As a video search marketing professional and legal analyst of new media, I’ve put together this introductory guide for marketers on understanding the most important legal issues with video in search marketing, the serious consequences of not following the law; and tips for how to protect your own video assets and your business.

Biggest Legal Issues Today With Online Video

I recently covered some of these issues with attorney Daliah Saper, of SaperLaw.com in the video below, and I’ve highlighted some of the key points in our discussion below..

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Copyright infringement – the unauthorized use of a video, or any content featured in a video, under copyright by someone else. This includes the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or make derivative works.
• Trademark infringement – using a trademarked name or other brand’s identity in your video, which causes consumer confusion and can cause damage to the owner’s trademark.
• Right of publicity – also called “personality rights;” this is the right to control how your image is used for any purpose. (I.e., to keep one’s image and likeness from being commercially exploited without permission or contractual compensation.) In a video recording, this can apply not only to other people, but private locations and facilities featured in a video. This is one of the reasons why search-marketing conferences have strict video recording policies for all attendees.
• Right of privacy – basically, the right to be left alone and not have one’s personality represented publicly without permission. In a video recording, this would apply to an individual person’s rights to not be video recorded for commercial or non-newsworthy use, and to not take that person’s name
• Defamation – making malicious statements in your public video against someone else that are knowingly false, or with a callous and reckless disregard for the facts; and which can be shown to cause damage or likely create a negative image. Defamation in video commonly happens in two situations:
  • A company or individual will either shoot a video with defamatory content about another company or professional individual
  • A business or individual will create a user-generated content space that allows others to submit defamatory video content about another business or individual, and not respond in a timely and appropriate manner to removal/complaint notices.

Serious consequences for not following the law:

• Injunctions – you videos may be removed from your video sharing site (like YouTube), or even from your own website if your ISP or Web Host has received a DMCA takedown notice. If the situation is considered egregious enough by your video host, they may suspend or cancel your account altogether.
• Civil lawsuit – you could be sued for financial penalties, both compensatory and punitive (in the case of any infringements of registered trademark or copyrights). Your clients or partners could also hold you liable for failing to get the necessary clearances in advance of doing the work.
• Loss of reputation and business – you may lose the trust of clients and prospects if you have a record of violating legal guidelines and lawsuits to deal with.

What Legal Tips Should Video Marketers Know?

I’ve put together what I consider to be the 5 most important tips that everyone should take as necessary precautions to protect theirs’ and their clients’ video assets, and be successful in their video marketing activities.

1.  Check for and get permissions

There can be a lot of intellectual property issues and personal rights involved with any video you produce and publish, and market for commercial or promotional purposes. These can include:

• Other people’s own copyrighted footage – e.g., video, audio recordings, or graphics – you wish to insert in your video.
• Talent featured in the video -  either paid or non-paid.
• Locations in your video -  If you’re shooting at an event, you may also have to get permissions from the facility holding the event, as well as the event promoters.
• Usage – How you feature any of these people or things in your video directly relates to the types of permissions you need. Even if you have permission to record something or someone, you may only be allowed to do so for personal use, not for public use. Or, you may be allowed to publish a video for informational purposes, but not for commercial purposes. (I.e., such as implying an endorsement of your business or to sell something.)
• Content – Are you portraying anyone in an unfavorable light? Better make sure you got your facts straight, and you’re not intentionally trying to misrepresent yourself or others.

The first thing you should always do when using any footage or content in your video that is not your own, is check for who owns it.

Look for original sources, and do searches online for the trademark name or copyright registration. That’s the best way to track down the owners and find out about what you may or may not have permission to use, and what licenses you may need to arrange and purchase for such use.

The best way to get permissions is to have a written release waiver. The New Media Rights website provides a legal guide to getting video releases, and the use of audio and video recordings. Finding release waivers templates online is a very basic form of legal insurance.

However, For those who are serious about protecting their video assets and themselves, I strongly recommend consulting with an attorney to review or create your video release waiver form. (See below, “Know When To Consult With An Attorney.”)

If you can’t get a written waiver, your next step is getting an email with expressed permission. (However you will have the challenge of being very specific in your request and using the proper legally binding language for your permitted use.)

If you can’t get an email, at least get a recorded verbal release from the person you’re video recording, or whoever has the authority to grant a video recording of wherever you are shooting.

Here’s the best and simplest advice I can give on permissions. If you’re not sure if you have permission to use someone else’s video, or use something in your video, then the safest thing do to is not use it!

2.  Understand “Fair Use”

Video publishers and marketers who haven’t received expressed permissions (such as in writing or otherwise recorded) definitely need to understand what is fair use – I.e., when you have protection under the law to copy someone’s copyrighted material.

Fair use protections with a video are much stronger when that video is considered “newsworthy,” versus publishing a video primarily for commercial purposes (or even selling that video).

3.  Follow online legal resources

The good news is there’s a lot of information on the Internet with legal tips for online video marketing, and it doesn’t have to cost you a cent. Review in advance any website guidelines for submitting video content, (especially copyright and trademark guidelines), and for filing claims and counter-claims on copyright or trademark infringement.

I strongly recommend checking out YouTube’s Copyright Overview section, YouTube’s Trademark Complaint Form, YouTube’s Abuse & Safety Center, YouTube’s Community Guidelines, YouTube’s legal inquiries page and legal resources page. Also be familiar with DMCA takedown notices, both for knowing how to file in case of a legal dispute, such as a claim or counter-claim.

And I would be amiss to not include my own legal resources with online video: ReelSEO’s Online Video and the Law column; and my YouTube Channel, Legal Video Guys, which covers legal issues with online video marketing.

