As I’m sure you’ve seen, YouTube displays related videos at the end of videos you have viewed. This can be useful, but this can also be problematic. For example, we were recently working on a very personal project for a client. This client had a great video to use for their cause, but because the project was so personal to them, they felt uncomfortable that all these random, unconnected videos were being offered to viewers at the end of the video.

I remembered that I had seen that you can remove related videos from the end of a YouTube video. It turns out, it’s really quite easy to do!

Let’s say I want to embed this adorable kitten video in my site to share it with my readers:

You see all those supposedly related cute kitten videos at the end? How can YouTube dare to even compare this video with others? In order to make sure you are completely focused on this cute kitten, I will remove the related videos from the end. Note: you can only do this on embedded videos, and not on YouTube itself.

1. Go to the video’s individual page on YouTube. In this case, the individual page is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8GHf-aELjY.
2. On the bottom of the video, click Share.
   
3. Once you click Share, a new area slides open underneath the video with a shortlink for sharing the video. It also presents an Embed button. Click that.
   
4. When you click Embed, another area opens up underneath that offers you the embed code, and also a number of options to allow you to customize the video’s appearance on your site. The first option is a checkbox that says “Show suggested videos when the video finishes.” Make sure that box is unchecked. If you look at the embed code, you’ll see that it adds a parameter after the video’s URL:

   ?rel=0

   . “Rel” means related videos, and 0 is a binary command, meaning No.
   

5. Copy the embed code and paste wherever you want the video to appear! See below:

While I was searching for this solution, I came across a list of parameters that you can add to YouTube embed code to customize the player: YouTube Embedded Players and Player Parameters. For example, let’s say I think that the above video speaks for itself, and doesn’t need the title to appear on the player. To remove the title, I would add another parameter to the video’s URL in the embed code. So the URL would change from

http://www.youtube.com/embed/z8GHf-aELjY?rel=0

to

http://www.youtube.com/embed/z8GHf-aELjY?rel=0&showinfo=0

(note the use of the & to add another parameter). Here’s the final embed code:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src=http://www.youtube.com/embed/z8GHf-aELjY?rel=0&showinfo=0
frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And here’s how the video looks without the related videos or title:

Other things you can customize in your player with these parameters are if it autoplays, loops, starts or ends at a particular point in the video, and more!

Recently, we launched a new monthly lecture series to present the most important web trends for marketing professionals.

Please join us at our next free WEBINAR: ”Latest Web Trends in 1 Hour” on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10am.  Signup and details here.

At the April 2012 Web Trends Webinar, Miriam Schwab, the Friendly CEO of illuminea, spoke about:

Love the Sociabell graphic!

Google:

• Google Webmaster tools keeping data for 90 days
• Keep a close on your Google account with activity reports
• Need more space in your inbox? Sort emails by size with a Google Spreadsheet script
• How Google Penguin updates affecting sites
• Google Drive finally launching but not with iPhone access
• Google+ gets a new design, as if that’ll make more people join…

Facebook:

Fancy graphs to show user's engagement with the Facebook timeline

• You can now email people’s message box based on their profile URL. Good for stalkers…
• Download IP addresses to see who’s been logged into your account
• Timeline Checklist – a list with useful tools for optimizing your timeline
• Fancy graphs for Facebook engagement since the launch of timelines
• Facebook ads that link to internal Facebook pages perform better, and are cheaper.

Linkedin:

LinkedIn's People You May Know feature

• People You May Know feature
• Targeted updates
• Follower stats
• iPad app which represents a general trend of people moving away from apps and more toward specialized mobile and tablet sites

YouTube:

• Overview of ad options and prices
• Partner program allows you to put ads on your videos and do revenue share with YouTube

We also discussed: Pinterest, WordPress stats – over 72.4 million sites built on WP, Klout, Wajam, Sociabell,  joliprint, and secure.me.

We invite you to join us in-person at illuminea Headquarters in Jerusalem or online via live straming for our next 1-hour Webinar on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10am. Signup and details here.

Watch the April 2012 web trends lecture video
We apologize for the quality of the video. To see the accompanying presentation, go here

April 2012 Slideshow on Slideshare.

About a year ago, WordPress added a feature that made it ridiculously easy to embed content from various sites (like YouTube, Slideshare, Vimeo) into WordPress sites.

How to embed media in WordPress in a second

If you want to embed, for example, a YouTube video in a post, all you do is paste the URL of the video into the editor, unlink it and save/publish. See our ultimate guide to embedding HTML and iframes in WordPress on WPGarage for more info on how this works.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to work 100% of the time. Luckily, there’s usually a reason for this. So if you’re having trouble embedding media in your WordPress site, see if the following tips help you out.

1. Your WordPress site isn’t set to enable embeds of this kind.

Whenever you set up a WordPress site, you have the option to allow embeds or not. Make sure you’ve chosen this option.

1. Go to Settings > Media.
2. Under Embeds check the option: “When possible, embed the media content from a URL directly onto the page. For example: links to Flickr and YouTube.”
3. Save changes.

2. You aren’t using the right link

It’s possible you aren’t using the right link. For example, maybe you copied the link of a channel instead of an individual video.

Here is an example of a URL that won’t work:

http://www.youtube.com/illuminea#p/u/1/LlSeZIHroNw

Instead, the URL should look something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlSeZIHroNw

Lets see it work (all I did was un-hyperlink the above link to get the embedded video below):

Man, it’s so easy I could spit!

