Courtesy of blossomblogs.com

The Talking Head Video Defined

A talking head video is the quickest way to add valuable content to your YouTube feed. It usually costs you nothing but effort to make, and some basic editing skills. ‘Talking head’ videos are called this because they have a fixed screen position that focuses on a person’s head. You then talk on screen and use your dynamic personality to keep people entertained.

Here’s how to make your exciting talking head video for YouTube:

• Wear a uniform or film the video in a room with a presentable background. You can easily create a ‘set’ for yourself with a few well-placed items or a hand-made paper background. Branding your video works well here.

• Use exciting props. Just because the camera position is fixed, doesn’t mean you can’t bring in interesting props and extras to highlight your point. A whiteboard will help you explain something crucial, and household props are great for analogies.

• Add in some images to enhance emotion. Images are great to use in talking head videos as they give your viewer a break from you. Inserting an amusing image into your dialogue to illustrate a point is a technique used often on YouTube.

• Add extra text. Sometimes cutting away to text in point form can really bring a presentation or dialogue to life. Use text for dynamic recaps of important information, or to ensure that the viewer retains what you’ve just told them.

Courtesy of vimeo.com

• Facial expressions matter. You may not be a television presenter, but you are being viewed by random people that don’t know you. That means you must take advantage of your facial expressions and body gestures to make what you say entertaining. Practice your on-screen presence and it will improve.

• Get someone else on screen. If you are struggling to make your videos entertaining, turn your talking head video into a talking heads video, by adding another person into the mix. The back and forth can be very entertaining, and this fresh perspective may be exactly what you need.

• Be original. The best thing you can do for your channel is to find a specific and original way to present information to people. Take some time and watch at least 20 videos by 20 different YouTube talking head stars. You’ll see that they each have something special to contribute, based on style or tone.

Talking head videos may sound easy to do – but they take time, strategy and effort. Remember, it’s your goal to get these videos viewed and shared all over YouTube. That means you have to start thinking like the owner of a television station. What do people want to see, and how can you give it to them on your budget? Good luck!

What was the last brilliant talking head video you watched? Leave the link here for our community to see!

Courtesy of empowernetwork.com

Why Have These Viral Videos Blown Up?

#1: Viral Videos like these both focus on silly dances that took the world by storm. These are dances that people can do in their homes, in clubs and with friends. They are repeatable!

#2: Both of these virals are location-specific. Gangnam Style focuses on South Korea, and The Harlem Shake focuses on Harlem, New York. They have a cultural heritage in other words that the global internet population deem ‘cool.’

#3: Both viral videos are refreshingly offbeat, almost bizarre. They don’t conform to any norms, and as a result – are surprising to watch. The element of surprise in a video is becoming more and more valuable in virals.

#4: Gangnam Style and The Harlem Shake are both incredibly entertaining – which makes them highly watchable and sharable. You can watch both viral videos more than once, which means viewing it with friends is even more fun than watching it alone.

#5: There is one strong central character in each of these virals. In Gangnam Style, Psy, the Korean horse-rider is the main character who leads the dance. In The Harlem Shake, there is always someone with a motorcycle helmet on, or their face obscured by a mask that begins the dance. People identify with the quirkiness of these characters.

#6: There are few things more human than dancing. Viral videos that are deeply humanized tend to do better on Youtube, because people strongly relate to them.

#7: Gangnam Style and The Harlem Shake both contain scenes with lots of people, which seems to promote trend setting in viral videos. If all of these people are doing it, I want to do it! This is seen at the end of Gangnam Style when they all dance together, and in the latter part of the Harlem Shake, when everyone joins in the craziness.

Courtesy of salon.com

#8: Both viral videos are highly marketable. Because of the strong dance moves and firm characters in each, these are brands that can be packaged, marketed and sold. It also makes them easily recognizable, or memorable.

#9: Be original, or at least be a really good copy. Truth is that while Gangnam Style made a ton of cash from Youtube, so did many spoofs of it. The Harlem Shake was one of those viral videos that everyone joined in on. If you can do a good one, you are guaranteed millions of views because of the trend.

#10: Both videos are absolutely hilarious! Gangnam Style and all of the Harlem Shake videos are funny, and humor is the fastest spreading virus online! If you want your video to be watched make it funny.

#11: A little known fact about Gangnam Style is that it was launched on a platform that already had 2.5 million subscribers. They used this network to accelerate the viral speed of the video – and it worked. The Harlem Shake has similarly been launched on many top subscriber Youtube feeds.

