Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Maruxa Murphy for the Video Marketing Telesummit. It was a lot of fun talking about the usage of animation for online marketing applications and having a great discussion on the topic.

There are 11 other interviews done with some outstanding video peeps representing different specialties of online video marketing. The others interviewed for this series include: Michael Koenigs of Traffic Geyser, Perry Lawrence of AskMrVideo.com, Andrew Lock creator of the podcast “Help My Business Sucks!”, Josh Anderson of Internet Business Ideas Inc, webinar expert Stephen Beck, David Frey of Marketing Best Practices, video newsletter expert Michael Yost, Will Franco of jiveSYSTEMS, Joshua Aikens of Flixify, Michelle Cox of Metacafe (who I’d also interviewed a couple years ago) and video blogging extraordinaire and all around great guy from the Boston social media scene Steve Garfield.

If you are interested in checking out the series it runs from 6/14 – 6/18 (my session happens to be on Friday 6/18 from 1-4pm EST). Register to listen to the entire series or just one session for FREE.

Here’s the description of my session for the event.

Eric Guerin

“How To Grab Your Customers By The Eyeballs And Keep Them Glued To The Screen Through Fun And Effective Animated Videos For Your Business”

Eric Guerin has over 15 years experience in the visual communications field working for marketing firms in and around Boston MA. Eric started his own company, Adelie Studios, in 1999 with the mission of providing an integrated solution to customer’s print and web design needs.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this presentation…

Discover the 2 types of video animation that is often overlooked in video marketing today
The easiest and most unique way to position your products in your video marketing strategy
The #1 way you can grab your audience’s attention in the first 5 seconds of your video
Why 53% of your current viewers are NOT watching your entire video (and how you can immediately change these stats to your favor!)
3 superstar tips to getting your videos viewed by your intended audience again and again
How to create high-converting videos without your talking head in the video
The single most powerful way to get more views to your videos
How Google Site Maps can get your videos dominating Google searches within hours
3 major reasons your audience will want to pass on your animated video
The fastest way to get your audience to see your animated videos through your email marketing campaigns

Register to listen to the entire series or just one session for FREE.

Rebranding Adelie Studios

January 11, 2010 by admin

It was has been almost 10 years ago since Adelie Studios was started as predominantly a graphic and web design company and a lot has changed since then. Now I am doing mostly online marketing animation and animated tutorial videos…not so much graphic or web design. So because of this shift in my design focus and the fact that it’s been neglected for so long…it’s time for Adelie Studios to have a make over.

Originally Adelie Studios was named after my dog but I decided to play around with the branding a bit and look at other elements like the penguin (which I got the name for the dog from) and the meaning of Adelie which is “noble” in both French and German.

So now is where I am looking for your help. I am so used to taking other people’s concepts and running with a creative message that it becomes difficult for me to be objective with my own stuff when I am the only voice. So I’d like to crowd source some feedback from my creative friends and connections.

I have posted a few of my most recent logo design concepts here. Please vote for which one you like below in the comments, on Facebook or you can tweet me your favorite on Twitter. I look forward to all of your feedback!

NomX3 and GaryVee: Wining, Dining and Signing Live Feed

October 15, 2009 by admin

There is an outstanding opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk, get a copy of his new book “Crush It” and join Mike Langford and Jeff Cutler for a live taping of NomX3 this Friday from 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM at the Estate in Boston.

This is an outstanding opportunity to meet Gary who has one of the greatest social media success stories you’ll ever hear. If you haven’t heard it, in a nutshell, Gary leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world.

You can attend the event by registering here. If you can’t make it to this event, you’ll be missing out! But you can watch a live event feed and participate live from Facebook. You can also log in through the Facebook panel to comment through Twitter if you prefer. So it’s like you’ll be there…sort of. I’ll be there live and in person and I hope to see you there too!

Entrepreneurship is not an "employment gap"

September 24, 2009 by admin

Recruiter: “This is a pretty long employment gap.”

Me: “What employment gap?”

Recruiter: “Well you haven’t been employed since 2002.”

Me: “I have been employed, as you can see on my resume I’ve been running my own business since then.”

So went the conversation between myself and an HR recruiter while he was reading my resume. I’m not sure why this view is held but I’ve had similar conversations with several other HR recruiters. Now I’m not writing this to speak poorly of any HR recruiter but to shed light on the positive aspects of hiring an entrepreneur.

Let me explain how I came to be an entrepreneur. While working at EMC Corporation as the Internal Marketing Communications Coordinator…I loved my job. If the dot com bust and 9/11 hadn’t happened, I might still be working for them. Immediately after I was laid off, EMC started sub-contracting projects to me. Initially I wasn’t inclined to start my own business…I was used to the comfortable umbrella that working for someone else provided. However given the economy in early 2002, my employment options as a creative marketing director were limited.

