Year End in Review

How time has gone by this year. As I am creating this post, I realize I have been very negligent to my once very high reader base. One of our main goals for 2010, will be to create more content to better help those wanting to include video and or social media into their business plans for the New Year. So what have we been doing and why have we not “eaten our own dog food” as the saying goes ?   Well the main reason is we have been creating content for clients and helping them gain community communication channels by co-developing Social Media Managed platforms, with video as a core tool. Our proudest accomplishment over the last 7 months and the chief reason for our negligence on posting here has been our involvement with a nonprofit organization, Operation Hug-A-Hero.  You can read our Press Release posted on the Fast Pitch site entitled Nonprofit OPERATION Hug-A-Hero gets Social Media Makeover.

We wish everyone a safe and Happy New Year, and look forward to a wonderfully creative 2010. We will be revamping the Virtual Interactive web site to better bring news and advice so that Small Business owners will have the tools they need to succeed in the new media realm.

V/r

Thomas Townsend

President

Virtual Interactive Systems

Tampa, Florida

Why Fortune Companies are embracing Social Media

The 2nd week of June the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Social Media Council (SMC) released their first-ever Social Media Survey.

The goal of the Social Networking Software Survey was to obtain industry awareness of how Social Software is being utilized today, as well as to get an understanding of future internal and external social media strategies. However, what they really were after was learning just how mainstream this going Social phenom has affected larger companies.

They surveyed over 3,000 companies in April – May 2009. This included close to half of the Fortune 100 companies. What they discovered during the process was that large companies are embracing social media,with about 40% of the respondents indicating they currently had social media trials underway.

Additionally they found that:

• Over 70 percent of companies surveyed are already using external social networks for collaboration purposes.

• Almost 60 percent of the survey respondents think social networking can have a high impact on brand awareness.

• Of the top emerging technologies, companies surveyed believe external social networks have the most potential value to their respective organizations.

• More than 45 percent of respondents believe social networking can have a high impact on capturing customer insights.

So as a small to medium business owner (SMB), this means that you need to really take a serious look at including Social Media in your marketing strategy, if you are not already doing so.  You can pretty much guarantee that your competition is! Read more

The buoy in this economic storm is Search Marketing

In a new research report from E Marketer Inc, Web retailers and other online marketers will be spending much more time and effort beefing up their search engine optimization efforts over the next several years.

In yet another report, this one from the Internet Retailers new search engine marketing survey, some rather interesting survey results revealed that more retailers are investing in search engine optimization as the economy worsens.

Moving forward through the severe recession, 55.3% plan to increase spending on search engine optimization to achieve better natural search results.

These numbers clearly show that retailers are turning their attention more to optimization to improve natural search results than focusing on getting the best keyword mix in paid search.

eMarketer’s report also indicates that 2009 spend will likely hit $14.7 billion and by 2013, total U.S. search marketing advertising will reach an estimated $23.38 BILLION, with marketers spending more on search engine optimization … Read more

YouTube redesign outs User Generated Content

Is  UGC  (user generated content) headed for the digital dustbins  on YouTube ?

If you’re a small or medium business and have been running the do it yourself approach on Video promotions, your ROI (return on Investment) which at present may be  equal to the time you have invested in producing your clips and uploading them to YouTube, is fast approaching its end.

YouTube has been a great way for those without the skills or tools to get their content noticed, as well as some premium content too.  However, there is still a ton of plain old garbage that is uploaded to the site in mass quantities every day.   As a result YouTube is continuing to lose bucketfuls of money on the increasing bandwidth that it forks out every month.  Since it’s owned by Google, the share holder and investment community won’t stand for it to continue to bleed without some way turning down the spigot and eventually getting to a model that earns a profit.  Enter the new deals with corporate clients with the likes of Disney, CBS etc and now add to that the ubiquitous larger banner ads that are running on most of the USG content these days.

It appears that YouTube in many ways may want emulate Hulu that offers premium content that is professionally produced.

So what’s a small business owner to do?  Well I can say that adding video as one part of a Social Media Management Campaign can have a beneficial and lasting impact with recurring benefits to your bottom line.  For about the cost of a Yellow pages add we at Virtual Interactive Systems can pick up where a YouTube video leaves off. Now is the time to give professionals a serious look and discover what you’re missing.  Oh, you can call the folks that run the outdated and out modeled phone book.  They even do video ads that can only be observed on their site.  We know because we have done a few projects for them before we found out just how bad a business proposition it turned out to be for their clients.

If you want to get your business and or products noticed with a lasting and recurring theme that promotes you across the entire Social Media Spectrum then do it right and call us today for a FREE CONSULTATION.