4.  Know when to consult with an attorney

If you haven’t done so at least once already, talk with an attorney who specializes in intellectual property, Internet law, and entertainment law. (Ideally, one who not only follows the online video space and has consulted with clients on web video campaigns, but participates in web video marketing as well.)

If you’re doing a big campaign involving video, consider budgeting for consulting with an attorney to have your project plans reviewed. This way, you can be advised on what permissions you may or may not need to get, and what precautions you may need to take, before you start shooting, and then publishing. At the very least, you should have a much better awareness of what the risks are and how to prepare accordingly

5.  Have legally binding contracts

Make sure that your written contracts with clients, vendors, and other 3^rd parties has clear language that absolves you from liability from any unauthorized and restricted video content which they may provide you with, and you are expected to work with, or create on their behalf.

For example, I had this case one time with a client who assured me that they received permission from their headquarters office do a video shoot for their website and YouTube channel, only to have the entire shoot and marketing budget go to waste after all the work was completed, because of a cease-and-desist notice when HQ decided to not allow the content for saying it was in conflict with their brand guidelines – something that was the client’s responsibility to provide all along.

Implementing Mobile Video SEO

Optimizing for mobile video requires not only encoding your video correctly on mobile pages, but also using traditional SEO best practices for video. As mentioned in my previous post, encoding should ideally be done with H.264 — though WebM and Theora are also options — and accompanied by an appropriate audio codec like Vorbis, MP3, or AAC.

Don’t forget the responsible task list for pairing multimedia with mobile SEO:

• Asset hosting
• Keyword research
• Optimized title tags
• Compelling copy
• Actionable meta data
• Unique URLs
• Mobile HTML declarations
• Video sitemap
• Transcript files

Just as important for ranking video/video pages for your content is the ability to leverage your canonical site to boost visibility that will, in turn, provide ideal positioning for mobile searchers. This can be accomplished by first applying SEO to your canonical, main domain pages (designed primarily for desktop/laptop browser access). There are two options for leveraging these:

1. Via user detection that sends the visiting mobile device a “mobilized” CSS, which reorganizes the canonical page for a smaller screen and input type
2. Via user/browser detection that sends the visiting mobile device to an equivalent mobile site page specifically optimized for mobile accessibility

If resources are tight, the former is usually a more cost-effective means of presenting ideal page layouts to mobile users, but the latter is the best option if you can manage to fit it into your budget.

Since mobile devices are usually accessing the site on a slower, bandwidth-constrained network, serving handheld CSS to these devices doesn’t necessary offer a faster, more optimized experience if there are large images, gobs of JavaScript, and excessive text not ideal for a small screen.

If the latter is taken, equivalent mobile pages should, in turn, reflect the content (including video) of the canonical, main site page with a focus on compressing images, eliminating unused JavaScript, and trimming down excess text.

A Rundown Of Usage

Let’s say you choose option #1. Your development team will program user agent/browser detection on the bigger, desktop-optimized versions of your site (that rank based on past and current SEO efforts) to redirect mobile searchers to the equivalent mobile pages. Additionally, all mobile pages should have a canonical tag pointing the equivalent desktop page, and each mobile page should also detect desktop browsers and direct them to the bigger, canonical site.

This strategy guarantees an elimination of duplicate content while providing ideal user experiences for both desktop users and mobile users. If your site is exclusively mobile, it’s as simple as keeping your video encoded with H.264 and respective audio codecs.

If you’re juggling a canonical, desktop-size site and a mobile site, it’s best to cater to the widest audience possible — and that includes browsers not capable of HTML5 video and only Flash. Camen Design gives an excellent overview of how to address video for browser users of all types, and provides robust example code.

As mobile usage and video consumption grows, the more important their fusion becomes; and SEO continues to be the most effective way to bring visitors to that content.

Note:

There recently has been heated discussion (and a fair amount of hair-ringing) from Google’s announcement about dropping support for H.264 from its Chrome browser, instead opting for the WebM multimedia container format.

This change could delay forecasting and planning for the future of mobile video because so much of the Web has prepared for the coming of HTML5 and chosen to use H.264 as the codec of choice for some kind of standardization since many modern browsers supported it, but not WebM.

The reason they’ve done this is most likely due to the codec’s ability to take advantage of hardware decoders, accelerating performance on mobile platforms and optimizing device battery life.

Since so many developers have chosen H.264 — even Google’s own YouTube uses the codec inside a Flash container — the call to change to WebM may not be greeted by developers with open arms even if it is technically more open standard, because their workload would increase: they would need to code their videos three times, one in Theora for Firefox, and so on.

What about mobile video consumption on these devices? Huge. Mobile video is used by approximately 11% of global online consumers according to Nielsen’s report in August. Rhythm NewMedia’s key mobile video findings for Q3 2010 saw video retention on mobile devices higher (at 94% in the first ten seconds) than traditional online video (81%). Even full episode viewing on mobile devices grew 20%.

But mobile video isn’t all peachy. Devices and operating systems are splintered. Technological capabilities are splintered. Yet the conflict isn’t between devices—it’s an accessibility conflict. And your mobile video SEO efforts are detrimentally affected by the technical accessibility of these increasingly popular, powerful platforms. Video via websites won’t work on dumbphones, and it won’t work on previous generations of smartphones. It works on modern platforms with modern browsers, and the users you’ll find there are the users you want seeing your video content. According to the latest numbers, there are droves of these users and they’re hungry for content.

