One of the things I like about Facebook is that the free widget “Facebook Fan Box” that makes it easy to keep your website always fresh.

Yfrog Widget is a Showstopper for Photos and Video

Now Yfrog, the Twitter photo and video sharing platform offers a free customizable widget that will update your Webpage any time you stream video or take photos and sharethem on twitter with YFrog.

The delicious user interface for creating the Yfrog widget allows users to customize the shape of the widget and colour it to seemlessly plug in and match your Web site.

Each video or photo posted to Yfrog shows up in a live stream along with your comment and clicking on the Widget brings you to the full version of the photo or video as hosted at the site.

How to know if YFrog’s Widget is for you:

• looking for an easy way to keep your Website always fresh
• enjoy taking photos and video on a regular basis
• photos and video would help your ideal client appreciate something special about your business.
• You use twitter regularly
• have a mobile device that captures photos and video
• you have a healthy disdain for Facebook and wouldn’t dream of putting a Facebook Widget on your site.

What do you think? Is it important to have an always fresh Website?

Nielsen Company says mobile TV adoption is growing rapidly with 17.6 million Americans using smartphones to view video in the last quarter of 2009 (that is almost a year ago), up 57% year over year.  The average face-in-phone time watching video averaged three hours and 37 minutes per month (or about seven minutes per day).

According to Pew,  in a blog post researchers found “85 percent of Americans over the age of 18 own a mobile phone, and that a staggering 96 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 “own a cellphone of some kind.”  Expect most of these folks to be able to view video on their phone when they upgrade their handhelds over the next few years.

According to the NY Times, in a report released Friday,  market research firm Gartner predicts that tablet devices used to access media will reach sales of 19.5 million units in 2010.  Gartner also predicted that sales of these handheld video-oriented devices would reach a staggering 150 million units by 2013.

While the mobile viewing bubble is a few years off, it’s time to consider what your Web presence will look like on a phone or 3G connected tablet device when handheld video comes of age.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn

With most savvy tourism businesses starting to look seriously at video, a question I frequently get from tourism operators is How long should my promotional video be?

When considering video length it is best to measure time in seconds rather than minutes.  After 2 minutes, 60% of people have tuned out!

The best answer to the question “How long should your promotional video be?” has more to do with how long is your audience willing to pay attention, than with how long it will take you to get your point across.

90 – 180 seconds is all the time you get to get your message across with video.

A recent study by Visible Measures looked at 40 million different videos which have over 7 billion combined views to produce the veiwer abandonment chart below. All videos were less than 5 minutes long.

Less is More – Get to the Point
In order to keep as many viewers as possible make sure your video starts with your best stuff. According to Visible Measures, 20% of viewers abandon video within 10 seconds.
It is possible to tell your story in 90-100 seconds, but you may need to look outside your organization and your editing skillset in order to tell your story in less time. Just because the video is short, doesn’t mean your tourism business or association should give video less attention. In fact, with all the video available to folks on the Web, making a high quality short promotional video can have a huge impact on viewer retention for the entire video.

It is better to produce three two minute videos with targeted, tight story-telling than it is to produce one 6 minute promotional video. Get to the point quickly, hit your viewer with your best shots and leave the rest on the cutting room floor.

The viewers have spoken.

Google Maps has neatly integrated photos and videos that have been geotagged.  If users take the time to put their media on the map when uploading, Google Maps users are provided with links to your media!

Hey, it just takes an extra minute to properly tag you photos with map information.  You are already tagging your photos with compelling titles and keyword tags, right?

TripAdvisor’s TripWow is a little over the top, but the idea of helping travelers create embeddable multimedia is a great one for the travelers.
The promise: Create a Slide Show that will make your friends go “Wow”.

The benefits for TripAdvisor – click throughs to TripAdvisor destination pages via keyword-laden hyperlinks to kickstart the travel planning process for TripWow slideshow viewers. Interestingly, the terms of use for the TripWow widget prohibit users from disassembling the widget and removing the keyword hyperlinks. The secondary benefit for TripAdvisor is some serious keyword SEO for TripAdvisor destination pages.

If growing traffic is your aim, make it easy for visitors to create and share media
If I was in the travel information archiving business (travel review sites, destination marketing organizations and travel associations), I’d forgo the development of my own platform and work with a company like Animoto to help folks create travel videos that more effectively focus on the photos of the traveler, with embedded music tracks.

A custom branded version of Animoto would create greater interest in your travel information site while adding a small revenue stream for Animoto, perhaps leading to the DMO, travel association or travel information site to pay for the higher resolution services of Animoto’s great travel promotion tool – making it free for travelers to create and share media promoting your website.

I’d also make sure that it was easy to geotag the photo sets and create a similar mapping graphic as shown in TripAdvisor’s TripWow tool part of the show. TripAdvisor’s map owes it’s inspiration to the likes of Indiana Jones, and the maps work well but frankly speaking, most of the other graphic elements of the video take attention away from the trip photos.

I am a fan of the social media tools that pop out from the right side of the videos. They make it easy to share the media by Twitter, Facebook and making the media easy to embed. The Video branding and destination keyword links are sure to drive serious page views for TripAdvisor.

