Want to know whether your views are coming from YouTube searches? or from the embedded video on your blog? or on someone else’s blog?

Using the totally free and totally easy YouTube insights, those analytics are at your fingertips. Just follow the steps below.

1.) Sign in to your YouTube channel and click “Account” under your menu options in the top right corner of the screen.

2.) Click “Insights” on the horizontal navigation bar near the top of the screen.

3.) Under the “My Videos” heading, you’ll see a list of your videos.  Select one and YouTube will provide you with statistics for that video alone, as opposed to statistics for the whole channel.

4.) After choosing a single video, click on “Discovery” (found on the lower left side of the screen).  Then, you’ll be able to view all the stats regarding where and how often viewers watched your video.  For more detailed info just click the hyperlinks (seen on the right in the screencap below).

So, why do this?  Well, because you can track the performance of videos in various locations.  For example, if you discover that 90% of the views for one of your popular videos are coming from the embedded player on a blog, perhaps you could post more videos on that blog.  Or, if you notice that some videos seem to be drawing a lot of traffic from YouTube searches, you can take a look at what keywords viewers are using to find and watch that video and adjust other video keywords accordingly.

So, now that you’re equipped with a little knowledge about where viewers watch your YouTube videos, be sure to subscribe to the 12 Stars Media channel and our e-mail list (use the form on the top right of this page) so you’ll get more YouTube tips and tricks.

Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 Internet Television, posted this week “There, I Said It: Screw Viral Videos” and we couldn’t agree more.

If there’s anything we’re learning from experience in social media, it’s that deeper, longer lasting relationships with viewers, visitors, and commenters matter most. It’s that whole quality versus quantity concept. Heard of it? But, not surprisingly, Louderback says “online video creators, advertisers, and producers have an unhealthy fascination with viral videos, and that obsession is dragging down the entire industry.”

I like how Louderback reminded us, though, that “successful producers bind an audience to their creation, building an insatiable hunger for the next installment, next episode, next post.” If you think of it in terms of your favorite television program, you might have a favorite episode or one that really stands out (representing the outstanding or viral video), but what keeps you tuning in week after week is the continuity, character development, and that good ol’ “what’s going to happen next?” feeling.  Same goes with online video.

“Ten predictable episodic shows that deliver a consistent 100,000 views an episode is far easier to plan for an monetize than a channel that has a one-in-100 chance of catching fire — and a 99-in-100 chance of bombing,” says Louderback. For similar reasons, although admittedly none of our video productions have yet reached the 100,000 view mark, we constantly educate our clients in the strange paradox of quality versus quantity of viewers and quality versus quantity of video production. From our perspective, high quality viewers and high quantity of online video is the secret recipe.

“So what’s an advertiser to do? Stop chasing viral, and start looking closely at online video that delivers repeatable, measurable and sustainable views,” says Louderback.  And we agree.

In putting on some of our Media for Hire antics, we gave two 140 Character Conference attendees the opportunity to tell us what brought them out to Scotty’s Brewhouse last week for the #140conf (as it’s called on twitter).

Let’s see how they did.

First up – Tim Hashko, of YouGo Network…
 

 
 
Great Job!  And now, Daniel Herndon of Redwall Live and Forkout…
 
 

 
 
Yikes, better luck next time Daniel.  But hey, it sounds like you got some tasty food at Scotty’s so that’s always a plus (Scotty’s Dill Chips are our favorite).

Watch out for an upcoming episode  Media for Hire with more interviews of Indianapolis social media folk!

Okay so, I’ve gone back to this blog post at least ten times in the last month to copy the very mysterious, yet deliciously helpful, code that allows me to easily generate YouTube video thumbnails for use in our blogs.  In the author’s own words…

“This could be useful to display thumbnails with links in your sidebar, or to replace the YouTube embed code with a video within your RSS feed. Attempting to write your own YouTube thumbnail generator could be quite a task.

The good news is that you don’t actually have to generate a thumbnail, YouTube actually has several waiting for you:

Here’s the video – notice the video id?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?SgGVitTU9F8

Here are the images in a couple sizes and frames, note the video id is embedded in the URL:

• http://img.youtube.com/vi/SgGVitTU9F8/0.jpg
• http://img.youtube.com/vi/SgGVitTU9F8/1.jpg
• http://img.youtube.com/vi/SgGVitTU9F8/2.jpg

Our friend and client, Douglas Karr, first showed us how it was done. You can read the whole post on the Marketing Tech Blog, and you should definitely subscribe to the blog for lots more helpful tips like this one.

