Do you remember the hype about videophones somewhere around the late 80s and early 90s? I remember my local radio station running a giveaway to win a videophone and thinking that would be so cool to have one… if you had other people to call that also had a videophone. It was the way of the future! Then came the massive adoption of personal computers, chat rooms, cell phones, and eventual widespread access to broadband Internet, now smartphones that basically act like personal computers, and so on. But what happened to the videophone?

Videophone to Video Chat

Well it’s certainly not wired to everyone’s landline like I had imagined when I was kid; however, video chat servers like Skype, ooVoo, and TokBox are definitely growing in popularity and usage. It probably won’t be long until these services allow video chat by phone. According to a recent article on video chatting from AdAge.com, Skype claims over 520 million users worldwide and video communication is predicted to increase ten times by 2013. While many users currently use the service to connect with their family and friends, its growing usage and familiarity across demographics could benefit brands as well.

Video Chat for Brands

Just like other social networks, video chat could be a further opportunity for market research, customer service, and advertising. It’s able to put brands in touch with consumers on a one-to-one basis but with the added value of face-to-face interaction. How many times have you felt a sense of miscommunication after someone misinterpreted an email, voicemail, or instant message? Or what about the satisfaction of actually being able to reach someone at a company when you have a question, concern or complaint? Video chat is a great opportunity for consumers to connect with customer service reps and product managers, and for brands to gain feedback and in-depth market research.

Here’s a video overview of Skype, the most popular (and free) online video conference software.

What do you think? Will video chat become a part of our regular lives as marketers and consumers? Would you be willing to participate in a video hosted focus group? Leave us your comments below.

Photo courtesy of stevegarfield

Everyone is talking about new internet marketing methods, are you a part of the conversation?

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It’s been highly debated amongst interactive marketing professionals as to what actually constitutes social media ROI (is it clicks? comments? website visitors? conversions?) and whether executives are missing the point when it comes to social media, applying outdated standards to an entirely different marketing approach. While I’m not going to get into my detailed opinion on the subject, there are two major thoughts I have on social media and ROI:

1. If you’re going to provide ROI on a project (where the investment in question is dollars), your end goal should always be financial impact.
2. Social media is not an effective short-term marketing strategy.

“R” stands for $$$

One of my favorite thought leaders on social media ROI is Olivier Blanchard, who produces great content on his blog http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com. He put out a great presentation last year on how to calculate social media ROI (see below) that really hits the mark in explaining what it means, why you need it, and how to actually find it. As you’ll see in the presentation, although non-financial return (visitors, feedback, clickthroughs, etc) is very important in ROI calculation, if that’s where the process ends, it’s fallen short of truly measuring ROI. The return must always translate to actual dollars (not potential dollars, perceived value, or Monopoly money). An important distinction Olivier makes is that not all clients will be seeking financial impact with their social media strategy. Some are perfectly happy measuring brand awareness, feedback, brand monitoring, and other kinds of metrics. However, if they are asking for ROI, you better know how to find it!

Social media and the long haul

Whenever I talk about social media ROI, metrics, web analytics, strategy and everything else involved with social media marketing, it always solidifies my opinion that social media doesn’t make for good short-term (1-2 month) strategy or an everyday intern’s part-time responsibilities. It can be fun to interact with the audience, play around with new web apps, run contests, and enjoy real-time communication, but unless it’s being measured and serves a purpose for the overall goals of the business (and its executives) it’s a waste of time… and we all know time = money.

How do you know if your efforts are meaningful? Identify your goals or what you hope to get out of the time you’re going to be investing in social media, devise a strategy on how to achieve those goals, make note of relevant baselines, track performance, and then take a look how your efforts succeeded or failed in meeting your goals. These are not tasks that can be undertaken and executed in a week or even a month. If you really want to see the value of social media (whether you’re looking for ROI or non-financial impact), it’s going to take a while to start seeing the big picture. But with a little authenticity, professionalism, creative thought, and dedication, social media marketing can be a great investment for any business. As in life, you just have to know what you’re looking for and how to go after it.

