Friday, September 9, 2011

Embedding Channel with Specific Video Playing First

There is a way to embed your channel on your blog with a specific video playing first (instead of the first video in your channel), here are the exact steps:

1. While your ShortForm channel is playing on the Watch page at www.shortform.com/watch, click on the "Embed" button, and copy the embed code for your channel into a text application.
2. Go back to the Watch page, click on the thumbnail of the video in your channel that you want to start playing first in the widget, and copy the shortened URL of the video (shrt.fm/xxxxxx) under the "Share with Friends" section on the left-hand side of the page.
3. Paste the shortened URL into your browser's address bar, and press "Enter" on the keyboard. The original longform URL of the video (www.shortform.com/UserName/ChannelName/VideoName) will appear in your address bar. Copy the "/VideoName" part of the longform URL.
4. Paste the "/VideoName" into the embed code that you copied into the text application, between the "/ChannelName" and the "?". This altered embed code will play that specific video first in the widget. Copy that embed code into your Tumblr/Blogger/Typepad account and you're done!

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Channel Pitch to Bloggers

To get more views on your channel, you can focus your current channel or create another channel around a specific topic (skateboarding, animals, cooking, nature) and pitch your channel to relevant bloggers to ask them to embed your channel in the widget on their blogs.
By having a relevant video channel on their blogs, the bloggers would increase their users’ engagement and time on site, and it will give you channel views.
You can usually find the blogger’s email address or contact form in the “Contact” or “About” pages of the blog. Make sure to address the blogger by his/her first name when writing to them. A sample pitch is included at the bottom of the page.
For a list of the top blog sites on any topic, check out www.alltop.com, http://technorati.com/blogs/directory, http://blogs.botw.org, http://portal.eatonweb.com, and http://www.bloggernity.com.
You might also want to use www.compete.com to check that blog's monthly traffic and write to the ones that are neither too high (in the millions) nor too low (in the teens) in monthly traffic.
Our embeddable widget works on Tumblr, Wordpress.org (not Wordpress.com), Blogger, Typepad, and HTML webpages, so make sure that the blog you write to is built on one of those platforms.
Make sure that the first video in your channel is the most attractive or attention-grabbing, because when your channel is embedded, the thumbnail of the first video will be the one showing up on the webpage and you would want to make people click on it.
Our widget comes in all sizes and colors and can be embedded either in the blog's sidebar, in a blog post, or on a separate page of the blog. Usually, having your channel embedded on the blog’s sidebar is the most preferable because it will be exposed to more people.
Generally one out of every ten bloggers that you write to would write back, so don’t be discouraged by the response rate. If you do get a blogger to embed your channel on their blog, it’s a big win because it will drive views to your channel automatically every week! It’s called the “magic number” in sales.
If any of the bloggers responds, follow up immediately and follow their requests until they embed your channel on their blog. They might ask you for access to your ShortForm channel to add/rearrange the videos or change your channel name. Think of it as a business partnership in which you coordinate and cooperate with each other for the benefit of both! Email me after you have landed a blogger and you will get recognized.

Sample Pitch to Bloggers:

Subject: Put a channel of <Your channel’s topic> videos on <Name of the blog>!

Hi <First name of webmaster/blog editor>,

My name is <Your Name> and I’m an intern at ShortForm, a San Francisco-based web entertainment company that lets users curate YouTube videos into a video channel, and then embed the channel on their website to stream it continuously to their audience. You can read about us in the TechCrunch article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/31/video-curation-is-growing-up-shortform-hits-one-million-visitors.  

I have created a video channel on ShortForm about <Your channel’s topic>. Since <Name of the blog> is one of the most prominent blogs on <The blog’s topic>, I think that my channel’s content would complement your website perfectly! By embedding my channel on your website you will deliver relevant video content to your readers and increase your users’ engagement and time on site. I will regularly add new videos into my channel to ensure that it has the best content!

ShortForm's embeddable widget comes in all sizes and colors and you will be able to embed my channel in any part of your website. You can go here: “http://www.shortform.com/widget?current_channel=true&user_name=<YourVJName>” to see a preview of my embedded channel. To embed my channel onto your website, simply copy the HTML embed code on that page and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page.

