I lament the fact that most businesses doing “social video” campaigns today are too often fixated on increasing reach and awareness as their end goal, and do not have enough focus on engaging customers directly.  With increasing consumer demands on businesses and brands to engage with social media, it should no longer be considered acceptable to treat video as just content; it needs to be part of your customer service strategy.

In this article, I delve into why customer service is so important in the social media era, and how you can get a leg up on…

Measuring social video ROI can be a daunting challenge for retailers today.  In fact, ROI can be often overlooked in social video initiatives when marketers choose to focus on the less tangible goal of customer relationship building.  In this article, I review the reasons why social video ROI measurement is a critical element to the success of your social video program.

Coming of age: Social video initiatives realizing ROI expectations

Social Video ROI has come into prevalence now. I base that claim off of two key survey results from Social Media Examiner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report:

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I interviewed Justin Nassiri, founder and CEO of the user-generated video platform, VideoGenie, on the power of using consumers’ video testimonials to build better customer relationships.

Why should retail and e-commerce brands use consumer-generated video testimonials? Justin and I came up with 5 good reasons that can help make the case for you and the decision makers at your company:

5 reasons why consumer video testimonials are great for e-commerce

1.) Gets consumers’ attention quickly through an emotional connection

Research studies from web usability specialists have revealed that the average new website visitor spends 5-10 seconds…

Pinterest is by far the fastest growing social sharing site today.  With the increasing popularity of Pinterest, online retailers and brands are provided with another valuable social video distribution channel.  In this article, I will explore how to use Pinterest’s video features to increase search engine visibility and consumer interest in your online store and brand.

I interviewed ExpoTV.com’s Founder and President, Bill Hildebolt, about their research findings on the opportunities brand retailers, e-commerce sites, and other marketers have to target Millennials with user-generated online video. I also shared my own tips for effective strategies that retail brands and e-commerce sites can use to persuade Millennial consumers to buy from them.

Product videos are vital to e-commerce sites, but they don’t always lead to increased search traffic or social media engagement. To maximize exposure and buzz, marketers need to explore other types of video formats that are better suited to that task. One example is a ‘making of’ or ‘behind-the-scenes’ video.

Opening up about your company culture and the processes behind your products is a good way to gain, or retain, consumer trust in this age of Radical Transparency. Rather than simply trading on an idea of what you stand for and living in fear of…

In a double-interview special: I talked with Zappos’ Senior Manager of Photo & Video, Laurie Me’chelle Gates (previously Laurie Me’chelle Williams), who shared some of the tangible, real-world business benefits from her company’s social video strategy.  Before I get to my interview with Laurie, below is a dissection of why I think some companies and agencies are not using social video in the right way.

My “rant” about the big problem today with social video

“Social video” is already being considered the next big business trend. So why am I starting to get worried?

Unfortunately, I am seeing “social video”…

E-commerce video continues to scale. Last year, a whopping 73% of US retail websites incorporated video clips, according to eMarketer. Still, video remains woefully underused and hard to find on many e-commerce sites.

I interviewed Google’s spokesperson Andrea Faville to learn more about the video features available on Google+ (Plus) Pages. Andrea shared examples of e-commerce and retail businesses across the web taking advantage of the newest video features and shared some tips for how you can do the same!

How-To product videos are one of the most under-utilized features that every e-commerce site should have.  Many brands and retailers should be doing a lot more of them for real financial gain as well as social value with their customers. Learn in this post what are the many benefits of doing how-to videos for your own brand, and some helpful times for getting started.