The title may sound sensationalist but it really isn’t. It’s a genuine threat, not just now but into our innovative future. Your business is at risk. Even suspected use of copyrighted material without a legitimate licence can close down your entire online presence. You have all the licences for the clipart your designer used in your website, right? Not sure? The watch the video. Get involved. Stop this threat before it is too late.

Some more weekend fun but moreover an important lesson for anyone involved in online shopping. Also very funny and by the folks at Google Analytics.

Have you ever wanted to visualise your Google Plus relationships? Well now you can with the Circles of Trust.

Green means that you are mutually circled, yellow means that you have circled them but they didn’t and red means they circled you but you didn’t. It’s a fascinating use of the Google+ API and an intriguing way to see an overview of your social network.

If the video of Goggle’s new Nexus S is anything to go by it will allow you to fly and possibly change genders. More great innovation from Google.

Here’s a great way to promote your product. Speed test it against the forces of nature…oh, and a potato.

Recently I was asked to do some consulting for a company. They were developing a strategy for their online presence and wanted some assistance. The strategy involved a lot of social media and made some fairly bold claims about the returns on their investment. Upon seeing this, the first question I asked was where was the research to back these claims. There was none, and worse there was no budget to do any market research. Fortunately they had a year’s worth of web metrics that I was able to analyse and offer some practical solutions.

Metrics are often under-utilised as a market research tool, whether it be the number of hits on a website or which demographic is watching a video. Careful analysis of your metrics can yield a wealth of information that you can then use to help develop your digital strategies. Here are three:

Analytics

Google Analytics is probably the most used web metric in the known universe but there are still people that either don’t know about it or fail to analyse the data. Sometimes all people use it for is to see how many hits their site is generating. It’s so much more than that. It can tell you how they reached your site, where they are based, how long they spent on the site, where they clicked out, plus a whole lot more. In the situation above, analysing the company’s data showed that their web site was attracting a different demographic from the one that they had started with. It had actually changed six months before and the company was completely unaware of the change. Once they found out it allowed them to adapt their strategy to better suit their new user-base.

Server Logs

Before Analytics there was the server log. Some people still prefer to log their own traffic or use it in combination with Analytics. I prefer to use a range of metrics simply because they provide me with different aspects of the traffic and it provides me with a better overview of my readers. There may also be security reasons for preferring to do it yourself or you just might not like/trust Google.

Depending on how your web server is configured there is a range of data that is being captured about the users who visit your site: where they are based, which site referred them, how long they were on the site. Many of the same things that Analytics provides. And there are even programs that will analyse this information and package it into a human-readable format (just perfect for your Powerpoint presentation or the end-of-year report). Here are two of the more popular analysers (they are also free):

• AWStats
• Webalizer

Insight

Even YouTube provides a selection of metric data for the videos you upload to their site. It’s called Insight and while you do need 500 or so views for all the features to become available it provides, as the name suggests, an insight into the demographics of who is watching your videos. Gender, age, location, plus there’s even a hotspot graph that shows when your viewers got bored and clicked away. All very useful for your online video market research.

Market Research doesn’t necessarily have to cost the Earth. By analysing the data you are already collecting, and by utilising the free tools that are available, you may find that you have enough information to base your strategies upon. And even if you do need to employ an research agency you may only require a subset of the data. Meaning you save time and, more importantly, money.

The traditional view of how to advertise on television (and subsequently through online video ) is the mini-story. Usually these are short pieces dealing with one subject in a superficial but psychologically attractive way. Sure, the story may have a dominating, but catchy, jingle and the narrative may be non-existent – but essentially that is what a commercial is to most people. However, online video offers some interesting alternatives that not only move away from this traditional mini-story concept but also allow you to build a dynamic and engaging community.

