Confession – I think a lot about choice and decision making. I believe ‘choice’ is one of the biggest issues facing business today. For one thing, it’s a challenge facing consumers, knowing they have choice. But ss businesses, if we ignore this challenge we fail to grasp the context of our role in consumer’s lives. We risk failing to grasp how and why they, in turn, ignore us. Choice is a major communications challenge. Mastering choice is a huge opportunity for differentiation.

24 hours per day is all we have so by nature attention is finite. Work or play we are bombarded by choice, and content has no respect for time. Books, Events, News, Music, Websites, Blogs, SMS, Emails and of course Videos. Each category offers seemingly infinite choice to acquire content. So are we always choosing? Well, no, we filter on auto-pilot. We snack, skim, channel hop, and tune-out. I use the term ‘Info-Snacking’, inspired by Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”. Are you an Info Snacker? – Confess!

‘The Paradox of Choice’ by Barry Schwartz was the first book to expose me to concept of ‘too much choice’ being a bad thing. I included his Google Talk video in an earlier post on choosing a Christmas Tree

When I think about choice and content, the geek in my laughs about ‘DiVISION BY ZERO’ errors. When you slice our attention so thin, we end up with zero attention. As a culture are close to this point, yet the sense I get is we don’t know we’re in trouble. So how have we changed the way we communicate to accommodate this new reality?

It should be no surprise that there is a lot of great content on the subject of choice. Here are some fantastic videos focused on choice. They each add a unique perspective. Perhaps one of them will speak to you and get you thinking more about choice. They speak to me in the context of HuStream’s methodology for Conversational Video. I’d argue these methodologies are highly relevant for your business. I talked about framing in my “FCUK: Fashion Your Vision Around Your Tiger” post. All products and services compete for our attention. You’d better get used to it. To some extent Time is the new Tiger.

1. Sheena Iyengar: The Art of Choosing

   It’s important to understanding how people decide. Until I came across Sheena’s talk I hadn’t thought about how choice varies by culture. We live in in a diverse world. I now know choice varies massively by culture. Who is your audience? Your target persona? Do they make choices differently? Are you responding to that?

2. Richard H. Thaler: Nudge – Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

   Nudge is about how to help people make the right choice and a lot of that comes from pre-loading the correct defaults. Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful ‘choice architecture’ can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice.

3. Jonah Lehrer: How We Decide

   Lehrer explores neuroscience as it helps us make the best decisions. As scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they re-discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason and the precise mix depends on the situation. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.

So what really happens when one of your video spokesmen leave? The instant answer is nothing. You hire/promote a replacement. Over time you let them reshoot clips featuring the ex-employee, but we bet you won’t.

Why?

Things move on. You learn. Let your new team be themselves, let them tell your story as they see it today. Keep it fresh. You always learn from every video you create. There’s always something you can do better next time.

Take the departure as an opportunity to refresh your story.

The debate for using actors or real people continues. One plus for hiring an actor is they never leave your employ, except that’s the rub, they never joined you in the first place and it shows. Too slick. Actors train to look relaxed and perform, and for business video that’s a problem. They don’t come across as real.

We’re often asked “Should you have a single spokesman?”

We no longer think so. Our thinking has evolved for one major reason – Hollywood. Take your queues from the masters of the art.

Take any movie or sitcom. There’s always a handful of characters. Take Friends. Who’s your favourite actor/actress? Joey, seriously!

Precisely! We are all different.

Our brains are really good a processing people, more people means more to process. It keeps us engaged and Hollywood gets this. And so can you.

Simply put, more people is more engaging. Keep the brain busy. Busy is better than bored.

The other major plus of mixing up your people is that it lets the real naturals rise to the top. If you don’t try people on camera, you will never know

In a true persona-based marketing sense you should match your actor to your target persona and by offering choice, passing control to the viewer and by offering up many actors, your are doing just that. Let your customer’s find their favourite spokesman.

The more people you show, the more real you become. You show you diversity and your humanity. Your viewers form opinions and guess what.

They have forgotten about the star. A company is not a one-man show. There are many sides to your business personality, show them.

We are so thrilled to share that The Branham Group has selected HuStream as one of the Top 25 Up and Comer Information & Communication Technology (ICT) companies in Canada!