Please let me know if you have any questions about embedding my channel on your website. If you would like, I can also give you access to my ShortForm channel so that you can add videos to it or change its name. I look forward to developing our blossoming partnership!

Thanks,

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Channel Promotion Tips

Part I. Content:

Adding the right videos to your channel matters. Pick videos that are recent and have not yet gone viral (1000-100,000 views) but have the potential to do so because their content is so compelling, rather than videos that have already gone viral (1,000,000+ views). Popscreen (www.popscreen.com), Devour (www.devour.com), YouTube Trends (http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com), Flixxy (www.flixxy.com), KnowYourMeme (http://knowyourmeme.com) are great places to find those viral videos.
You can use the URL shortener site Bit.ly (http://bit.ly) to track which videos in your channel are getting the most views and which websites your views are coming from. Create an account on Bit.ly, then copy the video URL from your browser's address bar into your Bit.ly account to shorten it into a Bit.ly URL (bit.ly/xxxxxx) and share that Bit.ly URL instead (which directs to the same video). You will be able to track that Bit.ly URL's clickthroughs in your Bit.ly account. Share a different video on a different website and you will be able to see which site is sending you the most views!
You can also see which videos in your channel are getting the most views, and which ShortForm users are viewing your channels the most by going to your Weekly Digest at http://www.shortform.com/users/digest

Part II: Sharing in the Comment Sections of Blogs/Forums

You can post the links of videos from your channel into the comment sections of relevant blogs and forums, so that readers of the blog would click on your link when they read the comments on the blog’s articles.
For example, if you have a video of a Ronaldinho soccer goal in your channel, start out by finding all the top soccer blogs/forums on the web. Then visit each of the blogs and post that video in the comment section of the blog's top stories. Write a comment that addresses the topic of the story and follow it up with your video link ("Haha yea that Beckham goal from last night's game was ridiculous, but this Ronaldinho goal shot is even better! <Link to Video>"). The more relevant and catchy you make your comment, the more likely that people will click on your link.
For a list of the top blog sites on any topic, check out http://blogs.botw.org, http://portal.eatonweb.com, www.alltop.com, http://technorati.com/blogs/directory You can also do a Google search for the top blogs/forums on the topic of your choice, or do a Facebook search for the top Facebook groups/fan pages on that topic.
For a list of the top forums on any topic, check out http://directory.big-boards.com.
When posting your channel links on forums, it's more effective to post it as a reply to an existing topic than to create a new topic. When the topic you posted your channel link in starts to sink, you can bump it up by replying to it.
Make sure you don't only talk about your ShortForm channel in your forum posts, but talk about the topic at hand, interact with other forum members, and be a natural part of the forum's conversation. Share your ShortForm links moderately or you will be banned from the forum.
If you speak a foreign language, you can also post your video links on foreign-language forums in the US or anywhere in the world. Avoid forums located in countries where YouTube is blocked, such as mainland China, because ShortForm won't be able to load the videos.
For most blogs you would have to register for an account to be able to write in their comment sections. Avoid the blogs that require moderator approval of comments before they are posted, because the moderators would remove the links in your comments. Also avoid the blogs that don’t automatically turn your text link into clickable links.
Similarly, you can also post videos from your channel on the wall and in the comment sections of wall posts of relevant Facebook fan pages and groups.
The hard part is finding the best blog/forum that will get you the most views. After you have found the right blog/forum, you can always expect to get views from it week after week. All of our top interns who have been getting 1000+ views every week all have found their blog or forum of choice on which they post their channel every week.
To embed your channel on your blog with a specific video playing first (instead of the first video in your channel), read Embedding Channel with Specific Video Playing First.