From Containers To Conduits

The last couple years have seen a heroic change in the way video is handled across websites. For a long time, the best method of getting video to a viewer’s screen was to put it inside of a run-time environment. Flash emerged as the preferred technology to do this, and its use as a plug-in to browsers has helped shape both the advertising and media industries on the web. But the proliferation of powerful web-browsing mobile devices has changed the situation, and has prompted an entirely new era for media consumption.

While the largest video hosting services are serving video through both a Flash container and via native HTML5 video, if you choose to leverage Flash, Silverlight, or a third-party video service independently, you need to ensure there is an alternative method of viewing the video in a container appropriate for video. Certain platforms are working with Adobe to improve the Flash experience on their devices, but the initial results aren’t promising, and can be even more frustrating for your visitors than is necessary. If you plan on providing video assets for mobile traffic you need to consider the bulletproof standards.

Consider the original call to action for video presentation change across so many high-profile sites: the iOS’s native browser, Safari. For reasons that don’t necessarily need to be addressed here, Apple refrained from supporting Flash in its mobile browser. But its browser, and its Webkit framework, permitted it access to the latest HTML5 spec that included native video and audio support. Webkit—originally derived from a fork of KHTML back in 1998—is a layout engine for rendering web pages. It has since been adopted by several entities, is comprised of powerful JavaScript and rendering cores, and enables support for the latest specs of HTML5 and CSS3. Leveraged by the native browser in most modern smartphone operating systems, Webkit helps power the way the web is perceived on devices running iOS, Android, BlackBerry 6 and WebOS.

Since many of the popular mobile device platforms support HTML5, more pressure from the development communities has been applied to video sites to leverage HTML5 containers and codecs. Now that Flash isn’t a necessary component for video, video coders need to consider the standardized options made available by HTML5 support (which guarantees that their videos will work on the most popular and capable mobile devices). Unfortunately, this isn’t as clear cut as it sounds, and I encourage you to read Mark Pilgram’s Dive Into HTML5, which covers encoding video and coding your site appropriately for video detection by browser capability. Mobile lucks out, though—we know what kind of video/audio containers and codecs are supported in Webkit browsers, and we can make absolute suggestions for using HTML5 video tags (namely H.264, AAC, and MP4).

Part two of this article, coming soon, will address mobile video SEO and ways to strategically leverage your parent site for your mobile site.

1. Move

No. You don’t need to “move” from a shower, to a boat, to a horse in one continuous shot. You do, however, need to move your audience emotionally. Start with a clear vision of how you want people to react to your video or interact with your video campaign and create accordingly. Set goals early on, because you’ll want to measure progress against goals to determine success later. Perhaps most importantly, have a story in mind and make sure your videos tell that story. If you plan to extol your brand’s virtues, do so in a humorous, controversial, scary, helpful or other manner that will elicit the type of response you seek.

Old Spice did this extremely well with “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” They aimed for a humorous reaction and got it, but the brand also communicated its benefits to its audience and repeatedly drove home the brand name.

Keep quality in mind when setting out to move your audience. Old Spice completed its commercials with one-camera continuous shooting and very little computer generated imagery. This alone caused quite a stir among the public at large with many online discussions swirling around the complexity and reality of the footage.

2. Market

It’s critically important to follow best practices for file creation and optimization. Pixel size, download speeds and desirable video rendering are just a few of the factors to consider before posting videos to ensure that your videos are looked upon favorably by consumers, search engines and video sites. Follow these additional guidelines when creating and optimizing your videos:

• Just like at home, HD quality video with a 16:9 aspect ratio is best
• Use Mp4 file format with .h264 compression
• Audio compression should be MP3 or AAC
• Display rate 30 frames per second
• Keep it short and sweet (approximately 2 minutes)
• Nail your titles
• Use all of your description (don’t spam)
• Meta tag the video (don’t spam)
• Align the optimization (title, description, tags)

Creating a YouTube channel provides a home base for any video campaign and ensures the availability and accessibility of video assets. Then, make it easy to market and share videos and enable social tools—comments, likes, forwards, embedding—everywhere. Currently, Old Spice has more than 200 videos on its YouTube channel and leveraged the right communication channels to create views.

Email, social networks—even in-store point of sales promotions can drive views, but advertising in particular can provide a lot of great opportunities to seed content. Old Spice went all out on this, running its first “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ad in the 2010 Super Bowl and following that up with on ongoing broadcast barrage, taking the campaign social later in 2010. Less expensive options abound, however, particularly online. YouTube alone offers a wide range of advertising opportunities: home page featured; click to play; in video; watchpage companion; profile channel icons; and audience targeting by interest, geographic location, content type, demographics, etc., not to mention the many cost effective opportunities to advertise online through search, display and other channels.

3. Mobilize

Once the video campaign hits the market, use Twitter, Facebook and other social networks to build and engage audiences. Support consumer discussion and do whatever you can to help the buzz continue to grow and spread.

For one day only, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” took comments/questions via Twitter and Reddit. He responded to the comments that got the most up votes through YouTube videos, and some of the results were stellar. One user asked the man your man could smell like to provide audio for various phrases, but provided very little detail on his plan. Old Spice delivered the audio as requested and what resulted was the Old Spice voicemail generator, a completely viral adaptation of the man your man could smell like and an entirely different platform over which the branded communications could travel.

While other marketers have done a good job of interacting with the public on the web, Old Spice took the mobilize mantra to a new level. Even Sesame Street got in on the action, spoofing the original commercial with its own take: Smell Like a Monster. So lets just say that the campaign and the people behind it did a great job of mobilizing consumers, news sites, television shows and other organizations.

