Welcome to My Blog

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Unriddled”: the HubSpot Marketing Blog’s mid-week digest of the tech news you need to know.

This week, we’re coming to you live from South by Southwest (SXSW), a festival of interactive events where we’re positively drowning in a sea of bots, music, and some of the best tacos around.

But fear not: if recent current events have you scratching your head and wondering, “What just happened?”, we’ve got you covered.

It’s our Wednesday tech news roundup, and we’re breaking it down with Amanda’s dance move of the week: none other than The Robot.

Unriddled: The Tech News You Need

1. SXSW Kicks off With Mixed Sentiments on Tech

In Austin, TX, the annual SXSW celebration of tech, film, and music kicked off with mixed sentiment and messaging around tech.

Each year, SXSW polls attendees for the Trust Barometer: a measure of how much faith the crowd has in things like media, institutions, business, and technology. And despite the interactive presence at the event, this year’s survey found that attendees have quite a low level of trust in emerging technology.

Attendees seem to have the lowest level of trust in blockchain technology, coming in at only 27%. That’s followed by autonomous vehicles at 33%, and the same percentage of attendees reporting trust in virtual reality (VR) platforms.

The Trust Barometer results for technology echo an overall key change in an outlook of technology that’s been discussed in several sessions at SXSW. According to certain expert panels, it seems that users are generally looking to revisit a more human element in the technology they use, from social media to smart speakers and digital assistants.

In the realm of social media, for instance, some predict that the trend is moving toward a greater emphasis on communities.

“Sometimes, it’s easier to share more intimately in a group,” said Facebook Product Design Manager Tutti Taygerly during a panel discussion — suggesting a move toward “smaller, more intimate social networks.” 

That suspected widespread need for more personal communication among consumers also came up during a panel discussion on the next wave of communication with technology like voice assistants and bots.

“What about emotional attachments?” asked moderator Shara Tibken, a senior reporter with CNET. “Do you see a day when these become our therapists, or our friends?”

“People do ask the bots if they’re a boy or a girl,” responded Dashbot co-founder and CEO Arte Merritt, adding that users also ask these technologies for their names, and whether or not they’re real.

People send images into these chatbots,” he continued. “It turns out people treated a weather bot like a person, and sent it pictures like it would to a friend.” 

2. Twitter’s CEO Held a Live Broadcast to Discuss the Network’s Health

As we reported in February, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets that the social network would be enlisting the help of outside experts to determine the relative health of Twitter. That decision, it seems, was largely a response to user demand for Twitter to resolve the use of its network to engage in negative, often hateful conversation on the platform. 

We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable towards progress.

— jack (@jack)
March 1, 2018

Last week, Dorsey and other leaders at Twitter took a further step in those efforts when they hosted a live stream to answer questions about the social network’s health.

Admitting that Twitter has taken on serious issues it must resolve, Head of Product Health David Gasca remarked that the network has to overcome them and examine health “in such a way that is public and accountable,” but goes beyond such basic figures as retweets and followers.

A conversation on #health https://t.co/Il8Mtx1JOs

— jack (@jack)
March 8, 2018

The live stream took place a day after Twitter issued a statement emphasizing that it would be taking measures to prevent cryptocurrency scams on its network, noting that it’s “aware of this form of manipulation.”

To address it, the statement said, Twitter will be able to detect certain “signals” that indicate an account might be engaging in this activity.

The live stream also coincided with the release of new research from MIT that found false news to be 70% more likely to be retweeted.

Dorsey noted that Twitter is likely to host future live streams on the topic. Check out our full coverage of this one here.

3. Messenger Could Be Issuing Updates to Emulate Snapchat (Again)

Over the weekend, messaging blog WABetaInfo released new information indicating that Facebook has plans for major changes to Messenger — which could include disappearing photos and videos. 

According to the post, the rumored update not only includes an overall new design and features like auto-translate, but also may allow users to send disappearing — or ephemeral — visual content.