Here is a great video from Olivier Blanchard speaking about social media ROI in his own words:

Are you measuring your social media ROI? If so how and are you satisfied? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Services

We’ve completely revamped the Services page to provide an in-depth view of all of the services Video Army provides.

Case Studies

We’ve added a Case Studies section to highlight some of the campaigns we’ve worked on from a variety of different industries and clients, outlining the goals, strategy, and results for each.

Events

Did you know that the Video Army headquarters and bunker (aka our office) is available for events? Well now you do. If you’re looking for a space for an art opening, photo shoot, video shoot, or just to throw a special party or event, you should consider it. It’s a beautiful space located in the heart of Venice Beach. Check out the Events page for details!

Blog

Last but not least, the blog. We’ve actually always had a blog on VideoArmy.tv but now we’re calling it that (instead of News). We’ve also added the option to subscribe to the blog via email on the bottom of the homepage for those who prefer email updates of new posts instead of using a feed reader.

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Drop us a line below.

Local Review Sites

As a resident of the Los Angeles area, I probably couldn’t visit every restaurant in my zip code in less than a few years. So any time I’m looking for something in my area, I always hit up local review sites. People are more than happy to provide their candid opinions of local businesses and they also give great tips on things like parking, their favorite menu items, what stylist to see, and what places to steer away from. Granted not everyone lives in a city the size of Los Angeles, but location-based review sites are popping up all over the country. Not to mention, they’re a great resource for visitors, tourists and travelers.

Yelp.com, one of the top local review sites on the web, features approximately 160 cities in their popular local listing directory. In September of 2009 I took a trip to Homer, Alaska (which has a population of around 5,500 people) and was able to find a number of helpful reviews on places to eat, sights to see, and places to stay right from the comfort of the passenger seat while on my iPhone. I was also sure to add my two cents regarding the places we visited.

Maybe the online community in your area has already started populating reviews and information about your business on review sites. It’s only to a business owner’s benefit to keep an eye on what’s being said and at least make sure the basic information is up to date and accurate. Plus the more content you’re able to provide on the page, the more search engine friendly it becomes, making it easier for people to find you on the web.

Another perk of having your business featured of sites such as Yelp, Urbanspoon, or Citysearch is that they often offer premium accounts that allow more robust listing options (such as video) for businesses who sign on for their advertising program. Sponsored listings show up first when users search for relevant keywords within a certain radius of your business and your listing is also suggested to users when they’re viewing a competitor’s listing. Yelp also hosts online promotional events for specific cities by featuring participating businesses and offering discounts and incentives to users.

Location-Based Social Networks

Although still gaining the trust of even early adopters, location-based social networks are finding some interesting ways to provide value to users. Features vary from one to the other but the gist is that users are able to broadcast wherever they currently happen to be in the world (down to the exact coordinates) via text message, mobile app or website. For some, the point to such a service seems incredibly lacking and even frightening. Not only are people broadcasting uninteresting things like, “I’m eating a hamburger”, which is a popular criticism of Twitter, but now you can know the exact location at which this person is eating their hamburger. So how can this be useful for a local business? I can think of two right off the bat: engagement with your audience and targeted mobile ads.

Despite fears of location-based stalking, social networks like Foursquare, Brightkite, Loopt and others are continuing to grow. Depending on your business, there’s a good chance that your audience is already starting to interact with you on these networks. Anywhere there’s a community mentioning your brand, there’s an opportunity for engagement. Yelp also just incorporated a “check-in” feature to their mobile application, furthering its social networking capabilities.

Mobile ad networks are also becoming more location savvy. Similar to Google’s new “click to call” ads which offer clickable phone numbers to users searching on Google via their smartphones, other mobile startups aren’t far behind on figuring out a way to utilize a user’s location to serve relevant ads within social networks.