4. Mingle

Once others have mobilized around the campaign, it’s important for marketers themselves to get involved. Brands often mingle with the public by conducting surveys, asking for input, making their own contributions to contests, etc.

Without question, the most advanced mingling done by the Old Spice team came in July. In fact, Old Spice got more involved than any other brand to date that I’m aware of when the man your man could smell like began taking questions and responding with almost real time custom video responses. The brand/agency team created a war room to execute rapid video responses to questions, complete with copywriters, their go-to actor and direct access to decision makers to keep things moving quickly. The effort resulted in 186 individual video responses and significantly extended the video campaign’s shelf life and fresh factor, creating millions of additional impressions. Celebrities got involved too, with many of the video responses directed to them generating over a million views each: Ellen DeGeneres (1 million), Perez Hilton (1.9 million), Alyssa Milano (1.1 million) and Kevin Rose (1.3 million) among them.

Whether your team wants to go as far as creating individual multimedia responses or simply make a spokesperson available to chat for an hour here or there, be sure to consider the most effective ways for your brand to mingle.

5. Measure

You can’t determine the success of a YouTube campaign without the ability to measure progress against goals. Providing a nice gauge of performance against many basic video metrics, YouTube Insights offers a solid starting point but consider supplementing that with your own, more specific results tracking analytics as necessary.

For anyone sure about goals for their campaigns, here’s a short list of common but measurable and effective types of campaign goals to consider.

• Improving SERP real estate: How did you fare on brand searches on Google, Bing or others before the campaign, and how did the campaign change SERP performance? Goals should aim to improve your brand’s presence in natural, news, multimedia and other types of search results and should be as specific as possible.
• Video views or impressions per day, month, etc.
• Video popularity rankings
• Growth of social network fans, followers, interactions, etc.
• Web site traffic.
• Performance of a campaign’s YouTube channel.
• Sales growth.
• Industry brand rankings.

No surprise to the people who watched the campaign unfold or participated directly, the man your man could smell like campaign performed well against a wide array of metrics. The campaign earned almost six million views on day one alone and reached more than 40 million in its first week. The brand’s Twitter following increased 2,700 percent, and its Facebook fan interaction rose 800 percent. Overall web site traffic climbed 300 percent, and the brand’s YouTube channel became the all-time most viewed channel. The campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions in six months, and sales rose 27 percent over six months since launching (YoY). In July alone, sales were up 107 percent.

Mmmmm… that success sure smells great!

People usually find videos online in one of two ways: through search engines and video sharing/aggregation sites. Optimization shouldn’t be discounted outside of the big three search engines—ample consideration should certainly be given for optimization inside YouTube and other video sharing sites, especially considering comScore considers YouTube the second largest search engine. To secure high ranking listings for videos on target keyword searches in any of these channels, marketers must optimize, link and build independent pages on their own domains, intertwining them with YouTube’s powerful video presence. The following strategies will help:

• Take ownership of brand-oriented YouTube videos
• Optimize key site elements on video pages for targeted keywords
• Leverage controlled domains to direct inbound links and embed video files from sharing sites
• Submit a media sitemap (Media RSS) to search engines to organize and identify all video assets on the brand’s site

Take ownership of YouTube videos

YouTube is the most popular destination for video viewing on the internet, so marketers should consistently upload new commercials, brand-oriented videos and other clips to the site to ensure access for the general public. Optimizing for YouTube helps videos get found and enables marketers to be proactive with their efforts.

Proactive monitoring of videos also lets marketers manage their videos reactively. YouTube provides companies a “content identification and management system” that tracks branded content across its website. While this service offers several useful features, one in particular helps monitor the ownership of branded products and the distribution of videos containing infringement. This provides marketers another way to find and take ownership of content pertaining to a brand’s intellectual property (i.e. duplications of a brand’s commercials, videos, etc.) that has not been endorsed by the company.

Optimization of key site elements for targeting keywords

Optimizing a video for YouTube visibility will increase that video’s chance of being discovered on search engines and, subsequently, shared with other users. Ranking well on YouTube relies on a combination of social outreach (for flags, subscribers, ratings, views, shares, etc.), branded or user channel design, and organic linking. Much like any SEO program, this requires a dedicated effort. To best leverage YouTube for keyword optimization, adaptable elements of each YouTube video page need to be re-focused for target keywords. Although there are many customizable elements of a branded YouTube page, a few of the most effective include:

• Branded channel information
• Titles tags
• Branding box

Customizing channel information on video sharing sites like YouTube, where the brand describes its channel focus, should be optimized with target keywords pertaining to video content. Many search engines use approximately the first 150 characters of the beginning sentence of this site element as the META description. The META description tag is traditionally considered a space where a brand can describe itself in its own words, unrestricted by the expectations of technical search engine visibility. Since search engines index this tag, it should contain proper targeting keywords to help users decide whether to click the link.

Search engine users will often read the contents of the snippet when they see a title tag that interests them. META description tags should be periodically reviewed to determine whether revising their contents could increase click-through rates. Use succinct marketing sentences for the YouTube META description, with the intention of promoting higher click-through rates.

Search engines also tend to give title tags high authority when it comes to the text used in describing a Web page or video. Title tags take the form of the clickable link in SERPs, and serve as the description for the page as seen atop the browser window (or browser tab). On SERPs, target keywords used by the searcher will appear in bold in the title tag, and since this line of text happens to be larger in size than the META description below it, its influence on click-through conversion is important enough to continually address. Marketers should use target keywords at the beginning of the title tag and place all branding elements at the end of the tag, since search engines tend to distribute more importance to the words at the beginning of the title tag.

