Driving Video Views: EA Sports Success

The power of video's sight, sound and motion is unparalleled for creating immersing branding. But it's well documented that video consumption continues to shift from TV to digital devices. This is particularly true with younger audiences. Savvy brands are following their audiences. One of the more popular way brands use MyLikes text solution is to drive video views of their TV ads (or other video assets). Like this example for EA's recent launch of Madden NFL 13. 

      

How does this work? 

These days, all brands post their TV ads to YouTube but that doesn't mean that these commercials get much viewership - even when the creative is great. (If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there...). That's where MyLikes can help. Brands set a budget and a bid (i.e. CPC/ Cost per view) and provide a sample Tweet and accompanying link to their YouTube video. MyLikes social publishers share this message (often in their own voice like this tweet from Steeler Troy Polamalu) with their millions of followers - driving interested/qualified consumers to view the video on YouTube or as an embed on Twitter or Tumblr.

A typical campaign might have 500-5000 tweets/posts, which means MyLikes can drive millions of cost-efficient views. And of course we track all the metrics such as number of daily views, likes, retweets/reposts in our online dashboard.

Better than "Seeding"

It's also important to note that while many companies offer to "seed" videos, it's uncertain exactly how and where these companies get their videos. A recent event linking brands like Marriott and JetBlue with offensive content made it clear that working with the right partner is important.  All MyLikes video views are delivered on YouTube and Twitter.

Does it work?

Are these campaigns successful? It's exciting to note that EA set record first-day sales for the Madden 13. Glad we could help!

Sponsored Vlogs: They're Great, But Are They Scalable?

Pictures are worth a thousand words.  Videos are worth a million.  Whether it's sharing their Call of Duty prowess or helping ladies revamp a wardrobe, video blogging or "vlogging" lets tastemakers connect with an audience wanting to learn.  With thousands of viewers, the publishers behind these "vlogs" also give brands a cool, creative way to engage new consumers.

Sponsoring vloggers has grown extremely popular among brands for the simple reason that it is so effective.  Having your brand or product featured in a vlog delivers a unique and highly relevant branding experience and drives deep consumer engagement - including sales.  Combined with the relative low cost of these sponsorships, the value is unquestionable.  So, if sponsoring a few vlogs is good - then sponsoring dozens is great.   Right?

Not so fast.  Scaling a sponsored vlog initiative in-house or with a public relations team can be complicated and inefficient.  Even getting two or three vloggers to work with your brand can be a challenge.  Multiply these obstacles by 20 or 50 and time and expenses start running out.  Suddenly sponsoring a lot of vloggers doesn't look as attractive anymore.

MyLikes uses technology to automate the process, enabling brands to easily sponsor, manage and scale vlogs campaigns.  Brands get large-scale results of sponsored vlog campaigns with the ease of a small-scale effort.  Achieving successful results is now dependable and repeatable.

The platform our clients use is the finished product of identifying interested vloggers, negotiating rates and setting the scope of work.  Brands simply posts their sponsorship opportunity in our system and  interested vloggers select your campaign and terms for sponsorship.  We automate the process of distributing of product samples to the vloggers, acquiring finished videos, ensuring quality control  and effectiveness.  MyLikes' online dashboard tracks campaigns' social activity and metrics in one report.  Plus, the system makes sure all the vloggers get paid and are happy to work with you again on your next initiative.

This is one of over 200 ShoeMint videos MyLikes has produced.  With over 190,000 views, it's a great example of the work our campaigns produce.

Engaging Audiences Across the Social Web

Creating and managing an effective social media campaign is a classic "moving target."  As the number of social media platforms increase, so do points of consumer interaction, and brands must proliferate content through more and more social media channels to continuously reach target audiences.

One compelling aspect of MyLikes' social advertising is that it enables businesses to use a comprehensive mix of platforms within a single campaign.  MyLikes vloggers (video-bloggers) promote their content by making sure to take their posts beyond YouTube.  They also promote them on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and their own websites.  As we encourage them to connect with more and more social media users, our client brands get to reach bigger and better-targeted audiences.

Take this video from our current Conair campaign.  This tutorial is a good example of what our vloggers start with.

Now that she's produced high-quality content, this publisher is going to promote this media in order to maximize its visibility - of her work itself and, by extension, our client's brand.

Here is how the video looks when she posts it on her blog:

And this is her Tweet promoting it.

And this is her Facebook post of the video - which garnered 477 likes and 23 comments within a week of posting.

This publisher isn't alone - campaigns like this can use anywhere from 20 - 100 videos.  Here are two more videos from the same campaign, each of which found consumers through a number of social media channels.

Like the first example, both of these publishers created consumable content which they shared with every means available.  With a single media buy, MyLikes' effective publisher selection and high content standards let brands like Conair reach the maximum number of consumers, creating the most valuable marketing campaigns on the web.

For more information on vloggers and social media campaigning, check out mylikes.com or leave us a note at sales@mylikes.com.

Social Publishing can be quite difficult

While many of us hang out on a lot of social media sites, few understand how to gain an audience and engage them.  It takes a lot of effort to come up with compelling posts and sustain the attention of the audience.

Going forward, we are going to be posting more regularly and also going to be providing tips on how to make your social activity be more effective.

Hope you guys and gals are having a great weekend.

Twitter (and Tumblr, and MyLikes) Goes to the Movies

Hollywood is constantly seeking new ways to utilize social media as an effective advertising platform. One example is the surprise hit Ted, whose social media branding made headlines in the Wall Street Journal. The publication’s recent article, “Twitter Goes to the Movies” highlights the film’s successful social media campaign, which helped gross profits surpass box-office projections by nearly $20 million.

MyLikes was happy to have helped. Featuring cutting-edge content in their posts, and taking advantage of the scale of their following, our social publishers turned their Twitter audience into theater audiences. The result was tens of thousands of new movie-goers seeing the foul-mouthed teddy bear in theaters.

But it wasn’t done with Twitter alone. Favoring more and more relevant content, Universal delved into the mixed-media hotbed Tumblr to maximize their campaign's impact.

A growing platform for social publishers, Tumblr lets brands reach a large scale of users in new and wonderfully effective ways. Home to an active, vocal community, the “micro-blogging” site makes it simple to share highly consumable content. Plus, the site's diverse 7-figure population of users delivers a whopping 15 billion page-views each month.

Another upside to Tumblr is its hospitality toward mixed media, new branding vehicles that go beyond more static picture or text posts. To gain an edge on other social media campaigns, Ted’s utilized the popularity of animated .gifs. Gifs communicate a brand message while making that message fun, engaging and highly shareable.

MyLikes’ CPC (cost-per-click) pricing increased the value of these campaigns. Universal Studios only paid for clicks on a link saying “buy tickets at Fandango,” after our publishers’ posts had converted followers into movie-goers. In the meantime, Universal received an even greater amount of free marketing from the campaign. The resulting online engagement yielded huge amounts of free branding, including impressions, re-shared posts, and genera user engagement – a clear value.

For more information on how MyLikes can help you brand, click here or send a note to sales@mylikes.com.

Pricing based on quality

Going forward we are going to be pricing all posts based on the quality of your posts. Please read our publisher FAQ for more details. We will also be posting more details here.

Check out the MyLikes Demo Reel!

You know us, you love us, but how does MyLikes really work? Check out this brand new demo reel to get a look at some of awesome ways MyLikes has promoted products or services on Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.  Whether you're an advertiser or a social publisher, MyLikes has some wonderful things in store for you.