Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

Dr. Melody King - Our VP for Sales & Marketing

On March 5th, our very own VP of Sales and Marketing, Dr. Melody King was interviewed on Webside Chats.

Webside Chats, in case you aren’t familiar with the site, is produced by Jack Humphrey: “who’s sole purpose is to track down the leading experts in internet marketing, blogging, SEO, and branding and pump them for insider information for the benefit of new to advanced marketers”.

Although of course we have a particularly soft spot for video, we appreciate all mediums for communicating our message, and it was an honor to be hosted in this audio format.

Automated Video is always impressive

In case you didn’t catch the Treepodia interview just yet, to summarize, Jack and Melody discussed the growing importance of video online in general, and on retail sites in particular.

Melody went on to describe the Treepodia platform and how it uses retailer’s existing marketing materials to automatically generate product videos in a time-effective and cost-effective manner, thereby removing all barriers to adding video to any retailer’s site.

Throughout the conversation, Jack was particularly impressed by this automated process, and the ease of installation (adding just a couple of lines to code, once, to the retailer’s site). But the thing he seemed most enthusiastic about was the type of relationship Treepodia builds with its retailers in offering long-term service with continual video version A/B testing.

85% Increases to Conversion Rates…

Other things that were discussed include the details behind how we do automated voice-overs, some stats on conversion rates (starting at an 85% increase), and practical examples of the difference different video versions can make to your bottom-line.

We recommend that you listen to the interview in its entirety for a great summary of all that the Treepodia smart video platform can do for your online store. If you have any questions or comments, you are always free to contact us.

On his popular “DigitalBuzzBlog“, Aden Hepburn recently published a post commenting on the latest video from the gang at Socialnomics:

“Social Media ROI is the hardest job in town”

In the post, largely based on a post published on Socialnomics’s own blog, Aden claims that:

“Everyone knows that trying to measure Social Media ROI is the hardest job in town. It’s so diverse in every application that there is no single (or simple) way to measure all the outputs into a single report, let alone track sales indirectly from the effects of their social presence.”

Granted, a single dashboard for measuring the effects of your Social Media efforts, isn’t something I’ve come across yet. However there are a number tools that can give you a pretty good idea, especially when used together.

Introducing Better Google Analytics

For those of you using Firefox there’s a free and funky solution I’ve been using for a while and highly recommend: The “Better Google Analytics” GreaseMonkey scripts by Erik Vold.

Better Goolge Analytics add, amongst other nifty features, a set of social media related data to your standard Google Analytics dashboard. Since Better Google Analytics is a GreaseMonkey script all you have to do is install the addon and your good to go – simple, quick and zero risk.

Do you Youtube insight?

Another tip is the splendid “Youtube Insight” dashboard accessible with any Youtube account.
Once you have enough volume, Youtube Insight provides great demographic data regarding the people who’ve viewed your videos. If most of the views for your video come from embedded views on your video you can also easily cross reference the Insight data with the any other stats you collect.

Tubemogul for video analytics

My last tip is also related to video:
Tubemogul, an excellent video syndication platform, has a nice analytics panel for following cross domain video campaigns that they make available to free accounts as well. You’re welcome to learn more about what they do from the following video presentation I found on their homepage:

Measuring Social Media ROI – Not easy, but not impossible either

Indeed a 1-stop-shop for tracing and proving Social Media ROI is, as of now, still unavailable. But, if you’re prepared to invest a little extra time, you can piece together a pretty complete picture from the fragments that are available.

Does Microsoft have a LookingGlass up its sleeve?

As a final note, for those of you who remember, in September the web was all a-buzz about Microsoft’s LookingGlass which will supposedly finally answer the market’s need for a one-stop Social Media analytics panel. I Guess we’ll all just have to wait and see…

Epilogue

Funnily enough, an hour after publishing this post I found an excellent post by David Berkowitz that lists no less than 100 ways to measure social media. A day later I ran into a great post by Urs Gattiker of SocialMediaToday, that did an excellent job of analyzing why Social Media ROI analysis often fails and suggested a few point for planning strategy that helps avoid these pitfalls.

image credit: annia316

Twitter on the toilet?
What?!?

Yes, I know, it’s a pretty crass attempt at grabbing your attention, but if you’re reading this… hey, it worked. AND, I do have a point.

According to a recent article in eMarketer, people are “Going Social Anywhere and Everywhere”.

“…60% of Twitter users reported using only their computer to access the service, microbloggers are highly mobile, accessing social media from the washroom, the car, the theater and even during a religious service…”

They’re not just shamelessly updating their Facebook statuses, revealing more about themselves than you never wanted to know. They are doing it, literally, in the most uncanny of places.

The graphs included in the eMarketer article tells us where American social media users are accessing their accounts:

Where US Social Media Users Have Accessed Their Accounts

And in what situations:

Situations Where US Social Media Users Have Accessed Their Accounts

So what do we learn from these graphs?

Well, the high percentage of people accessing social media during work hours, particularly for those under 35, is obvious enough. What’s slightly less expected is the relatively large number of people doing the same from the washroom or toilet (second only to work).

Truly disturbing is the fact that a vast percentage of people are checking up on their social circle while driving (eyes on the road people!), and right after sex (is romance THAT dead?).

Priorities people!

Which leaves only one question, really, where are your priorities?
We’re definitely all for staying up-to-date with the social media scene, but really…

I guess the moral of the story is that people really like their social media, and there’s just never a time too personal nor too sacred, when they aren’t at least tempted to give it a peek…

Oh, and if you’re not already doing so, you should definitely start following us on Twitter @treepodia.