At Soul Arch Media we’ve been busy creating a series of area guides for each suburb on the Gold Coast that we’ll be releasing in parts over the next few months over on our sister site, Goldcoastvideo.com
GoldCoastvideo.com is a video guide to Gold Coast’s attractions, business, events and services, featuring videos that Soul Arch Media has created for our Gold Coast video production clients across relevant industries. (We don’t charge clients extra to be featured on GoldCoastvideo.com, it’s all just part of our service.)
We’ve embedded here the first of these video area guides to be launched – take a peak at our video tours of Burleigh Heads, Currumbin, and Nobby’s Beach.
The Burleigh Heads video area guide takes in the gorgeous foreshore walks, beaches and colourful shops in Burleigh’s town centre. Currumbin’s video guide takes viewers on a journey from ocean to rainforest with Currumbin’s rock pools and rock slide, Currumbin Alley and Elephant rock all featuring heavily. Meanwhile the video area guide for Nobby’s Beach takes in the eclectic array of cafes and stores found just metres from the beach.
All videos feature some of Gold Coast’s finest up-and-coming bands, and are hosted by Soul Arch’s resident presenter, Cassandra Nevin. We’ll be launching more from this series in coming weeks – let us know what you think, and which suburb you’d like to see next!
At Soul Arch Media we often have video production clients baulk at the thought of using Youtube to promote their videos as they don’t like the thought of all the advertising and the ‘related videos’ that pop up after each video, however it’s actually pretty easy these days to switch these functions off or pause them.
If you want to know how to stop Youtube showing ‘related videos’ after yours has finished, or you don’t want pesky ads from your competitors to show up on your Youtube channel, here’s a few step by step instructions to help.
For Embedded Youtube Videos
If you’re planning to embed the video somewhere else, like your blog or website, go to the ‘share’ button beneath the video.
Click on “Embed” and you’ll see an embed code.
Below it there’s a row of adjustments that can be made – the first being “Show Suggested Videos When The Video Finishes”. Make sure this box is unchecked – you will need to manually uncheck it. There’s also the ability here to select the size of the video player you embed and other great options to. If you’re unsure of any of the choices simply leave them in their default settings.
For Videos On Your Youtube Channel
Unfortunately you can’t just switch off Youtube’s default “related videos” function on your Youtube channel, but you can delay the related videos from playing for several minutes so viewers are highly unlikely to see them!
To do so, sign in to your YouTube channel.
Next, up in the top right corner click on your channel’s name and a dropdown will appear. Click “Video Manager”. Select the video you’d like to work on first, then click “Edit”
Along the top bar above the video player select the “Annotations” option.
On your right you’ll see a button that says + Add Annotation. Click it then from the dropdown menu select “Pause”
Below the video player you’ll see a screen that allows you to select the length of the pause by dragging the red ‘bar’- push it out to a nice lengthy time, like two minutes pause. If you have difficulties with the drag bar, you can also manually set the pause length at the “Start” and “Duration” boxes to the right of the video player.
At the top right select Save and then Publish.
Stop Advertising Showing Alongside Your Youtube Videos
If you’d also like to work out how to turn off ads that pop up on your Youtube channel, there’s a super easy checkbox that will allow you to do this.
First, sign in to your YouTube channel. Next, up in the top right corner click on your channel’s name and a dropdown will appear. Click “Settings”
At the bottom of the page under the header of ‘Advertising’ you’ll see a check box that allows you to select “ Do not allow advertising to be displayed alonside my videos”. Go up to the top right corner and select the “Save” button, and you’re done! Now you don’t need to feel like this guy…
How To Permanently Add Video To Your Facebook Business or Fan Page
Adding video to your Facebook Business or ‘Fan’ Page to show up in your status or news updates is very straight forward (Simply paste the video’s URL in the page’s status box, or to upload select the ‘Photo/ Video’ option and follow the prompts).
But what if you’d like to display a video that stays visible long-term, and doesn’t get lost or buried after a few new posts?
With Facebook’s new “Timeline” format options aren’t as plentiful as they used to be, but you can still display videos on a custom page through the use of a few helpful apps described below.
Adding the Youtube For Pages App
If you’ve got several videos already loaded onto Youtube that you’d like to display on your Facebook page, the app ‘Youtube For Pages’ can help you display all the videos on your Youtube channel. If you choose, it can also automatically update the page with any new videos you add to your Youtube channel.
*Go to your Facebook page. You’ll see the tabs section on your top right hand side – there’s an arrow you can click on to show all the tabs you currently have in use.
* Find a blank tab- you can click on the ‘Plus’ box in the top right corner.
You’ll see a drop down that says ‘Add to favorites’ and the choice of available tabs, such as Videos, Notes or Groups.