Real Estate Mobility

We recently wrote an article for the folks over at Home Gain, where I am a guest Blogger on the Technology front for the Real Estate industry. My article entitled, Is an iPhone Under Your Tree This Christmas? discusses the merits that the iPhone has ushered in for consumers and the reason why Real Estate agents and Brokers should give some serious thought into developing a mobile version of their web site.

A few of the screen shots used in the article are from the  recent upgrade we did for the Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate Team, where we not only added video capability but made the platform Mobile aware with specific emphasis for those using iPhones and the new Goggle Android platform.

We will be posting as press release here shortly on all the things we did for the Real Estate platform upgrade, it will blow your mind at how much functionality we added to their site.  Anyways back to the article on Home Gain.

Unfortunately, one area of the article did not make it past the editorial cut due the fact that the application I referenced is one from Trulia a competitor to Home Gain. So, I am including that portion on our site here because it is very good information on how to do an iPhone application for Real Estate consumers the right way. It is by no means perfect but of the applications now available on the iPhone in the Real Estate category, this ones does the best job by far. As we know competition can spur technology so I only hope that Home Gain picks up the gauntlet and comes out with an even better application. So read the blog post over at the Home Gain Blog and then come back here for more. Read more

Online printing services extraordinaire

With Christmas fast approaching, I often get customers that have rather large projects that need to be done in a hurry.  This is in itself not a problem but if my resources are tied up and the project results in needing more than (1) or (2) DVD’s, well it can be quite hectic getting the labeling and jackets ready for that finished professional touch that our customers expect from us.  Recently I came across a company that can help us out in this area.

Since we are all about Web services at Virtual Interactive we also tend to use vendors like ourselves that work or support a web based business model.

After taking a look at their offerings, I thought this was something that I should pass on to others who regularly frequent our site.

What am I talking about?  Printing services that produce top quality full-color CD/DVD sleeves. Hey this beats the old plastic jewel case, looks very professional and they can save us money and a lot of hassle.

After looking at their site, I was very surprised at the range of additional service that they offer.
One that caught the eye of my daughter was their poster printing. She is a budding artist and I may be having a discussion with the bearded guy….if you know who I am talking about ….for a special Christmas order?   The samples on their site look great.  Come to think of it, I may have a use here as well for another upcoming video project.  I can just see the look on my client’s face when we present them with their finished DVD and full size movie poster to boot.

I also liked the easy to navigate site and their pricing is straight forward, calculated based on details of your project and delivery requirements. So weather you’re an artist, musician or budding film maker, it looks like PsPrint has something for you.

BTW here’s a quote from their site that I think sums it up quite well.

“By combining the very best in web technologies with state-of-the-art production facilities, PsPrint delivers online convenience combined with lightening-fast turnaround and very competitive prices”

You can bet that we will be using them on our next project.

Preserve old movies, photos, music with Digital Technology

This last Saturday my local News Paper printed a pretty good article in the Homes section regarding preservation of old films and photos stored away in peoples attics closets etc.

Of course this article is very near and dear to my heart and actually is a good cause to write about. Recently my father passed away at 90 years old. He has a ton of old photographs many of them from vintage periods of his hey days in the 30’s 40’s, 50’ 60’s etc. So what to do with all of these photos ? Very simple for me since I am in the business of not only creating memories for clients but also in the preservation of those memories.

They are in the process of being scanned, cleaned up and categorized. In the case of my fathers photos, I will be using them as part of a documentary project on the Merchant Marines serving in WW II and the US foray into the war with our entry into the campaign in New Guinea, for which my father played an active role.

“The campaign on New Guinea is all but forgotten except by those who served there. Battles with names like Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima overshadow it. Yet Allied operations in New Guinea were essential to the U.S. Navy’s drive across the Central Pacific and to the U.S. Army’s liberation of the Philippine Islands from Japanese occupation.”

Did not mean to digress off track here, the point that the article makes as well as the one that I am talking about merge into the same theme. You see as we age, so does the media on which we’ve stored our memories and moments of the past. The older storage medium of film and photographs is referred to as Analog and the new medium of computers and DVD’s is referred to as Digital.

If you still have old film footage lying around: be it old 8 mm, Super 8 or 16mm film or even old phonographic albums – LP records old 78’s or 45s!, or even fading black-and-white snapshots, not to mention color slides and prints and lets not forget VHS tapes, then the time to transfer that over to a DVD for long lasting storage is now.

The longer you wait the more the material degrades to the point that very soon it may not even be salvageable. Basically, the preservation of old film footage should be done as soon as possible.

You might have a few questions regarding the process and cost and that is understandable.

