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At the Content is King conference, Phil Scott, VP of the VP of the Consumer Digital Group of Kodak spoke about the transition that Kodak has made from photography to video. He presented the history of Kodak and a few dates caught my attention:

• 1975 – worlds first digital camera prototype was developed by Kodak
• 1997 – they created the world’s first 1.0 mega pixel camera.

He then went on to share some thoughts about online video and suggested that before we create our online video we need to start with is defining what success would look like in terms of the number of views and where we want the video to show up online e.g. YouTube, Facebook, in emails, your website, other sites

He shared his thoughts on what will increase the likelihood of increasing views of your online video – for this he suggested:

• be funny- though he comments that is hard
• be shocking – but do you want to associate your brand with this
• make it sexy
• use a contest
• be timely
• make it short – especially if you are sending the video in email.

You can find Kodak online and their links to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and their blog here. It wll be interesting to see if Kodak to take onboard ideas from their community.

Mark Tarbatt also shared with me on Twitter that Kodak also asked on their community on their blog and on Twitter  for ideas on what to name their digital camera – see the feedback here.

Colin Hetherington of Zoo Digital also shared some tips to help you optimise your video online incuding:

• using key words in your titles
• using key words in your tags
• sharing your video with friends to increase views
• share your video on many sites online.

I’d also add:

• make sure that your online video is relevant and brings value to your audience
• don’t over promote – most online videos that get high number of views are not sales piches for products and services
• ensure there is a call to action in your video – what do you want people to do or where do you want people to visit when they have watched your video online
• monitor your views – you might be as suprised (as I have been) where what you think will bet lots of views doesn’t, and a video that you think is not as interesting gets thousands of views.

What questions do you have about creating and distributing online video as part of your marketing mix? And who do you think has implemented online video effectively?

Additional Resources

Read about some recent European research about online advertising and the projected spend in 2010 here – it suggests that 33% of the advertisers report that they are increasing spending on online video advertising next year.