Part III: Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and email

Sharing videos from your channel on Facebook, Twitter, and email will lead to higher viewing time on your channel because they contain your closer social contacts.
For Facebook, posting a video on your wall will send it into your friends’ news feeds. Get your friends to like and comment on that video so it will be sent into their friends’ news feeds.
You can also post videos from your channel on the wall and in the comments of relevant Facebook fan pages and groups.
For Twitter, you can get higher clickthrough rates of the links in your tweets by tweeting more often and having more followers.
You can increase your number of followers by searching for other Twitter accounts with similar interests as you using Twellow (http://www.twellow.com) or TweetFind (http://www.tweetfind.com) and following them, so that some of them would follow you in return.
You should go unfollow those who you follow but don't follow you back every week or so using FriendOrFollow (www.friendorfollow.com). You can unfollow about 100 accounts a day without risking getting your account flagged. Twitter does impose a limit of 2000 accounts that you can follow if your number of followers isn't greater than that.
Tag your tweets with specific keywords and trending topics using the “#TOPIC_NAME” hash tag. Take advantage of Twitter occasions such as #MusicMonday (everyone shares their favorite music groups on Mondays) and #FollowFriday (everyone suggests people for other people to follow on Fridays).
You can also direct your tweets at specific people by putting "@Twitter_handle" at the end of your tweets. Don't be shy to ask other people to retweet your tweets, and if they do, retweet one of theirs!
Don't make every one of your tweets be about your ShortForm channel, tweet about other subjects and topics, reply to other people's tweets, and participate in the Twitter community interaction naturally and organically.
For email, send videos from your channel to your dorm, fraternity/sorority, club/organization, athletic team email lists and ask them to forward it on to their friends.

Part IV: Sharing on Pinterest

Pinterest (www.Pinterest.com) is a relatively new website and has a lot of potential. It is a virtual pinboard on which users can post images and their friends can comment on these images or "repin" them onto their own board. To get started, simply follow the below steps:

Go to www.Pinterest.com, Log in with Facebook (You might need to request an invite first), and create your pinboards. Pinboards collect groups of pins under the same topic, and pins are the actual images that you post.
You can add an image relevant to your channel as a pin and link that to your ShortForm channel. To do that, click "Add" on the navigation bar at the top of your profile page. Then click "Add a Pin" if you want to post an image from a webpage, or click "Upload a Pin" if you want to post an image from your computer.
In the description field for your pin, direct the user to click on the image with a comment such as "This is an image of Bruce Springsteen in concert. Click on the image to watch a video of him singing "The River" in 1985!"
After you have added the image as a pin, click on "Edit" on the pin, and change the URL in the "Link" field to the ShortForm video that you want to link to. Pinterest users can then click on that image to go to your ShortForm channel.

Please make sure that your Pinterest account has a wide variety of content and that not every pin is from ShortForm or directs to ShortForm. In addition, follow other Pinterest users, Like/Comment/Repin their pins often and they will do the same to yours!

Part V: Increasing Your Channel's Viewing Time:

Increase the length of your channel by adding more videos into it. A channel with just 7 videos is unlikely to have a very high viewing time per viewer. You can also add videos with longer duration into your channel so that your viewers will watch for longer.
Traffic sources such as Reddit and StumbleUpon could bring you a lot of viewers but reduce your viewing time. This is especially the case with StumbleUpon because the "Stumble" button is right at the top of the page for people to click to go to the next site anytime. In contrast, sources such as Facebook and Twitter might not bring you a lot of viewers but could bring a higher viewing time per viewer, because they contain your closer social contacts who are more likely to watch your channel for longer.
Focus your channel around a specific topic or theme (football, Lady Gaga, old movies, French cuisine, traveling in Europe, etc.) and promote your channel in the relevant blogs/forums/Facebook groups/fan pages. Since the readers of those blogs and forums are deeply interested in the topic, they are likely to watch all or most of the videos in your channel, leading to higher viewing time. Having a focused channel on a specific topic will lead to much higher viewing time than a channel with random viral hits, in which viewers will just watch a video and leave.
For a list of the top blog sites on any topic, check out http://blogs.botw.org, http://portal.eatonweb.com, www.alltop.com, http://technorati.com/blogs/directory For a list of the top forums on any topic, check out http://directory.big-boards.com.

