ClicFlic - Intelligent Media Object Discussion Blog

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Animation or Live Action? Five Questions to Help You Make Your
By Shoa Tav	11/10/11
Animation and live action media can enliven any training content. However, making the decision around which one to use can be tricky. Determining the answer to these five questions will help you pick the right medium for your project. View Full Entry

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Making E-learning Mobile Ready
By Shoa Tav	9/20/11
People spend 9% more time with mobile apps than they spend on their computers. Most businesses already recognize that mobile technology is here to stay, and they’re investing in or are preparing to invest in mobile-ready websites. Unfortunately, the change creates a bit of a conundrum for e-learning developers. Making web-based training mobile ready might be a daunting task, but there are lots of benefits to the trend as well, and there’s no reason not to start now. View Full Entry

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3 Simple Ways to Quadruple Your Website Visitor Engagement
By Bill Lake	2/2/11
Our very own Bill Lake was asked to present on current and future state of intelligent media. You can see and hear the presentation at this link (12 minutes) and pick up 3 easy tips on how you can easily quadruple the time your web visitors spend on your site while boosting sales. (Here’s a hint…it has something to do with making your onsite video clickable.) View Full Entry

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What's Next DC and ClicFlic!

By Shoa Tav

12/22/10

We're really excited about a great event coming up this January, called What's Next DC hosted by our friends at Green Buzz Agency.

What's Next DC brings together marketing, public relations, advertising and communications professionals to brainstorm and share ideas about what works, what doesn't, and innovative approaches to appeal to your audience.

Our

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Level 3 Interactivity Made Easy
By Shoa Tav	12/15/10
If you're wondering what to get that special content developer this holiday season, look no further than ClicFlic. ClicFlic Intelligent Media makes it easy to generate level-3 interactivity learning programs that impress end users and deliver learning results. Level 3 interactivity is interactivity that uses audio, video, animations and high level interactions that allow learners to apply learning and solve problems. To see a level 3 interactivity learning in action, look no further than this blog post here. View Full Entry

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Corporate Training Trends Align with Intelligent Media
By Shoa Tav	7/21/10
In the article "Corporate Training Trends to Watch for in the Coming Decade," we learn about the trends toward e-learning, training employees in small bites, and training that is adaptable. Intelligent media supports these trends, making it easier to create training that is adaptable, relevant, and results in increased retention. View Full Entry

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Quest Fore and ClicFlic Luncheon July 21st - FULL
By Shoa Tav	7/15/10
Join ClicFlic and Quest Fore in a luncheon to learn about delivering a targeted message and a more engaging experience. Interactive video offers a powerful new tool in the organizational marketing arsenal, and the market for interactive video is expected to grow ten-fold over the next four years as interactivity becomes the preferred video experience. View Full Entry

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ClicFlic and the Business Alliance Grubstake Breakfast!
By Shoa Tav	6/4/10
We're excited to announce that ClicFlic is one of seven businesses that have been accepted for this month's Business Alliance Grubstake Breakfast! Three times each year, the Business Alliance Grubstake Breakfast networking and investor program brings together the region's brightest entrepreneurs, potential investors and other business leaders. View Full Entry

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Q & A on Interactive Media and Human Capital in Government
By Shoa Tav	5/27/10
We received some excellent questions during our Interactive Media and Human Capital webinar in collaboration with CHCI. We're listing the questions and answers here. Please reach out to us to learn more! View Full Entry

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WEBINAR TOMRROW: ClicFlic in Human Capital Management
By Shoa Tav	5/19/10
ClicFlic and TMGov.org will be partnering to present a discussion on Interactive Video in Human Capital Management! View Full Entry

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Building an Online Audience for Video Content
By Shoa Tav	4/13/10
Boston Globe columnist and author, Scott Kirsner, presents three rules for building an online audience for video content. He highlights placing videos on forums and blogs, making it easy to share and embed video, and engaging your audience so that they participate in the experience. View Full Entry