Running my own business was something I’d never considered. It was a great unknown but I jumped in.

Entrepreneurs are willing to take risks.

I found it a challenge to run my own business; I needed to learn stuff like bookkeeping, come up with a business plan and spend endless hours doing “non-paying” work to lay the foundation for the future of my business. I loved it and spent endless hours working well beyond the traditional 40 hour work week to make my business succeed.

Entrepreneurs are persistent workers who enjoy a challenge.

I also continued to learn, adapt and change as the needs and requirements of my clients evolved. When I originally started out I was doing predominantly graphic design for traditional marketing. After about a year I saw my clients needed more help integrating their offline with their online marketing so I took classes and educated myself about web design and online marketing. Now the focus of my business is more about providing online marketing solutions to clients through educating them about social media and providing creative content like online video production to work seamlessly with their social media efforts.

Entrepreneurs are committed to adapting and improvement.

While I know this is just my experience and every entrepreneur is different, I don’t see how potentially hiring someone with these skills could be a bad thing for any company.

Entrepreneurs bring a prudent sense of risk taking to the job. That doesn’t mean they’re running around like Yosemite Sam firing their guns in the air. They just know how to balance risk with reward. Entrepreneurs are also relentless and aren’t easily disheartened. They are willing to work very hard if the rewards are right.

I understand that some employers may be hesitant because they may feel an entrepreneur could jump ship at the next big opportunity. That’s understandable and each individual with an entrepreneurial background is different. But would you rather hire a mediocre employee who’s just punching the clock or an employee with an entrepreneurial background who given the right working environment could reap results for your company far beyond your expectations? What are your thoughts?

NomX3 Podcast Discussion

August 28, 2009 by admin

There is a new podcast called NomX3 – a brilliant idea where two guys (Mike Lankford and Jeff Cutler) go to lunch and discuss interesting topics as well as the great food they are eating at different restaurants. NomX3 (or nom, nom, nom best pronounced as if you were a Muppet) i’s a great way to spend your lunch as a viewer at your desk (if you eat lunch like I do) and have a good laugh. It also reminds you that lunch is a great opportunity to get out there and meet some new people or reconnect with old friends.

Recently I created an intro for the podcast and they invited me on to the show to talk briefly about short form online video versus podcasting. Then they profiled the Telly Award winning video we created through JCSI for OpenPages as an example of what we do. The lunch at Burton’s Grill was absolutely amazing and the conversation was great. Enjoy this while you eat your lunch…I know I did.

Buzzworthy Wednesday Video: Quiksilver – The Spot

August 26, 2009 by admin

Sorry this wasn’t posted earlier…minor problem with my WordPress install delayed me.

Typically I select a video from YouTube or some other video sharing site to profile here, but this is a site that is taking video and thinking outside the box…literally.

Quiksilver, which specializes in surf, snow and skateboarding clothing and gear put together a website focused on their skateboarding side which utilizes the skateboarding talents of Tony Hawk, Alex Olson, Danny Garcia, Reese Forbes and Kyle Leeper set to The Heartaches music. It comes up looking like a standard website with navigation but quickly degenerates from there – utilizing the entire browser frame as their skate park. I have no coordination and it even made me want to skateboard. All ending with easy ways for you to share it on your favorite social media site. So check it out by clicking the screenshot below.

On a rant here but isn’t it amazing that Tony Hawk is 41 and is still seen as the epitome of cool going on 20+ years as a skateboarding phenom? I’m just saying – that’s pretty awesome.

What social media site refers the best video viewer engagement?

August 17, 2009 by admin

Social networking and bookmarking sites are a critical part of any online marketing effort utilizing video because you need to get your video seen where your key demographic is spending time online.

TubeMogul recently completed a research case study to find exactly what the title of this post asks: what social media site refers the least fickle viewers? They sampled 6,763,690 video streams over three months referred by links from Digg, Facebook and Twitter to come up with the findings. I’m going to highlight a few of the real key points to talk about but here’s the link to read the full results from their research report.

Results from TubeMogul

The results (below) are surprising: on average, viewers referred by Twitter tend to watch a video the longest (one minute, 58 seconds), compared to Facebook (one minute, 14 seconds) and Digg (58 seconds).

On average, audiences clicking on video links from Twitter watch a video 36.91% longer than viewers referred by Facebook and 49.98% longer than viewers referred by Digg.

My Analysis

This is an interesting study and the numbers are intriguing but there are a few things that the study doesn’t take into account.

