison Nation
Edison Nation was written about recently here on OPEN by Anita Campbell. You can visit this innovation center here. It is filled with inventors, entrepreneurs, and, of course, plenty of ideas.
Here are a few local shops scattered around the U.S. that might give you some ideas.
- PartSnap, based in Dallas/Fort Worth, can help you scan a product, then help you 3D print it or urethane cast it.
- Cut IT For You, in the Seattle area, works with area makers, inventors and entrepreneurs to help them make new products and iterate on old ones. They run a CNC Router and can cut, carve, engrave just about anything you can imagine.
- Hines Design Labs, based in Virginia, offers a variety of ways to get your product made—from 3D printing to laser cutter to CNC router. The founder says "bring your napkin ideas and we'll turn them into reality."
Let me know in the comments about the technologies and services you are using to get new products and inventions to market.
06:46 0
samedi 25 février 2012
The Value of Being LinkedIn [Infographic]
So just how epic is LinkedIn? An infographic from the infographic pundits at OnlineMBA shows a whole lot of interesting stats about LinkedIn, including:
- 1 million new users every 12 days means 1 new user per second
- 69% of users make at least $60K
- 39% make over $100K
- 2 Billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010
16:14 0
The 5 Fastest Growing Social Media Skills on LinkedIn
1. Social Media Monitoring – 52% growth year-over-year
Primary Industry: Public Relations and CommunicationsThis is the 25th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. Of the 11,000 professionals who claim social media monitoring as one of their selling points, 58 percent of them are between the ages of 25 and 34, while 20 percent are between 18 and 24.
“A media monitoring service provides clients with documentation, analysis, or copies of media content of interest to the clients. Services tend to specialize by media type or content type. For example, some services monitor news and public affairs content while others monitor advertising, sports sponsorships, product placement, video or audio news releases, use of copyrighted video or audio, infomercials, “watermarked” video/audio, and even billboards.”
2. Social Media – 47% growth year-over-year
Primary Industry: Marketing and AdvertisingThis general term is the 86th most popular skill on LinkedIn and also the 49th fastest growing. There are 751,000 people who count social media as an area of expertise. The age ranges are a little more varied for this category, with 20 percent of them being between 35 and 44, which is slightly less than the 23 percent of social media professionals who are between 18 and 25. The largest group was still the 25 to 34-year-old crowd, at 47 percent.
“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”
3. Online Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year
Primary Industry: Computer GamesThis is the 63rd fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 3,000 professionals who have added online community management to their lists of skills. The 25 to 34-year-old age range still dominated the group at 59 percent, with 35 to 44-year-olds training behind at 22 percent.
“The online community manager role is a growing and developing profession. People in this position are working to build, grow and manage communities around a brand or cause. While the term “online community manager” may not have been used at the time, the role has existing since online systems first began offering features and functions that allowed for community creation.”
4. Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year
Primary Industry: Computer GamesSome skills sound so similar to one another that it’s good to read the description first for before you add it to your profile to see which one is the best fit. This is the 76th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are currently 21,000 professionals who list community management as one of their skills, with 64 percent of them being between the ages of 25 and 34. Some congratulations are in order for the 1 percent who are between 55 and 64.
“Community management is the functional control of systems by communities or their representatives. It can and often does, but does not have to, include elements of community ownership, and involvement in day-to-day operation and maintenance. It is particularly reliant on clarity of ownership of schemes.”
5. Social Media Marketing – 42% growth year-over-year
Primary Industry: Marketing and AdvertisingThis is the 71st fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 259,000 professionals who have this skill in their arsenals and once again, half of them are between the ages of 25 and 34.
“Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.”
The “skills and expertise” option is great for social media professionals because they don’t all work at Facebook and Twitter. And not all 751,000 people who are claim to be experts in social media are going to be right for any one position. there are a number of other keywords, like “social media development,” “social networking,” and “social outreach” that also made the list, but don’t have descriptions yet. Make sure that employers can drill down to what it is that you actually do – and be sure to have evidence to back it up.
Image by Elnur via Shutterstock.
15:40 0
Print is Dead! Long Live Print?
It’s been said before, but it needs saying again (and again and again): PRINT IS DEAD. Across the publishing industry, year-over-year declines in revenue, subscriptions and circulation, are well documented. Yes, there have been a few quarters of blood-stanching flatness (yay!), but – you heard it here first (or few weeks ago from The Annenberg School, or over the summer from Clay Shirky) – print periodicals are going to go away – forced out of this world by the march of technology and changing tastes, and replaced by new powerhouse brands – TMZ, Buzzfeed and HuffPo to name a few — which are poised to own the future, because they know how to adapt to (and even anticipate!) evolving user behavior. As John Paton, CEO of one of the largest newspaper companies in the U.S., put it recently “‘You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone’ is not much of a business model.”