Source: WABetaInfo

If true, this move would be the latest in a Facebook’s long history of attempting to emulate Snapchat’s features since its failed attempt to acquire the platform in 2013.

“The Facebook platform saturated the market with stories on its portfolio of products — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger,” said Connor Cirillo, HubSpot’s conversational marketing manager, when the story first broke. “And now, with its emphasis on things like video calls and filters, Messenger continues to push to be the way users build one-on-one relationships.”

The sentiment of Messenger being leveraged by individual consumers and brands alike has been echoed throughout SXSW during a number of conversations about the platform and how businesses are — and should be — using it.

“Over time,” said Niveus CEO and co-founder Tim Cutting during a panel discussion, bots should be built “so that it’s more of a dialogue back and forth.”

“Folks are letting this into their lives,” he continued. “It’s a train moving toward comfort, and feature, and benefit.”

4. Speaking of Snapchat … 

Last week, it was reported that the somewhat troubled ephemeral content app would be cutting over 120 engineers from its staff.

According to Reuters, the app’s parent company, Snap Inc., has a staff meeting scheduled for today to discuss a reorganization, as well as answering lingering employee questions.

Confirmation of the Snap layoffs totaling 120 and Hunter’s full email to employees here: https://t.co/8zE8smvKBT pic.twitter.com/L5LX6IAjZI

— Alex Heath (@alexeheath)
March 8, 2018

The announcement came after disappointing results and revenue a year after the company’s IPO. 

For many, the sustainable value or monetization potential for an app like Snapchat remains unclear. While it was a pioneer in the realm of ephemeral content — and certainly attracted the attention of Facebook, as per above — it’s lingered behind other social networks in terms of providing tools for analytics and measuring ROI for marketers and brands.

Discussions at SXSW also implied that it even causes some confusion for best use cases among consumers.

“One core problem on Snapchat is deciding what should be shared just with friends and family, and what should be public,” Taygerly said. “What is the demarcation between those two worlds?”

5. YouTube Will Add Information From Wikipedia to Conspiracy Videos

At a Tuesday night SXSW panel, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said the video-sharing platform will be adding topical information to videos about conspiracies.

The goal of this move is to provide additional information around controversial topics — the soure of which will be Wikipedia.

“When there are videos that are focused around something that’s a conspiracy,” Wojcicki said, “we will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event.”

There’s an issue, however: Wikipedia is thought by many to be a less-than-reliable source of information.

Its content is crowdsourced, and much of the time, entries can be edited by anyone without requiring citations. That’s one reason why, for example, when I was in graduate school, Wikipedia was not a permitted source of information for research.

But as Wired reporter Louise Matsakis pointed out, floating Wikipedia as a source of information isn’t new for Google.

but it’s important to note that Google has been pulling from Wikipedia in its search results for a long time now—this isn’t exactly radical from a Google company

— Louise Matsakis (@lmatsakis)
March 13, 2018

Information from the site is often used in featured snippets, or some of the highest-ranking pages in its search engine results. After all, here’s what a search for the query “moon landing” yielded:

It’s possible that YouTube could face a backlash from this move — but as for whether or not it will reconsider its sources of information for such content remains to be seen.

That’s all for today — but we’ll be at SXSW all week. While we’re here, feel free to weigh in on Twitter to ask us your tech news questions, or to let us know what kind of events and topics you’d like us to cover.

Every day, five billion YouTube videos are watched around the world. And they’re not just being watched — they’re being devoured. The average YouTube session by any one viewer is roughly 40 minutes, up 50% from the previous year, according to Omnicore.

If only there was a way to make money off of a website people spend so much time on. As a matter of fact, there is! A few ways, actually.

Who’s making content worthy of a nearly hour-long visit to youtube.com? Well, YouTube isn’t just for amateur filmmakers and people videotaping their zainy housepets anymore. Musicians, TV networks, small businesses, and the self-employed all find monetary value in posting their own amazing content on a YouTube channel.