In addition to these staples of the branded channel page, video marketers can take advantage of YouTube’s branding box, which enables them to specify promotional text and provide links associated with the brand. Within the branding box, the title can run up to 100 characters in length, and the main body text up to 4,500 characters, including the implementation of links and specific HTML markup. Using this box as an additional conduit improves target keyword density and conveys a succinct marketing or informational message about the purpose of the marketer’s brand and products.

Leveraging controlled domains and embedding content

Marketers may host video assets either on their own domain, or—as many organizations do—use YouTube as a video host. If a marketer chooses the latter option, all video assets get uploaded and distributed to YouTube, whose viewership is massive and social. This isn’t an exclusive option—these same videos can also be embedded on the marketer’s site.

Embedding a video on a separate domain automatically creates an incoming link to the video on the hosted domain (in this case, YouTube). This passes incoming link equity authority from the separate domain for that particular video on YouTube, but also illustrates more information about the video’s content to search engines.

To implement this strategy, marketers should build individual pages for each available video, surrounding the video with descriptive text, optimizing title, META descriptions, and an <H1> header tag, and using target keywords in the URL structure. Individual pages for video enable incoming links to point to specific video content with target keyword anchor text and, as a result, can attract inbound links from other relevant websites. The number of inbound links with optimized anchor text a page receives greatly contributes to its visibility on search engines. Ideally, these videos should be embedded from their host site on YouTube.

Marketers may embed videos in one of two ways, both of which require that all relevant video assets—particularly commercials, informational videos and brand-related content—are hosted on YouTube. The first option includes building separate pages in the commercial directory for each video asset. Target keywords need to be picked for each available video asset, using “video” as a modifier to the target keyword to ensure they match relevant search queries. The second option includes embedding relevant subject videos into established, optimized pages on a brand’s own domain. This permits the flow of strong link equity and an optimized page to not only host the relevant video, but also point to the same video on YouTube. Thus, each video asset, and all future video assets, should be placed on relevant landing pages.

Create a media site map (media RSS)

Once these basic optimization steps are in place, it’s time to let the engines know these resources exist. Another effective strategy for optimizing video assets includes creating a media sitemap for videos hosted on a marketer’s website. This organizes and identifies all video/media pages on a website via syndication. Since it’s difficult for search engine crawlers to access and identify videos on a website—oftentimes because they are hidden behind JavaScript for Flash—a Media RSS allows them to parse videos directly. In addition, it provides search engines with richer metadata, enabling them to better understand content for better ranking and—particularly on Bing—generate its “smart preview” feature.

Revisiting and implementing these important optimization strategies can help marketers improve communication with search engines and enhance visibility of their video assets.

Shock and awe

Viral videos successfully create a sense of surprise and curiosity, exactly the types of reactions marketers hope to elicit from an audience. Generating this type of buzz through video helps brands promote their company or product in more creative and innovative ways than traditional advertising which is why hitting viewers with a shocking or humorous video can capture an audience in a matter of seconds. Then, a viral video must awe audiences with quality content that is surprising, engaging and, at its core, worth sharing. Marketers that find a way to make audiences care about the content of their video yield better results. Consider, for example, this funny clip from The Cartoon Network’s “Brain Rush” television show using simple b-roll footage.

Credits: Chris Gomersal, Donald Alexander, David Reed—Moxie Interactive

This clip left viewers wondering one thing: Why is this guy losing it? The rationale varies and conversations ensure, but the video, which was posted on targeted websites and via blogger and influencer outreach, earned more than one million views and appeared on 17 unique video-sharing sites. Some users even created original content using the video to create dance remixes. The buzz generated around the humorous and shocking nature of the video not only yielded great results by promoting viewership for “Brain Rush,” but also enabled greater fan participation.

Respect your audience

Viral videos that find the most success online are those that grab the attention of their audience and engage them beyond an initial viewing. To do so, marketers need to earn respect by creating good content that viewers can connect with. Often, this means the audience suspends their disbelief; a viewer can sit back and say, was that for real?

However, a video’s content should strike the right balance between creativity and transparency. Audiences often criticize and react negatively to those videos in which a stunt is too outrageous or simply comes across as too far-fetched. Viewers are willing to put aside skepticism in return for entertainment, but not when that entertainment offends their intelligence or fails to connect with the brand’s message. Marketers can respect and engage their audiences by letting the viewers discover the different facets of a video on their own. The resulting feelings of ownership and connection can lead to viral conversations around the video content, its authenticity, and so on.

Take a look at the video that Performics sister agency, Moxie Interactive, created for Verizon Wireless to generate conversation around their brand:

Credit: Justin Archer, Nicola Smith

The Verizon video earned 794,216 views in 6 weeks on a variety of video share sites and picked up more than 400 comments, many of which praised both the content and the brand.

Find the right balance

It’s “awe” for nothing if brand connections don’t exist. The aforementioned Verizon Wireless video clip is a textbook example of why video content that remains relevant to a brand and the message they wish to convey connects with viewers so well. “The Network” commercials on television are already well known and intriguing, so turning that same encounter into a real-life experience serves as an extension of the brand and beautifully blends structured and viral marketing tactics.

Sometimes, however, videos can backfire simply because they lose the brand message for the sake of virality. In 2008, for example, the creators of the movie Wanted put together a video to promote their film depicting an office worker flipping out and destroying his office space. The video garnered more than 6 million views on video-sharing site Break.com and remains popular two years later, but no one knew the video was created to promote Wanted—so it fell short as a stealth marketing operation. To connect the brand message with viewers, marketers need to provide entertainment to the audience while finding the happy medium between a heavily branded video and a non-branded video that fails to convey the intended message.