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HR Expert Bryan Baldwin talks about ClicFlic in Human Capital
By Shoa Tav	4/5/10
Bryan Baldwin recently featured ClicFlic in his blog, HR Tests - Recruitment, assessment, and personnel selection: The science and practice of matching employer needs with individual talent. "When I see a product that I think has the potential to be innovative, highly effective, and highly valid, I want to share the wealth," writes Bryan, in his post: ClicFlic Offers Assessment Innovation. View Full Entry

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Small Businesses Using More Video!
By Shoa Tav	3/26/10
Small businesses often leverage proven marketing techniques to increase their conversion rates, and today’s REELSeo post, Video = Fastest Growing Website Feature for Small Businesses shares that in 2009, small businesses embraced two things to increase conversion: video and search. Mark Roberston points out these findings are compelling, not only because it’s great news that small businesses are doing so well online, but because it’s further proof that video is yielding more-than-enough value for small businesses to factor having business video into their budgets. And we, of course, agree. In the spirit of the flourishing business video, we’re going to dedicate some time now to sharing three different places to put your video to make the most of it. View Full Entry

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ClicFlic featured on Business Video!
By Shoa Tav	3/12/10
Paul Ritter, the Managing Director of the Excellence in Enterprise Video Awards, took the time to explore the ClicFlic platform in more depth over the past few days. He created, uploaded and deployed his own compelling, interactive video, in which he takes a Video First Look at ClicFlic. "Let's take a more in-depth look at how it works," says Paul. "If you’re leaning back while watching this First Look, it’s time to lean forward and take a test drive of the interactive video technology from ClicFlic." Click here to check out the video! View Full Entry

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Report Shows Interactive Video Increases Sales and Conversions
By Shoa Tav	3/11/10
We are pleased to announce our latest report that shows advanced interactive video technology typically results in 20% - 60% increases in sales conversions and lead captures. Businesses build brand, segment visitors and rapidly close the sale leveraging the innovative format. Download the report today! View Full Entry

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Webinar: 3 Ways to Increase Web Sales with Video
By Shoa Tav	3/2/10
Video is on the rise and businesses have been taking advantage! Register today for a free, 30 minute webinar on March 3, 2010 for how to increase your web sales with video. View Full Entry

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3 Mistakes Companies Make with Online Video
By Shoa Tav	2/18/10
We hear it all the time: "Online video is exploding." And it's true, viewers streamed over 11 billion videos in January 2010. Most of these videos were for entertainment, such as television shows and sports streams. However, consumers want video on business sites as well. In fact, simply having relevant video available for viewing on a company website, regardless of whether or not viewers choose to watch it, can increase conversion rate over 40%. Such positive results from video tell us that marketing leaders will continue to invest in video, and we are going to see even more online video over these next few years. And because I spend a lot of time reviewing corporate online videos and observing their rhetorical implications, I often see the same mistakes made over and over again. In the spirit of sharing information and improving online video for all, here are the top 3 mistakes companies make with online video today. View Full Entry

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Consumer Goods and Online Video
By Shoa Tav	2/2/10
In today’s eMarketer article, "Consumer Goods Marketers Go Beyond Ads with Online Video," a Cone survey indicates that marketers should take advantage of online video to sell to consumers and increase consumer engagement with the product. Consumers want new media to help them solve problems, get feedback, entertain, and market. But there’s a problem, writes eMarketer. It's hard to assess the effectiveness of online video. "The same metrics issues that bedevil marketers trying to assess the effect of online advertising on their brands also plague the ability to evaluate the performance of video content." ClicFlic recognizes the importance of measuring effectiveness, so we take several steps to ensure the videos are optimized for conversion. View Full Entry

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Corporate Use of Interactive Video
By Shoa Tav	1/22/10
Interactive video has been wildly successful. Clients are always asking me about how their competitors are using interactivity for their marketing. I respond to this question, with another question: "If your competitors jumped off a cliff, would you?" Clients then glare at me, and rightfully so. They're not paying for any sass. Without any further ado, here are some popular ways that leading B2B and B2C companies apply interactive video to increase conversion, engage visitors, and become the envy of their peers. View Full Entry