*To add a Youtube tab, select the ‘Find More Apps’ option at the bottom.
A page will open up with popular apps. From the menu on the left hand side under web apps click on ‘Photos and Video’ and scroll down to find the ‘Youtube For Pages’ app, or simply type ‘Youtube For Pages’ in the search bar across the top of the page and select it. Once you’ve clicked on the app icon, you’ll see a new window – select “I want to Install Youtube”
*You’ll be asked to add Youtube for Pages, and a drop down menu of the pages you’re an admin for will be displayed. Select the page you’d like to add the Youtube App to, and then confirm the page when prompted by selecting ‘Add Youtube for Pages’.
*On the next page, confirm again by selecting ‘Go To App’ – you can skip the next lot of permissions if you choose.
*Once the app has been installed, go back to your page and click on the Youtube icon on the Page Apps (top right corner). You’ll then see a page that gives you an option to ‘click here to configure this tab’. Go on to configure the tab.
*Add your company name and contact phone number, plus a tick box to accept the terms of service.
* Fill in just the name of a YouTube user or channel (i,e, from “youtube.com/involverchannel” use only “involverchannel”.
*Select ‘Import Uploads’ or if you’d prefer not to add all the videos on the channel, you can choose ‘Import Favourites’ (simply go back over to Youtube and make sure the videos you’d like to import are in your favourites list, and delete any favourites you don’t want shown.)
*There’s also the option to select which video is the featured video, although in the free version of the app it’s limited to the first or last video in your favourites list. If you’d like any new videos you add to this favourites list to be syndicated here as well, tick the yes option under “Syndication & Accessibility’. Free account updates occur once per day.
Other Video App Options
There’s also the regular Youtube or Youtube Box apps, and even apps for other services like Ustream and other video sharing services. You can find them by searching for apps as described above.
Once you’ve selected the app you’d like to add, if you are using Facebook as your business page you may be directed to use Facebook as your personal profile. Don’t worry, you’ll get an opportunity to select your page later, so select “Continue as…[personal name]” option.
The App page will open- look for the ‘manage page’ option at the top right of page. If you don’t see an option to add videos, up in the top right corner look for an icon that looks like a queen and spade. Hover over this icon and you’ll see a drop down menu that lists the option to ‘Edit Applications’. Click on it and all your Apps will pop up – select the “Edit’ option on the Video App you have selected.
Uploading Videos Directly To Your Facebook Page Tab
If you don’t already have your videos on a service like Youtube or would prefer to upload directly, you’re also in luck.
*Select ‘Videos’. A tab will then show up with a film strip icon with ‘Videos’ written underneath. Click on it and you’ll see a pencil icon in the top right corner – click on this if you’d like the tab to swap places with other more prominent tabs.
*To add videos, click on the movie strip icon. A blank page will show up with a ‘+Add Videos’ button in the top right corner – click on it.
The page will then give you an option to upload a video file, or record video. Click on ‘choose file’ to locate video on your computer.
NB> Videos need to be under 1.024 MB and under 20 minutes in length.
As with anything on the ever-changing world Facebook, these steps outlined above were current at the time of writing but are subject to change – let us know if you come across any updates or changes we should add!
Infographic of Online Video consumption. Click on image to see larger version.
If there’s been any doubt to the rise of online video viewing in recent years, here’s an easy-to-digest series of charts and graphs showing that online video viewing has experienced another massive jump in volumes of videos watched over 2011/2012.
This infographic released by Marketing Mag outlines the online video viewing habits for Australia current August 2012 and is based on figures sourced from three different studies – the comScore Media Metrix (Apr 2012), the Neilson Australian Consumer Report 2012 and the Unruly Media Social Ad Effectiveness study 2012.
While the total amount of unique new viewers only increased 20%, the amount of videos watched increased by 93% to over 2 billion while the hours spent watching video per viewer also jumped 91% compared to the year prior. In short, there’s a lot more people watching greater amounts of online video. The interesting thing is the breakdown of topics they’re interested in. Entertainment leads the way (10.7 million unique viewers), but if you added together the corporate (10.6 million unique viewers), promotional ( 6.6 million unique viewers) and services (6.1 million unique viewers) you’d have a pretty solid case that there’s a lot of people out there interested in researching brands and products… What are you doing to put yourself in front of this audience? If you’re in business might be high time to investigate online video … Sign up for our free newsletter for regular online video tips and news from Soul Arch Media. Based in South East Queensland or Northern NSW? Call our Gold Coast video production team for tips and advice for online video content on 07 55595551
At Soul Arch Media we focus on promoting our video production services, but the marketing arm of our business also handles PR, copy writing and press release preparation for small start ups right through to international brands.