Promote with honesty

The most effective way for marketers to find success with viral videos is to be clear about their message and reach out to their audience using reliable channels. Marketers should use the same distribution channels, including blogs, social networks, paid search and email, as they would with other marketing messages. But it is imperative to be transparent about who they are when doing so. Reach out to a fan base, talk about what was created and solicit honest feedback. Users will appreciate the honesty and, coupled with creative and striking content, will champion a brand’s efforts and do their part to make the video a viral success. As long as marketers create videos with relevancy and valuable content, with careful consideration for distribution through key channels, they can reap the benefits of successful video virality.

Once marketers take these four pillars of viral videos into account, they have to make sure their videos can easily be found. To ensure viral videos are searchable, marketers should create a unique and permanent URL for each video and optimize the filename and metadata of the video file. Optimizing the title, description, headers, keyword density and surrounding video captions on the HTML page that hosts the video will also ensure the video is found more easily. Finally, marketers should create a video sitemap to submit the engines before uploading the video to YouTube, MySpace and other video sharing sites.

Achieving true virality requires a lot of creativity, careful planning and a clear goal, and with these four pillars in mind, marketers have an effective approach for realizing quality viral performance. Most viewers don’t mind overt advertising when it comes in the shell of something genuinely entertaining, so if marketers create a video with good content and a clear underlying brand message, they stand a good chance of achieving viral success.

HTML5 improves search engines’ understanding of the structure and content of a video and provides greater accessibility. HTML tags like the “section” tag, which enables marketers to explain the topic of page sections, and the “nav” tag, by which a mobile device browser can make a link, help search engines more accurately categorize content and links.

Similarly, simple browser coding makes HTML5 videos more searchable and indexable. At the Google I/O conference on May 19, Google announced it was joining with other web companies in launching webM, an open web media format project, and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec the company will contribute to the project under a royalty-free license.

According to webM, VP8 delivers high-quality video while efficiently adapting to the varying processing and bandwidth conditions found on today’s broad range of web-connected devices. VP8’s efficient bandwidth usage aims to deliver lower servicing costs for content publishers and high-quality video for end users. The codec’s relative simplicity makes it easy to integrate into existing environments and requires less manual tuning to produce high-quality results. These existing attributes and the rapid innovation expected through the open development process make VP8 well suited for the unique requirements of video on the web. With VP8 and other codecs that can be supported by an HTML5 player, marketers can assure their content will be viewable on virtually any platform, from iPads to Smartphone devices to web browsers.

So why should marketers embrace HTML5? A better question might be “why shouldn’t they?” given the many benefits offered by embracing the technology. Let’s consider a couple of advantages demonstrated during the Google I/O conference by Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell.

McDonell unveiled a magazine application in development that featured HTML5 video running within a frame of text. The visual capabilities alone are impressive, but the Sports Illustrated project also demonstrates how HTML5 enables more web-friendly graphics and greater interactivity. The video also illustrates how HTML5 video ads can provide a more dynamic user experience.

As McDonell says, “the advertising can be so good in this context that it can become content itself. It can help you evaluate products and when you’ve made your decision, it can help you find the place to buy them,” as seen with the WonderFlex L300. Rich video runs seamlessly with text, which broadens the possibilities for the creativity of “print” ads, combined with the accountability of online media. The format of HTML5 provides instantaneous playback on all-access video and low power consumption, while drag-and-drop capabilities enable users to customize their experience. The search capabilities showcased within the Sports Illustrated video also give users more access to videos from multiple sources.

To effectively move toward implementing HTML5, marketers should determine whether their videos are ready for the platform and choose the appropriate codec. Google has built enough momentum for VP8 by simultaneously announcing support in most browsers and by most companies that the format can’t be ignored. Marketers should also be sure to design videos with enhanced content in mind. Using the appropriate tags ensure that videos get properly indexed and stay searchable. Tying in all relevant content to the video subject matter, like related articles or photos, will help make the video content more interactive and customizable, as seen in the Sports Illustrated video. Enabling social media capabilities will also allow users to share content, thereby further exposing the content to more users and additional screens. Of course, it’s also important to keep in mind some standard SEO video best practices like including optimized text, page titles and descriptions in any HTML5 video object.

Considering the growing prevalence of HTML5 and the accessibility it provides, it’s important for marketers to adapt to this evolving video format and take advantage of the new capabilities in order to keep up with competitors and stay visible with their audience. By serving consumers at every possible touchpoint through the adoption of HTML5, marketers can ensure that they stay accessible and engage consumers on every available screen.

The Web continues to evolve into an increasingly visual medium, and Google’s new interface offers video marketers more ways to show, not tell. Users can now begin refining video searches by clicking on the videos icon in the left-hand rail of Google’s SERP. Users can then sort video results in Google by duration, time period (past hour, past 24 hours, past week, etc.), relevance, quality, closed captioning and source. A Google search on the term “iPad,” for example, gives searchers the options to filter results for videos less than four minutes or more than 20 minutes in length, view videos in high quality, or see only videos posted on cnn.com. These features give people the ability to pinpoint the videos most relevant to their preferences and presents video marketers with new options to better optimize and manage their videos.