TripWow’s bow is perhaps the inspiration you need to get into providing media production tools like this with a partner who has demonstrated expertise in creating Wow video that focuses on user generated photos and video. Page views are sure to follow.

The idea of charging a fee for video and audio from conferences and events is old, and comes from the days of charging for tapes of presentations as a way of boosting revenue from live events.  Those days are over.

Today, sitting in little old South River, Ontario, Canada I’m watching the live streaming event LeWeb from Paris France – for free.  Not everyone can afford to travel to conferences and not everyone can attend your event each year.  By letting participants peak into your conference on their computer, you build your event reputation, entice future attendees and earn fans far beyond the walls of your event.

Events like LeWeb and Web 2.0 Conference put some of the brightest lights in the tech industry on stage for their audience and give away the content. These events gain a wide audience and inspire people to consider attending in person and make it more enticing for presenters to offer their services at little or no cost.

These events and others like Phocuswright Conference for Tourism Industry earn income by providing a stage for start-ups to showcase their businesses.  Unlike others, Phocuswright charges a fee for access to streaming and on-demand video.  This insulates conference content from those who don’t pay for access, and offers less exposure for the people and businesses that take the stage.

Growing your brand exposure by giving away the proceedings, earns free promotion for your event from people “Outside the Walls” who:

• tweet about happenings with your hash tags (even though they are not there)
• broadcast the news and info and crediting your event
• tell others about what they learn
• blog about ideas they see and hear
• link back to your event
• attend future events

In this regard your event might consider moving the cost of video production from an expense that will produce income (selling access to video from your event) to a Public Relations and Promotions expense that will grow future attendance at your events.

Ask Yourself: How can I extend my brand and involve people who can’t be here?

Why Live Streaming your Event is a no brainer:

Audience members can stream your event themselves today for FREE.  Apple yesterday approved the Ustream Live Broadcaster application for iPhone.  Now anyone with an iPhone 3G can  live stream video straight from the iPhone to the Ustream Web site.  That video can be embedded in other Web pages for free.  When audience members are holding up their phones, they are no longer just snapping photos, but sending video of your conference or event to others on the Web.

The Ustream.tv Live Broadcasting app works on both 3G cell phone connections as well as Wi-Fi.  It supports audience interaction with chatroom messaging and polling of viewers and allows uploading video to Youtube and Facebook.  Ustream Live is available in the iTunes store for FREE here

Other apps like Qik Video for iPhone (and other smartphone devices) has submitted its app for approval to the iTunes store as well.  This app permits instant updates of Video broadcasting via Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

All information is already free. The information attendees gather from your event will be publically available around the world before your speakers even step off stage.  There is virtually no information that Google can’t provide, but for the sake of a couple of keystrokes.

Information presented at your event is already old. The Web is changing so quickly that information has a “Best Before” date stamped on it that expires before the signs are taken down and the stage is packed away.

If they can get it for free, why would anyone come to your event?

The truth is, most people don’t come to your event for the conference proceedings and presentations.  They come to socialize with other attendees and presenters.  The biggest value you bring to attendees is the opportunity to build face to face relationships.  If your event doesn’t gain renown for the face to face interactions that take place in between presentations, you have a bigger problem than ubiquitous live streaming video.

photo credit: kitcowan

Apple announces iPod Nano and iTunes Upgrades

Apple transformed the marketing of tourism when the iPhone became the connected device of choice among digital travelers. Today, Apple announced a number of new enhancements to iTunes and their most importantly the Apple iPod nano music device.

iPod Nano – Video

iPod Nano, the small little music player that fits into the smallest of Christmas stockings will bring video into the hands of everyone. Last year I wrote about how the Flip Video camera could be an important tool for getting video to market your tourism business.

The current Flip Video has 4 gigabytes of memory.

The new iPod nano will record video on a flash drive with up to 16 gigabytes for less than $200!

Couple that with a device that is syncs with your computer via iTunes and has one click upload to Youtube capability and you are making it easier than ever for anyone to create and share video.

The device will clearly be marketed to youth – it has no still camera capability, nevertheless, there are important implications for travel and tourism businesses.

With Video on iPod Nano, Video will be Ubiquitous

91% of people who have cell phones have them with them within arms reach 24 hours a day. Stats aren’t available on how in-touch people are with their Flip Video camera, but its a safe bet that they have their portable music player a lot closer, a lot more often (most are iPods of course).

What that means: It will be as convenient for iPod nano owners to shoot video as it is for cell phone users to make phone calls.

Get it?

iPod Nano spurs questions for Tourism

iPod Nano announcement means it’s time for a few important questions the tourism industry needs to start thinking about (if you aren’t already):

• How are you going to encourage your guests to share video that inspires other travelers?
• How are you going to monitor social media for video representation of your region, property or experience?
• How can you include the needs of digitally connected travelers to make sharing of content easier? Think wifi and power needs. (Please tell me you are still not charging for wifi access?)

What questions come to mind for your region or business?

Links:

• Get video from your guests
• Flip Video & social media post

Video featuring Todd (3 minutes): How Facebook makes it super simple to keep your Web site fresh:

• Facebook Fan Boxes.
• Status updates.
• Handheld instant publishing and sharing of photos.
• Tagging people in your fan club photos.