Part VI: Sharing on StumbleUpon:

StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com) is a very effective site for getting views on your channel; past interns were able to get 500-100,000 weekly views on their channel from StumbleUpon.
However, it usually takes several weeks or months for your StumbleUpon account to get fully built up to be able to attract any significant viewcount. So it's more of a long-term strategy for those that want to stay in the internship beyond the required 10 weeks and aim for the top slots of the Channel Guide.
StumbleUpon is a crowdsourcing site on which users can post links to be Thumbed Up or Thumbed Down by other users. The more Thumb-Ups your link gets, the more users it will be shown to, and the more views it will get.
To increase the views of your StumbleUpon links, you have to build up the value of your StumbleUpon account first. You should not share any ShortForm links in your StumbleUpon account before it is fully built up, or else you risk getting your StumbleUpon account flagged and banned.
There are two ways that you can build up your StumbleUpon account (I and II):

I. Adding various non-ShortForm links into your StumbleUpon account as Likes and Additions, and getting Thumb-Ups on them.

Go to http://www.stumbleupon.com/home and sign into your StumbleUpon account. You can create an account by clicking on "Join Now," filling out the Sign Up form, and picking a few interests.
On the next page you will see a toolbar at the top of the page. Every time you click on the "Stumble" button on the toolbar it will show you a new site, and every time that you click on the Thumb-Up button that site will be added into your account as a "Like."
The best ratio is to Thumb-Up ONE out of every TEN websites that you Stumble across to add it into your account as a "Like." That way you will be seen as a credible account with legitimate interests. Do this until you have 100+ Likes in your StumbleUpon account. You can see a list of all your Likes by clicking on "Profile" to go to your Profile page.
You can also add a specific non-ShortForm link into your StumbleUpon account as an "Addition" by clicking on "Add a new page" or going to http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit
The Additions in your StumbleUpon account matter the most because they are the links that you submitted to StumbleUpon first. The Thumb-Ups and viewcount that your Additions get define the value of your StumbleUpon account. You can see a list of all your Additions by clicking on "Profile," and selecting "Show Additions" from the pull-down menu.
You should make sure to add popular non-ShortForm links that would get Thumb-Ups as your Additions, because if your Additions get a lot of Thumb-Ups, that will increase the value of your account. The top links from Digg, Reddit, Yahoo, ESPN, CollegeHumor, CNN, etc. could make great non-ShortForm links for your Additions, provided that they have not been submitted to StumbleUpon already by other users.
To determine the value of your StumbleUpon account and whether it is getting built up stronger everyday, take a look at the viewcount of all your Additions. Click on "Profile" and select "Show Additions" from the pull-down menu to see all your Additions. If all of them have fewer than 10 views then you don't have a very strong account yet since your Additions aren't attracting many views. But if any of them has 100+ views then it's a sign that you are doing the right things in building up your StumbleUpon account.

II. Following other Stumblers and Thumbing-Up/Commenting on their Additions.

Find and follow your Followers and Visitors by clicking on "Profile," and clicking on "Connections," and selecting "Followers" and "Visitors" from the pull-down menu. Please note that there is a daily limit of how many accounts you can follow.
Click on their icon and then select "Show Additions" from the pull-down menu to see all their Additions. Click on any of them to go to the Addition link. You can Thumb the Addition up, Comment on it, or Share it by clicking on the Thumb-Up button, the Comment button, and the Share button on the toolbar. Many of these people would return the favor by Following you back and Thumbing-up/Commenting on your Additions!
Do this until you have Followed 50+ Stumblers and Thumbed-Up/Commented on 50+ of their Additions.

After you have added about 100+ Likes/Additions and Followed 50+ Stumblers, you can then post links from your ShortForm channel into your StumbleUpon account to get views on them.

While your channel is playing on ShortForm's Watch page, click on the thumbnail of the video that you want to share to play it first.
Copy the video's URL from your browser's address bar, or click on the StumbleUpon share button on the right (3rd button from the left) to share the video currently playing.
Go to your StumbleUpon Profile page, click on "Add a new page," paste in the video URL, tag the link with a couple appropriate Interests from the pull-down menu. It's important that you pick the appropriate Interests or otherwise people will Thumb your link down. Then write a catchy comment about the link and click "Add This Page."
Please submit your ShortForm links to StumbleUpon in moderation (no more than a couple a day), or else you risk getting your StumbleUpon account flagged and banned.