An active, entertaining YouTube channel — which is free to make through a Google+ account (also free) — strengthens these users’ brands and extends their reach to new audiences. It can also build a base of subscribers that other companies using YouTube will actually pay to advertise their products to.

Before launching a YouTube channel for the purposes of making money, you need to decide what kind of profit you’re interested in. Are you looking to use YouTube as a promotional outlet for your own products and services? Or, do you want your video content to generate ad revenue right from YouTube?

Here’s a breakdown of both monetization strategies — plus a bonus strategy that content producers are increasingly considering as their YouTube channels become more popular.

1. Be an Advertiser

As an advertiser on YouTube, you’re populating your YouTube channel with video advertisements made by you. The difference between YouTube ads and, say, TV commercials, is that you get to show YouTube ads to more specific and often more engaged audience segments. You’ll pay YouTube to host your ads on other, highly watched YouTube channels that appeal to the same viewership you’re targeting.

The channels on which you host your video ads can range from big brands all the way to individual users who’ve made videos that are a hit with your audience.

When advertising on YouTube, you should know going in that you’re playing the long game. It can be scary to pay others for top video slots that don’t guarantee you’ll be seen by your ideal buyer — let alone get click-throughs to your website that you can convert into long-term customers.

But studies show these ads do pay off for advertisers during their time on YouTube: Those who see a TrueView ad (we’ll explain what those are in a second) are reportedly 10 times more likely to take the action prompted in the ad than the viewer would be on their own.

Here’s a rundown of your three advertising options on YouTube:

TrueView Ads

Got a great story to tell that also has a connection to your product? TrueView is for you. TrueView ads are your opportunity to create high-quality, longer creative spots that appear adjacent to the YouTube videos your target audience is already watching. These ads come in two forms: In-Stream and Discovery

In-Stream videos play right before the YouTube user’s selected video, “in the stream” of that chosen video. Users can opt to skip this video after five seconds of it playing, as shown below, and jump to their content. In-Stream ads can be between 12 seconds and six minutes in length.

Image by
Brian Carter

Discovery ads appear on the right sidebar of a selected video, just below the “Up Next” video as a suggested result. See how this one looks below.

Because of the time you’re allotted with this ad format, it’s suggested that you create this type of ad with the goal of views and brand development, rather than just clicks into your website. This ad ideally generates revenue from the long-term brand awareness that comes out of a story people don’t want to skip, and one viewers remember the next time they approach your product or service.

Both In-Stream and Discovery are pay-per-view — you pay YouTube a fixed rate for every view the ad receives — and their return on investment (ROI) can be measured in Google AdWords. YouTube tallies one new “view” after 30 seconds of watching, or a click on the video as it’s playing. If the video is less than 30 seconds, views are tallied from people who watch the entire ad.

We’ll explain how AdWords manages all three ad formats in a minute.

Preroll

Like In-Stream ads, Preroll ads play in the stream immediately before a user’s selected video. The difference is this ad type can’t be skipped after five seconds. These videos also run a maximum of 30 seconds, though YouTube recently confirmed it will limit advertisers to 15- and 20-second options starting this year.

Because viewing is required in this ad format, advertisers pay per click, so make the click worth it. A preroll ad with an enticing call-to-action that directs viewers to an appropriate landing or purchasing page on your website can be an enormous lead-generator for the sales team.

You can also leverage YouTube’s remarketing options, which enable you to send new videos back to users who’ve already engaged with your YouTube channel. If you’re a HubSpot user, and you’ve built smart forms for capturing new information on returning visitors, remarketing can be a terrific addition to an inbound marketing campaign.

This remarketing option helps you learn more about a person’s background and interests when they receive new videos that bring them to new landing pages.

Bumpers

Bumpers are the shortest ads you can buy. These six-second spots play just before a viewer’s selected video (like the above two options) but are best for brand awareness in the short breaks between long videos, or a YouTube playlist a user might be listening to in the background.

