Sports Illustrated:

Sports Illustrated has done an amazing job digitalizing their print assets by driving their readers through the print – mobile – social funnel.

• Vote for their favorite of the eight models competing for the chance to be a SI Swimsuit rookie in the 2012 issue. They can view photos and video of each model.
• Watch behind-the-scenes video of all 17 models in the 2011 issue.
• Share videos via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail.
• See their favorite 2011 models in “Model vs. Model,” featuring swimsuit models matched with a Nissan car.
• Download the new Swimsuit Mobile App.

Utilizing mobile tagging for the five features listed above I’m sure they’re going to have an amazing success story by the time they’ve finished their campaign. Also note the functionality of each feature should be noted for your next mobile tagging campaign.

However there is one medium that is almost always overlooked when it comes to social marketing… Print. I’m not talking about adding a short link or URL on a flier or magazine adds. I’m talking about using print as a portal to your social marketing efforts.

When it comes to integrating social marketing into print there are three key elements that you need to consider.

Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these categories and I’ll make my case why social marketing should now be heavily involved with print marketing/advertising efforts.

Print:

If you look at the graph below print has been declining rapidly especially in comparison to the internet’s overall growth. This is mainly due to the readily available content on the internet that is free, rich with different media types such as video, audio, games and text. Now days with the increasing adoption of Smart phones and tablet PCs content can even be more interactive and on the go.

With that said Mobile Tagging is a growing trend in the U.S. that allows people connect print content to mobile or tablet experiences. Moreover, this technology allows a social marketer to integrate mobile and social experiences in print.

A mobile tag is a two-dimensional image encoded with information. It is decoded using a camera phone application. These tag reader applications are able to scan tags and react accordingly based on the patterns within the image. Based on the information contained within the tag, the tag reading software can perform a variety of functions including the display of text or images, hyper linking to specific URLs, linking to video content, mobile sites, games, application downloads, or even providing contact information. This type of information can be encoded into two-dimensional images in multiple ways. There have been upwards of 70 different types of tags developed over the past decade, each with associated applications built to identify their specific method of encoding.

Mobile:

Activating print marketing or advertising with a Mobile Tagging solution is just the start. Understanding how people are using their mobile phones can give great insight to what you should build as the back end solution. So when users “Scan” a Tag they have an amazing experience on their mobile device.

Right now most companies leveraging mobile tagging usually put a video or a simple website as the backend. However, looking at the graph above you can see that videos and websites are ranked very low. Games, Search and Social Networking are at the top of the list. Knowing how users engage with their mobile devices you can now build a backend solution for a Mobile Tag in print. More importantly, as a social marketer these trending interactions for users and their phones provide an amazing opportunity to further integrate your social marketing strategy.

Social:

Keeping the top three mobile interactions (gaming, search and social networking) in mind you’ll find pretty quickly that most of these can be leverage by social marketing. The following are great examples how you can work with your print marketing, advertising, editorial or publishing teams to create a mobile tagging experience that already has a built in audience and demand.

Mobile/Social Gaming:

As the top mobile interaction let’s dive into this one first. I’ve only seen a few examples of social gaming through mobile tagging and I think there is a ton of room for innovation in this space. The following graph will give you a snapshot of the top players in the space.

Social gaming can be leveraged throughout your print efforts by allowing people to have an interactive experience around the theme of the article or advertisement. In short competition can be a major motivation for people to engage with you. The beauty of using gaming with mobile tagging you can add new life to old media. Print isn’t just static content when you use mobile tagging and social gaming can have a huge viral affect if you allow people to invite their friends to compete or play with them. Most importantly once you have a gaming system work you can have it live on multiple different mediums (website, facebook, mobile). Simply put mobile tagging adds to the breath of entry points that people can join your social gaming component.

Search:

Search isn’t what it used to be, people want highly targeted recommendations that are in line with their interest and geo-location.

Social applications like Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla have changed users behaviors immensely and few social marketers are picking up on the true potential of geo-location.

How does this apply to mobile tagging? Think of it this way, 80% of searchers research online before making a purchase. What if you included a mobile tag on your print advertising that allowed people who scanned the tag receive discounts, coupons, location based suggestions where they could purchase the product or activation to social accounts like Twitter to have a real time conversation. Another idea I would love to see implemented would be a group savings program (kind of like Groupon) however the mobile tag in your add will offer special deals if X amount of people who scanned the tag.

Social Networking:

To build a social mobile tagging solution that will dazzle users you need to understand how they are interacting on social networks through their mobile devices.