More tips on building up your StumbleUpon account:

Be patient with building up your StumbleUpon account! You won't see a lot of views on your StumbleUpon links for the first 4-5 weeks but don't worry and don't give up. It's because you still have a relatively new account and StumbleUpon doesn't trust you that much yet. By the time you get into your 5th and 6th week, AND if you have been consistently building up your StumbleUpon account by doing the two things that I talked about (adding non-ShortForm links into your account as Likes and Additions, and Following other Stumblers and Thumbing-Up/Commenting on their Additions), then you should see a sudden increase in the viewcount of your StumbleUpon links.
If you have gotten a lot of views from StumbleUpon in the past, your views might die down and fade away for a couple weeks before surging back again. The reason is that StumbleUpon's algorithm shifts after a couple weeks, and if you have been getting a lot of views in the past, it will distribute the views to other Stumblers to give them a chance to get views as well. So don't worry if all of a sudden you see your StumbleUpon views declining. Keep building up your account during the lull period and it will surge back again very soon!
One final thing: If you do get a flood of views from StumbleUpon, it will likely decrease your viewing time. So make sure that you do something to keep your viewing time high in the meanwhile!

Here is a good informative video about how to maximize your views from StumbleUpon: http://vimeo.com/25770166

Part VII: Sharing on Reddit

Reddit is a crowdsourcing site on which users can post links to be voted up or down by other users. The more up-votes your link gets, the higher it will rise among all other links, and the more views it will get. So the whole purpose of using the site is to get votes on all your links (ShortForm and non-ShortForm) to increase the value of your account, which is shown by the link karma points and comment karma points.
Your link karma points is the aggregate number of votes on all your links in your account; your comment karma points is the aggregate number of votes on all your comments. The more karma points that you have, the more views you will get from your links on Reddit--it is directly proportional. Aim to get to 20-50 link karma points at first.
You can build up your link karma points by submitting popular non-ShortForm links to your Reddit account and getting votes on them. Your non-ShortForm links can be from any variety of sources: CNN, ESPN, Yahoo News, CollegeHumor, Break.com, blog articles, magazine pieces, video interviews, funny comments, inspiring photographs, political commentary, personal anecdotes, etc.
Reddit checks for duplicate links so you have to be the first to submit that link, so the most recent news and blog articles are good choices for your non-ShortForm links.
Liberal news and controversial political commentary links get a lot of votes on Reddit. Try submitting the newest columns from Talking Points Memo (www.talkingpointsmemo.com), Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com), HuffingtonPost (www.huffingtonpost.com) to the “politics” section of Reddit as your non-ShortForm links.
Writing a catchy title for your link would greatly help it in getting views.
After you have gotten 10-50 link karma points in your account, you can then submit a video from your ShortForm channel into your Reddit account and see how many views it gets. (If you submit your ShortForm links with fewer than 10 link karma points in your account, Reddit could make you wait 5-10 minutes before you can submit the next link.)
Keep building up your link karma points by submitting popular non-ShortForm links into your account and getting votes on them, and submitting your ShortForm video links intermittently amongst them. The ratio of your ShortForm links and non-ShortForm links should be about 1:10.
DO NOT submit only ShortForm links to your Reddit account with no non-ShortForm links, you will get flagged as a spammer and your account will be banned.
To post a link to a certain category, simply put that category's name in the "reddit" field of the "Submit a Link" form (On Reddit, categories are called "reddit.") DO NOT post your ShortForm links under the "reddit.com", "videos," and "gaming" categories, because those categories have a lot of moderators going around flagging accounts as spammers. You can still post your non-ShortForm links under these categories, but post your ShortForm channel links under other categories.
Try not to post your ShortForm links to the big categories on the top gray bar on Reddit's homepage, and post them to some of the smaller categories instead. Here is a list of all the categories on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/reddits/ Click on "Next" at the bottom of the page to go to the next page. Always vary up on the categories that you post your ShortForm links to and never post them to the same category continuously.

