Marketing

Youtube introduces Interactive Cards

March 17, 2015 By Dan Thornton

Youtube has introduced interactive cards as a replacement for annotations on videos. There’s a new Cards tab available in the Youtube Video Editor to allow you to choose from 6 types; Merchandise, Fundraising, Video, Playlist, Associated Website and Fan Funding.

Youtube_Interactive_Cards — Youtube Interactive Cards

They’ll work across mobile and desktop and eventually annotations will be phased out to make way for the new interactive cards. Each type of card has specific settings – for instance Merchandise cards allow you to add an image, merchandise url and a call to action, while fan funding cards allow for donations to creators within the video itself.

They display as a small pop-up, and the teaser can then be clicked for more information. In addition there is an information button that shows throughout the video to see all cards at once. And the new interactive cards will also work in livestreams as well as pre-recorded video.

At the moment you can’t choose size, or position them anywhere other than on the right edge. You can have a maximum of 5 cards per video, and the colours are fixed. Plus their location will change depending on the device being used to view them – so it’s not a good idea to point to them when you’re on camera.

Google Authorship and rel=author is no more

August 29, 2014 By Dan Thornton

One of the main benefits of signing up for a Google+ profile as a writer, blogger and author has been the Google Authorship program, which began back in 2011 with the launch of Google’s own social network. And in a Google+ post, Google’s John Mueller has confirmed that not only will the search results no longer show any Authorship results, but data will no longer be tracked from the rel=author markup.

Since the start of 2014, Authorship has carried slightly less benefits for those who implemented it correctly with first a reduction in the amount of author photos shown per query, and then a complete removal of author photos, leaving only bylines. Now that’s gone as well.

Should you remove Authorship markup?

Although the markup is no longer being utilised for authorship, Mueller has confirmed that it will be treated just like any other markup (e.g. Schema), and won’t cause any problems.

Part of the reason given for Google Authorship ending has been the low take-up and correct implementation of the process. Given that Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has stated the importance of real identity and information tied to online profiles, it’s unlikely that Google won’t continue to try and complete the link between people and their work in a less public way in the future.

What about Publisher markup?

Although the links between an individual and their articles won’t be correlated and highlighted any more, there’s been no explicit mention of Publisher markup between a brand and their Google+ page. It’s always been slightly easier to implement, and obviously only has to be done once for potentially hundreds of authors working for a brand, so the future is potentially brighter for Publishers than Authors.

Why was it ended?

The reasons given for Authorship ending at Google are:

Low numbers implementing it, and even fewer implementing it correctly.
Low value to searchers. Mueller stated ‘Unfortunately, we’ve also observed that this information isn’t as useful to our users as we’d hoped, and can even distract from those results’ – partly this may be down to the need to display properly on mobile devices, and there have been conspiracy theories about the impact on paid search advertising, as well as the possibility Authorship didn’t offer an increase in click through rates after the initial novelty had worn off.

What now?

So for the time being, we’d recommend that if you have Authorship in place, you don’t rush to remove it. And you continue to link your Google+ page with your website.

Mueller also mentioned an expansion of support for structured markup such as Scheme.org, which we recommend all clients look at to see how it can be implemented.

And Google+ posts and pages will still appear in searches where relevant, so there is still some reason to post on the network, even if it’s lost one compelling reason for a lot of journalists, authors and bloggers.

Best Business Social Media and Blogging Guidelines

February 9, 2014 By Dan Thornton

Social Media policies and guidelines are vital for every business and employee. Not only are they helpful in ensuring that everyone in a company understands what is expected of them, they can also be a way to empower your employees to feel comfortable and confident in engaging with customers or clients via social media.

Rather than relying on the efforts of a small group of individuals to monitor, engage, interact and report on all activity across the plethora of social networks, blogs, wikis, forums and other locations, a good social media policy or set of guidelines means that the workload can be shared, and the responses can be crafted by those in the best position to respond with the right knowledge on a subject. That also cuts down on response times, as it avoids having to spend time internally contacting the right people within your business and obtain an answer.

Even with a small business, it’s good practice to instill the right guidelines and policies early on. That way you are already building a strong brand image and reputation, and new employees as you grow will pick up the right methodology by example as well as by instruction.

List of Social Media Guidelines and Policies:

Company Name	Document Name	Link
AFP	Guidelines for using social media	http://www.afp.com/newsletter/new-social-media-guidelines.pdf	(PDF)
American Medical Association	Professionalism in the Use of Social Media	http://www.ama-assn.org//ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-ethics/code-medical-ethics/opinion9124.page
BBC	Social Networking, Microblogs and other Third Party Websites	http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/page/guidance-blogs-bbc-full
Boy Scouts of America	Social Media Guidelines	http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Marketing/Resources/SocialMedia.aspx
Cabinet Office	Social Media Guidance for Civil Servants	https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/62361/Social_Media_Guidance.pdf	(PDF)
Civil Service	Lets Get Social	http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/news/lets-get-social
Coca Cola	Social Media Principles	http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/online-social-media-principles
Exeter University	Social Media Guidelines	http://www.exeter.ac.uk/staff/web/socialmedia/
Ford	Ford Social Media Guidelines	http://www.slideshare.net/opinionwatch/ford-social-media-guidelines-scoot-monty
HP	Blogging Code of Conduct	http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html
IBM	Social Computing Guidelines	http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
Imperial College London	Social Media Guidelines	http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/webguide/socialmedia
Intel	Social Media Guidelines	http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html
International Olympic Committee	Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines	http://www.olympic.org/social-media-and-internet-guidelines
Inter-Paliamentary Union	Social Media Guidelines for Parliaments	http://www.ipu.org/PDF/publications/SMG2013EN.pdf	(PDF)
Nursing & Midwifery Council	Social Networking Sites	http://www.nmc-uk.org/nurses-and-midwives/advice-by-topic/a/advice/social-networking-sites/
Oracle	The Oracle Social Media Participation Policy	https://blogs.oracle.com/otn/entry/the_oracle_social_media_partic
Roche	Roche Social Media Principles	http://www.roche.com/social_media_guidelines.pdf	(PDF)
Tesco	Social Media Colleague Guidelines	https://www.ourtesco.com/media/2013/09/social_media_colleague_guide_160913.pdf	(PDF)
University of Texas at Austin	Social Media Guidelines	http://www.utexas.edu/know/directory/guidelines/
Thomson Reuters	Social Media Guidelines	http://thomsonreuters.com/site/social-media-guidelines/
University College London	Social Media	http://www.ucl.ac.uk/social-media
University of Michigan	Guidelines for the use of social media	http://www.voices.umich.edu/docs/Social-Media-Guidelines.pdf	(PDF)
University of York	Social Media Guidelines	http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/hr/resources/policy/social-media-guidelines.htm
Walmart	Walmart's Social Media Guidelines	http://corporate.walmart.com/social-media-guidelines

Lessons from a Google Hangout – State of Digital’s Future of Search

January 16, 2014 By Dan Thornton

The Future of Search was discussed in a live Google Hangout organised by State of Digital today, and I was honored to be one of the people involved in the debate.

It was great to be chatting with Dixon Jones, Gianluca Fiorelli, Krystian Szastok, Russel McAthy and Tim Stewart. And Bas van den Beld did a great job of organising, hosting and moderating it all, including feeding in some good questions from people watching the hangout live. The ‘behind the scenes’ chat also helped everyone to cover all the topics raised, as well as distracting the less confident among us from worrying about our appearance or occasional fluffed sentence over the course of 90 minutes.

So overall it was great, I learned a lot just from chatting with everyone else involved, and I’d love to do more.

But having written a quick guide to Creating and Sharing Videos Online, there were some obvious mistakes I made in preparing…

Google Hangout Guide:

The organisation was handled by State of Digital and Bas, who did a good job in herding us all into the right place at the right time, and managing the muting of mics for everyone who wasn’t speaking. It’s important to make sure everyone involved turns up a little bit early to make sure they get access, have functioning video and audio (e.g. Tim’s blurrycam), and they also know how to access any backchannel, such as Google Hangout’s chat functionality.

What could I have done better?

Appearance:

Overall, I didn’t do too badly. I’m no Tom Cruise, sadly, but I’ve found it’s vital when speaking live or on video to feel confident in how you look and what you’re wearing. In this case, an Open Rights Group T-shirt which remained out of shot…

The other thing to remember is to check for all potential embarrassments such as unwanted nose or ear hair, errant bogeys, bits of lunch etc, etc. Five minutes before shooting can save a lifetime of internet mockery.

Lighting:

Fail here. Despite the fact I know how important lighting is for video, and I actually rent my house from a professional video editor, the lighting in my home office is crap for filming. It’s easily solved with a couple of decent and cost effective lights. And now I have the impetus to invest, as I did look slightly pale and blue. Fine for an extra in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but not ideal…

You can spot the people who put a little more thought into their lighting arrangments (Bas, Gianluca, Krystian).

Posture and Seating:

Not too bad. I was basically using my laptop on my desk and sat in my office chair. So it was serviceable, but not necessarily comfortable or relaxing – I think it was Gianluca who moved to a sofa part way through the hangout.

In the future I’d aim to have a more comfortable and relaxed place to sit, and somewhere where I’m not looking down at the camera (I wasn’t the only person to pick up on the inherent risk of a double chin looking down). It also meant I was only seen from the neck up, which was fine for this particular chat, but might be rather boring if I was hosting something on my own for a few minutes – all you’d see is my head, without any body language or movement.

Audio/Visual:

Not too bad. My Creative ChatMax HS-720 Headset worked well considering it’s under £30. And if I’d picked a better angle and lighting, the actual quality of the video feed is reasonable.

For shooting more videos, I think it will be worth investing in a good quality external webcam, so I can be more flexible with where I place it, and potentially a good quality external mic as well – the ChatMax works well for chats like this where I need to hear the other people, but if I’m recording a screencast etc, I’d like to have a little more audio quality.

Plus I keep meaning to record myself playing guitar etc to see if I’m improving, so that’s another reason for an investment…

Google Hangouts: Worth doing?

I’ve talked to a couple of clients about organising Google Hangouts with experts in their respective fields and I definitely think it’s worthwhile. One of my earliest jobs online was to organise celebrity web chats in a text only chatroom – the ability to have a panel of speakers, and easily sharable recorded video, makes this much easier and more effective.

As long as the content is interesting, the production quality is secondary, and by having multiple people involved it seems to average out the best and worst.

In the tech world, Hangouts have become a staple part of internet content. And the blogging community has also picked up on them as a great way to connect, discuss and share conversations and content.