UPDATE: The deadline to enter this contest has been extended to Friday, August 17th!
Howdy Mozzers!
We're excited to announce the new SEOmoz YouTube channel! Check it out at https://www.youtube.com/moz. We'll be adding a bunch of our video content from the last couple of years, including Whiteboard Friday and our just-for-fun videos like Aaron's First Day. Going forward, you'll be able to view SEOmoz videos on the YouTube channel a few days after they debut here on the site. We'll also be doing special YouTube-only content, presentations, and contests - like this one!
The SEOmoz YouTube Contest: "1 Tool/Tactic, 2 Minutes"
A few words from Rand on the contest:
Here's the rundown:
Create a 2-minute video on your favorite inbound marketing tool or tactic. You've got 2 minutes to tell the SEOmoz community why this one thing is awesome and how to use it to get real marketing results. Your video can be as simple as you talking into your webcam ZeFrank-style, or as complicated and special-effects-y as you care to make it, but it can't be longer than 2 minutes! We'll be selecting winning videos in the following categories:
- Content Marketing
- Google Updates
- Link Building
- Social Media
- Analytics
- APIs
- SEO Secrets
- Email/Outreach
- Conversion Rate Optimization
The winning videos will be selected based on how informative, entertaining, and actionable they are (infotainable?). Winners will get their videos featured on our YouTube channel (along with a link and shoutout in the video description) and will also win an SEOmoz swag bag!
Entries are subject to the SEOmoz Community Etiquette & Disclaimer. Videos must be original content that are not previously posted anywhere else.
To enter:
- Make a video! 2 minutes or less.
- Label the video file with the video's title PLUS your SEOmoz username. This is how we will know it's from you (ex: if I were submitting "Twitter for Links," an example file name would be: TwitterForLinks_ruthburr)
- Upload the video using the "upload your video" button below.
Make sure the file name has the your SEOmoz username, or we won't know it's from you. When you click the button below, you'll be prompted to upload your video - simply select the file you want and click "Open." You'll see a progress bar letting you know how long you've got left for the video to upload, and when it's complete you'll see a message saying your upload is completed. The uploader may run a bit slow depending on your connection speeds, so please be patient. Ready to upload? Let us have it:
Submit your video by Wednesday, August 15th Due to popular demand, we're extending the deadline - you now have until Friday, August 17th to submit your video. We'll start announcing the winners on Tuesday, August 21st and will release a new winning video on our YouTube channel every weekday until all the winners have been announced.
I love a good contest! :) Good luck to the entrants.
Also, "infotainable" is a great new word.
I love this idea! Maybe just one small observation from the peanut gallery? Videos are a lot of work--even two minute ones--especially if one is trying to making them contest-winning-worthy while still juggling his/her normal workload. Two weeks doesn't feel like a lot of time. I guess it's enough time if we all did our video's Whiteboard Friday style where we filmed ourselves explaining our strategies; however, for something epic, I don't know. I guess you could say if someone does accomplish something epic with only two weeks to do it, he/she's even more worthy of winning!
Noted and fair point. If the contest goes well, we'd certainly consider doing a longer run one in the future.
I'd also point out that a screencast is a great way to go for these, and may be considerably easier to produce than splicing real world footage :-)
I think people over think video which is why there's not more awesome video content being created. Just go for it, 2 weeks is plenty of time ;)
Woo.. It’s amazing.
Moz came up again with a new marketing trick that will not only help to promote Moz video channel but also give some chance to newbie’s to recognize him in industry.
I will definitely move this idea to my SEO manager to prepare a video and submitted it on MOZ video channel.
Thumbs up for all Moz team members
There be some smart cookies on the seomoz team.
You mean because they'll have a bunch of new, relevant and short videos to start their YouTube channel to gain whatever SEO's live under a rock and don't already know that Moz rocks? I think so, too.
Can't wait for all the awesome entries :-)
Awesome Ruth!Cheers
Very interesting stuff! In light of the fact that most of the previous posts on here around Video SEO have suggested "don't host it on YouTube" would love to hear/see an update from you guys and how this fits in with your overall strategy around video and video SEO.
Totally get the move but would be interesting to hear how this fit's into SEOmoz' overall SEO strategy and would love to hear any lessons along the way.
Great question, Sam!
I definitely agree that YouTube shouldn't be your whole video SEO strategy - just like Facebook shouldn't be your whole social media strategy. We will continue to host our Whiteboard Friday and other videos on SEOmoz.org via Wistia, who we just love working with. However, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the United States, and there's an audience there that's worth trying to reach. We'll be creating unique YouTube-specific content, as well as cross-promoting our existing videos - similar to our social media strategy with Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
Lessons along the way? Now you've got the inside scoop into one of my upcoming blog posts ;-) stay tuned!
Awesome competition Ruth!
A great way to launch a Youtube channel.
Good Idea!!
Good-
Another great way to create brand awareness for a large audience. I hope I can find some time. Two weeks is a tight deadline to create something good.
There are tools to know the keywords that use the successful videos and thus put an attractive title and labels to make the video appear better positioned than others.
I have done it with several videos and it is very effective
Great - looking forward to seeing what people come up with. Should be alot of good content and two minutes is a decent chunk to start with.
Add me to the "Love this Idea" tribe. I'm all about the win-win propositions and time-bound challenges. This is a great opportunity for everyone to create and share, and to really hunker down on putting out golden content.
Thanks Ruth and I look forward to uploading soon. :)
Love this idea. I can't wait to see a ton of useful, short videos made by the community. Now, I have to put my thinking cap on and try to think of something to create and share.
