Hey, guys welcome to Shama.TV. I want to talk you guys today about Facebook ads. They are talked about, they’re discussed. People either love ‘em, hate ‘em or are excited by the opportunity, but here are my thoughts on Facebook ads.

They are primarily two main thoughts on why I don’t think they are very successful at the moment and I think this may change. This is my current take on it.

(1) Facebook ads aren’t successful is because they are very stringent. Google ads give a lot more flexibility about what you put out there. How you capitalize on certain things. What kinds of images you use. Facebook ads and I have talked to a lot of people who feel this way, are really trying to keep them pulled in. That’s not bad, but when you are trying to really leverage an advertising platform and see everything it can do for you, but when you don’t have the power to experiment freely it really restricts you in a lot of ways. So one of my things with Facebook is I really hope that in the future, they will be a little more lax about the types of advertising experiments people can do. That’s not to say they should go let it go on unlock and it can be spammy ads. I am saying if they can loosen control a little bit and let people run with that I think they’ll see some great results.

(2) The other thing about Facebook ads is people on Facebook are not in buying mode. This is why they’ve seen that Facebook works better by building relationships, cultivating leads and understanding how people are receiving them. It’s a much better research and lead generation tool, than it is a direct selling tool, which is what we are hoping to do with ads, or get them to click through. So, because people aren’t in the buying mindset, it’s not even like Google where their looking for solutions. They’re just their showcasing their identity and connecting with others.

In summary, I think that if marketers can figure out how to get around this, how to work the ads into people identities, and Facebook can loosen up control just a little bit, and let people have a little bit of fun with it, I think Facebook ads have a great chance of being very successful. I think consumers and marketers will find them to be a very handy marketing tool, but for now I am not sure that Facebook ads are the best investment.

Hey guys, welcome to Shama.tv. You know, I always talk about ROI in social media marketing and new media marketing, and it always comes back to ROI. Well, you know, this past week I’ve spoken to some organizations and I’ve realized that they aren’t even to the point to really discuss ROI (“Return on Investment”). They were at a whole different acronym which I called RUI, and I think a lot of businesses, non-profits, and organizations fall under this category. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think about it.

But to me, RUI is “Resistance, Understanding, and Integration,” and I realize that this is the process most people go through every single time that anything new comes out. You know, when web sites came out, when Email came out, and now it’s social media, you’re seeing this. Before you can talk to people about ROI, you really have to talk to them about RUI and figure out where they are, because the first thing people feel is resistance. It’s a new idea. They’re not sure. They’re resisting it. And I’ve noticed this but, you know, as people who are very accustomed to doing [things the] way they’ve always done things; you see the resistance level is higher, so there is resistance.

Then there’s understanding. So they understand what social media can do for them. They understand the mindset. And then there is integration where they actually start making it part of what they’re doing, whether it’s their marketing activities, [or] their daily life, and once they understand RUI, once they’ve been through that process, then you can talk to them about ROI. So, I’d be interested to hear what you guys think about this concept.

Hi, I’m Dave Kaminski of Web Video University with some more tips for Shama.tv viewers, and today we’re going to talk about some of the Do’s and Don’ts with web video, and I want to specifically cover three of them, and the first is video length.

You always want to try and keep your web videos around two minutes long. That’s because beyond the two minute mark, viewership tends to really drop and statistically, across the web, the average length of time a video is watched is slightly over two minutes, and on video-sharing sites it’s worse, where 90% of viewers have gone away before the first 60 seconds of a video is even played. So keep your videos short. It’s no accident that Shama’s videos on this site are all around two minutes, give or take.

The next thing you want to do with your videos is keep them moving. This will help keep viewers glued to your videos. For example, if you pay attention to television shows, you’ll notice that about every three seconds, what you see on the screen changes. It will be a different camera angle or a different scene, or they’ll show a different character. Again, this is done to hold the interest of your brain, at least subconsciously. Now throwing different things on the screen all the time can get pretty tough to pull off with web video. So instead just, every so often, throw some text or an image on the screen, a lot like I’m doing in these videos. It can really help to keep viewers interested.

And finally, if you’re doing live video like this one, well, whatever energy you project in normal life, well, you want to double it once you get in front of a camera. It’s one of those weird things where the camera won’t really pick up on your personality unless you over-emphasize it. For example, if you’ve ever seen a live performance being videotaped, you’ll notice the actors really seem to be exaggerating things, but through the camera lens, it comes out looking exactly right.

So that’s going to wrap up this tip on the important Do’s or Don’ts with web video, and in the next lesson I’m going to cover the three major ways that people are profiting from web video right now. I’ll talk to you then.