Marketing via the blogosphere – send an embeddable video

It’s notoriously difficult to do but can be done. The objective is to get bloggers to put your message out there and discuss your web service.

Take this example, a nice email from Sky News producer Ruth with a thank you video for contributions to the Sky News Technology programme (nightly 7.30 GMT…) to embed in my blog. How can I refuse? Here it is

The only issue is that the embed code is not compatible with WordPress (the engine I use to blog with) so I had to provide a link rather than embed it direct in this post. WordPress supports Google and Youtube videos only.

This unfortunately may be the real message of web 2 marketing – you still need to use the existing platforms and get your message and content out that way.

This leaves Sky in a quandary as they want to be media channel not a content provider. So they need to be one of these platforms that WordPress supports – allow me to post and exchange High Quality digital videos in a format like their Sky News player.

So well done Sky News, something nice for my blog, good publicity for Sky News and no money changed hands. Now come on Sky online – be a platform for users as well as for yourselves and compete with Youtube head on with a high quality (widescreen) video excahnge platform.

Battle for news

As I’ve referred to on previous posts – the News Feed is the key battleground for social networks – I’m going to keep returning to the social network that provides me the most interesting daily diet of news about my friends and community of acquaintainces.

Till now the News Feed has still lacked one critical component – News from the wider community – what’s going in my country, or in the world for example.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could see breaking news videos appearing in your feed as well – that way you can keep up to date with those closest without losing touch with the big events that shape our world.

I’ve been working with Sky News to provide just this on Facebook. As reported yesterday on techcrunch uk, we’re providing a way that users can get breaking news videos appearing in their Facebook feed.

The app launches in a couple of weeks. Sign up as a Fan on the app pre-launch Fan page to be one of the first users.