Earlier this month we launched our YouTube channel. To celebrate, we announced the “One Tool or Tactic, Two Minutes” contest, challenging the SEOmoz community to create a two-minute video highlighting their favorite tool or tactic.
For those who might have missed it, here’s the original YouTube contest post.
The Videos
We were thrilled with the response we got. You guys got creative: we had everything from simple Whiteboard-Friday-style standups to screencasts of tool use to cartoons and fully produced mini-movies.
We also learned a lot about what everyone's focusing on these days. We received a ton of submissions in the Content Marketing and Social Media categories, just a few in the Email/Outreach category, and none at all in the APIs or Google Updates categories (I guess everyone’s finally tired of talking about Panda and Penguin?).
When we first launched the contest, we decided that if there were no submissions in a category, we would name more than one winner in another category so there would still be 9 winners. Even with the ability to have a “tie” in a category, we had so many great submissions that we couldn’t keep the winners to 9.
So without further ado, here are the TEN winners of the SEOmoz YouTube contest. You can see the videos on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/moz. We got lots of requests to see the runners-up too, so in a few days we'll show you the videos that almost made the cut as well.
The Winners
Content Marketing – TIE!
- Developing a User-centric Content Strategy for Effective Content Marketing by Sean Si of SEO-Hacker.com
- Content Marketing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Foster Web Marketing
Link Building
- The PR Funnel by Mike Essex of Koozai
Social Media - THREE WAY TIE!
- The Social Media Shuffle by Loud Interactive - Updated! The original video didn't upload correctly, so here's a working version.
- Video SEO Tip for Google Plus by Ronnie Bincer of Video Leads Online
- The Perfect Social Media Metadata for WordPress by Douglas Thomas of Search Influence
Analytics
- Keyword Swing by Richard Stephenson of RichardStep.com
SEO Secrets
Email/Outreach
- Retargeting Through Affiliates by Vishal Maru of MaruVishal.com
Conversion Rate Optimization
- eCommerce SEO by Benj Arriola of Internet Marketing Inc.
In addition to being featured in this post and on our YouTube channel, the winners will also receive some awesome SEOmoz swag!
The Runners-Up
- Content Siloing by Laurent Bourrelly of LaurentBourrelly.com
- SEO Secrets: First in Google by Markus Allen of Marketing-Ideas.org
- How to Don't Be Evil by Intrapromote
The editorial team had such a blast watching all of the videos you guys submitted - we love seeing your bright shiny faces and hearing you talk about SEO. We'll definitely be providing more opportunities for you to submit video content in the future, so stay tuned!
Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO
And this got selected? "BH are jerks" as a punch line?
How naive. Google decides what's wrong, they proclaim "do no evil" (tm) and anyone
who is smart enough not to believe that BS is a jerk?
That defies the basic principles of logic.
I'm so glad you had the guts to question this video, alileo@pkm. I didn't. I chickened out until now.
When I read this:
We received a ton of submissions in the Content Marketing and Social Media categories...
I was super excited to click on the winning videos.
But I was soon scratching my head. I even got a bit upset because most of the videos didn't teach me anything. Some were even unwatchable (I posted a link above to companion notes just to figure out what was said).
I would have commented a few days ago, but then I would have sounded bitter because I was runner up.
Respectfully, I was disappointed that the black/white hat video won. Not because mine should have won (I didn't have the entertainment factor in it and shouldn't have taken top spot for that reason alone), but because it was a total WTF...
... I showed it to my wife last night and it looked like she ate a skunk. She didn't know about me entering - and she said, "That was the best entry? I don't even get it?"
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I'm commenting about this because as per Rand's tips on blog commenting and his admirable transparency values...
... Because if this contest were to be offered again, I wouldn't enter.
Nor would I invest the time to watch the winners.
It just didn't match up to the normal quality I see here more times than not.
Please understand I comment because I care. I LOVE the video submission idea. I think it's great just the way it is. The 2-minute rule is great. It forces us to deliver nuggets now (instead of waffling on and on). Perhaps the only item I'd add is the ability to attach notes or our own description (which YouTube loves anyway... hey, there's another tip:>).
I expect this comment to get voted down (or worse, deleted... as I've had a few comments deleted recently which is a head scratcher to me).
Let the down votes begin!
*
I have a feeling that a lot of people here avoid making dissonant comments.
I wonder why is it so?
Ummm, hit and miss, some certainly better than others.
all the videos were really great. Honor to be part of it.Ruth, rest your eyes.
Found Koozai Mike's attempts very quality and creative ;) Keep it on and my congratulations to all the winners!
Cool videos!
My favorite is the Wild Western Style video - that's awesome.
The one by Dougleas Thomas (metadatas) is really hard to follow because of the speed in the video. Perhaps he can provide us with a slower version.