Although it may be too early to tell exactly how Google’s left-hand rail navigation system will affect searcher behavior, video marketers should kick the tires to glean insights on ways these additional filtering options will impact video SEO efforts. Marketers can find more creative ways to build and optimize videos by paying particular attention to the filtering options on Google and acting accordingly. Some of the features of Google’s new interface enable marketers to cast a wider net and reach more people, while others give them the opportunity to customize their video publishing specific to the habits or preferences of their target market. I’ll take a look at the opportunities to excel through customizing video publishing by duration, publishing times and intervals, reaching more consumer destination sites, and remembering that many of the old rules still hold true in the new environment.

Marketers can generate videos of different lengths for all types of searchers. By doing so, they will reach a wider audience or cater to different preferences. For example, if someone were to search for instructional video about the iPad, the user can choose between a quick how-to video or a longer, more detailed video with step-by-step instruction. Providing videos of varying durations will help meet the needs of more searchers.

Marketers can also take advantage of Google’s new interface by refreshing content more frequently to ensure it passes the various time filters. Depending on the audience, marketers should bear in mind the time of day their typical target viewers might search for video. Considerations regarding user geography or high-traffic Web-browsing periods may affect the frequency or exact timing a marketer posts videos. In an ideal world, video marketers would publish new videos every hour on the hour, but that’s not realistic due to lack of content and the huge amount of resources it would take. Instead marketers should consider what is more realistic for their operation. Can they publish videos daily? Weekly? Monthly? Once marketers make those decisions, they can optimize a video search program that will naturally develop in time.

Again, for those marketers interested in casting a wide net, it’s important to consider posting videos to more than one site for searches refined by source. Publishing a video on YouTube, Hulu and/or MySpace instead of just posting it to one site increases the chances of the video getting more views and reaching the desired audience.

Relevance remains an important factor in video search and serves as the default option on Google’s left-hand rail, so marketers should continue to make use of descriptive text to ensure their videos get indexed properly.

In short, marketers should test the various filtering options as an indication of how Google sorts through all video content on any given keyword and figure out the most effective strategies to take advantage of the new interface and best serve the user. While the addition of left-hand rail navigation may seem like one small step for Google, it is one giant leap for improved SERP usability on the industry-leading engine.

More than 300,000 iPads sold on the day the product was launched, so it’s essential that marketers meet the high demand for video consumption and make sure they’re adapting content to take advantage of this phenomenon. Most web-based videos currently use Adobe Flash, but the iPad supports videos using HTML5. It may prove to be a mistake for Apple not to provide functionality for both the existing Flash videos and the emerging HTML5 videos, but these are the realities to which marketers must adjust. The new <video> tags in HTML5 will make it easier for search engines to locate video content and the HTML5 coding structure should make it easier for engines to label it, resulting in better indexation and ranking of videos.

One of HTML5′s biggest impacts on marketers is its native video support. For marketers, this means that video becomes more ubiquitous. HTML5 makes video a native browser experience for users and publishers. It allows users to consume and publishers to distribute video without the need for browser plugins. Major players in the television and video industry like CBS and ESPN have already made changes to their sites to support video playback on the iPad, as well as other devices that do not support Flash and other video plugins.

Marketers looking to reach consumers on this new screen need to build iPad-ready web sites by using HTML5 code to be more accessible and give consumers a positive user experience. For online video marketers interested in SEO, the main objective has been to make sure that the search engines could easily find and identify all of the content on their sites. HTML5 provides marketers with new ways to tell search engines about their content.

HTML uses tags to classify different types of content on a web page. For the first time in HTML5, sites have a video component which provides control for the way video is displayed and organized. That component eliminates the need for browser object tags. In addition, with HTML5, size obligations no longer exist for video, which should make online video marketers excited, specifically those marketing on a device like the iPad. In HTML5, videos have a width and height, much like images, so marketers are no longer forced into the standard Flash video sizes.

HTML5 offers another new element known as the <nav>tag which marketers can use to specify navigation menus, such as sections of links to other material with little or no original content. Search engines can then use these tags to understand site structure better, as well as display the navigation in various ways. For example, a mobile device browser like on the iPad can make links within “nav” sections accessible by swiping the screen left or right.

While content is key, marketers also have to understand the best technical and most flexible ways to present it. Video will continue to be a significant part of SEO as HTML5 should makes it easier for search engines to index and rank it. HTML5 will play an important role for marketers planning to advertise across multiple screens: televisions, computers, smart phones and the iPad. Video marketing continues to grow and get smarter in the way information can be published. So, in order to keep up with the latest consumer devices and search engines trends, publishers must give serious consideration to creating HTML5-compliant web sites and more premium app offerings.

The SEO advantages of video syndication are less clear, but there is certainly evidence to show that syndicated distribution of a video has the potential to drastically improve its ranking on Google. The best example I have seen of this is a simple experiment that Mark Robertson of Reel SEO conducted about a year ago. He used TubeMogul and VideoWildfire (both discussed below) to distribute a video across as many video sites as possible with the hopes of ranking for the targeted search term “SEO Sales Training.” What the test showed was that a relatively uncompetitive search term could dominate video search results with the assistance of syndication.

Of course, this is only a small piece of the puzzle, and this doesn’t necessarily make short work of the larger challenges of highly competitive video search. But the experiment is certainly a strong argument for the practice of syndication for the purpose of boosting search rankings. The following tools all strive to simplify the work required to submit a video to the many available video and social media sites available for online distribution.

TubeMogul, in my experience, is the most talked-about and popular video syndication tool. It has been around since 2006 which is an eternity in the video SEO/analytics game, so it is certainly an established service that has undergone many useful revisions and enhancements.