#12: If you have access to famous people – use them. One recognizable face is enough to get viral videos in the media, which is what Gangnam Style did. They had a famous Korean entertainer, a comedian and a kid from Korea’s Got Talent in it. Use this fame to get more views early on.

#13: Both videos had serious momentum in the media. Blog after blog, magazine after magazine – even news stations covered the Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake phenomenon. Get as much media attention as you can! Have an interesting back story!

#14: YG Entertainment masterminded the Gangnam Style video sensation, that made it one of the only viral videos to ever exceed a billion views on Youtube. This proves that with enough planning and marketing know-how – it’s possible to create a viral video.

#15: The Harlem Shake proves that production value isn’t everything –as long as you have entertainment value. Part of the appeal was watching different people do the Harlem Shake in different ways – in offices, schools, fire trucks and outdoors. It was truly global!

#16: Facebook and Twitter fueled the Youtube fire for both of these viral videos. Gangnam Style was tweeted by Britney Spears, which sent over a million tweets with that search term bouncing up and down Twitter. Get your fans and friends to Tweet and Facebook about your videos!

Courtesy of visual.ly

=> Infographic Source

#17: Both viral videos inspire CURIOSITY. If you hear about people doing a funny dance, you want to see it. There is a question there that people need answered. The more people that see it, the more curious you get. And that’s how a billion people find and watch a video.

#18: These viral videos are both positive, edgy and they make you smile. You’ll notice that not very many negative videos go viral. People want to improve their days, not ruin them!

#19: The music in both videos loops, and is very contagious. These viral videos have notes that stick in your head, so you might play the video again just to solve that problem. In a way, they create a kind of – repetitive song that you WANT to hear again.

#20: The Harlem Shake follows a set structure, with music that makes all videos the same length – just a minute or so. This means that people can watch these viral videos quickly, share them quickly and enjoy them again and again.

How would you make your videos viral?

Courtesy of venturebeat.com

The New Youtube: Does It Drive You Nuts?

A while back Youtube was released with a fancy new charcoal and beige look that everyone loved, loved, loved. It seems incredible to me now that the Google design team hasn’t stuck with this natural color progression. Youtube has adopted the ugly, all white face of the Google+ network, and fans aren’t happy.

Granted, the new flash player is pretty awesome – and the dashboard has been cleaned up quite a lot. This is most evident in the new Youtube direction – they’re focusing more on subscriptions than anything else. It’s awesome if you love to subscribe to feeds, but if you don’t it can be a little limiting.

I’ve noticed while surfing around the new Youtube that all of my searches are linked with what I’ve searched in the past (a Google change no doubt). It’s nice in that I get to see people and feeds I like, but horrible when I want to discover new things. I used to use the right hand bar to watch random videos, and I can’t really do that anymore.

One of the main things that drove me NUTS about the new Youtube is that you can’t search by date anymore, by newest to oldest. Some videos are lost to me forever. You can still search year, month, week, day and hour – but it’s not the same.

What it means to researchers is that only contemporary searches will come up with the latest news. Older news will be buried. This is not great if you’re looking for older research. In a world of online content and increasing need for video evidence, this was bad move by the new Youtube.

The older social networks get, the bigger problem this will become. They’re great for recent issues and impossible on archived content. Someone will need to change this eventually. For now, we all just have to deal with that absence.

Courtesy of technobuffalo.com

New Functionality For The New Youtube

As a mobile app layout, it’s actually really nice – for smartphone users all over the globe. Honestly on desktop view, the old one was better. It’s like Google has sacrificed aesthetics for functionality instead of balancing out the two.

Subscribe to channels so that you can have a television-like experience – which I think is where Google is going with these new changes. They want to eventually be the leader in online TV for desktop and mobile users in the world.

This makes me concerned for a few reasons. With the drastic steps Youtube is taking to monetize, with new ad systems – will they be charging to subscribe to certain feeds soon? Is this the inevitable future of online video? I certainly hope not.

The Benefits For Video Marketers

The good news is that Google is very business-orientated, so this is nothing but good news for the new Youtube and its many marketers. Youtube uses split testing to change features, to improve user experience and core analytics for video uploaders. This in turn increases subscribers, video views, ad conversions and clicks, and more.

Youtube is definitely becoming more business-friendly. The shiny new user icons personalize the commenting experience, which is long overdue on such a ‘troll’ site.

Don’t get too excited about the comments however – if you’re one of those people that like to read your old comments. Good luck finding them on page, signed out, without a sort by comments thread.

Still, Google has made some good additions to the new Youtube. I just can’t figure out how their ‘what to watch’ page will work. If you subscribe to lots of feeds, it becomes a total nightmarish mess. It’s like Google is telling us what we can and can’t watch. It’s that ‘NO don’t click on those videos, you like THESE ones.’ Not all algorithm prediction is good.