While they might be brief, YouTube found 90% of their bumper ads were remembered later by viewers. Bumpers are sold through cost-per-minute (CPM) bidding, which means you pay for every 1,000 plays of your ad on YouTube. They’re best used as a compliment to a TrueView ad campaign.

So how do you track the performance of these three video ad formats? Once you’ve created a YouTube channel and uploaded your video content, you can open a Google AdWords account and link it to your video campaign. In AdWords, select the campaign type, ad format, your budget, and to whom and where to show each video on YouTube.

You can target very specific audiences, and track the conversion rate of each video individually to see how much business (and revenue) you’re driving. See this blog post to learn more about this process.

2. Be an Advertising Platform

If advertising is a marathon, the next two strategies are a sprint … sort of. When you think about how to make money on YouTube, you’re probably thinking of the following options. In this case, you’re the one getting paid to host others’ advertisements — the other side of the YouTube advertising relationship.

Keep in mind that while turning your videos into ad space can make money more quickly and directly, it requires more heavy lifting on your part to make a decent profit.

Here are your main options:

YouTube Partner Program

The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) allows the website’s most successful YouTube channels to monetize their content by serving ads made and paid for by other YouTube users.

The criteria for this program — which changed in 2018 — requires that your channel has reached 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 channel subscribers in the last 12 months. Once you have passed these two milestones, you can apply to join the program through the following steps:

• At the top-right of the YouTube homepage, click your account icon and select “Creator Studio.”
• On the left-hand side, click “Channel” and select “Status and features.”
• Under the box, “Monetization,” click “Enable.” Don’t be fooled if it says you’re already “Eligible” to the left; this just indicates there are no restrictions against you from trying to become a Partner.
• You’ll be asked to agree to the YPP Terms. Do so, and you’ll then sign up for an AdSense account so you can receive revenue through your monetized YouTube account.
• Set your ad hosting preferences and follow the prompts to submit your channel for review.

YouTube typically emails you a decision on whether they’ve accepted you into the YPP within a week of applying, so sit tight. Still trying to hit the right watch hours and channel subscribers? Keep in mind you should be posting prolifically — having just one or two videos on your channel that you’re personally proud of won’t cut it.

By publishing multiple videos a week, you can build your viewership, qualify for YPP, and make decent cash. YouTube splits ad revenue 55-45 with its partners — 45% to Google, 55% to you. That means an advertiser who invests $200 in serving ads on your channel can bring you $110 for your videos’ real estate.

Affiliate Links

As an affiliate, there is no eligibility requirement — you’re taking advertising into your own hands. This is a great option for YouTube channels that offer reviews and how-to’s, and frequently recommend new products to its viewers.

Turn those suggestions into paid (but natural) product placements in the description section of your video, as shown below:

Image via Authority Hacker

Working as an affiliate of various brands can make you money — albeit usually less than a YouTube Partner campaign — each time that company makes a sale off a link you post on one of your videos. In this case, you’re earning revenue from the company of which you are an affiliate, rather than from YouTube and its advertisers.

Start by joining an affiliate network through sites like Click Bank or Amazon’s Affiliate Program, and follow the signup instructions. Keep in mind that each program takes a different percentage of a sale as commission, and your success is still tied to the popularity of your YouTube channel.

Bonus: Fan-Fund Your YouTube Channel

What exactly is fan-funding? It’s exactly what it sounds like: viewers donate money to your channel if they find your content enjoyable.

It’s the perfect option for videos managed by charities and nonprofits, but even for-profit businesses and independent creatives can publish videos and YouTube Live streams that encourage contributions from their audience. Streaming platforms such as Twitch.tv, which webcasts video games and general interest content, sees accounts that are two years or older make $80 in “tips” per year on average.

Twitch.tv’s most popular users make thousands.

Obviously YouTube and Twitch have different users, but YouTube has just as many loyal channel subscribers who would likely pay for exclusive rewards and content. On YouTube, sign up for Fan Funding to allow viewers of a live stream to tip through a chat window associated with the video.

