The internet is coming down with video content. To give you some idea of the scale, in January 2009 YouTube alone had six billion videos viewed.
Of those six billions views you might have already seen the home grown videos such as the “Charlie bit my finger” 109 million views, “Battle at Kruger” 45 million views, “David After Dentist” 25 million views , “Star Wars Kid” 13.5 million views, “Beached as” nearly 5 millions views. And, who could forget the entertaining Sparta the Mean Kitty who’s video has been viewed 25 million views and counting.
Now of course, there is another breed of video content, the sort that originates from advertising agencies and corporate offices and has defined commercial intent. Brands are increasingly using it for marketing brand messages, promoting services, educating consumers and establishing a presence online oftentimes entertaining their consumers (and potential consumers).
But can there be some SEO payoff for a brand entering social media with video? Can a brand publish a video online, get the desired exposure and improve performance in organic search? The answer is yes and here are some other recent examples of videos that have truly gone ‘viral’ and done well for the brand behind it:
Dove Evolution of Beauty
One of the most notable videos to come from any brand was Dove’s Evolution video which was part of a campaign by Dove in 2006. By striking a chord with female viewers the video showed how model’s beauty is often artificial but with a little Photoshop magic, Dove turned an ordinary women into an airbrushed beauty. Dove’s angle is an honest approach to beauty and has been rewarded with well over 9 million views, 9,219 ratings and 4,241 comments. What’s more, the original video has spawned 100’s of clones, remakes, and parodies. And what about the SEO payoff? The video page on YouTube has 8,823 links. Unfortunately, those links benefit YouTube and not Dove’s websites.
Evian Skating Babies
No doubt Evian saw the huge amount of views that baby videos were getting, such as “this laughing baby” and “Charlie bit my finger” and then realised that there was an opportunity produce something creative. So far, Evian’s Skating Babies original video has had over 8 million views. The website promoted on the video Evian Live Young has a growing portfolio of precious links.
Jonathan Jarvis made an impressive video making simple the complex story of the US credit crisis for his thesis work for the Media Design Program. Over the span of 5 months the video has got 1.9 million views on Vimeo and another 1 million views on YouTube. What’s more, the main Crisis Of Credit website, has amassed a powerful portfolio of 21,000+ links.
Compare the Meerkat
What have meerkats and car insurance got in common? Nothing in particular. However, that didn’t stop one UK-based car insurance comparison site from making a connection. Launched at the beginning of this year, the videos play on the similarity between the name of the website “Compare the Market” and the Russian pronunciation of the name by loveable meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov. How successful was it? There are five original videos on YouTube now with combined views of 257,000+. The Compare the Meerkat website was nominated for a webby and has amassed over 11,000 links meanwhile the main website now has close to 40k links. On the social front, Compare the Market now have a powerful brand mascot if the 491,866 of Aleksandr’s Facebook fans are anything to go by then.
Computer Tan
Computer Tan was launched back in February to appeal to sun-starved Brits who want to “look great in the office” by using new desktop tanning technology. Ridiculous as it sounds, quite a few pale poms were fooled momentarily because of course the website & iPhone app is an elaborate hoax, a hoax with a serious message about the dangers of skin cancer. The charity behind the campaign, Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity Skcin, skillfully combined humour, hoax and skin cancer with video to score over 1 million visitors , 125,000 YouTube views. Breit Bart’s story about it was popular on Digg with 1720 diggs. And the SEO payoff? Thousands of links to ComputerTan.com and Skcin.org from blogs and authority websites including BBC.co.uk and Telegraph.co.uk.
David has been involved in Internet Marketing, SEO and Social Media since 2000. He is based in sunny Sydney, drinks way too much coffee and wishes he could go surfing more often. Read more posts by David Boyd.
Excellent post. There is an excellent opportunity for brands to benefit from their participation in online video. They have two major options for integrating Online Video into thir marketing mix. They can either 1.) have professionally produced content that is developed for the purposes of sticking with the overall marketing message of the brand (less risky, more control but usually fewer total views earned) or 2.) encourage their consumers to participate in user-generated video content (a more risky but larger reward proposition) through either a video contest or an on-going video platform. In order to effect a true “viral” success, brands must adopt the latter, encouraging their consumers to develop “branded videos” that integrate into their marketing message without seeming like a sales pitch.