The best new feature is the awesome side-long video line up that you see when you play videos now. These playlists keep people on the site longer, and encourage you to watch more videos, which is good for business.

Courtesy of blogs.independent.co.uk

The New Youtube According To Google

Google mentioned in their 30 minute video on why they made these design changes to the new Youtube, that it’s because people ‘don’t know’ about channels. This means one thing – people don’t want to use Youtube as a social network.

If they don’t use the new Youtube as a social network, Google can’t collect information from their accounts that they can use to sell them products via advertising and video suggestions. So, the new Youtube is now obsessed with subscriptions.

I’m concerned about Youtube becoming a ‘stronger’ social network, because I think it will weaken why people love to use Youtube instead of other video sites. Sure commenting is fun, but do you really care which friends have seen the same videos as you? Nope.

If Google keeps pushing for channel subscribers and people don’t comply, it could mean the end of Youtube’s rise. The new Youtube will be replaced with another site that doesn’t force people to be tracked and advertised to. Only time will tell how this goes.

Do you think Google will ruin Youtube by making it more of a social network, and less of a video viewing and sharing site?

Courtesy of theconversation.edu.au

But how do you create these elusive viral videos for your brand? Let’s take a look at some top secret tips from expert marketers.

#1: All Virals Have an X Factor

All viral videos have that something ‘special’ that makes them super sharable. Whether it’s a brief moment of entertainment, or a 3 minute video of sheer brilliance – you’ll always find that these videos make people say, ‘you have to see this.’

#2: All Virals Are Pushed by Influencers

How do ten million people see these viral videos within a day? Easy – they are first spotted by internet influencers, who then share them with their community of thousands. Make sure that your viral is seen by the right people, to increase your viral potential.

#3: Keep Them Short and Simple

The truth is that most viral videos are no more than 1 minute long. People love videos that don’t impose on their time, so the shorter the better. If you can do something incredible, hilarious, cute, weird or shocking in 30 seconds, you’ll be a hit.

Courtesy of allthingsd.com

See the Skateboarding Dog viral here.

#4: Your Outstanding Thumbnail

You need to spend a good amount of time picking out the best and most alluring thumbnail image for your viral videos. It’s the first thing people see, and it’s the reason they’ll click on your video. A bad, hasty image can ruin a highly viral video.

#5: Viral Videos Are Personal Showcases

When someone shares a viral vid, they’re saying that they approve or like your video. It makes up part of their online social profile – all their friends are going to see it. Make your viral cool enough to say something awesome about the person sharing it.

#6: Say Something About Your Brand

Your Youtube viral videos need to say something about your business or brand. They don’t have to say it outright, but they should contribute in some important way to your brand image. This should make you ask the question – how do you want people to feel about your brand?

#7: Be Emotional

Brands and brand advertising is usually so dry and emotionless. You’ll find in many viral videos that nearly all of them are emotional or trigger an emotion in some way. For the famous ‘Charlie bit me’ viral, the theme ‘cute kids’ was the trigger.

Courtesy of pocket-lint.com

#8: Be Different

Don’t try to be the same as other brands in your niche – be different! Your viral videos need to have an edge, be quirky or just be something people haven’t seen before. If you can give your audience this, you’ll get a ton of brand exposure.

#9: Leave The Advertising Out of the Advert

Viral videos are advert-free. The advertising is built in – when people see who created the video. Not loading your vid with tons of terrible pop ups and ad screens will score you big viral points.

#10: Hit The Streets

For a brand, few things are as awesome as interacting with people in the street, or in real world situations. When lots of people are in a video, people will watch it just to see what happens. You can use this curiosity to create viral videos.

Are you ready to create a viral video for your brand? Get to it!

Do you have a tip for us on viral videos that we don’t know about? Share!

Courtesy of ajchristian.com

How Do You See Youtube’s New Design Changes?

Many frequent Youtubers have noticed a lot of glitches and issues on the site as of late. There was an incident a few weeks ago when Youtube even crashed for a while, causing global pandemonium. Now, Youtube’s new design is being tested and chatted about in the secret tech spaces on the internet.

If your computer stores Youtube cookies, you’re still seeing the old Youtube. But if you clear these cookies, you might get the new interface. If you use Chrome, get to the developers console by pressing Ctrl+Shift+J, while on a fresh Youtube tab.