Last week we attended our first 140 Characters Conference at Scotty’s Brewhouse in downtown Indianapolis. Jeff Pulver, founder of the 140 Characters Conference, came with a purpose – to meet people who’s lives are being affected by the emerging real-time internet and to recruit “140 ambassadors.”

Check out the video below…
 

 
We love shooting interviews and capturing the energy of fun events, especially social media events, especially social media events with Scotty’s Dill Chips. So, should you or anyone you know every have the need for some video coverage of an event… you know who to call.

We recently hosted a contest on the facebook page for our reality series Media for Hire (click here if you’ve never heard of it). How did we get over 60 comments on one post (300% more than any other previous post) and increased traffic to our facebook page by over 700%? One simple word…

Influence.

We hosted a contest for “Social Media Top Gun” in which our fans could nominate and vote for someone to win the bragging rights (that’s right, no prize at all other than bragging rights). We asked several of the most influential people in our social media community to participate and voila!   Comments and “likes” started pouring in and in less than 24 hours we had received three times as many comments as any other previous post.

The contest originally stemmed from our Media for Hire episode involving a friendly challenge between Chad Richards and me during an in-flight refueling mission on board a KC-135 Stratotanker.  We were invited to attend the flight, not really to compete for “Social Media Top Gun,” but to learn about how Grissom Air Reserve Base is using social media for crisis management and to help promote the social media footprint of the 434th Air Refueling Wing.

Dave Woodson (pictured top right) won the contest, but we don’t think we came out too shabby either. We netted over 25 page “likes” and brought in 700% more traffic than the previous week.  Here’s an interview with the “Social Media Top Gun” himself during this year’s Blog Indiana conference.

Lesson to be learned – find people with influence to help you boost your social media traffic and interactivity (and a little competition never hurts either).

Be sure to “like” our Media for Hire facebook page yourself if you haven’t already done so.  Who knows, you may become the next “Social Media Top Gun”!

We have to admit we were pretty stoked when we started producing real, simple videos for Clarian Health Network.  Once we found out the first would be a video centered on voluntarism and community service performed by employees of Clarian, we were even more excited.  It doesn’t get much more real or simple than folks getting their hands dirty and talking about how volunteer service makes them feel.

Even though the “Day of Community Service” lasted literally 24 hours, we worked with members of Clarian to create this short glimpse of the volunteers and their projects…

We’ve recently signed on as a media sponsor for one of the biggest and best expos to… well, just watch the video.

As I said in the video, six counties, eight industry categories, a thousand attendees or more all coming together to Hoosier Park in Anderson, Indiana to “get linked” and create commerce. Pretty cool huh?

We shot this video right in our office in Greenfield, Indiana the day before we presented it at a Wake Up Breakfast hosted by Hoosier Park and the Madison County Chamber, so it’s not just real, simple video… it was real, fast video too!

Be on the lookout for more Get Linked Expo videos soon. Of course, you can always subscribe to our e-mails (on the right) so you never miss out on what’s happening in the Indianapolis YouTube community.

Two more interviews from Blog Indiana 2010.

In the first, Amy Stark interviews Nathan Hand of School on Wheels.

 
Then Jon Bausman of Ricker’s Stores and Josh Humble of TKO Graphix share their experiences with Blog Indiana 2010.
 

Rocky and I shared the honor of joining members of the Hoosier Chapter of PRSA as they went to Grissom Air Reserve Base in Peru, Indiana for an actual in-flight refueling mission on board a KC-135 Stratotanker.  We wanted to learn a little more about jets and planes so, naturally, we turned to Hollywood and watched Top Gun the night before.

The following is the result of our serious research…

This was an awesome experience for us. Flying in a KC-135, refueling a C-17, sitting in the cockpit, talking with the pilots and crew members… Whew! We went near the east coast to refuel the other aircraft, which took about four hours to get there and back.  The 434th Air Refueling Wing performs in-flight refueling on a regular basis, but they’d never had a “social media flight” until this summer!  It was cool learning about how the KC-135 can literally become a “gas station in the sky” as it circles round and round refueling planes on an as needed basis during combat or for training purposes.

The whole “Social Media Top Gun” thing at the end with Dave Woodson was the result of a Facebook contest we hosted. That contest received over 60 comments in less than 24 hours which, for us, is a lot.

Who knew when we started a reality series we’d soon be going around and doing such awesome stuff?  Anyway, be on the lookout for our next episode and, of course, if you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments!

EDIT: BTW, Rocky failed to mention to me how goofy my hair looked during the opening interview. Grr.