Online Engagement Platform

Recently, I've worked with several people who have stated that it is really difficult to get started with online engagement in the right way - with the right presence on the right platforms, with the right level of activity, and without making it a major time waster.

In collaboration with Robot Parade, we've put together a platform that makes this easy: an Online Engagement Platform .

The Online Engagement Platform offers a complete setup service to kick-start a career in social networks including the most important sites: a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and RSS feeds to syndicate content. The main focus and differentiation of our service is that we have set this up in such a way that the sites can be controlled from one central location without the need to engage on every site separately. This makes it a low-touch service - something very important to the busy lives of people.

At the same time, we include into the service analytics for each of the sites - including our own VQmetrics product. The metrics are also mostly delivered through the central control platform making it simple to keep track of success. Additionally, our Vquence analysts will create quarterly reports with recommendations on how to improve on the engagement impact.

To round it all up, we offer training sessions to help be successful from the start.

Senator Lundy's successful start into Web 2.0 video

Media Release:

With the help of Australian video company Vquence, Senator Kate Lundy started a YouTube and a Vimeo channel in June this year as part of a new effort in using social networking technology - also known as Web 2.0 technology - to better communicate with her constituency.

Many of her federal colleagues have started using YouTube for publishing videos. The success of the Obama campaign has impressed many politicians and encouraged trying out the new approach - in particular to connect better with the younger generations. However, the majority of YouTube channels of Australian politicians are barely more than "Trophy channels" - they just republish TV appearances and best speeches from parliamentary recordings of the particular politician. But there is so much more to be done with video.

A YouTube channel that follows the Obama example needs to be part of a well thought out strategy. According to Maxwell Harper, Obama's video strategist during the 2008 campaign, "Video is an investment and if you think about it really strategically it'll pay for itself through the impact it has."

Senator Lundy made her YouTube and Vimeo channels an integral part of a wider campaign to improve her own communication with citizens and to allow citizens to have more input into government decisions. Her twitter presence, her blogging site, as well as her consultative Public Sphere events are other parts of the picture that forms a complete, modern communication strategy for a politician.

The strategy is paying off. According to video metrics prepared by Vquence, the more than 50 videos posted since June have seen more than 3000 views by the beginning of August. More importantly, the time that people spend on her website has increased by 45% because of the videos. Clearly, visitors are finding the videos a valuable addition to her communication mix.

The videos that are showing the most impact are the vodcasts or video blogs. "Vodcasts are regularly produced short pieces of video that provide a focused message, similar to a blog post but in video format." says Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, Vquence CEO. "Senator Lundy's first three vodcasts have achieved more than 1000 views within the first month - more than any other videos on her channels. Clearly, people like the direct way in which the Senator tries to communicate with them."

"One of the concerns often expressed when considering video amongst a range of Web 2.0 strategies is the perceived complexities of recording, posting and assessing the effectiveness." Senator Lundy says. "I was aware of the success other politicians were having with their video and You Tube channels but had always presumed the need for resources would put video beyond me. The good news is it is indeed possible!"

"If you are not publishing video online, you are missing out on an opportunity." states Dr Pfeiffer. " YouTube is now the second biggest search engine on the Web and that means visitors are trying to find you there. If all they can find are fake channels about you or your brand, your reputation may suffer."

Vquence is now helping Senator Lundy with video search engine optimisation, seeding, daily metrics, and quarterly comprehensive reporting. Senator Lundy and her team have become self-proficient in video production and are continuing to try out new production styles, trying to provide even more value to her constituency.

Senator Lundy YouTube Channel

Senator Lundy YouTube Channel

More Kate Lundy videos

Senator Kate Lundy has posted two more vodcasts:



Vodcasting for Sentor Kate Lundy

During the last weeks we have helped Senator Kate Lundy start her vodcasts. The very first one is now publicly available:

There are another three pieces in the pipeline. What we did for Kate included helping in preparing the draft script, shooting, editing, captioning, transcoding, publishing to YouTube and Vimeo , video SEO, seeding, and metrics. It's great helping politicians communicate better with their constituency and thus making politics more transparent.

Press release - Australian startup launches social video metrics product

Social video technology and consulting company Vquence launched a new social video metrics product called VQmetrics with an event in Sydney last week.

NSW digital media industry directory released

The NSW government just released their industry directories , including the Digital Media Industry directory, which also has a section on Vquence.

Download it from this link

VQmetrics Launch Event

On 19th March, 5-7pm at the Blacket Hotel in Sydney, Vquence will launch the VQmetrics product into the market place.

VQmetrics provides metrics on video published to social video networks such as YouTube, MySpace, Dailymotion etc.

VQmetrics is currently in use by several trial customers and will be released as a Dashboard service, accompanied by analytics services of the Vquence video experts.

During the launch, Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, Vquence CEO and internationally acclaimed video technology expert, will present the metrics of recent Australian and International video campaigns, such as Witchery Men, Queensland Tourism, Durex and Nike, and explain the power of viral video advertising campaigns.

IAB standardises in-stream ad API

Under the title "Digital Video Player-Ad Interface Definition (VPAID)", the IAB has published new standards for the communication between video players and in-stream video advertising. This document provides a standard API for interacting with in-stream ads - an API that will help produce ads that can be used in multiple video players, but also an API that can be used to track the performance of ads across multiple players and aggregate it meaningfully.

Vquence launches new sites

Yesterday, we re-launched www.vquence.com with a new front page which is now a portal page that leads to the VQmetrics and VQslices services as well as to the corporate site . This also implies that we have now moved away from the original aggregation site and are focusing our efforts fully on metrics. The aggregation site is still accessible under VQslices , but it is not the focus of our business any longer. Interestingly, the Internet (see pt 33) ) seems to have picked that up already :-) . Should you have embedded a vquence into one of your blog posts or Web pages, these will now stop working and you may want to replace the code to point to the new VQslices website.