Pros: TubeMogul’s analytics software, called InPlay, is robust. This is the primary feature that sets TubeMogul apart from its larger competitors. InPlay aggregates all analytics to which it has access and puts them all in a single reporting interface. I can tell you from experience that one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of running any video or social media campaign is collecting and digesting the data. At the agency level, InPlay’s reporting is especially useful because you can export the data directly to existing reporting templates.

Cons: TubeMogul suffers from the same problem as all video syndication tools, which is that every video submission site is different. There is little standardization among sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Imeem, Yahoo! Video, etc. Therefore, the convenience of bulk submission often sacrifices the on-page nuances of each video site. This puts your brand at risk of looking careless or unsophisticated. It’s a trade-off that might or might not be worth it to your brand. Therefore, TubeMogul is definitely a syndication tool to carefully consider as part of your video syndication strategy.

Your first impression of Traffic Geyser’s website might be that it has “scam” written all over it, but once you get past the aggressively sales-oriented mumbo jumbo, you will see that this service is another useful video syndication tool. Additionally, Traffic Geyser has a back-end lead generation form creator with an automated response and lead notification system. I have not used this part of the service, so I cannot recommend it one was or the other, but is an interesting feature for a syndication system.

While researching this piece, I kept quietly chuckling to myself about how much Traffic Geyser reminds me of a late night infomercial with quotes like “I am making nearly $250,000 a year from one simple website using your system.” But it must be working for them, so I can’t fault them for finding an effective sales strategy.

Pros: The service is relatively simple to use, and for newcomers to video syndication or marketing in general, Traffic Geyser provides tons of training videos that cover basic marketing concepts all the way through how to use and potentially profit from their service.

Cons: Did I mention that their website and entire sales process rubs me the wrong way? Frankly, this would be enough of a reason for me to choose another service, but I’m sure it won’t bother everyone the way that it did me. The biggest drawback to Traffic Geyser is the same problem that still plagues all video syndication software, which is the inability to customize each video to the nuances of every video hosting platform.

VideoWildfire is another infomercial-themed website, but again, it obviously works for them. This is a low-cost service, so the back-end features are anemic when compared to something like TubeMogul, but like most services, you get what you pay for, and VideoWildfire is cheap. This service will appeal to individuals more than brands or agencies, but it could certainly be a nice behind-the-scenes helper for any video marketing professional at any level.

Pros: At about 20 dollars per month, VideoWildfire is inexpensive and accessible. The service is easy to use, and the online support in the form of videos and slide show presentations is robust. At the most basic level, I like VideoWildfire because it largely does what it says, which is that it submits your videos to a wide array of hosting services. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, but for many people there probably don’t need to be.

Cons: I’m not crazy about their website, which I think will repel reputable brands and agencies. But since their target consumer is probably individuals, they likely aren’t terribly concerned with my impression of their online presence. Yet again, VideoWildfire is harmed by the inescapable reality that each video site has its own quirks. Using this or any other software-based syndication service is going to leave noticeable gaps on many of the video view pages to which they upload.

Hey!Spread is similar to the three preceding tools in that it provides a one-stop shop for distributing video to a wide array of video hosting sites. The company provides several other services including one that analyzes trends in online video and another video encoding service. But the Hey!Spread service, launched in 2007, is the one that we’re interested in here.

Pros: Hey!Spread has flexible pricing. There isn’t a set monthly fee. Instead, you pay for how much you use. For brands and agencies that run sporadic video campaigns, this is an appealing option. They also offer an interesting service called YouClone that takes existing YouTube videos and redistributes them across Hey!Spread’s supported network of hosting sites.

Cons: I know that sound like a YouTube video on repeat, but the disadvantages of using any software service should be clear by now. Obviously, any user, whether it is an individual, a brand, or an agency, will have to weigh the assets and liabilities of using a software solution. What is more important? Do you need to place your video in as many places as possible in the smallest amount of time, or is it essential that you maintain the integrity of your brand by taking the necessary steps to customize each video to the individual platforms on which they will appear?

Manual submission is obviously not a tool, but I feel that I have to cover the advantages of using low-cost interns or offshore employees. Rather than offering any automation, you can achieve similar results to the above software solutions, but then you can take it many steps further.

Pros: The biggest advantage to using low-cost employees is that you can overcome the inescapable downside to using any available software solution—customization. One of the primary pitches of all of the above tools is that they will save you time and therefore money. Time will certainly be saved, but at what cost? If it is vital that your video pages be customized, there is currently no other way to achieve this than doing it all by hand. But remember that this isn’t something that requires a great deal of skill. In the past, I have written simple tutorials that guide another employee through the process of submitting and customizing videos for each targeted hosting site.

Cons: Obviously, when everything is done by hand it is going to take time. And even if you are not coming out of pocket significantly for interns or offshore employees, you will have to wait first for the work to be completed, and then someone will need to Q/A the work (at least until you are comfortable with your employees’ abilities). Compared to the inexpensive or free software solutions that are available, manual submission might not even be an option. But consider, especially at the agency level, the off-peak times (like overnight) that can be used for this work to be completed.

Furthermore, other tasks like transcription can be completed at the same time. If your client or brand has the budget for manual submission and customization, you would be wise to consider it as a possibility.

Since there is no compelling reason for the various video hosting sites to agree on standards, there will likely never be a perfect solution to automated video syndication. But services like TubeMogul and Hey!Spread have come as close as possible for now. These same sites offer value-adds like analytics that collect data that would otherwise not be available to most brands or agencies in any convenient way. At the beginning of any video campaign, or even earlier when you or your business are considering video as part of your marketing strategy, spend some time thinking about what is more important—efficiency or accuracy.