Video: Somebody’s Watching Me from CNN.com

Conclusion

There are many ways in which businesses can market themselves locally online. I’ve really only skimmed the surface by highlighting the most obvious (review sites) and the emerging (location-based networking and mobile advertising). The important thing to take from this is this: if your business makes money by serving local residents and visitors to your area, there’s a huge opportunity for you to increase your visibility by putting effort and resources into local web and social media marketing.

In the days before big corporations, chain stores, supermarkets, and infomercials, the consumer’s connection to a service provider was relatively personal. If they sold a bad television, for example, chances are the customer would return the next day and speak directly to the person that sold it to them. A “good” shop owner would at least replace the television, if not offer some sort of additional compensation for the inconvenience. A “bad” shop owner would shrug their shoulders and leave the consumer in the cold. Kind of reminds you of a scene out of Leave it to Beaver, doesn’t it?

What’s the point?

If a business provides a valuable service and treats their customers well, they have a greater chance of staying in business, they’ll have repeat customers, and they’ll benefit greatly from everyone who’s had a good experience with them telling their friends, neighbors and milkman about it (aka word-of-mouth). Sell enough faulty product to customers without doing anything about, and a store owner could get run out of town… or at least uninvited to all of the social activities, including little Teddy’s birthday party.

Flash forward now to present day. An average American’s options as a consumer are almost infinite. Their attention spans are short. Their calls to “customer service” often lead somewhere across the ocean. Their main concerns are reliability, convenience, and value. People want to be treated like they’re people that matter by other people that they’ve paid to provide a product or service. In other words, The Golden Rule.

When social media started to blow up over the last couple of years, it also blew up the huge marketing/advertising/PR curtain standing between consumers and brands. People were given the voice to share what they thought about brands and not just to their neighbors down the street, but across the world online. Now they share their praises and woes to anyone who will listen and they find solidarity with those who have had similar experiences or those who are there to help answer their questions or complaints.

Why should brands care?

The social media megaphone is a very powerful tool that can bring eyes to small businesses with great products and service that keep their customers happy, and also to large brands that are able to open up, respond to customer feedback, and interact with online communities in meaningful ways. However, it can also bring attention to businesses doing a very poor job and if nobody is there to respond or make use of the feedback, it never goes away (until they lose all of their customers and go out of business and nobody talks about them anymore).

People (and by “people” I mean you, me, other marketers, business owners, everyone!) are talking about their experiences with brands every day and it’s not to customer service reps on the phone. We don’t have time to sit and listen to the terrible music that plays while we try to actually reach a human being instead of an automated answering service. It’s a lot easier to go complain about a bad experience to millions of people in 10 seconds at 140 characters or less on Twitter or Facebook.

Real life example

Rayanne Langdon (@rlangdon) from Freshbooks (@freshbooks) hits the point exactly in this video interview she did at SES Tornoto in 2009. I’m very happy to have found this video because I actually tweeted with Rayanne back when I first started using Freshbooks. She was so personable and helpful, it really made me fall in love with the brand. It helped that they also provide one of the best online bookkeeping services for freelancers, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was just a beginner who happened to read about Freshbooks in a blog post by another freelancer. Rayanne is also backed by her colleagues who are always happy to chat it up on Twitter, and if you can score one of their necktie t-shirts, it’s almost like you’re a part of the fam.

In summary, it’s very important to remember that as a business or a marketer, you’re a consumer too. Do you talk about your experience with other brands to your friends or communities you’re a part of online? So are your customers. How do you like to be treated as a customer? That’s the same way your customers should be treated. Do you appreciate it when a business goes out of their way to make sure you’re happy? You should do the same for your customers. It’s the Golden Rule. It’s good Karma. It’s the social media way and quite frankly a key to business survival.

Do you think social media is helping business become better at marketing and customer service? Leave us your thoughts below!