12 Tips to increase YouTube Video Views Organically

“2014 was year of images and 2015 is year for videos.”

 Brands try hard to get more views on their YouTube Videos and are always looking for ideas to get their videos going viral. Making every video viral is not something that is possible for any brand; however a few steps can help brands make their videos reach to right audience. Below are some of the simple tips that can be used to enhance your video views and channel subscriber base, all organically! Continue reading “12 Tips to increase YouTube Video Views Organically”

Personal TO-DO List: Everyone’s must

 (A list to complete before I die)

In our day to day routine, we are used to of making to-do list to complete our tasks. On those lines, I thought of making a to-do list for myself, a list of tasks that I want to complete before I leave this earth. Now, I am quite unorganized and generally don’t make written lists, mostly because I remember things (Yeah, time to boast my memory!) But still I decided to make a list so that some important things are not missed and I am reminded by others, if I skip something.

  1. Tell People what they mean to me:  God has been kind to me and blessed me with some of the most loving persons. I don’t tell them  very often how much they mean to me and I think this is most important thing in my to-do list to tell them all that I really love them and owe them a lot.
  2. Apologize to some: They say, we hurt them the most who love us the most. Willingly/Unwillingly I have also been the source of pain for many, including those who cared for me and loved me. I need to apologize to them, once again.
  3. Sort out finances: Not that I am super rich, but I have created biggest mess in this field so far. People around me know how mismanaged I am regarding my money matters and I don’t want my loved ones to give up on getting my hard earned (peanut sized) money due to extreme hassles to receive that.
  4. Meet few people one more time: Some family members, friends and acquaintances whom I haven’t met for long, meeting them once is certainly on my to-do list!
  5. Cook some more weird(ish)dishes: Ok, I don’t know if I want to try out some new dishes and make few tried ones for the love of cooking…or for love of people. But I want to try them out and ensure they are eaten! I know the victims (if reading it), would have already become worried!  There is no place for “Eat this or that” in this list… as I am not that great a foodie!
  6. Visit some places: As a child, my wish was to visit Rotterdam and as I wrote, God has been kind to me, so I got a chance to go Rotterdam as my first foreign trip.  I have yet to go some European cities, in India-Gangtok, and once again to kanyakumari, Pondicherry…and most importantly my home! But this is more  part of wish-list than to-do and if I get to make to even my home, I will be satisfied.
  7. Find the way to clear up my social presence: To learn the nitty gritties of social media, I was forced to created profiles at many social sites, wikis and what not, apart from multiple email ids. Some of them I use a lot but others are just useless and I don’t think they need to stay there after me and take some storage capacity. So I need to do a little research to ensure that my social footprints are I am not like a ghost on social channels.
  8. Make it even with a few: I guess I am sufficiently generous and mostly forgive people, but then I ain’t no saint, and have to make even with a few people, who have troubled me beyond limit or my loved ones. No, I am not mercenary, so don’t look at me…I won’t settle others’ scores.
  9. Thank a lot of people: I need to thank a lot of people whom I know for being good, to me and to others..pretty long list but I must do that, including you,for taking time to read this!

This is quite a list already in which except places to visit, I haven’t added my wish list part like reading, writing and so on … and phew, it’s already a huge one!!!

Do you think there is something really important that I am missing from this to-do list?

Campaign Review: #HIRALVIDEOS campaign by HCL

While India has one of the biggest young population with higher education degrees, the sad truth is that talented workforce doesn’t get right opportunity while organizations spend millions to attract right talent.  In a survey by information week, 88% of respondents at larger IT companies admitted that see an IT talent shortage today in one or more technology areas important to their business!

Organizations are resorting to all possible medium to attract the right talent and in this league.  HCL technologies, one of the largest IT companies of India emerged as pioneer in using digital medium for recruitment and employer branding through its #CooolestInterviewEver campaign. Now again it has launched another campaign #HiralVideos to leverage power of digital for recruitment.

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The Campaign

The campaign is a video-based campaign, consisting of 4 videos-each sharing the details of a particular job in an interesting manner with an urge to make it viral for those people who are busy in their work so much, that they get no time to watch videos.

The campaign seems to have twin objectives:

  • Get a boost in job applications, and,
  • Establish HCL’s leadership in using digital for employer branding.

The execution

The campaign was launched on 19th November, 2014.  All 4 videos were published on HCL’s official YouTube channel. A campaign landing page was created and shared on HCL’s social channels. The campaign is also been promoted on job portals like Timesjobs. Apart from this, the paid medium is used to bring traffic to YouTube videos and the campaign landing page.

What’s good

The most remarkable point of this campaign lies in its novelty.  I don’t recall any such campaign previously to hire employees, more so for non-creative roles. The videos are quite interesting and even their titles generate curiosity in the mind of viewer.