Adding a mobile tagging solution to your print efforts can bring the static content to life by –

• · Allowing people to share the piece of content online through Facebook, Twitter , Linkedin ect.
  • Think of this as a share button that you have on your website but for print
• · Allowing users to have conversations with you at the point of time their engaged with your offline content
  • See example in the search section above
• · Provide the opportunity for people to join your community
  • Instead of having putting a link at the end of an article or advertisement to your Facebook or Twitter account allow them to join at the moment their engaged with your print efforts
• · Make the mobile tag link link to your Linkedin community so they can meet other professionals in your industry
• · If the print article has pictures etc, allow them to share them on Facebook or Flickr with their friends
• · Or simply create a mobile website that the tag links to showing all of your social properties so they can pick and choose what community they want to be part of and how they would like to receive digital information
• More importantly the biggest pitch that you can use if you try to work with your print marketing or advertising team is that mobile tags provide reporting features that can allow print marketers to have a better understanding of their ROI.

Conclusion:

There are endless opportunities to incorporate social marketing within print and mobile experiences but most of all connect all three. I’m always available if you have any questions how to leverage this technology in your business or need additional information on how social can connect these different mediums.

Let me know what you think!

One thing that everyone has control of to increase their chance of a video going viral is optimizing their video for search. SEOmoz has created a great video going over Metrics and Tactics. I’ve also included some of my own notes below. If you have any questions just leave a comment. – Elliott

SEOmoz – SEO Software

Here’s some additional notes on how to optimize your videos so you can organically grow the views on your videos.

Video Search:

Video Search is found in:

• Main engine results
• Video-specific search at major engines
• Specialized video search engines

Video Discovery Methods:

• Site crawls
• Video sitemaps
• Uploads to video engines
• User shares and submissions of your video
• RSS/mRSS feeds

Video Optimization:

Encoding:

The video file should be encoded with metadata including keywords, descriptions and titles. You can use window media cleaner to encode your video. The video file name should include the target keyword (use dashes between words) and be a recognized video file format. Google can crawl the following video file types: .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv. All files must be accessible via HTTP. Metafiles that require a download of the source via streaming protocols are not supported.

Site architecture:

Video content should be grouped together on the server in a subfolder or subdomain. This makes is easier to block indexing of multiple formats as well as to create video sitemaps. If you’re offering multiple formats for your audience, it is important to block search engine indexing of duplicate versions via your robots.txt.

Video length:

Given the attention span of the audience, most videos should not be longer than 3 minutes. If your video needs to be longer, break it up into smaller pieces and label it accordingly.

Watermarks:

Commercial content should include a «watermark» to indicate origin. This will help if your video goes viral, and is copied to multiple sites, because it will still carry your branding message and/or site information. The brand and/or URL should also be mentioned in the video content.

Players:

Please be aware that if your video is displayed on your site in a popup or embedded player it may not be indexed by the search engines. Check the site code to ensure there’s a clean link to the video file. If not, consider use of SWFObject.

Sharing Elements:

Video sharing sites and on-page tools will contribute to building both links and additional traffic. Adding sharing elements can help the video spread virally. This would include embed scripts that allow users to email or embed the video in a webpage or blog. Displaying the video’s full link makes it possible for a user to submit the video to social

On-page Optimization

• Use a unique URL for each video
• Use target keyword(s) in the Page title and meta tags of the page where the video is embedded
• Don’t forget to include the words “video” and “videos” in meta description and meta keyword
• Use relevant keywords in Page Header and text surrounding the video
• Create navigation links to your video content, use target keywords in anchor text to the video
• Create a video sitemap and submit via webmaster tools
• Consider a text transcript or closed captions for video. Transcripts in a separate file are more effective for SEO than closed captioning embedded in the file.
• Ensure full video link or embed code is available to users and provide video sharing buttons or scripts to make it easy for users to share your video.
• Allow users to subscribe to your videos via RSS. Submit RSS video feed (List)

Off-site Optimization/Syndication

Tip: Consider a video submission tool such as TubeMogul (free) to streamline syndication. If you want to do it yourself, start with a list of popular video engines.

• Title
  • Use keywords here. YouTube character limit including spaces is 30.
• Optimized Description
  • Prepare an optimized description for the video. Put URL near front of description field in order to drive traffic back to site.
• Optimized Tags
  • Use only relevant tags and place strategic keywords first. Check the YouTube Keyword Suggest Tool to find popular keywords. Avoid stop words. Use category terms. Avoid keyword stuffing here.
• Select the Correct Category
  • There are many categories listed on the video sharing websites such as fun, sports, movies, travel, pets, children and travel. Choose an available category which best represents the video content and the purpose of its creation. Again consider the YouTube Keyword Suggest Tool when seeking the most popular relevant category.
• Consider Closed Captions or Subtitles to Your Video
  • Captioning allows you to provide a text transcript of the video with timecode and caption text. Must be in .SUB or .SRT format. Also see, Third-party captioning services and software.