Just this week, Gannett gave us a stunning reminder of just how little it understands the world it lives (and dies) in, and how myopically it views its business when it announced its $100M bet on establishing paywalls in all 80 of its local newspaper markets. A gambit predicated on “the public’s strong desire for local news and in readers’ longtime trust in Gannett’s papers,” according to Gannett’s CEO Gracia Martore. Oh my. The paywall, whether for Gannett or other publishers, is a finger in the dyke, a cover-up for tectonic shifts in their businesses. For Gannett, local paper audiences are old (that’s what “longtime trust” means), and may well age out of relevance before Gannett’s gosh-darned paywall gets erected. And where’s the proof that the public wants local news? Readership is declining, local news website traffic is infinitesimal, and even pure digital plays like Patch can’t seem to find readers or revenue. The fact is, the thirst for local news can be sated by a single hometown blog, run pretty much by a single entrepreneurial blogger (granted they’d be very busy – and underpaid).
What can Old Print do to survive?
To use a trite metaphor (or two) – stop rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, grow a pair, and change your businesses. Pivot out of the corner and reclaim your heavyweight title. RUMBLE, Old Man, RUMBLE:
1. Face reality:
- The audiences of traditional print brands on paper and pixel are aging.
- Digital upstarts are capturing the new audiences, and stealing your least loyal current readers.
- The cost structures of Old Print companies are out of whack with the times.
- New technology is further commoditizing content, and fragmenting audience.
- In-house digital innovation at Old Print companies is largely non-existent, stymied by outmoded, editorial-first ego at the top, and fearful protectionism of current revenue sources: print subscriptions, ad pages and banner impressions.
2. Start thinking like startups.
Actually, start thinking like well-capitalized start-ups – pirates with a war chest. Lose the fear and deploy some of your profits to incubate new ideas (like The Washington Post) and go after whitespaces. Consider pure-play digital products and platforms you have the brand permission to create, and that leverage your current audiences to build new ones. Be aggressive; invest in your own technology and talent – and buy what you can’t cultivate.
3. Gut and retool your staff and cost structure.
Take a disciplined approach to justifying every position and business expense in your organization. Eradicate all unnecessary fluff, and all employees with meta jobs and not enough to do. Everyone in your organization should be a doer, contributing 100% of her/his work hours to either making things (content, technology, digital and physical products and services) or selling things (to consumers and advertisers). Keep your good editors. They are some of the sharpest, most creative people on the planet. They’ve simply been given a flat and narrow palette to work from. Put their imaginations to work. And bring in new, energetic digitally literate talent around them. While you are at it, delete your entire company’s Outlook calendar database. Start everyone off fresh without meetings. The people who are doers will automatically fill their time with more doing, and the people who suddenly have nothing to do are the ones you can cut. Act like a P.E. firm that’s just bought your company, before they show up at your doorstep.
4. Stop thinking that technology serves content.
The anachronistic mentality that technology is just a means to an end for getting content in front of readers is going to kill you. Technology and content need to be seen as one and the same, each working with the other to delight and engage your users. To that end…
5. Update your web platforms.
To a publication, the flagship websites of print publishers are too unaware of the web-at-large. They put content and page views first, and appear to consumers as static, opaque and uninviting. There are a host of technology and design tactics that can be deployed to improve and open up your sites, making them more enjoyable to use, and enabling deeper connections with your audience. Watch what Lewis D’Vorkin is doing over at Forbes, and read everything he writes. (Disclosure: I worked with Lewis at AOL). Or, look at what Marcus Brauchli of The Washington Post is doing with that product suite. Remember, when it comes to digital, you’re creating a living, breathing application, not just republishing (or even “repackaging”) a magazine or a newspaper.
6. Use data to inform your editorial and product decisions.
Search and social chatter are the paths to finding audience. Install listening stations on editor’s desktops. Require real-time and forensic reviews of content and headline performance to teach your editors social and search engine biorhythms – so they can learn what their audience wants, and what content connects with them. Deploy machine learning and data analysis technologies on your publishing platforms to dynamically adjust metadata and tagging to improve SEO and content discovery.
7. Add great digital product people to the executive suite.
Your future is digital, and digital thinking needs to start at the very top. Digital product people are not your classic CTOs or CIOs; they’re people who think creatively about how to use technology to create digital experiences, and marry editorial with functionality. Put a priority on hiring the best talent to take you forward, and to work with your star editors to re-imagine your businesses. Together they can set a course for the future. Look for people from outside who are uninhibited by print tradition, can spot trends and have an innate ability to create and execute in the digital sphere. Just as importantly, empower them to hire and inspire great, nimble and creative tech teams, and teach technology – how the web works – to employees at all levels of your organization.
8. Break down the wall between editors, writers and readers.
If you do one thing, make your editors and contributors work like bloggers. Espouse transparency and accessibility. This is what builds trust and connection with your audience. Nudge writers off the cliff into the cacophony of social media, and redefine enterprise journalism to encompass not only reportage, but also building an audience of followers, and responsibility for driving traffic to their own work product.