Branham Group Inc. is a leading global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) analyst and strategic marketing consultancy. Each year the company publishes The Branham300 – a definitive listing of Canada’s ICT industry leaders. For nearly 20 years, the Branham300 has highlighted the top Canadian and Multinational ICT companies operating in Canada. It illustrates the depth and breadth of innovative technologies developed in Canada and is widely considered to be a leading source of intelligence on Canada’s ICT industry.

The Branham300 list consists of the following major categories:

‘ Top 250 Canadian ICT Companies
‘ The Next 50 Canadian ICT Companies
‘ Top 25 Multinational Companies operating in Canada
‘ Top 25 Up and Comer ICT Companies (ranked on innovation)

The Branham300 is published annually in the April issue of Backbone Magazine as well as the Branham300 website. You can pick up a copy of Backbone Magazine in tomorrow’s issue of the Globe and Mail.

We are so excited! The HuStream Social Video is officially and award winning product! Douglas College, who last year produced a super cool Student Services Tour app, recently captured SILVER at the Paragon Awards that are Sponsored by the NCMPR National Council for Marketing & Public Relations.

The NRCMP Paragon Awards recognize outstanding achievement in communications at community and technical colleges. It’s the only national competition of its kind that honors excellence exclusively among marketing and PR professionals at two-year colleges. The Douglas College Student Services Tour App was nominated in the Online Services category.

Congratulations Douglas College!

Scott Peckford is a Mortgage Broker and author of a new Book, “How to Rob Your Bank” – Great title!. He’s a total video natural. Scott very quickly got with the program and how to create a HuStream video App. Not that it’s hard, Scott just fast-tracked. Take a look.

It was easy to work with Scott as he was willing to just be Scott on camera. He didn’t exude any marketing speak. He just spoke like he would in real life, in a real 1:1 human conversation. That’s why he looks natural. It’s not perfect. It’s real. That’s a core part of HuStream’s offering – making you real. Some people find this easier than others, but we have lots of experience in helping you become real on video.

An App like this would promote your book and collect leads 24/7. More Leads. Lots more leads.

When we get a client that is very interested in our approach and wants to just get their feet wet in Conversational Video, we recommend our “Trust Builder” package.

The book explores ways to educate yourself on the strategies and techniques banks use to get your business. What adult persona isn’t interested in this message! I know I picked up a lot of tips during the production of this app for my own real estate strategies.

We built a 4 topic app giving value to the viewer about the book as well as who Scott is. We encouraged Scott to give the viewer lots of great FREE advice. This transparency of his book is a great way of generating further interest. We even had links to downloadable chapters and helpful content from the book. All for FREE!

No gimmicks. No hard sales. We love this!

A huge thanks goes out to Scott for being so honest about who he is and what he offers. The process was fantastic and we wish him great success.

The irony of a Trust Builder about “How to Rob Your Bank” was not lost on us!

Here’s the latest stats on Video direct from Comscore Analyst Dan Piech

I’ve also located the matching slide deck as it’s not that easy to view all the metrics mentioned in the video.

Enjoy. I’m still digesting what this means and how this aligns with our thinking here at Hustream.

I’d love to hear your reactions

I’ve pasted some of the stats here into the post.

89 Million People in the United States are going to watch 1.2 Billion Video Today

Ad Spend on Video up 344% between 2006 and 2010, While Video Content grow 600%

2006
$324 MILLION 63 BILLION VIDEOS
’0.7 PER VIDEO

2010
$$1,440 MILLION 441 BILLION VIDEOS
(ad spend)
’0.4 PER VIDEO

Every month:
NUMBER OF VIEWERS % OF INTERNET AUDIENCE
VIDEOS VIEWED
VIDEOS PER PERSON VIEWING TIME PER PERSON
180MM
85% 36B
200 13 hr

THE STATE OF ONLINE VIDEO
Ubiquity The rise of long-form Video advertising

Ad impressions per month
5.9Billion video ad impressions per month
2.4Billion video ad minutes per month
148 Million viewers exposed to video ads

Ad Impressions per month ‘ 6 month variances
36% Growth
video ad impressions per month
30% Growth video ad minutes per month
8% Growth viewers exposed to video ads

Linear video ads are served across the web in a month reach the average video viewer 40 times

16.4% of videos viewed are ads

Online video viewing growth is outpacing ad spending growth

I just wanted to share a very engaging video adapted from Dan Pink’s speech at the RSA that talks about the real truths to motivation at home and the workplace. The content combined with animations makes the video very compelling.