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Tips for Improving an Interactive Campaign
By Shoa Tav	1/16/10
The national spokesperson for eSmart Tax (a Liberty Tax Service company) is Daryl Johnson. Daryl was randomly picked because he has the same last name as 30,142 other guys. We here at ClicFlic were very interested in Daryl's good fortune because the eSmart Tax campaign is super innovative and has all sorts of interactivity, including interactive video! We're big fans of interactive video, so any time we see campaigns embrace interactivity, we feel warm inside. I'm considering using eSmart Tax now, in fact. In this article, we discuss some ways to improve the awesome interactive video. 1. Decrease video load time by using a platform designed for branching. 2. Host the interactivity on your own page, to get people looking at your product. 3. Let the user click in under 30 seconds. 4. Add a trigger to register for eSmart Tax. View Full Entry

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2010 Is the Year for Building Site Engagement
By Shoa Tav	1/13/10
In the most recent New Media Minute, Daisy Whitney discusses how big companies are changing their strategy for brand engagement. Rather than invest the big bucks in reaching out to audiences in other spaces, for example through Superbowl ads, companies like Pepsi are looking to increase engagement on their own sites and spaces. They want to develop their own audiences. Daisy concludes this means more video, and more video interactivity. View Full Entry

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Increase Conversion through Interactive Product Demos
By Shoa Tav	1/13/10
In Terry Dean's 25 Ways to Increase Conversion, tip #6 is: "Give proof for anything you say. Your visitors don’t believe you. Give them facts, samples, videos, and demos. Show checks, charts, endorsements, etc. If you can’t back it up, they don’t believe it." It's true. People want proof. Interactive product demos are amazing sources of proof for products sold online. They educate the customer and excite the customer. And customers who are excited about a product help build brand confidence. View Full Entry

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Happy Holidays from the ClicFlic Team!
By Shoa Tav	12/23/09
Happy Holidays to you from the ClicFlic team! This season, we bring you some exciting video trends: In October of 2009, 28 billion videos were watched on the web. Did you watch a video and are you in the US? If so, you are part of the 85% of the U.S. internet audience that watched a video. View Full Entry

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Interactive Video Teaches Better, Faster, Stronger, Smarter...do you
By Shoa Tav	12/11/09
Interactive video helps us learn faster than regular video. This statement was demonstrated in a 2004 study where participants learned to tie four nautical knots. There were two sets of participants. One set had to watch the video as it was created for them. The other set could manipulate the video, moving it forward, replaying, slowing it down, and controlling their learning period. While both sets of participants spent the same amount of time viewing the video, when it came time to tie the nautical knots in real life, the participants who controlled their viewing experience were able to tie knots better and sooner than participants who simply watched the videos. View Full Entry

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How Net Gen is shaping Talent Management
By John Austin	10/13/09
The key take away for me at the recent HR Technology Conference in Chicago is how the Net Generation is Transforming Talent Management NOW. Don Tapscott author of Grown up Digital, argued persuasively that the Net Generation is in the process of changing the talent management space. Aged between 11 and 30, doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace. They’re the first generation to have literally grown up digital–and they’re part of a global cultural phenomenon that’s here to stay. Let’s look at three ways this generational effect is going to impact talent management in terms of general communication, performance feedback and interviewing. View Full Entry

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Make or Buy - The Case For Using ClicFlic
By Mike Russiello	10/12/09
Flash-based interactive video is taking the Internet by storm. Thanks to the release of ActionScript 3, it is now within reach of most programmers to create their own video player, and to provide it with all sorts of branching intelligence. Since flash allows for remote reporting to a server environment, clever programmers can also ensure robust, server-based data capture, for just about any data that the you can get a user to enter. So why not create your own interactive video software? It's a logical question, and it's certainly possible to do it. However, after taking a close look, most ClicFlic customers realize that it's just not cost effective to do so. View Full Entry

