There’s YouToube, Vimeo, Hulu, and we’ve been hearing talk of AOL and Yahoo! joining the online video arena. But how many of you have heard of MyPod Studios? Apparently quite a lot, because it’s the 191st most trafficked website in December of 2011 – just five places behind Hulu.com – and scored more than 20 million unique visitors in November alone. Although it’s hard to keep track of all the online content providers, and it may be even harder to decide which service to use when promoting your own video production, MyPod’s unique approach to video curation could be a real asset to Chicago videographer brands that manage to break into the video site’s inner sanctum.
Below are exerpts from an interview between MyPod’s CEO and ReelSEO’s Jeremy Scott.
Q: What can you tell me about the goals for MyPod Studios?
A: Our primary goal is to create something that people will seek out as a source of great entertainment, enjoy, and want to see more of. There’s a lot to be said for creating something that becomes part of people’s everyday routine – it’s fine when people get to our site because they’ve come across a link somewhere, but I’ll consider it a huge accomplishment when we’ve created a site that people enjoy enough that they sit at their computers and consciously think “let me check out what’s going on over at MyPod Studios.” I think that alone is a goal worth shooting for, and I expect we’ll get there sooner rather than later.
On a more tactical level, our goal is threefold:
- We want to continue to grow the amount of watchable content on the network, while remaining a gated community of only pre-approved videos.
- We want to springboard off of the success we’ve had with our category “hostesses,” and evolve mypodstudios.com
- We want to expand our brand and venture out into original content production, long-form movie presentations and gaming.
Q: Where do the viewers come from? How are they finding you and your content?
A: Well, I can’t give away the secret sauce, but I can say that our video production viewers find us through a combination of strategies. For one thing, we’ve built strong relationships with both our content providers who are incentivized to push traffic our way, as well our use base, 25% of which comes back regularly. Another 22% of our daily traffic goes from Pod to Pod. On top of that, we build awareness through social media press releases for specific Pods, a large emphasis on SEO, Ad Word PPC campaigns, in-network advertising, and some highly targeted SEM. Future plains include non-traditional advertising placements, which we roll out mid Q2.
Q: How would you describe the content mix at MyPodStudios? Is there any directive for tone, topic, or style?
A: We don’t necessarily look for a particular tone or style. Instead, we look at all of the content that we’re presented, and ask ourselves if it informs, educates and/or entertains. If it doesn’t meet one or more of those three qualifications, then it’s immediately rejected. If Chicago videographer content we’re reviewing gets past this step, we look at how well it was written, acted, presented and produced, and decide whether we think people would enjoy watching it. Watchability is tough to put your finger on – there’s no precise formula for it – you just know it when you see it.
Q: How does your gated community help you achieve your goals–what does the elimination of “anything goes” do for your business model?
A: The most important thing that it does is provide the video production viewer with a sense that they’re not wasting their time. In an “anything goes” environment, you really have no idea what you’re going to come across – someone taking a video of themselves singing, maybe a video of some other guy shopping for fruit. Really, it could be anything. That’s fun for awhile, I suppose, but coming across something that’s interesting is just pot-luck. By keeping MyPod a gated community, the Chicago videographer viewers understand that everything on our network has been seen and pre-qualified by our team, so they can be more certain that their time spent with us will be spent watching more enjoyable content. There is a distinct trust that has been built between our visitors and our editors.
Check out the complete transcript on ReelSEO. For help with all your Chicago videographer editing, video production, marketing, and online video needs, visit Video One Productions to see what we can do for you.
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