tent-pole Articles

Thanksgiving Videos You Can Use That Provide Food Tips, Fun, Hilarity

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  As you should all know by now, any holiday can serve as a tent-pole event for videos.  And around this time, people will be searching for holiday recipes, or trying to learn a little something about Thanksgiving that they didn't know before.  ...

Halo 4 Forward Unto Dawn: Review - The Best Video Game Movie Never Made?

Machinima and 343 Industries (Microsoft's new game studio in charge of the Halo 4 franchise) have created the ultimate piece of tent-pole marketing for the Halo 4 video game, the Halo 4 Forward Unto Dawn web series. For the five Fridays leading up, fans enjoyed installments of the epic web series serving as prologue to the game.

How to Spike Video Views via Special Channel Events - A Look at Captain Sparklez’ Minecraft Style

When you look at certain YouTube channels, you'll see some healthy views here and there that number into the tens and hundreds of thousands.  You'll see a consistent amount of views across every video.  Every once in awhile, one will spike, and there's usually a ...

A Quick Look at Machinima's Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn Web Series and Tent-Pole Marketing

We heard about it for months: Machinima was going to spend a ton of money to get a Halo 4 web series/video game tie-in after a round of funding, led by Google, rewarded the channel with $35 million to spend awhile back.  Halo 4: Forward ...

O'Romneybama Political Song Parody is Great Example of Tent-Pole Programming in Action

I was able to talk to comedian/actor Jim Meskimen awhile back.  He uses YouTube very well and still comes out with great content, all promoting his show, "JIMPRESSIONS" that he does around the country.  After my interview with him, he kindly sent me a DVD ...

Teacher's Extra Credit - 10 Steps to Create Your Educational Channel on YouTube : The EDU Playbook

YouTube recently released a new playbook, the YouTube EDU Playbook Guide.  They are beginning to narrow down their playbooks into more specific areas.  The last one was for brands, and it was a sort of mini-Creator Playbook.  All playbooks are going to take pages from ...

5 Social Video Marketing Lessons Brands Can Learn From the Olympics

The battle for Olympic success was not confined to the running track, swimming pool or boxing ring. London 2012 was also a golden opportunity for brands to create spreadable video content across the social web and amplify their message at a moment when the eyes ...

Nike’s YouTube Videos Snatch Gold from Jaws of Official Olympic Advertisers

According to Demitri Kalogeropoulos of The Motley Fool Blog Network, “There are 11 multinational companies that make up the official list of worldwide sponsors to the Olympic games. And to get on this list they each pay a hefty premium for their places near the ...

A Fireworks Display Gone Wrong Shows What Goes Right On YouTube

Many times when we think of how we can make a video successful, we forget that many times, it's a happy accident.  It's just the fact that a camera was there, ready to capture something beautiful in its own right, but maybe something goes wrong.  ...

7 Tricks to Optimize Your Video's Title for Search & Social [Creator's Tip #46]

When you think about your title, you have to realize that it’s the first thing the viewer sees when evaluating whether or not to watch your video--whether that's from a search result, or via your social network.  It’s important that a title works well for ...

Halo, Electric City Debut Trailers, Look For Unprecedented Viewership

A few months ago, Yahoo! announced their first original series, Electric City.  And like all big, huge, announced web series, we were given a vague release date (I'm still looking for that Ben Stiller fake trailer series that was announced, oh, nearly a year ago).  ...

Hulu's YouTube Channel Reaches 1 Billion Views: Why It's Not As Impressive As It Sounds

So, Hulu's YouTube channel, which you may not have known existed--after all, Hulu is its own video destination that basically competes with YouTube--has just crossed the 1 billion view mark.  Hulu's channel is little more than clips and commercials, so how in the world did ...

Google, YouTube Continue Betting Big On Machinima, And With Good Reason

A funding round of $35 million went to Machinima, one of YouTube's most visited sites, to the tune of 1.6 billion views last April, and a lion's share of the funding came from Google.  Already-invested Redpoint Ventures and MK Capital also joined in.  All of ...

How to Optimize & Maximize Video Views Over Time: Analyzing the Highs and Lows

We've talked a lot about how to optimize views on your YouTube videos, and we went over a lot about what the YouTube Creator Playbook says about YouTube Analytics.  But maybe after you have a video that gets some good views, you start seeing a ...

Google's YouTube Strategy: 101 YouTube Channels for Three Key Reasons

What's Google's YouTube marketing strategy? Google Inc. has 101 Official Google YouTube Channels which feature videos on a wide range of topics, from product demos to visiting speakers to Google’s offices. The company also has a network of 182 Official Google Blogs that cover topics ...