We're very excited that we were chosen as a winner! Thank you SEOmoz for running this contest and allowing our team a little project to have fun and get creative with.
Definitely some great videos in this collection, and excited to see the runner-ups as well.
Congratulations on a great contest. Just curious -- why aren't the videos embedded on this page?
I love seeing all videos about SEO and social media, heartily congratulation to all winners. Personally i like this Video SEO Tip for Google Plus by Ronnie Bince. In this video i found truly great stuff which i want about Google Plus.
Thanks for making me part of the winners also. I did not have any professional video setup, poor lighting, bad camera and audio. I'm glad you gave emphasis to the content. I was planning to come up with something looking more professional but couldn't due to time constraints. I looked through all of them and all were great. But my personal favorite was The Perfect Social Media Metadata for WordPress by Douglas Thomas
I agree about the The Perfect Social Media Metadata for WordPress... would be great if we could actually have that meta data shown here so we can see it.
Update: I found the code here.
Thanks @benjarriola for the props & thanks @Markus Allen for both props and doin' my job for me!
I had submitted a HQ version, but I totally get the CRO need to not wait for 60MB to load to watch a 2 minute video.
I also really liked Vishal Maru's Retargeting Through Affiliates -- that was pretty cool and sneaky :)
Geez the runners-up must feel hard done by! Throw them a link SEOmoz :P
I like Content Marketing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - thats fun ;-)
Hi Ruth,
I thought the runner-ups would get a bit of SEOmoz love :-(
Is it still planned ?
Thank you
Regards
I know that my comment's quite late but I just want to say thanks to the judges for letting me win (undeserving) in the content marketing category of this contest. The Good the Bad and the Ugly was way beyond my league. Kudos to you guys!
Hi everyone,
Thanks for letting us know that the Social Media Shuffle video was glitchy. We've updated the link above to the new, non-glitchy version.
Thanks! We're so excited here at Foster Web Marketing to have tied for first place (in the content marketing category)! We've long preached the gospel of quality content - nice to feel validated. Have to give a shout out to our partners at the Fairfax Video Studio and to our "actors" Tom (good), Mike (bad) and Jim (really not that ugly) ;-)
*edited to note we placed in one category... pardon my enthusiasm this morning!
Also wanted to add - this is a great idea for a contest, whether you agree or not with which videos were selected. Hope to see more contests like this; it is pretty interesting to see the different ways everyone chose to organize info into a 2min video. Thanks Ruth and SEOmoz!
Great contest Ruth and the Moz team!
It was good to watch all of the videos and I'm honored to be part of the lucky few to be picked. Oh and can't wait for that swag bag to hit my front door. :) *crosses fingers for a Roger desk toy* :)
No Google Update videos? Well, when we get a Penguin update, I'm gonna have "Happy Feet".
Hey Ruth thanks for this blog post and letting us know about the winners. All the videos are highly creative and shows sheer hard work and research. Three cheers to the winners...
Thanks for picking my video as one of the winners! The mixture of videos from all the entrants is very impressive, it's great to see such a collection of styles and approaches.
Hi Mike your videos is simply fantastic. Pure Koozai style as your all videos. Congratulations.
Dang I missed my chance! I so wanted to submit my "Roaches Eat Toothpaste Video"! ..
Hint... Videos with mentions & links are my strategy. =)
...but really, thanks for sharing some good tactics.
Thanks for the props, SEOmoz! This was fun.
Now that the contest is over, I guess we can post "How To Don't Be Evil" on Intrapromote's website:
https://blog.intrapromote.com/inbound-marketing-video-how-to-dont-be-evil/
Well done to all the winners! These videos are great!
The great videos contest. Seems to be very initiative as people can have their best shoot marketing get going and also get the change to have their top in videos. Seems to be great one.
Some really great content here! What a brilliant idea and thanks for sharing.
Wow all the winner are actually a winners of attentions. Some of the greatest videos on Internet Marketing can be found over here only and why not after all those are the winner of the SEOMOZ Contest.
Well undoubtedly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Content Marketing just rocked the contest. I found it very funny but the idea, creative and content integrated by foster is just Mind Blowing I will always recommend this video only whenever found any one confused with Content Marketing.
Thanks & Congratulations to all the great winners.
Cool!! Thanks! We had a lot of fun making the video
I'm uploading my video (I was a "runner up" winner) to YouTube... I'll update this spot with the link. Stay tuned.
Update: Here's the link to my "runner up" winning video about showing up first in Google...
With only 3 Runners-up, we might deserve a special category ;-P
Congrats to the winners, though
-
Laurent Bourrelly
Just by going through these videos and looking at new thinking, tips and tricks is wonderfully inspiring. Now i'm gonna have to go through all of them today!