Social networking and bookmarking sites are a critical part of any online marketing effort utilizing video because you need to get your video seen where your key demographic is spending time online.

TubeMogul recently completed a research case study to find exactly what the title of this post asks: what social media site refers the least fickle viewers? They sampled 6,763,690 video streams over three months referred by links from Digg, Facebook and Twitter to come up with the findings. I’m going to highlight a few of the real key points to talk about but here’s the link to read the full results from their research report.

Results from TubeMogul

The results (below) are surprising: on average, viewers referred by Twitter tend to watch a video the longest (one minute, 58 seconds), compared to Facebook (one minute, 14 seconds) and Digg (58 seconds).

On average, audiences clicking on video links from Twitter watch a video 36.91% longer than viewers referred by Facebook and 49.98% longer than viewers referred by Digg.

My Analysis

This is an interesting study and the numbers are intriguing but there are a few things that the study doesn’t take into account.

Separation of social media sites & social bookmarking sites

I would have liked to have seen Twitter and Facebook (possibly even MySpace and LinkedIn too) go head to head and Digg go up against other bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, etc. My reason for this is that typically you are more connected with people on social media sites than on social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites are cluttered with millions of links people are sharing with others they may not even know. So it’s a less direct form of sharing than say Twitter or Facebook where you (usually) have a more established relationship with the possible viewer clicking your link. Most bookmarking sites have a lot of users who are lightly “browsing” content and clicking on something that may sound interesting but then quickly clicking away if their interest isn’t peaked. On Facebook for instance if I share a video, only people who have some sort of relationship with me are going to see it and are therefore more likely to watch more of the video. So it would have been nice to see a comparison of apples to apples.

Yes its video…but what is the content?

This may seem like a stupid question but if 75% of the videos profiled were of a cat playing the piano…what does that actually tell you? It would have been great to cull out the user generated content and just focus on videos that have some sort of at least a vague marketing purpose, whether its a direct sell on down to the nebulous but humorous branding video. I realize this is nearly impossible to achieve, however including all that user generated content as part of the research definitely skews the numbers. Let’s face it…if you upload a video of your dog barking at the TV – you don’t really care how many people watch it to completion but if you put a branding video online with a call to action – that’s information you want to know.

Time of day comparisons

Just like email marketing where you have better days of the week or times of day to send your email to get ideal open rates or click through rates, social media works much the same way. It would have been interesting to see over a three month period what days of the week and hours of the day had higher engagement rates.

What the numbers tell me

Ultimately the numbers don’t matter. Well…they matter but its a giant brush stroke of the entire social media space, not necessarily YOUR demographic and how THEY are engaging in social media. So you have to keep this in mind when you delve into these numbers. If the key demographic you market to is predominantly on MySpace but you are just sharing your video link on Twitter because this research report told you to – you could be missing your mark.

Personally over the past 3 months, SmartMarket Media has had better engagement rates from LinkedIn (2 minutes 35 seconds) followed by Twitter (2 minutes 32 seconds),  Facebook (1 minute, 40 seconds), (StumbleUpon (0 minutes, 45 seconds) and Digg (0 minutes, 37 seconds). Obviously we have a much smaller sampling (hundreds of visitors rather than millions) but it just goes to show you need to know your customer base and engage where they are engaging.

What do you think? What do these numbers tell you?

So this is a bit of a departure from the traditional 5 Question Blog Interviews I have done in the past…but for good reason. Matthew Mamet is Director of Product Marketing at PermissionTV and because of the cutting edge work they are doing with online video (and our nearby locations) we decided to do a video version of the 5 Question Blog Interview and to utilize the interactivity of the PermissionTV Platform Player. So without further ado…please enjoy.

Question#1: For those who are unfamiliar with Permission TV, can you briefly describe what you do?

Question#2: What specific features does the Permission TV platform offer to help enhance the viewers experience and the businesses opportunity to measure viewer engagement?

Question#3: The race to monetize online video is rapidly increasing among different advertising networks and video sharing sites, some are doing it well others are doing it poorly but everyone is struggling to find a model that works. In your opinion, what do you see as the future for monetization of video online?

Question#4: You recently launched the parody web site “I Want My Viral Video.com” poking fun at how some people view viral videos or their “online video strategy”. What was the impetus behind building this site and what kind of response have you received so far?

Question#5: What is the one hint or tip you could share that most companies getting started with online video fail to realize or include or factor into their overall online video marketing?

Bonus Question (surprise!): What can you share in regards to PermissionTVs new product offerings and what you are working on now?

Mike Langford, CEO of Tweetworks, was kind enough to invite me to participate as part of a panel discussion about social media for the Metro-West Chamber of Commerce. I was joined on the panel by Mike and two others; Cappy Popp of Thought Labs and Jeff Cutler of JeffCutler.com

The title for the panel discussion was “Linked in – How to Increase Sales” however given all of our diverse backgrounds with using social media in all different ways, it quickly evolved into a broader discussion about how we use and recommend using social media for business.

Jeff had some great recommendations for finding the “pulse” of online conversations going on around your company online and using Google Alerts to find those conversations. Mike had a great analogy of how social media is really no different than going to a Chamber networking mixer. Cappy’s reminder that in social media you need to “give” if you want to “receive” to build a brand following falls right in line with Mike’s analogy too. Networking online using social media is virtually the same (other than the technology) as networking in person. It’s all about building relationships.

I’ve shared Mike Langford’s video recording of the panel discussion. Although the still on the video looks like I am about to break into song…I assure you that doesn’t happen. I wouldn’t torture my blog readers with my horrible singing voice. Enjoy!