In order to drive large amounts of participation and submissions, brands need to be prepared to incentivize the time/effort for these video producers by establishing either a grand prize (contest) or working with a viral video platform such as MeHype (http://www.mehype.com) or Poptent (http://www.poptent.com). Both are excellent examples of leading edge companies that have the brand AND the video producer in mind, trying to establish an open market system for viral videos while maintaining the Word of Mouth/Viral Marketing integrity for all involved.
Really good research, one or two of the “brand” campaigns you mention are our work.
IBL can work well through viral, works best if you support with accompanying text (include the URLs) to frame the communication objective behind the viral WHEN you distribute the content. For a “corporate” viral video that ends up on 25,000 sites, you’ll only get a small percentage including a URL.
More sites will include the URL, but ONLY if it continues the story/experience AND if this is of further social value to the audience.
Nick, thank you for your comment. Your insights are really valuable into what works best when it comes to deploying the video and getting the best/highest amount of in-bound links.
[...] yesterday evening I tagged up one of our previous blog posts, David Boyd’s thought-provoking ‘Viral Videos and the SEO Payoff’. This particular post contains 6 links to YouTube videos in the second paragraph, the first of [...]
Viral Videos and The SEO Payoff…
Kudos for a great SEO article – Trackback from SEOKudos…
Trackback by SEOKudos — July 22, 2009 @ 1:30 am
Excellent post. There is an excellent opportunity for brands to benefit from their participation in online video. They have two major options for integrating Online Video into thir marketing mix. They can either 1.) have professionally produced content that is developed for the purposes of sticking with the overall marketing message of the brand (less risky, more control but usually fewer total views earned) or 2.) encourage their consumers to participate in user-generated video content (a more risky but larger reward proposition) through either a video contest or an on-going video platform. In order to effect a true “viral” success, brands must adopt the latter, encouraging their consumers to develop “branded videos” that integrate into their marketing message without seeming like a sales pitch.
In order to drive large amounts of participation and submissions, brands need to be prepared to incentivize the time/effort for these video producers by establishing either a grand prize (contest) or working with a viral video platform such as MeHype (http://www.mehype.com) or Poptent (http://www.poptent.com). Both are excellent examples of leading edge companies that have the brand AND the video producer in mind, trying to establish an open market system for viral videos while maintaining the Word of Mouth/Viral Marketing integrity for all involved.
Thanks again
my blog: http://blog.mehype.com
Twitter: @tylerlecompte
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerlecompte
Comment by Tyler LeCompte — July 22, 2009 @ 1:57 am
Clever article of yours…. not just the content of it, but how you kept us all on your page so long, giving you the credit, not youtube!!!!
10 out of 10
I’m more using this as an example as to why we should have more media on our sites.
Comment by Brian — July 28, 2009 @ 6:24 am
Brian, thanks for your comment.
Comment by David Boyd — July 28, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
Really good research, one or two of the “brand” campaigns you mention are our work.
IBL can work well through viral, works best if you support with accompanying text (include the URLs) to frame the communication objective behind the viral WHEN you distribute the content. For a “corporate” viral video that ends up on 25,000 sites, you’ll only get a small percentage including a URL.
More sites will include the URL, but ONLY if it continues the story/experience AND if this is of further social value to the audience.
Nick, goviral.com
Comment by Nick — August 1, 2009 @ 3:26 am
Nick, thank you for your comment. Your insights are really valuable into what works best when it comes to deploying the video and getting the best/highest amount of in-bound links.
Comment by David Boyd — August 4, 2009 @ 11:58 am
Hello. Thank you for this great info! Keep up the good job!
Comment by johnny — August 7, 2009 @ 7:42 pm
Didn’t understood the last part :s could you explain better please?
Comment by molamola — August 8, 2009 @ 11:24 pm
thank you! I really liked this post!
Comment by teinby — August 10, 2009 @ 10:58 pm
[...] yesterday evening I tagged up one of our previous blog posts, David Boyd’s thought-provoking ‘Viral Videos and the SEO Payoff’. This particular post contains 6 links to YouTube videos in the second paragraph, the first of [...]
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