Also, I really enjoy seeing the Wistia video player announcing your YouTube contest.
Can we submit more than one video here? I'd also assume that after the contest is over, If our video is not chosen we can feel free to upload it to YouTube if we like, right?
Sure, submitting more than one video is fine. Yes, just like with YOUmoz submissions, if your video isn't selected feel free to post it elsewhere.
Well ! I just enrolled for the contest ! Just uploaded my video right now. Man, that's hard to speak English without a crappy accent when it's been some years you didn't do it. I'm really happy to participate ! Cheers !
Thanks! We're excited to see it.
People have had some additional questions so I wanted to follow up with y'all on this thread:
Let me know if you have any more questions! You still have over a week to enter!
great!
Bring back this contest! SEO has gotten so expansive that I would love to see what kind of tactics people are coming up with these days to drive traffic. Creativity and humor wins every time.
I'll chew on this for a bit and figure our what video to make. Thanks for the opportunity to participate!
Let's do this again!
Hey guys, for those of you who didn't see the updated post - the deadline for this contest has been extended to Friday, August 17th! So get filming!
I was going to say due to the amount of work, I was going to shoot before 12 midnight. *LOL* Now that the deadline is extended... I will still try to get it done before 12 midnight otherwise I might never get it done. *LOL*
Damn I rushed to finish today.
Too bad I could have waited to rush friday before 12 midnight :-D
I wish you extended length instead of deadline. 2 minutes is really short !
I made an initial plan of talking about a topic with 6 strategies, 10 action items and 2 challenges and within the 2 minutes... it all boiled down to 1 strategy. LOL.
That much content in 2 minutes, the audio must have been done by an auctioneer!
Hi Mozzers. I've just been checking out a few of the Whiteboard videos via the new YouTube channel, I think it's a great new resource for browsing and discovering new material...a bit like a Whiteboard box of chocolates!
In case this is helpful feedback, I've a few suggestions on the presentation of the material in YouTube that I think would make these videos even more useful:
1) I'd request that you add the date of the original broadcast. This way it'll be easy to gauge the recency of an individual video. You don't need me to point out that SEO and inbound marketing are in constant flux, so in future it will be useful to viewers to be able place the video in the context of SEO's evolution.
2) Also the transcripts featured on the SEOmoz blog are not available on YouTube. There's an interactive transcript feature but it's almost unusable. So a link placed within each video's description pointing to the original SEOmoz blog post would be helpful.
In addition, the blog comments section is always a rich source of debate and ideas, so again, linking through will make this section easier to reach.
And of course, linking from the video description will also have the potential to drive new visitors to the SEOmoz blog :-)
GREAT suggestions - I'll pass them along to our uploaders. I'm so glad you're liking the new channel!
Interesting thought!
Simply Great, Hope we can see some great videos. Planning to do my own one, Lets see what sort of topic will I select. :)
This is cool but im not really good in making self videos hope i could join next time
Great idea SEOMoz, we've uploaded 2!!
Just uploaded one myself.
Hooray! We can't wait to watch them!
This could be useful, i will check your channel.
I like the almost "GoPro" ish approach to boosting off the youtube channel. Have a contest to have users fill in your content space while also giving them good publicity. Pretty sharp, looking forward to throwing something together I can submit.
That is one of the best things about SEOmoz, like YOUmoz for example. I've written a couple of pieces for YOUmoz (when time permits) and within days I've gotten calls from people who read SEOmoz but they aren't comfortable enough with SEO to take it all on themselves for their companies. Contributing to the SEOmoz community and being a part of the content that makes SEOmoz great is also a great way to grow your brand and your business.
Both parties win, which is a testament to what they've built.
<3
No! Don't pay attention to Matthew or it may spark an angry and hilarious podcast! Look away!
Coolness...
Hmmmm... what to do, what to do. I'll chew on this for a bit and figure our what video to make. Thanks for the opportunity to participate!
Definitely a great marketing angle, Rand! As a marketer I love it.
Also I love the idea that it's not just a blog piece or tactic that we can throw together...but it has to be creative content. We often forget in SEO, that Content Rules. So overall great idea, Rand. I look forward to hearing from the rest of the marketing team and brainstorming my entry later today.
interesting :)
Ummmm.... Mine better be picked! Great contest, updates from John Rampton to come!
I think this is great concept, in some cases videos are more helpful than just content in article form.
Great idea.
Interesting stuff Ruth... If time permits i will try and add a video to participate in the contest! But what i am more interested in is to see how it works for you in terms of traffic that is coming in through this channel and what is the behaviour of this channel like how much they stay on the site and how many people actually convert from this!
Obviously the great idea indeed! :)
You guys should have more categories like "creative" or "uncommon" or "offline" etc..
to make it more cool...!
Interesting idea! Maybe next time...
Nice one. It would be good to see all entries :-)
Is there going to be only one winner per category? Or if there's some amazing content out there... could there be multiple winners in each (or some) of the categories?
Agree with Scott - don't hide away great 2nd place videos SEOmoz. Let us see all the best ideas!
We may decide that there's a tie in some category - or if no videos are submitted in a particular category, we may award another prize to a runner-up in another category. People definitely seem interested in seeing all the best submissions - we'll discuss and see if a "runner up film festival" makes sense.
Thanks for following up Ruth! :-)
wow, Amazing!!
I definitely agree and upload the video for seomoz you tube in the particular category like as SEO, APIs which are mentioned in this blog.It's may be used in business marketing.