YouTube calls them Super Chats, shown on a mobile device below:

You can also sign up for Patreon, which allows you to launch membership-only video channels through YouTube at a small fee per month for regular rewards. Just imagine how much a YouTube channel could generate if it has the 1,000 subscribers required by the YPP. Charge $1 for a new channel with new content, and you could be looking at a solid monthly revenue stream.

There’s no shortcut to well-earned cash money, even on YouTube. The good news is video is taking up an increasingly wide slice of global internet bandwidth, and there are numerous ways to produce video content that’s good enough for people to pay for.

In the world of social media marketing, the word “engagement” gets thrown around a lot, but few brands actually know how to achieve it.

Brands might pursue the low-effort game of tweeting, ‘gramming, feeding Facebook, and Linkedin-ing updates about products, services, and educational content, but see little engagement.

Engagement just isn’t easy to produce. You have to be, well, engaging. In your business niche, the “like my page” approach probably isn’t going to be effective as you’d like.

Let’s look at ideas that could make you a force to be reckoned with. I’ve organized them into an AEIOU list. (I want to call it an acronym, but how would you pronounce the five vowels?)

A is for Ask

The best way to engage someone is to ask a question. “How are you?” and “How’s it going?” are popular options in conversion, but too dull for social media warfare.

“What’s your name?” probably won’t work and “What’s your email?” might come off as a bit too forceful. How about …

“What do you think?” Yes! That’s a winner.

People like to think things through. They like to hear from other thinkers. Certainly, they want other people to know what they think. Try prompting your audience with one of the following “What do you think?” strategies:

• Probe their personality. Post a question that invites people to share their opinion or weigh in on something.
• Play the “test your knowledge” game. It’s irresistible.
• Post a poll. It’s easy to create polls on Twitter and Facebook. In addition to engaging your followers, you stand to learn meaningful things about them too.
• Respond to my email. Email from brands are bound to ask you to click-through to read, watch, and try or buy something, but how often do they simply ask you to write back? I find this this be an enormously engaging strategy and have seen it work for my brand and many others. Notice I wrote, “Respond to my email,” not “our email” or “this email.” A human-to-human first person approach will be the engaging way to call this play.
• Just ask. Interactivity 101: simply post a question. Whether done so in a social stream, blog post, online group or community, or on a Q&A site such as Quora, I’ve witnessed asking followers relevant, provocative, and timely questions creates some of the most engaging and thought-provoking social media activity of all.

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Personality quizzes have been red-hot engagement magnets for years on Buzzfeed, and it’s easy to create them to promote your brand with a template-based tool such as ShortStack.

Nice going AARP. “Test Your Beatles Trivia Knowledge” engaged me, but you could have asked a few easier questions. I went 0–for-8 (and I’m a huge Fab Four fan).

This simple Twitter poll from Airbnb does a great job of engaging followers without any fancy tools.

E is for Expression

“E” is for “expression” because of the way social and mobile have collided, making the ubiquitous smartphone a personal expression machine.

It doesn’t matter how you create content. The camera might be front or rear facing. Audio might be on or off. Filters, emojis, stickers and so forth may be applied or not. Posts may be permanent or self-destructing. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Smartphone apps enable people to express themselves every which way, and so they do.

Here are a few ways you can encourage your audience to create content featuring your brand:

• Hash it out. The hashtag has become the click-to-connect ticket for bonding with like-minded people. When you put something of interest out there, do a little hashtag research first, or hash out a unique phrase that reflects your brand. Hit that # key, and invite your followers to jump in and hashtag content related
• Conduct media upload contests. Many social media fans adore Instagram and Facebook contests, and are especially engaged in the types that involve shooting and sharing original photos and videos. Contests may call for other forms of self-expression as well, such as: recipes, recordings, illustrations, poems, essays, and more.
• Rally reviewers. Thanks to pioneers like Amazon and Yelp, reviews, ratings, and testimonials have been baked into the fabric of ecommerce selling spaces and beyond.
• Showcase customers, partners and employees. Provided you’re doing something people like, consider creating advocacy programs featuring customers, partners and employees to catalyze your community, amplify your voice, and engage newcomers by giving them a platform to express themselves.