To increase your comment karma points, comment on your own links to get other people to reply to those comments and generate comment threads on your links. Comment on other people's links as well to build relationships with other Redditors so they would comment on your links in return. Vote up your comments and other people’s comments so that they would vote up your comments as well.
If a newly submitted link gets down-voted a lot, delete it and re-submit the same link in an hour or so to give it another chance in getting votes. Sometimes links get down-voted for no reason and that could affect your link karma points if you do not delete them.
Here are some examples of high-value Reddit accounts; take a look at the kinds of non-ShortForm links they submit and how often they post their ShortForm links.

Other sites similar to StumbleUpon and Reddit that you could post your channel links on include Mixx.com, Digg.com, i-am-bored.com, Fark.com, Ebaumsworld.com, etc.

Channel Creation Guidelines

Signing-up for a ShortForm account:

1. Please go to http://www.shortform.com/ and click on the "Sign In" link in the upper right-hand corner. (The site works best with Firefox/Safari/Chrome.)

2. Please sign up for a new ShortForm account by filling out the sign-up form on the left and clicking on the “Create a Channel” button. Please note that you can change your Email later but you can set your User Name only once.

Adding Videos to Your Channel:

1.On the "My Channels" page, you can add any YouTube/Vimeo/Hulu/CollegeHumor video to your channel by entering its URL into the "Add Videos by URL" box and clicking “Add.” That video will be immediately added to your channel. Your channel should have at least 5 videos and at most 100 videos.

Note: You will not be able to add VEVO music videos into your ShortForm channel due to copyright reasons.

2. You can go to the "Edit Info" tab of the My Channels page to edit the information about your channel.

3. You can also click on the tabs under the "Social Channels" and the "Premium Content" section to add videos from Hulu/CollegeHumor shows and videos that you shared or favorited on Facebook/Twitter/YouTube into your channel by dragging their thumbnails to the channel tab under the "My Channels" section.

Sharing Your Channel and Your Videos:

1. After you have finished adding videos to your channel, click on the “Watch” button on the My Channels page to start watching your channel play on the Watch page. Your channel URL is directly above the "Watch" button.

2. When your channel is playing on the Watch page, you can share the video that you are watching by copying its URL from your browser's address bar or clicking on any of the social media sharing buttons on the right. This URL will link to that specific video, but your channel will continue to play afterward. To share another video from your channel, click on the video that you want to share to play it first, then copy its URL or click on the social media buttons.

3. To go back to the My Channels page to add more videos to your channel, click on "<Your User name>'s Channels" on the upper right-hand corner of the Watch page.

Creating Multiple Channels Under the Same Account:

1. You can create another channel under the same account by going to your "My Channels" page, and clicking on the "Create New Channel" tab on the left. You can access the other channels in your account by clicking on their tabs under the "My Channels" section.

2. On the "Create a New Channel" pop-up, enter in a name and description for your new channel. Your new channel's URL will be automatically filled in for you, but you can change it to anything that you'd like. (Note: The first channel in your account will always have the URL "/my", but you can set anything for the URL's of your other channels.)

Tracking Your Channel’s Views:

1. Click on “Channel Guide” on the navigation bar or go to www.shortform.com/channels to go to the Channel Guide. Check the "My Channels" box to see your channel’s ranking and statistics for this week. Your channel needs to have at least 5 videos for it to show up on the Channel Guide. The statistics on the Channel Guide update once every 4-8 hours and reset every week at 12 AM PST Sunday midnight/Monday morning.

Embedding Your Channel on Your Blog:

1. To embed your channel on your personal blog with the ShortForm widget, click on the “Embed” button on your “My Channels” page. The blog platforms that we currently support are Tumblr, Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress.org, and HTML webpages. We do not support Wordpress.com.

2. On the next page, you can customize your channel widget to be of any size and color. To embed the widget on your blog, simply copy the embed code and follow the directions for your blogging platform.