3. Extra code is messing things up

Maybe extra code is being added to the WordPress editor without you realizing. Try embedding the link into the HTML editor instead of the Visual one. If you see any extra code aside from the link itself, remove it.

4. The YouTube user isn’t allowing embeddings of their media

When someone uploads a video to YouTube, they can choose whether or not others will be able to embed their video around the web. If they chose not to allow it, no matter what you do, you won’t be able to embed it into your site.

Want to know how to change the embedding settings on one of your YouTube videos? Here’s how:

1. Make sure you’re logged into YouTube (with your Google account).
2. Click on the arrow next to your username in the top right-hand corner.
3. Click on My Videos.
4. Click Edit info on the video you want to edit.
5. Scroll down to Embedding and click the arrow next to it in order to see the two options.
6. Choose whether or not external sites will be able to embed your video.
7. Click Save Changes.

Anything else?

These are the problems we’ve found that prevent the awesome WordPress embed function from working. Have you found any other issues that don’t allow you to embed using links in WordPress?

One of the perks of working in the field of social media is that you get to pretend that you’re working and learning while watching hilarious videos of a good-looking guy in a shower. You know, the Old Spice guy in the shower, the guy who used to work in shark dental care and rides lions as a hobby?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about (i.e. have been hiding under a rock etc.), Old Spice launched a campaign that combined twitter, YouTube and a bit of facebook that took the web by storm. The campaign included some planned commercials that set the stage for the manly-manliness of Old Spice Man, and then a series of real-time videos made in response to people’s tweets on twitter and comments on facebook and YouTube. Here’s the original video launched in February which attracted 19 million viewers (this video was actually shot in one shot with minimal computer graphics):

A few weeks ago Old Spice Man returned with this commercial:

What’s so great about Old Spice Man?

• Old Spice Man – actor Isaiah Mustafa is just amazing. He gets the message across perfectly.
• The writing – the lines Isaiah says are brilliant. I mean, how great is a campaign that ends with the line “silver fish hand catch”?
  
  

  I have to applaud the @oldspice writers for “Silver Fish Hand Catch” a catchphrase that will last forever.Thu Jul 15 07:48:04 via TweetDeckIain Tait
  iaintait

• Multiple channels – the campaign is coordinated across multiple social media channels, utilizing each channel’s advantages and cross posting as required. Twitter is used for direct conversation, facebook for posting videos and status updates with longer text and accompanying responses by fans; and YouTube for centralizing the video content.
• Appeals to men and women – For example, I can’t stand beer commercials which are obviously targeting men, but this campaign appealed to both sexes which is good for a product like Old Spice body wash, which men use but women often probably buy.
• Combines traditional and new media – these videos are commercials, a type of advertising that has been around for decades. But the commercials have evolved to take advantage of social media by using the medium’s potential. Creating new videos in real time is not something you can do with TV; also, the very personal style, and personalized videos (he spoke to his daughter, and helped a guy propose marriage, and even answered his own question), are very social media. But commercials are old media and we’re seeing the two come together here.
• Personalization – how fun is it to get a personal video message from Old Spice Man? Thousands sent tweets and comments his way in the hope that he would respond to them, and getting a response was like winning the lottery. In order to create these videos, marketing agency Wieder + Kennedy’s team worked at a furious pace, creating over 180 videos in 24 hours!!
• Old Spice Man is a nice guy – many attempts at creating viral media involved tricking people into believing what they were seeing is real, or being mean to others in some way. Old Spice Man is just nice, and cool. He makes us laugh. It’s a refreshing.

This campaign was a hit, with over 180 videos created, over 5.9 million views and 22,500 comments, as reported by Visible Measures. Visible Measures also reports that it is one of the fastest growing online video campaigns ever. Even once the videos have ended, people continued the trend. Reddit users created Old Spice Voicemail (with female and male versions), and some students at Bingham Young University created the a knockoff video encouraging people to study in the library.

Is this the future of social media marketing?

This is not the future of social media marketing. These guys created a groundbreaking campaign, but if companies copy this model, it will get stale. No one will enjoy this level of success because no one else can be first. Because when it comes down to it, success in social media is about creativity and originality, breaking out of the box and grabbing our attention. The next roaring success will have to be something else that’s never been done before.

References:

• Old Spice Mixes Social Media And Web Ads, Forbes.com
• Old Spice: The Archetype of a Successful Social Media Campaign, Mashable
• The making of Old Spice’s commercial: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Twit video with Leo Laporte
• How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made, ReadWriteWeb
• New Spice | Study like a scholar, scholar, Harold B. Lee Library

We are really excited to announce that after months of work, Natan Sharansky has a shiny new website, blog and social media presence. The goal of these efforts is to help spread Sharansky’s ideas regarding human rights, dissidents, democracy and Zionism, as well as to make access to his own fascinating history more accessible.

The site also offers a photo gallery, video gallery, audio gallery, timeline, and information about his books. You can also subscribe to a monthly newsletter with updates regarding Sharansky’s writings, activities, and news appearances.

Here are the details:

Website: http://NatanSharansky.org
Blog: http://NatanSharansky.org/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/NatanSharansky
Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/natansharansky/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Natan-Sharansky/38110548299
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/natansharanskydotorg
Delicious: http://delicious.com/natansharansky/

I hope you check it out and take advantage of this new resource!