Separation of social media sites & social bookmarking sites

I would have liked to have seen Twitter and Facebook (possibly even MySpace and LinkedIn too) go head to head and Digg go up against other bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, etc. My reason for this is that typically you are more connected with people on social media sites than on social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites are cluttered with millions of links people are sharing with others they may not even know. So it’s a less direct form of sharing than say Twitter or Facebook where you (usually) have a more established relationship with the possible viewer clicking your link. Most bookmarking sites have a lot of users who are lightly “browsing” content and clicking on something that may sound interesting but then quickly clicking away if their interest isn’t peaked. On Facebook for instance if I share a video, only people who have some sort of relationship with me are going to see it and are therefore more likely to watch more of the video. So it would have been nice to see a comparison of apples to apples.

Yes its video…but what is the content?

This may seem like a stupid question but if 75% of the videos profiled were of a cat playing the piano…what does that actually tell you? It would have been great to cull out the user generated content and just focus on videos that have some sort of at least a vague marketing purpose, whether its a direct sell on down to the nebulous but humorous branding video. I realize this is nearly impossible to achieve, however including all that user generated content as part of the research definitely skews the numbers. Let’s face it…if you upload a video of your dog barking at the TV – you don’t really care how many people watch it to completion but if you put a branding video online with a call to action – that’s information you want to know.

Time of day comparisons

Just like email marketing where you have better days of the week or times of day to send your email to get ideal open rates or click through rates, social media works much the same way. It would have been interesting to see over a three month period what days of the week and hours of the day had higher engagement rates.

What the numbers tell me

Ultimately the numbers don’t matter. Well…they matter but its a giant brush stroke of the entire social media space, not necessarily YOUR demographic and how THEY are engaging in social media. So you have to keep this in mind when you delve into these numbers. If the key demographic you market to is predominantly on MySpace but you are just sharing your video link on Twitter because this research report told you to – you could be missing your mark.

Personally over the past 3 months, SmartMarket Media has had better engagement rates from LinkedIn (2 minutes 35 seconds) followed by Twitter (2 minutes 32 seconds), Facebook (1 minute, 40 seconds), (StumbleUpon (0 minutes, 45 seconds) and Digg (0 minutes, 37 seconds). Obviously we have a much smaller sampling (hundreds of visitors rather than millions) but it just goes to show you need to know your customer base and engage where they are engaging.

What do you think? What do these numbers tell you?

5 Question Interview: Matthew Mamet from PermissionTV

July 28, 2009 by admin

So this is a bit of a departure from the traditional 5 Question Blog Interviews I have done in the past…but for good reason. Matthew Mamet is Director of Product Marketing at PermissionTV and because of the cutting edge work they are doing with online video (and our nearby locations) we decided to do a video version of the 5 Question Blog Interview and to utilize the interactivity of the PermissionTV Platform Player. So without further ado…please enjoy.

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Question#1: For those who are unfamiliar with Permission TV, can you briefly describe what you do?

Question#2: What specific features does the Permission TV platform offer to help enhance the viewers experience and the businesses opportunity to measure viewer engagement?

Question#3: The race to monetize online video is rapidly increasing among different advertising networks and video sharing sites, some are doing it well others are doing it poorly but everyone is struggling to find a model that works. In your opinion, what do you see as the future for monetization of video online?

Question#4: You recently launched the parody web site “I Want My Viral Video.com” poking fun at how some people view viral videos or their “online video strategy”. What was the impetus behind building this site and what kind of response have you received so far?

Question#5: What is the one hint or tip you could share that most companies getting started with online video fail to realize or include or factor into their overall online video marketing?

Bonus Question (surprise!): What can you share in regards to PermissionTVs new product offerings and what you are working on now?

Metro-West Chamber’s Social Media Panel Discussion

June 22, 2009 by admin

Mike Langford, CEO of Tweetworks, was kind enough to invite me to participate as part of a panel discussion about social media for the Metro-West Chamber of Commerce. I was joined on the panel by Mike and two others; Cappy Popp of Thought Labs and Jeff Cutler of JeffCutler.com

The title for the panel discussion was “Linked in – How to Increase Sales” however given all of our diverse backgrounds with using social media in all different ways, it quickly evolved into a broader discussion about how we use and recommend using social media for business.

Jeff had some great recommendations for finding the “pulse” of online conversations going on around your company online and using Google Alerts to find those conversations. Mike had a great analogy of how social media is really no different than going to a Chamber networking mixer. Cappy’s reminder that in social media you need to “give” if you want to “receive” to build a brand following falls right in line with Mike’s analogy too. Networking online using social media is virtually the same (other than the technology) as networking in person. It’s all about building relationships.

I’ve shared Mike Langford’s video recording of the panel discussion. Although the still on the video looks like I am about to break into song…I assure you that doesn’t happen. I wouldn’t torture my blog readers with my horrible singing voice. Enjoy!