How do you get the word out about your online video series?

So you've created an online video series and it's awesome. Your friends love it. Your cast loves it. Your Mom loves it (Don't forget to find some good gifts for Mothers' Day May 11th). And more importantly, you love it.

Now what?

What plan do you have for getting the word out about your new video?

"Oh, I'll just upload it to YouTube and I'll be famous"

Right.

That's like, "I'll just make an Independent Film and get it into Sundance and I'll be rich."

Yep.

Do you have a blog?

Do you have your own website?

Are you an active member of a Yahoo Group?

Do you have thousands of Twitter or Facebook friends?

Do you have one friend who has all these things?

What are you doing to build your word of mouth marketing network and more importantly what marketing tools are you creating?

Studios and TV Networks finance productions or acquire content and then licenses that content to other distribution channels or send it down their own. They also provide marketing and publicity for their library of content.

Studios and TV NETWORKS market first to the industry and then to consumers.

Every May the Cable and Network TV companies converge on New York and rent out big theaters and halls like Carnegie Hall to hold events that they call "Upfronts."

These conferences are an opportunity for networks to get advertisers and media buyers emotionally excited about current and new shows so that they will spend billions of dollars in advertising.

Each new show will have a new trailer cut for it so that advertisers don't have to watch the whole thirty minute show to decide if they want to buy the advertising inventory. That upfront trailer will then be shown to the packed theater. Sometimes the stars of the show will come out on stage and say a word or two. Occasionally with older shows a heart tugging recap reel will be put together and played for the theater of advertisers to remind them of all the great programming the TV Nework has done. Here's one of those from 2004:



This year, the TV Networks will be presenting online video content to advertisers with the same emotionally compelling creative marketing tools that they have used in television to go after advertising dollars for the web.

What marketing tools have you put together to go after advertising?

If you don't have any marketing tools, you better start thinking about creating some because just having a great video that you believe in and your friends and mom like doesn't mean an advertiser is going to watch it. They don't even watch the TV shows they buy advertising on - even if they have big stars. Why would they waist their time watching your online video series?



If you have any links to your marketing tools or know of some good marketing presentations for other online videos please post some links in the comments of this post.

French Maid Magic

So I've decided I try a few new things and see how they work. I've redesigned the French Maid TV website (using Apple's iWeb) and I've launched a new series on French Maid TV called French Maid Magic using Revver for the video hosting.

French Maid Magic is shorter than previous French Maid TV episodes, it's cheaper to produce and most importantly it's not sponsored.

I think I've left a lot of money on the table by not creating more episodes and I've also found that when I release a new episode I have more sponsorship inquiries come my way. So rather than spend time chasing sponsors I'm going to try and create more content that hopefully will generate income through attached online video advertising / new ads on the French Maid TV website and bring new sponsors to me.

I'm also trying a few other new things that I will let you know about as well.

Oh, I've also created an area on the site for Media Buyers

Diluting Your Feed

Is your RSS feed powerful enough that you need to dilute it?

I didn't think so but lots of people are diluting their feeds by making other feeds available. I'm guilty of this and I'm not sure how to stop it.

Why does this matter you ask? Well I guess it matters only if you want the free promotion that Apple gives you on the iTunes Store in the podcasting directory and if you want to make money by controlling and selling your own advertising inventory.

It stands to reason that if you make your content available in as many formats as you can that more people will be able to choose what feed they want to subscribe to. Right? Okay, sure but when someone subscribes to your Windows Media feed they are not subscribing to your feed that is featured on the iTunes Store and they don't count as a subscription for the day that will bring you up in the iTunes rankings. What good does moving up in the iTunes ranking do me? Well if you have content that is emotionally compelling and can really build a large audience it means a lot. It took me over a month to get listed on the iTunes Store and once French Maid TV was featured as new and notable we shot up to number one in 3 days and pick up 20,000 subscribers overnight. Then we were mentioned in Wired Magazine and picked up another 20,000 subscribers. Your feed is very important because it allows you to reach a lot of viewers quickly and the iTunes Store is a great way to get new subscribers and be noticed by business development people and media buyers who are looking for "hot" properties.

Youtube has offered subscribing to their videos for a while but that's a separate feed from your own feed and now other sites like Revver are offering subscription buttons for feeds as well. That's all well and good but in the long run where does that get you? You don't control those feeds. Sure they are another way to get more viewers paying attention to your videos but if these "Partner Feeds" go away you lose all those subscribers.

The Apple iTunes Store doesn't control your feed, you do. You create your feed and then you tell Apple where it lives. You can tell Apple about multiple feeds that you have, say an iPod/iPhone feed, an audio only feed and an Apple TV feed but if you do that you are just diluting your feed and diluting your brand when it comes to your ranking at the iTunes Store.

Looking at my stats at Feedburner 43% of the French Maid TV RSS feed subscribers come from Windows iTunes, another 43% come from Mac iTunes and the rest are divided up by up by other readers including 3% that is Zune. (I didn't even know that Zune people could watch French Maid TV. I thought I had to deliver an M4V in oder for them to subscribe.) 86% of French Maid TV's subscribers come from iTunes. They bad part about my Feedburner feed is that I don't know who my subscribers are and the only way I can contact them is by dropping something down my feed and asking them to sign up for my mailing list.

Now at YouTube I only have 2434 subscribers but I can see their YouTube user name/profile and what videos they have uploaded and what videos are their favorites. This has the potential to be valuable but I've not really taken advantage of it yet. At Revver I can't tell how many subscribers I have nor can I tell anything about them.

Having as much information you can about your subscribers that you can share with potential advertisers is very important and moving forward I feel I need to figure out a way to get the kind of info that I have about my subscribers at YouTube on all my delivery channels but beyond that I feel the need to figure out how I can have one feed that I control that is viewable everywhere because I don't want to dilute my feed.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

In the above video Brian Chappell offers a simple how to guide on setting up a basic meta refresh to enable tracking of RSS subscribers via google analytics, for sites that use services like feedburner. It is a great method to track where your sub's are coming from.

Apple Day 2008

Gary Rosenzweig of MacMost takes a look at past Apple Days and what important products were announced each year, including the iMac, iPod, the switch to Intel and the iPhone.

And as tomorrow is Christmas Day all over again I thought I would ask for a few things.


Dear Santa Steve,

I've been a very good boy this year. All 14 days of it. For Apple Day I would like an Apple TV that works like a TiVo and comes with AT&T Digital Cable or better yet my current cable provider.

Next I would like a professional version of iWeb with a content management system for podcasting and dynamic ad insertion - and a couple of interactive media buyers who like French Maids.

And finally I would like a new MacBook Pro or MacTablet (MacBook Air) that is faster than any laptop on the planet and will be for six months because of a deal you struck with Intel.

The Trader Joe's Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies are in the kitchen near the iMac.

Oh and one last thing, I'd like some programable digital photo frames that hook up to Airport and iPhoto.

Thanks

Timmy

and thanks Gary.