What really surprised us was that normally after a few minutes, a video loses its novelty but this video made us want to watch it right to the end and we even laughed at the joke.
Take a look and tell us what you think!

So what is interactive video and how do you create it. From experience, we’ve found this explanation helps.

• HuStream happen to use multiple short video clips to create conversations via video, but you can use text in multiple blog posts to convey the exact same concept. Hyperlinking isn’t new, not to the web. Interactivity is still new to video. They both equate to conversations. Interaction. Back and forth responses.
• This graphic gives you a clue of just how the whole conversation video app is stitched together.
• You can begin with an existing long video clip and splice it up into its respective segments. Once you are familiar with creating interactive video apps you can record and create individual short clips directly, but that does not have to be how you begin or how you levergage existing content.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  In a regular linear post, you’d read from beginning to end, except research proves you don’t. You skip & skim reading 20-28% of words on any given page [2]. You assume control to save time. Well that’s all we do with video, except we encourage you to take control to save you time. Think of it as a create your own adventure-style interaction.
  
  
  
  We can track your interaction on video, you like I can on the blog. We know on video it dramatically increases the time spent viewing. We know it keeps you attentive for longer. We know you are listening as you are clicking every 40-50 seconds.
• There are other reasons to split it into multiple segments. A big one is Google bots. It makes each post/clip easier to find. In this case 4 posts is 4+ times as easy, that’s 4 cracks at the SEO whip. Video it’s no different, except Video SEO is 50x more effective (simply because there’s less video relative to text) [3]
  
  
  
  And shorter clips of text or video are simply more precise to share. Which means what you share is more effective. People get your content. How many times have people sent you a long article. Did you always know why they thought you’d get excited. Did you ever miss the highlight?

Try interacting with the following video application. It’s really very simple and quick to create you own video application. This App takes you through a demonstration of the tools you use to create an interactive video. It’s quick and ridiculously simple.

So where now?

This post is connected to four other short hyper-linked posts. It’s more like a conversation. You are in control. It kinds of emulates conversational video, but via a blog post using text. You choose how and what you consume. So let’s explore, but on your terms. Where next? What do you want to know next? You choose?

1. Intro – Tribes Share, Conversations Engage. Listening’s Social Dimensions – Channels x Attention x Reach
   
2. Channels – Listening across all Media (opening your mind to listening everywhere)
3. Attention – Listening to grow the time your audience spend watching/reading
4. Reach/Sharing – Listening inside social sales cycles. Creating customer tornados via open sharing
5. Dummies Guide to Creating Interactive Conversational Video from Linear Video Clips

It’s great that engagement in a conversation and spending time increases the likelihood of purchase, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.[1]



What’s more the happier they are, the more likely they are to tell their friends. Now that expression of satisfaction used to be connected to actual usage and be post purchase. While this is still the case I’d argue this is not big news.



Today you can make brave decisions to be more transparent and to share more of your prospect conversations, which in turn begins more conversations with more new prospects.



Happy prospects in social sales cycles express themselves and their proud discoveries [2] One lead can turn into many. So being social and being open and making it easy for others to see these interactions is somewhat self fulfilling. Now this doesn’t work for bad products. Poor product can backfire. The only solution to that problem is fix your product.



Now it does not come without risk. You competition can see this stuff too, well they can if they are smart and if they listen, but how many times do you compete, really? And if you are having real conversations built on trust and not pure sales effort, then do you think you’ll be so quickly displaced. Inserting yourself in someone else’s sales process is not easy. Socially, publicly that could backfire on your badly.



Once the ball is rolling, your existing customers and your emerging fans will give confidence to new prospects to listen to you and enage with you in conversation. All you have to do it get the ball rolling to build inertia. Keeping a ball rolling is much easier.



And their friends have ears, lots more ears.



Like a snowball, short conversations with a few people can blossom into a larger, longer conversation with more and more people. That’s how things tip, as Malcolm Gladwell might say!



Listening and allowing others to listen helps you bring lurkers into the conversation. In case you didnt know “Lurker” is the seemingly self appointed term in social media referrring to people who are listening. You don’t know they are there, but they are. Lots of them. They could well have been watching you for a long time. Remember, this is their sales cycle and they are in control

• Thousands of people can listen.
• Listening can let you begin a conversation.
• Listening sews the seed.
• Listening builds trust.
• Listening grows attention spans.
• Listening expands the crowd.
• Listening fans the conversations
• Listening drives revenue.