9. Consider your most cherished asset – content – as currency, not the end-all, be-all, but a means to an end.
It’s the way to get your audience in the door and engaged on a larger scale. Ask: If content is your conduit, what can your audience do, and what will give them more value once they have engaged with your product? And I don’t mean: read another article, search our newly digitized library of old content, or print this page. We’re talking about what service or product experience, what self-sustaining platform, what new thing can you get your audience to try, share and love.
[image via flickr/NS Newsflash]
14:28 0
(Founder Stories) Warby Parker: “Why Should A Pair Of Glasses Cost More Than An iPhone?”
Both fed-up and puzzled over paying hundreds of dollars for a product that’s been around for hundreds of years, the Warby Parker team is shaking up the eyewear industry by selling prescription glasses online, at a price tag of just $95 a pair.
Having crafted their plan during business school, the foursome launched the company two years ago this month. Three weeks after the initial pair went on sale, co-founder, Neil Blumenthal says Warby Parker hit its sales targets for the entire year and adds “we sold out of our top 15 styles in four weeks”. The company has since ramped up to 60-employees.
Two of Warby Parker’s co-founders, David Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal recently stopped by TCTV to give Founder Stories host, Chris Dixon the backstory on how the company got started.
As lifelong eyeglass wearers, Gilboa tells Dixon the group couldn’t understand why “glasses cost more than an iPhone.” After doing some research they realized “there’s a handful of companies that control the entire supply chain.” Not content to roll with the status quo, Gilboa says the team set out to change the landscape by creating “our own brand of glasses …. so we could sell the same product that normally costs $500 for $95.”
However, because their product was only available online, the team had to figure out a way for customers to try on the frames. Blumenthal says their solution was to create a “first of its kind” program “in the US where you select 5 frames, we ship it to you free of cost and you have 5 days to try them on at home, with no obligation to buy.”
Gilboa adds that this process enables customers to receive feedback from people “they trust” (versus paid sales staffers) and as an added benefit, Warby Parker receives “millions of free impressions” from users who post tryout pictures to their social networking sites.
As the interview unfolds, Gilboa and Blumenthal share plenty more insights, so sure to watch the entire video to hear more.
Past episodes for Founder Stories featuring Jeff Clavier, Cyrus Massoumi, Stephen Kaufer, Mayor Bloomberg and many other leaders are here.
Episode II of this interview is coming up.
http://techcrunch.com/
14:18 0
The Secrets of a Twitter Co-Founder's Success
The 37-year-old entrepreneur was speaking to an audience of 1,000 at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.
"Failure is great," said Stone, who co-founded the microblogging site in 2006 with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams. "It's really scary, but it's totally worth it, because you can't succeed at these exponential levels until you dramatically fail."
One failure of his own: Starting a company that allowed people to send broadcasts to iPods. "We thought we were geniuses, and it turns out it was called podcasting and people were already doing it," Stone said, according to the Montreal Gazette.
Twitter's beginning was not auspicious.
"When we started it, nobody thought it was a very good idea," he said. "But we kept working on it."
An early sign that the naysayers might be wrong: When Stone attended Austin's South by Southwest in 2007.
"One person tweeted to tell a few people to meet him at a bar, and in the eight minutes it took him to walk to that bar, it had filled to capacity and there was a line out the door," he said.
The site now has some 500 million users.
He suggested entrepreneurs not fear madcap ideas to solve problems–in fact, entrepreneurs actively should look for the most off-the-wall solution and see if it works.
"I learned creativity is a renewable resource," Stone said, referring to his first job, which was as a graphic designer. "It's a wonderful way of thinking about challenges, because it turns work into play. It makes everything fun, and you can always take another crack at something."
He also advised businesses to own up publicly to their mistakes. (Twitter had to do this as recently as last week. When it was revealed that the user agreement allowed the company to store information from contact lists of iPhone users for 18 months, the site apologized and changed the agreement.) Not surprisingly, he suggested Twitter and social media are a great way to do this.
"I think vulnerability is essential," he said. "For so long, companies and brands thought they needed to seem bulletproof. I think when a brand uses Twitter, they're able to communicate when they make a mistake. I think when you do things like that you reveal you're open and honest and willing to change and admit to your mistakes. I think brands are using it to really build trust with consumers."
He also said no one should spend hours on Twitter at a time – that it "sounds unhealthy."
"I like the kind of engagement where you go to the website and you leave because you've found what you are looking for or you found something very interesting and you learned something," he said. "I think that's a much healthier engagement. Obviously, we want you to come frequently."
Stone said his goal for any of his projects is that they help improve the world, make money and have fun. He advocates socially conscious business.
"It just makes good business sense because consumers and good employees are attracted to products and companies that care about the world," said Stone, who is vegan. "If there's a $5-million marketing budget, maybe, you can spend $4 million bringing clean water to a region in India, and another million making a big deal about that."
He told the audience he was proud that Twitter hired a corporate social responsibility employee before it hired its first salesperson.
06:23 0
Inscription à :
Articles (Atom)