While our larger clients have healthy budgets and can afford to have releases distributed via reputable newswire services to media outlets, many smaller clients rely on emailing releases out to media contacts. This limits a releases’ effectiveness as many journalists receive upwards of a hundred press releases per day, and barely scan email headlines before clicking the delete button. Personalized pitches to journalists work a lot better, but this method is more time consuming and therefore a lot more expensive to undertake.
To maximise the life of their releases, I often upload them to a variety of low cost or free press release distribution services. There’s literally hundreds out there, but some have proven to be a lot more effective than others.
When we first started experimenting on pushing small business releases out via free press release distribution services about six or seven years ago, we discovered issuing an online press release was an amazingly cheap and effective way to announce business news while building links. You can still send the release directly to your contacts and distribute it online to relevant industry associations and press, but an online release is also invaluable for inserting direct links back to your website as well as insert your targeted keywords (in our instance Gold Coast Video Production, Gold Coast Online Marketing etc ) throughout the release, so once posted on online news sources it also helps raise your website’s SEO.
Many clients are still getting solid web traffic from releases we posted for them online six years ago – not bad for minimal investment!
Of the hundreds of sites out there that we’ve trialled over the years, only a handful are worth bothering with. Here’s a rundown of seven popular low cost or free press release distribution services:
1888PressRelease.com – Does have ad-supported free press release distribution options, but to insert any real links or gain visibility you’ll need to opt for paid services that range from $14-$250 plus, and not as effective as others we’ll tried. Still, not bad!
www.pr-inside.com – This site is European and has a reasonable ad-supported free press release distribution option. The cool thing about this site is they don’t try and upsell you to paid distribution like most other sites, but it’s fairly basic.
www.24-7pressrelease.com – Offers a free press release distribution option that’s actually pretty good, but limited to one website link in contact details box and limited distribution, so not overly helpful for spreading news, building links or SEO unless you select paid options. Free releases are ad supported.
www.prbuzz.com - This site used to offer a free option but now only offers annual packages. If your business sends out frequent releases this site is a reasonably-priced paid option, but very basic.
www.pitchengine.com – One of the newer players with a great free option, we just love the clean and sleek modern layout of this site. Big fan of the functionality – you can add all your social media links, add photo galleries and video to your press release. It’s pretty awesome to look at, the drawback is it’s traffic seems fairly low compared to other sites, plus it’s not a distribution site so doesn’t push your release out there to news sites and online news sources like the others. So very hip, but not as likely to spike traffic or get your phone ringing.
www.prlog.org – PR Log is the most effective free press release distribution site we’ve found. Their free option allows you to add links and photos, add video press releases or embed company videos, and even build a press room. Sure, it’s ad supported so doesn’t look as pretty as some of the paid sites, but it delivers good traffic and syndication to news networks for free. You can see a handful of releases we’ve published for clients here: http://pressroom.prlog.org/CazSoulArc/
www.prweb.com – Another complete step up in standards again is PR Web, which delivers in ways ALL the free sites can only dream about. It’s still very reasonably priced (packages from around $89) but is hands down the best bang for buck of any of the paid options we’ve used for any of our clients, large or small. Their news syndication network will catapult your release onto places like Google, Yahoo News and Bing, and as they’re a respected source of news ( many of the free sites often get a bit spammy) you’ll find your release syndicated across the web in places you’d never imagined. Plus your release doesn’t get lost in a myriad of ads from your competitors – this is a premium service with a polished look and delivery. It’s affordable and easy to use, yet light years ahead of anything else out there in the low cost bracket in terms of visibility, results, media reach, and SEO capabilities, so well worth the cost if you’re serious about getting your company news out there to the world. Like many services based in the US, many of the media contacts are in North America, but as it’s a truly international site we’ve found it’s still very effective for our Australian and New Zealand-based clients. In fact we’d go as far to say if you can afford a little extra for paid online release distribution, don’t bother with any other service listed here – PR web offers the best value and best results.
( To take a peek at what releases look like once published on their site, take a peek at this recent one posted by Byron Bay swimwear label Muther Of All Things here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/surf/swimwear/prweb9711258.htm )
If you’re interested in trying out PR Web to see results for yourself, as we’re an affiliate we’ve sourced a special discount credit to use towards your first trial. If you’re a newcomer to PR Web and like the look of some of their other packages, sign up today and get 10% off your first news release!
So there you have it. And keep in mind even the best press distribution can’t save a badly written press release. Contact Soul Arch Media today on 0755595551 if you need to prepare an online press release or video press release… And be sure to let us know how you go with any of the services above!
Caz is a seasoned journalist and copywriter and operates a boutique video production and PR content company called Soul Arch Media on the the Gold Coast, Australia, with her videographer husband, Dave Emge.
