Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

My two-year old son has become enamored with a colorful character named Blippi. He's one of the hottest rising YouTubers who has quite literally swept the children's educational market on the world's most popular video platform, soaring well past the billion-plus view mark. By curating content specifically geared towards helping children during their most important fundamental developmental stages, he's effectively carved a massive niche and a surprisingly large following.

One day, as my son sat enthralled by one of Blippi's videos, where he sings and dances and teaches children about all the various parts and components of a garbage truck, I knew that I needed to learn more. As someone who's entrenched in the online marketing industry and obsessed with things like passive income, I knew that what Blippi had achieved was nothing short of fascinating and amazing.

In fact, what I discovered from a rather extensive interview was even more amazing to me. Let's set aside the millions of dollars of revenue that Blippi has made, which is the brainchild of Stevin John, a creative professional from Washington State who once worked in Hollywood's film industry, behind-the-scenes, and let's look at the bigger picture here. From a branding and merchandising perspective, Blippi is sheer brilliant....

It’s no secret that video is quickly becoming the #1 priority for both social media platforms and marketers alike. As consumers, we spend more and more time glued to our smartphones watching one video after another. 

By 2017, it is estimated that video will account for 74% of all internet traffic in the world, making the upcoming year make or break time for any company that’s betting on video. As competition heats up, some of the most well-known platforms have rushed to report impressive statistics. While they may be staggering, such numbers tend to be cherry-picked and don’t necessarily show the full picture....

Ready to get started on YouTube? Or wish your YouTube Channel were performing better? I’m here to help!

YouTube is effectively the second largest search engine in the world (behind only Google). With video becoming more and more important (we even launched Buffer for video last week!), now is the perfect time to start optimizing your YouTube Channel and begin reaping the benefits of a strong video strategy, including connecting with new potential customers, getting a better search presence and building your brand.

I’ve had a lot of fun exploring YouTube optimization and wanted to share what I’ve found. Here is everything that I have learned and would do to optimize a channel....

I was recently offered a free cable subscription and I said “Why? I don’t have a TV, and all my shows are on YouTube.” I would like to think that none of the stereotypes listed here apply to me. Fortunately, usage statistics can shed light on the reality of negative stereotypes of YouTube users.

The stereotypes in this infographic are really stereotypes of internet users, or Internauts, in general. I think these negative generalizations came out of the fact that computers were largely marketed as toys for boys when personal computers were first coming out. Of course, computers, and the internet, are much, much more than that, but when people kept interacting with this thing that had been presented as a toy, it was interpreted by the wider public as immature and unhealthy.

As this infographic on the growth of the internet shows, internet use exploded in the decade between 2002 and 2012, and is only increasing as more and more of the world comes online. Sterotypes of internet users are going to die pretty quickly as the vast majority of people on earth join the ranks....

It all started when some YouTubers posted a 'Lick Race' Challenge video in June. These videos consisted of them trying to lick the middle part of Oreos as quickly as they could. Quite a light-hearted and fun video to make. However, no one realized this video had actually been paid for by Mondelez UK, who own Oreos.

It was only after BBC Newsround launched an investigation that they realised these Vloggers had been paid to say good things about Oreos, not having made it clear in the title and description of their video. The BBC journalist complained to the Advertisement Standards Authority (ASA) and they listened.

While some of the videos do 'thank Oreos for making this video possible' or state in the description that it is an 'advertisement', the ASA did not think they they had made it clear enough, and suggested the famous YouTubers were misleading their audience....