It a cyclical. You can build a customer tornado all from a single conversation.

So where now?

This post is connected to four other short hyper-linked posts. It’s more like a conversation. You are in control. It kinds of emulates conversational video, but via a blog post using text. You choose how and what you consume. So let’s explore, but on your terms. Where next? What do you want to know next? You choose?

1. Intro – Tribes Share, Conversations Engage. Listening’s Social Dimensions – Channels x Attention x Reach
   
2. Channels – Listening across all Media (opening your mind to listening everywhere)
3. Attention – Listening to grow the time your audience spend watching/reading
4. Reach/Sharing – Listening inside social sales cycles. Creating customer tornados via open sharing
5. Dummies Guide to Creating Interactive Conversational Video from Linear Video Clips

Today people choose what they want to hear. They certainly choose what they care to remember. Tell them less and they will recall more precisely and will appreciate your respect and brevity [0] By trading value for attention, you can keep earning their attention. It’s totally permission based. Done right, your audience will listen for longer. Enage them in a conversation and you are building trust and credibility. Find out about them. Ask questions. Tell them just what they need to know now. Let them come and ask for more.



When people spend more time, they spend more money. It’s that simple. [1] [2] [3]



We guard time. It’s our most prescious resource. When we give it, it’s becasuse were interested and we spend money on things that interest us. It’s no more complicated than that. Excluding Dentists & Lawyers (I joke), when was the last time you spent money on something you didn’t like? (Of course we can all regret a purchase and discover we don’t life something later, but that’s a distinct issue)



Purchasing at work is really no different than personal consumption. We’re just as busy at work as at home. We’re equally overloaded with too much information. Too many calls on our time. I’d argue time spent on serious business purchases gets filtered even faster than perhaps some fun social content. All the more reason to be respectful and earn your audience’s attention to keep them engaged.

• Do you spend time with people you don’t like?
• Do you read a book to the end if it’s not grabbed you by page 50?
• Do you read all of a blog post or do you skim?
• Do you sit on a Webinar and pay attention?
• Can you make it through a meeting without checking emails and voicemail?

I seriously doubt you can answer yes to all or any of these questions. So why do you expect your customer to do that too. At the end of the day were all people. Being human matters most. So respect it, encourage people to be human. Tell them how much you appreciate their humanity, their uniqueness. Tell people how you feel. By sharing you become more human. Today, people simply don’t go deep, they stay in the shallow [4] so you need to adapt your communications to match and to deliver your value in chunks, permission-based.



Do you want people to engage? Well ask them questions. Get interested in them, their pains, their challenges. And you want to be really smart, customize your responses. We’re all looking to cut things out. If you want to get cut, give cookie cutter answers. Want to get cut, sound like a cookie!



Do you listen when someone talks to you like a marketing brochure? Do you want to give them any time, more time, no time? Are you regretting agreeing to the meeting? Sure you are. Don’t use cliches. Talk like you would in a conversation not a catalog. There is a huge difference. Don’t agree with me? Well just listen to people. Start observing.



So if you are, don’t behave differently when you are selling. Don’t sell. share what you know. That’s how you earn trust, that’s how you win attention, that’s how you earn permission to progress to next base.



The time someone afford you is direct correlation to their opinion of you.



More time = High value. Don’t abuse it. Keeping checking in for feedback Keep being respectful of time and you will keep receiving.



One Caveat. The way to think of attention is as a simple trade for value. Attention is doled in ever smaller parcels of time. Bring value to the table every time and you will secure your next portion of attention.



It’s the same with people, books, music, website.



Look out for it. Watch others manage their attention. Become more conscious of your own attention.

So where now?

This post is connected to four other short hyper-linked posts. It’s more like a conversation. You are in control. It kinds of emulates conversational video, but via a blog post using text. You choose how and what you consume. So let’s explore, but on your terms. Where next? What do you want to know next? You choose?

1. Intro – Tribes Share, Conversations Engage. Listening’s Social Dimensions – Channels x Attention x Reach
   
2. Channels – Listening across all Media (opening your mind to listening everywhere)
3. Attention – Listening to grow the time your audience spend watching/reading
4. Reach/Sharing – Listening inside social sales cycles. Creating customer tornados via open sharing
5. Dummies Guide to Creating Interactive Conversational Video from Linear Video Clips