Let’s take a look at an example:

#KajabiHero is an impressive example of customer advocacy at work. Satisfied customers happily endorse the “knowledge commerce platform,” and wear their t-shirts proudly. They’re rewarded with special features, links to their websites, and social media support.

I is for Incentive

I’ve mentioned numerous forms of interactive content, some of them competitions, but have yet to introduce the term “gamification.” People like to play games, compete, keep score, and most of all, win.

Satisfy your audience’s competitive spirit by featuring compelling incentives in your promotions. As incentives go, valuable prizes loom largest, but you may be surprised how even small rewards prove to deliver a sizable lure.

I swept through a post that features 37 Facebook contest ideas to inspire fans to bond with your brand in an effort to extract some ideas you can use to encourage people to get involved.

The entry form on this promotion by Michigan’s Friendship Circle explains, each person who casts a vote for their favorite pair of hand-drawn Converse All Stars will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a free pair of the winner. The winning shoe was subsequently reproduced and sold as a fundraiser.

O is for Offer

Your engagement strategy doesn’t need to be interactive or gamified 100% of the time. Your brand can engage customers and prospects the old fashioned way, with attractive offers such as:

• Instant coupons and discounts
• Membership clubs (example below)
• Pick your discount promotions
• Free shipping

The link in Pura Vida Bracelet’s Instagram bio invites you to “join the Pura Vida Club.” BTW, the brand’s Instagram feed (1 million followers) bubbles over with joyous photos, mostly from customers, engaging questions, challenges, posts about charitable causes, and conversations.

Experiment with different types of offers to discover what your customers best respond to.

Facebook makes it easy to promote offers. A flavor of the Facebook ad portfolio is the “offer ad.” Offer ads can be redeemed online and/or be saved by Facebook fans to be redeemed in-store.

A help page from Facebook offers the following best practices:

• Make discounts substantial. Offers with free items or with discounts of at least 20% off will reach more people.
• Use an engaging image. Photos of people using a product often perform better than photos of a product by itself, and both generally perform better than logos.
• Set an expiration date. Give people a few days to discover and claim an offer and allow time for your offer to be shared among friends. The ideal length of an offer is 7 days.
• Promote your offer: After creating an ad for your offer, pin it to the top of your Page to help it get noticed.

U is for Utility

Engagement and utility are close friends on the web today.

Data from a research report about interactive contact from Content Marketing Institute and ion interactive reveals the top two reasons for using interactive content are (1) educating the audience and (2) engagement. 

A major majority of savvy B2B marketers put utility at the forefront of their content marketing programs. Useful content created to engage prospective customers could include tools, blog posts, video, infographics, downloadable guides, mini-courses, helpful email sequences, webinars, and much more.

Above is a LinkedIn ad from ConnectWise Automate that offers what appears to be a highly useful guide to help vendors price their IT services.

The ad is the pitcher… and here’s the catcher: a highly engaging and smartly designed landing page.

I love the question style headline, the directional cues, the 1/2/3 infographic vignette, the very cool bonus offer (a calculator), and the nicely designed form.

Utilitarian marketing ideas work offline too—and for any size company or individual.

I love the story from Jay Baer’s book Youtility about Taxi Mike. Jay calls an enterprising taxi driver he encounters a “one man Trip Advisor.” The driver created the Taxi Mike Dining Guide (above) and updates it regularly to handout to his passengers.

How will you AEIOU engagement with your brand?

A quick review:

(A) Asking Questions

(E) Invoking Expression

(I) Providing Incentives

(O) Making Offers

(U) Delivering Utility

I hope you found these ideas and examples useful — and engaging.