Lets’ see if I can help here:

Read more

DIVX Exit’s Stage 6 and Disney Enters Stage 9

Another month and another change in the video landscape. Last week I received an email from the folks over at the video sharing site Stage 6 (that was run by DIVX) informing me that they were shutting down operations the end of February. With the flood of new video sharing sites on the ever expanding landscape for User Generated Content (USG) it was inevitable that DIVX would shut this service down, as it was not a money maker at all. So no surprise here. Effective March 1^st former users of the DIVX site are now redirected via a link to VEOH who who has assumed most of the clients from DIVX, that is the ones that did not move their content some where else.

In a totally coincidental event with interesting timing was ABC’s DISNEY company making the formal announcement of their foray into the online video scene with the advent of STAGE 9. Where DIVX and DISNEY differ is that DISNEY is going after full on BROADBAND content vs. the USG format that DIVX embarked on. Disney is also developing projects for full series created specifically for the broadband video markets. In this respect they can achieve monetization via add revenue just because of who they are and what they will bring to the table. (The team over at NewsOXY has a good article on Disney.)

I think this year we will see a lot more firms move away from the basic garage made, USG ,YouTube type of video entry, and will see the filed morph into more professionally done video projects. The cutesy stuff on the USG sites is just that. It has not made much money for those users or for those that have created the content. If the companies that host the content are to become profitable they will all need to adopt some form of add revenue policy. This means that in order to attract advertising dollars, the quality of the content will have to increase. That is were firms like Virtual Interactive Systems based in Tampa Florida, come into play. We are working with Small to Medium Business to add video advertising content to get their products and services discovered in their local markets and beyond to even international exposure.

Related Post:

Video Sharing Landscape changes as LiveUniverse buys Revver

Video Sharing Landscape changes as LiveUniverse buys Revver

Back in January I wrote about the perennial favorite (REVVER) of many web Video enthusiast, and mentioned that they were going through some tough times that indicated a change was in the wind. Well the wind has now settled and as of Thursday the 14^th of February REVVER is now part of Brad Greenspan’s LIVE UNIVERSE family. It also appears that the final numbers were quite a bit higher than originally speculated. Numbers being mentioned were closer to $5 Million dollars, and all though the final purchase price is still a closely guarded secret it appears that both sides were happy with the outcome. The folks over at NewTeVee covered the Revver story rather well and today they released a follow-up article discussing the options of continuing with Revvers business model. It will be interesting to see how the landscape evolves for us content creators in addition to what happens to the add base home front, now that Brad has three horses in the stable with: Revver Video, LiveUniverse and LiveVideo to contemplate?

Related Post:

Video Sharing sites and your business

Video Sharing sites and your business

So you know about You Tube and Google Video and maybe three or four other sites that will let you post your videos for free?. Now let’s ad to the mix with the Social Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to name a few and soon the numbers start to swell to over a hundred. These sites are often categorized into different arenas based on usage of the content and the services they provide such as user generated, video sharing web sites, video sharing platform / white label providers and web based video editing.

The landscape on these sites continues to ebb and flow like the tides and as the New Media Generation continues to evolve, new names will pop up and some businesses will be swallowed by the larger video fishes of the media ocean. Some will survive, as You Tube was purchased by Google last year and thrives. Some will die and some will morph into other businesses or be bought and merged into existing service providers.

Last year’s big buzz of course was You Tube…..right now all the talk is centered on another shake-up in the developing video sharing sites. One of the originators of the user generated content form Revver Video may be going through some changes.

It appears the Revver had an executive shake-up in December 2006 that resulted in two of its three co-founders, Ian Clarke and Oliver Luckett, along with some of the support staff, leaving. There is speculation now regarding the site’s well being and it is being fueled by the rumored departure of their CEO Steven Starr. This could very well signal trouble for the video-sharing site. Some have even speculated that Revver would be taken over by Live Universe. “Los Angeles-based LiveUniverse is run by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan. Though its flagship site is the somewhat obscure LiveVideo, the company would add Revver to its network of video sites.”

Revver has had problems with attracting the kind of traffic that You Tube enjoys. It is one of the first sites that took on the revenue-sharing model. Will it be able to continue in its current model if it continues to lack in traffic or if its CEO departs?

With the recent inclusion of ad-sharing revenue models, this year will prove even more difficult for video-sharing sites to compete with the like of You Tube. Guba is another video-sharing site that has seen some execs leave, in this case to start their own video-sharing site and .

Whatever the outcome, you can be sure that Virtual Interactive will be right in the thick of things. When it comes to promoting your business or products, Video Sharing Sites can add real buzz to your business with very little impact on your bottom line. The key here is keeping track of who does what and when in the over all landscape of the Web 2.0 , Social Networks and New Media world. You can rest assured that when it comes to any thing Video related we are on top of it. This is the marketing edge that separates us from our competitors and that our customers have come to expect and where we will consistently deliver on.

Related Posts:

Wall Street Journal: Online Videos can increase your business

Adding Web 2.0 Services will increase business

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