Video and social media are a match made in heaven. Video has the power to provoke long lasting emotional reactions with viewers, and social media has become the perfect platform for people to spread these feelings to others. As we say at Zeta; we must create content that can be found, loved and shared with the world.

As the social web continues to dominate and mobile rises to stardom, it could be argued that video feels like a poor relation and could easily be forgotten about. However fear not, 2012 holds some exciting possibilities in the world of video and film: here are seven of them.

Steve Jobs final re-invention: the television

As the web has guided the evolution of television (iPlayer, iTunes, etc) TV has become more and more interactive. Steve Jobs re-invented the desktop computer; portable music player; music industry and mobile phone. Jobs also stated he wanted to re-invent the TV, and 2012 might be the year he achieves this last goal – hype for interactive Apple TV is already building. Apple TV would be the last remaining piece of hardware to complete the Apple family – it makes perfect sense that I should have an interactive TV to complement my iPhone, iPad and Airbook, all running from iCloud. If Apple get the deals in place with the big content producers we could experience a new way consuming through your TV.

Brand broadcasting

Brands have been creating emotional connections with consumers through TV advertising for the last 70 years. Although highly effective, television advertising doesn’t come cheap, and involves highly complex and very expensive campaigns. However, as the cost for video production falls, brands are increasingly broadcasting their content via their own video channels. OK, so this isn’t exactly an innovation, but I think there will be a dramatic rise in the number of businesses making this a priority as well as the amount of content produced and shared. Google’s YouTube is aiming to provide premium Hollywood entertainment on a regular basis during 2012. YouTube is investing $100 million in content producers to take on the traditional TV networks. As YouTube re-aligns itself, brands will begin to publish more video content, more quickly and more targeted.

E-commerce videos

2011 demonstrated that product pages featuring e-commerce videos enjoyed increased conversion rates. Leading e-retailers such as ASOS have been using product videos for a while and reaping the rewards. Although this is not a new technique, the e-commerce video seems to have become a tried and tested model throughout the past year, and 2012 is very likely to see a big rise in videos on e-commerce sites.

Rise in video display advertising

Gone are the days of static banners and gif animations (but just in case you still love them check out http://gifshop.tv/). Display advertising has taken on a whole new profile over the last few years as ad types have evolved, but more importantly brands have discovered that video can deliver not just the positive brand experience but also clicks (yes clicks!) from display advertising. Video ads can help drive people to the new premium YouTube channels.

Interactive ‘in-video’ social and purchasing engagement

The capabilities of in-video interaction have exploded during 2011 (everyone has been to the museum of me – if not give it a go: http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/). These are exciting times for video producers who now aim to add layers of interactivity to their videos. We will look back in years to come and find it hard to believe that we didn’t interact with video like we do a news story on a blog or website. As video becomes the dominant content type online, interactive in-video capabilities will continue to evolve and become part of our every day online experience.

Popcorn.js (HTML5 & CSS3)

Popcorn is an HTML5 Media Framework written for filmmakers and web developers to help unite video and web. Popcorn.js allows developers to link elements from across the web and multi layer motion elements on top of each other while syncing everything together into one smooth experience. Popcorn.js can handle 3D storytelling, cinema-experience film and incredible animation; whilst displaying relevant tweets, Wikipedia pages or news stories and all at the same time. It has even been used to show an analysis of a presidents’ speech.

The tool has been opened up to film makers and amateur videographers with a code-free creative tool, Popcorn Maker, making authoring interactive media pages easy.

http://popcornjs.org/
http://mozillapopcorn.org/popcorn-maker/

Rise in video tool apps

Instagram was Apple’s App of 2011, and photo apps dominated mobile technology last year with a huge growth in the amount of images uploaded to Facebook and tweeted. Video is set to become the content of choice for people, so it too will become the content they create and share.

Anyone can upload a video onto YouTube and thousands of people do this every day making it increasingly harder to get noticed. Uploading a clip while thinking it will automatically reach a wide audience just isn’t the reality and unless you do it with SEO in mind you may find that it just slips into the YouTube sea of useless information.
Appearing on page one for any chosen key phrase is essential to achieve maximum results. Applying SEO can get your video on the first page of YouTube and if you get that right you could also see yourself appearing on the first page of Google for the same key phrase. This will all depend on how competitive the key phrase you are targeting is and how well your video is produced, because at the end of the day you will need to create something that is visibly pleasing to the eye with relevant and useful information.

A good example of this is the video for the Magicard HoloKote Tool that I recently uploaded onto YouTube. After applying traditional SEO techniques I have got the video to appear number one on YouTube for its chosen key phrase “ID Card Security” and just recently it has started to jump between page one and two on Google.com.

Below is a screenshot I took today which displays the video at position one on Google.com

Alternatively search for [ID Card Security] on Google.com

Using traditional techniques like optimising the title, description and tags, have laid a solid foundation for us to build upon. Our next step is to create a newsletter that we can send out to all of the Magicard dealers. This will detail how they can embed the Holokote video into their site. Doing this will bring further exposure to the YouTube channel and move us up the SERPs. If we can get 30% of Magicard dealers to embed the video on their site then that’s a job well done and we should see the video move into the top five positions on Google.com regularly.

So in conclusion, using video as a marketing tool can bring a great return if you can achieve a first page ranking in any top search engine. And with more people turning towards the internet for video/media whether it is on a mobile device or through traditional means you may want to decide if this is something that you need to get involved in.

YouTube if you want to.

The brief was to explain how the printers frost a security hologram identity onto the ID cards and how it will benefit businesses. After much collaboration we decided that video was the best format to communicate the message and also target customers through the second biggest search engine, YouTube.

The video is part of the online Holokote Tool which we recently built for Magicard.

The Holokote tool is a unique way of encrypting a company logo onto an ID card. The watermarked logo is frosted onto the card creating a secure hologram. It is a really neat tool which we wanted to reflect in the ordering process.

So we built a truly bespoke application which allows customers to upload the background image for their card and their company logo. Once both images have been uploaded customers can alter the threshold of the logo to ensure it is pixel perfect and then play around with sliders to position the logo on the card. The preview stage shows how your card will look, fantastic!