This past Thursday I got the opportunity to guest host a video podcast with Matthew Mamet of PermissionTV. Every Thursday they run a live show called PTVLIVE focusing on news, product releases and events with online video.

This was all new to me. I’m usually behind the camera or if in front of it, have a few takes to get the content right. Going live was definitely a little more stressful as evidenced by my “ums” and “errs” at the beginning of the show. But after a while I fell into a groove and was able to relax and enjoy the experience.

We covered some pretty interesting topics including integrating videos in your email marketing campaign, test driving the GoodMail Email Marketing Platform’s integrated video feature, discussing how much of a typical online video is actually watched and some big news for Visible Measures which now tracks videos at MySpace.

All in all this was a really great experience for me and the folks over at PermissionTV were fantastic. You can subscribe to their podcast through iTunes or watch weekly live at PTVLIVE. As promised I have given my 5 star rating on iTunes for this great podcast. Check out the full podcast below:

Zak Barron knows EVERYTHING about email marketing. Alright I could be exaggerating a tiny bit but he is the local email marketing expert for Constant Contact in the New England area and he definitely knows his stuff. He runs frequent seminars on email marketing, interactive training workshops, and industry specific programs. I have had the pleasure of doing a few combined seminars with Zak talking about combining online video and email marketing. I asked Zak if he would be interested in taking the hot seat for one of my 5 Question Interviews and without further ado, here are his answers:

Eric Guerin: I’ve heard Constant Contact’s deliverability to ISP’s (Internet Service Providers – i.e. Comcast, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.) is one of the highest among ESP’s (Email Service Providers like Constant Contact)…how are you able to maintain such a high level of deliverability?

Zak Barron: Good question Eric. Constant Contact currently has a deliverability rate above 97%. This is a key metric for ESP’s that anyone looking for an email marketing service should look at when making their decision. It’s very easy for a company to say, “We have 97% deliverability” so make sure you ask if that is the ESP’s number or a 3rd party number. Constant Contact uses an outside unbiased 3rd party called Return Path to evaluate our delivery rate. The reason that we are able to maintain this high deliverability rate is because we require all of our customers to use permission based email lists. We have built personal relationships with postmasters at many ISP’s, and they know that we share the same contempt for SPAM email, this also greatly impacts how the ISP’s view Constant Contact as a large sender of email messages.

EG: You mentioned permission based email lists, can you briefly explain what the importance of an “opt-in email list” is and why you would NEVER want to buy an email address list from another company?

ZB: It is critical to a business that it only use email to communicate with those whom have given their permission to receive emails from that business. Given that statement there are 2 levels of permission; implicit, and explicit. Implicit covers anyone that you have a prior business relationship with, but you might not have told them that you are going to begin sending them email campaigns. Explicit permission means that you are actually setting the expectation when you collect the contact information of a customer, or prospect, that they will be getting email campaigns. The main reason that a business needs to build it’s list in this manner is the issue of SPAM. Over the years consumers have become very weary of who they provide their contact information to, and how they react to messages that they have not asked for in their inboxes. With many email clients allowing their users to report unwanted email as SPAM, the ISP’s are able to track the reputation of senders and penalize them if they get to many SPAM reports/complaints by not allowing them access to their(ISP’s) customers inbox. The point is that a purchased or rented list will get tons of SPAM complaints, certainly enough to be noticed by the ISP’s. A business that insists on this practice will find themselves on industry wide “blocklists, or blacklists” which will directly affect the businesses ability to get email marketing campaigns out the door.

EG: That relationship with your contacts is really the key to a successful email marketing plan. Speaking of relationships, how does Constant Contact engage online and build community for their users?

ZB: At Constant Contact we are all about community, and to that end there are 2 ways that we do that, one is with the Constant Contact Connect Up! user community, and the 2nd is the Constant Contact Cares4Kids program.

Constant Contact’s ConnectUp! user community was designed as a forum to share the entrepreneurial energy and passion that drives small businesses and organizations. The community provides a host of tools and technologies that enable you to connect with your peers, exchange ideas and find answers to your questions about email marketing, online surveys and small business issues in general.

As a paying Constant Contact customer, you can bring email marketing and online survey tools to your favorite eligible community organization-at no cost to you! Through Cares4Kids you can help an organization reach new donors, publicize their good works, plan events-and use their precious funding to carry out their mission. It all starts with one quick application.. More than 900 worthy organizations have received free accounts on behalf of Constant Contact’s Cares4Kids program.

EG: Where does Constant Contact see the future of email marketing headed particularly with more and more people using mobile devices to open and access their email?

ZB: If you would have asked me this a year ago, I would have told you that it was going to affect open rates in a major way. The tracking mechanism that CTCT uses is a small image in the body of the HTML email. So this means that all text based email clients are tough to track. With the release of the iPhone, and many other mobile devices that can read HTML, I see open rates actually improving and becoming more accurate, as most smart phones will be switching to the HTML platform.

EG: What is the one hint or tip you could share that most people doing email marketing fail to realize or include in their email marketing campaign?

ZB: I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of email marketers make is that they fail to set the proper expectations at the outset of their email relationship with their customers and prospects. Being clear as to the content and frequency of the messages you will be sending is vital. Instead of saying “sign up for me email newsletter” say “sign up for my monthly newsletter.” Half of the battle in email marketing is validating your place in your recipient’s inbox, and setting/managing expectations is key to that validation.

EG: Thanks Zak!