Paste in the following code: document.cookie=”VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=jZNC3DCddAk; path=/; domain=.youtube.com”;window.location.reload();

Then press enter, and there you go – Youtube’s new design. It looks like this:

Courtesy of readwrite.com

What SMMU Thinks of Youtube’s New Design Tinkering

At a glance you can see that Google has removed the awesome beige and charcoal homepage interface, and has instead replaced it with their horrible all white interface, the very same so many people disliked on Google+.

I’ve got to tell you, Youtube’s new design is not looking great. The functionality and navigation has improved though. Here’s how:

• You can switch between a ‘now playing’ and ‘recommended’ screen

The recommended videos are based on videos that you’ve watched before, whether you were logged in or not. This creeps me out a little, but it actually takes me further into Youtube’s new design than I’d go on a normal day, because of the suggestions.

• Longer scroll down homepage, showing many categories

You’ll have access to your favorite categories, like News & Politics, Entertainment, ABC News and Movies. A great feature is how many people have already watched these suggested category videos at a glance in Youtube’s new design.

• Larger video showcases, doing away with the ‘thumbnail’ sized videos

When they last updated Youtube’s new design – a big issue was the tiny video windows that fans hated. There was a lot of backlash about them. Luckily, Google has made the video ‘thumbnails’ a lot larger, which is easier on the eye. A great update!

• Video titles are now displayed at the bottom of Youtube videos

The least favorite change to Youtube’s new design has to be that titles are now below the actual videos. It’s a strange change, and we’ll have to wait and see if this contributes to even more view and financial losses to Youtube ad businesses.

• Improved sharing and commenting capabilities

Youtube’s new design also includes a way to add a timestamp when you share videos, and a one click option to record video responses.

And (should I say finally?) the commenting section appears more like the Disqus commenting system, which is really nice for social connectivity and reducing spam. People can add in their personal image thumbnails to go with their comments.

Courtesy of readwrite.com

• There are new playlist features that are less intrusive

Youtube has removed the bottom playlist bar and instead popped it on the right of the video, so that we can actually see it now, while watching the video. This will be great for virality, and it pushes the irritating ad to below the streaming playlist.

Our verdict on Youtube’s new design? Unsurprisingly, the functionality is a lot better, and it’s sure to make viewing multiple videos easier. As for the all-encompassing white design – I just don’t see it being popular. It wasn’t on Google+, and it’s only going to infuriate Youtube fans. But nothing is set in stone – they are still working on it!

Did you like this post on Youtube’s new design? Please share it with your friends!

What do you think of the secret Youtube re-design?

Courtesy of ibtimes.com

The Brazil VS Google Debacle

Campo Grande is a nice little city in Brazil. They are hosting mayoral elections at the moment. Youtube videos recently surfaced that Brazil claims ‘goes against’ their pre-vote election laws.

The Brazilian courts were so furious, they’ve demanded that Google remove these heinous videos, and have called for a nation-wide suspension on these two enormously popular internet sites.

I can see how the potential mayor of Campo Grande might not like Youtube videos circulating that may sway votes. But isn’t that what free speech is about? Brazil is a progressive country – surely they’ve read the Youtube responsibility clauses?

In case you don’t know – because Youtube is ‘run’ by third-parties, and consists of user generated content, legally, Youtube is NOT responsible for anything posted there. Google is appealing this (ridiculous) ruling, and has done it in good spirits.

What’s The Point of The Responsibility Clause?

What I want to know, is why the leagues of Google lawyers haven’t made the responsibility clause ironclad yet, on an international level. I guess it’s because on a global scale – there is no real authority to govern what goes and what doesn’t.

Google should have learned from their previous scuffle with a European nation (Italy) which almost saw 4 Google executives go to prison for not taking Youtube videos down that infringed on privacy laws. Clearly being a Google exec has its downsides.

Until free speech is as progressive in Europe as it is in America, these clashes are bound to happen. Google and Youtube even have a set of specific standards and rules that govern how people should use Youtube. While this is sometimes ignored, these videos are removed quickly by the Youtube team.

Courtesy of csmonitor.com

I don’t know why these issues are becoming contentious. If I was Google, I wouldn’t bother defending my executives in court. They did nothing wrong. Just take down the videos that the country in question is having a fit over, and remind the foreign court about their legal rights as an American company.

The Issues At Hand

Clearly the issues here go beyond court ruling, copyright infringement and videos that violate election voting laws. This is an issue of who owns the user content. In an increasingly user-generated internet – the companies behind the platforms can’t be expected to take the financial and legal burden caused by random users.

It seems to me that Google is going to have to head up the fight for free speech on the internet in the years to come. Until the world governments have some sort of unified regulatory policy for online content, Google is exposed.

Do you think Brazil has the right to sue Google? I’d like to hear your opinion on this hot topic!