Showing Not Telling

Everyone wants to see how a product works before they lay down their hard-earned cash. By providing a video demonstration of your products you can satisfy that need. There’s nothing really new in that idea, however by turning the demonstration into a form of entertainment you can make the demo far more appealing not only to your existing customer base, but also to people that have never heard of you – potential customers that don’t have a need now but may in the future. Here is a world class example of turning a demonstration into an appealing, form of entertainment advertising:

The Will It Blend series of online videos has been running since 2006 and has generated over 100 million views. As a result Blendtec has seen a dramatic increase in retail sales for their products. By demonstrating their product in such an unusual way they’re not only providing a wonderfully entertaining strange attractor – blending up items that aren’t supposed to be blended – but also demonstrate just how good their products are – if it blends an iPad it must be awesome at making a banana smoothie.

Also by allowing its audience to write-in and request items to blend, Blendtec are encouraging user participation and laying the foundation for other forms of two-way communication. They are forming a goodwill bond between themselves and the users. Forming the beginnings of a community.

Making It Personal

The old saying that your people are your best asset still rings true. You can use your staff to advertise your company and all they have to do is be themselves.

All business is based around the idea of trust. We’re at best hesitant about entering a deal with people that we don’t trust. By providing an online video of your people, showing them as personable humans rather than faceless drones you are setting the basis for a trust to be formed.

One idea for the format of these videos is a series of interviews in which your staff tell us a little about themselves – nothing overtly personal but enough so we can a feel of what this person is like. They can reveal what they do and maybe relate a story of an event that happened at the company. It is important to let them be themselves and to not try to force them to advertise the company. Let them be real.

Google has a range of these staff videos and after watching a few you get a real feel of the vibe that Google must have. There’s an undertone that the people of Google feel they are doing massively important work. Their passion is unmistakable.

While Google is undoubtedly a great place to work, and chooses the best people to work there, your company must also have exciting, passionate people that you can use as well. By using your staff in this way you make your company more friendly to clients and begin to form a foundation of trust, thereby opening up the lines of communication.

Beginner’s Guide or Master Class

Many products and services could benefit from a video or series of video tutorials explaining in detail just how to use them. Text instructions – even with diagrams – can be ambiguous. By providing a video tutorial for your products you lessen the problems associated with learning how to use the product.

Alternatively, you can construct master classes that provide professional-level knowledge on how to use a product. It doesn’t even have to be a tutorial about using your own product. If you are selling something that is ancillary to another product then a video tutorial about how to use that product offers you an opportunity to tap into that their established market.

One of the best examples of this technique is Andrew Kramer’s Video Copilot (unfortunately the videos are unavailable to be embedded). The site caters to users of the motion artistry and video compositing software After Effects. Andrew is one of the leading video artists in Hollywood and provides a range of tutorials catering to both the beginner right up to seasoned professionals looking for new techniques and tricks. Not only do the tutorials show off his expertise – advertising to prospective clients – but he also offers a range of add-ons for sale that improve the After Effects experience. The site has generated a strong community attracting 2.5 million hits per month.

Using these techniques to create video sites (or sub-sites) allows you to foster a community. It offers your consumers a chance to talk directly to you and allows you an opportunity to test new ideas, offer incentives and to receive feedback. In many ways it becomes your own personalised market research group the only costs involving the upkeep of the site and the production of the videos themselves. That’s got to be a great return on your investment.

Following in the footsteps of Nokia Friendview, Google has decided to delve into the world of location-based mobile social networking. Google Latitude is a free addon service to Google Maps Mobile that allows users to add friends and share current location and status updates with them. Of course this requires that the user have a GPS enabled mobile phone.

One of the fears of location-based services is the lack of privacy. Google Latitude allows users to control who has access to what information including the ability to hide or share only a city-level location.

If mobile-based social networking is likely to take off then this is the service that will initiate it. Most people who use mobile maps services are well familiar with Google Maps. It has already become an invaluable tool so adapting its use to social networking is really a no-brainer especially when you can invite your entire Gmail contacts list to join you. That’s something that Friendview really failed at.