 Scope of improvement

HCL is an IT company operating in B2B domain and they missed on few basic promotional methods useful for B2C domain, especially when CTA is request to share the video and target is enticing viewers to share the videos. Below are few small points that the company can work upon to achieve better results:

  • To begin with, a playlist could have been made with all 4 videos, and the url from the list could be shared, so that viewer gets automatically next video at the end of first!
  • A Google search for #HiralVideos yields 1 result! Yes, the google plus post is the only search result. A quick keyword check suggests it to be missing from the YouTube keywords. This important hashtag  can be used as a keyword in YouTube videos
  • A little SEO for landing page wouldn’t hurt much but can be useful.
  • Since the youngsters are more on social channels, paid promotion on social channels can help in fetching better results. ( I can write a separate post on how social media and HCL’s social channels could be used in most optimum way)
  • It has been established that “native content tends to aspire more to going viral”, this option can be explored to widen the reach.
  • This amazing work can be shared on sites like Kulzy so that more people get to know about it and help in its spread
  • Remarketing can be attempted aggressively to enhance the impact of the campaign.

Conclusion

#HiralVideos is one of its own kinds of campaign and its HCL has once again used digital medium impressively beyond product marketing, for recruitment and employer branding! A more holistic integrated digital strategy could have brought better results, and all the aspects of digital-social, search etc. could be leveraged simultaneously for synergistic effect. Though, trying digital beyond product branding in itself worth applaud!

However, a question ponders in my mind: Such videos could have given better results if they were for entry level positions or positions with 3-4 years. The population helping in making videos viral would not be really interested in sharing videos which detail about jobs requiring 9-10 years  of experience! What do you think?

On cookies, remarketing and privacy on Internet

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Being in social media domain, I do a lot of work related research in incognito to avoid being stalked by the content of sites I visit. But the thought to write about it was triggered few days back by a twitter interaction where @a1purva shared a tweet about how many people notice brands’ remarketing effort, as a matter of success for marketer.

There is no debate that people would certainly notice brands’ effort to reach out to those users who had visited their website; if not in first stance, then after a while. However for marketers, one important question is Continue reading “On cookies, remarketing and privacy on Internet”

Arrival of @SuperStarRajini on Twitter and the Social Media Blunders

May 5, 2014 witnessed a special day in the history of Twitter, especially for @TwitterIndia when the legendary actor, Super Star RajiniKanth joined Twitter as @SuperstarRajini. Even before there was any tweet, the followers started pouring in and Within 10 minutes of joining, the official twitter handle of the great Rajini sir with just 1 tweet, got 25K+ followers. This sure was in line with the reputation of the star and the love people have for him!

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Continue reading “Arrival of @SuperStarRajini on Twitter and the Social Media Blunders”

Tips for Brand Managers to Win on Social Media

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Being in a digital agency means, I often get to interact with the brand managers to understand what they want from their brand content to do on various social channels and suggest ways to do so. It could be getting more likes, comments, shares on their content or more people talking about the brand/its campaign to make it a talk of the town or to get more leads.  All these can happen in much better way if there is a little more understanding shown by the brand managers.

As a brand manager you can get the most out of social media if you understand- Continue reading “Tips for Brand Managers to Win on Social Media”

Is it progress or beginning of the end!

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For the last 3 months, I was spending around 3 hours in commuting to the office and after spending more than 9 hours in office with some more hours at home for office work ( Yeah, the perk of heading social in a digital agency), I was left with no time to complete the daily necessary tasks, leave alone any entertainment or time for myself. This morning, when I read the following Facebook post from my friend @prateekshah,  it struck a chord and I was forced to think where we are going as a society!

Facebook post

Then I saw another Facebook post from @Genexlogistics, where they emphasized the importance of time and that you can decide how to use your time, and I again thought, if it’s in my hand to decide how to use my time! Continue reading “Is it progress or beginning of the end!”

A guide to What, Why and How of B2B Social Media Marketing

That brands are embracing Social Media to connect with their customers and woo them for buying their products, is not a news anymore. B2B companies too have jumped on the bandwagon and are turning social for the benefits of this amazing media. However, for most of the brands, the social media starts and ends at Facebook with a little bit spicing up with Twitter profile and LinkedIn page. This strategy can be useful for B2C brands up to certain extent but not for B2B brands whose target audiences have different persona and therefore different behavior. This is multi-channel world and brands need to capitalize on the respective plus-point of different platforms. The following guide might help B2B brands Continue reading “A guide to What, Why and How of B2B Social Media Marketing”

What brands should not do on social media community

Its been some time since brands have started using social platforms to connect with their target audiences to achieve variety of purposes. Many big and small brands’ communities have mushroomed on the popular social channels like Facebook.  However many brand have just jumped on the bandwagon without understanding the very basic principles of community building- that a community is built for the people and unless there is no encouragement for interactions, there would be no engagement and the community would die eventually. These brands think that they should control the interaction as per their choice.  Continue reading “What brands should not do on social media community”