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iTV and Writers - You Know What You Have to Do
By Shoa Tav	6/26/09	1 Comments
Interactive television, or efforts to increase audience engagement, has been around for a long time. In the early days the interactivity was recommended to the viewer. For example, exercise programs asked viewers to dance along, and children’s programs asked them to sing along. With increased communication methods, we’ve made some progress towards affecting the actual outcome via reality television voting. We are definitely moving towards an age when entertainment becomes a two-way street. We’ve come a long way from asking people to dance alongside the television screen, but it feels like we still have a ways to go before we reach real interactivity, in which the viewer can become a part of the television program, much like a video game. Before we go down that road, however, it would be good to address the question of whether we even want that next step in interactivity. View Full Entry

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What's the (Power) Point?
By Mike Russiello	4/16/09
We at ClicFlic had to give in recently to customer demands that we make it possible to upload a PowerPoint presentation into an interactive video script. If it sounds like we were reluctant to do this, we were. However, I for one am glad we implemented this capability. Since this new capability went live last week, we've had a few people ask us why we did this. They question its usefulness and wonder if it dilutes to power of interactive video. So, why did we do it? View Full Entry

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Evaluating Amateur vs. Professional Production
By Mike Russiello	3/23/09
If you're like me, you think you can do just about anything, and learning new things is incredibly fun. So, why pay a professional to do something you can do yourself, especially if you would enjoy doing it? Assuming you have the time to do it, there's no reason to pay a pro to do something you can do and enjoy yourself. However, you should understand that difference between the quality you'll receive from an expert and what you can achieve on your own. View Full Entry

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Real Actors Vs. Animation - Considerations
By Mike Russiello	3/6/09	2 Comments
I don't know about you, but when I watch a hollywood movie and notice that that some of the scenes are animated special effects rather than real footage, I feel a little bit cheated. Still, as I become more familiar with the economics of movie making, I am coming to understand why we see so much animation these days. The bottom line is that it costs a lot of money to stage action-packed or calamitous events in the 'real' world. The glory days of casts featuring thousands of 'extras' are mostly gone. Sooner or later, every creator of web video eventually has to choose between animated scenes or real video - for the entire product, or for some small portion. As software tools and videography equipment continue to evolve, this choice becomes more and more difficult. So, how does the part-time videographer deal decide which way to go? There's no easy answer, of course. But here are a few considerations to think about. View Full Entry

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Preparing for an Interactive Video Shoot
By Mike Russiello	2/26/09
OK. You've finished your script and it's time to record. That's exciting, I know. But let me provide a checklist of things to consider before starting. If you're a media professional, there's certainly nothing here you don't already do in your sleep. But, if you're more of an amateur videographer, like me, this small checklist can save you a lot of rework and frustration. View Full Entry

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Creating Visually Interesting Video
By Mike Russiello	2/12/09
Like any craft, there are some basic rules of thumb for ensuring that your video is visually interesting to the viewer. Developed and applied over many years in the media business, all of us amateurs will immediately recognize them based on our own experience viewing media. While making a video interactive can greatly help keep a viewer engaged, interactivity by itself cannot make up for dull or otherwise uninteresting video footage. So here are the basic guidelines you need to know to keep your video content interesting. View Full Entry

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Basic Do/Don'ts of Video Sound and Lighting
By Mike Russiello	2/11/09
Being an expert video recorder is a pretty special set of skills. There are so many books and so much to learn, and of course there's the value of experience. I am by no means an expert. But, as a member of the rank and file of amateur videographers learning how to improve video quality, I've discovered what I would call the very basics for sound and light. These are the small number of things you can do to raise the quality of your video from a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, to a 4 or even a 6. They are the low hanging fruit of video recording. So, if you're looking for just a little advice to improve quality, this is a good place to find it. View Full Entry

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Understanding Video Resolution, Data-Rate, and File Formats
By Mike Russiello	2/10/09
Once you get started creating interactive videos on ClicFlic, you'll quickly reach the point where you need to post videos for each segment. Now, professional video people know exactly what they're doing. But what about everyone else? This is a short primer on what you really need to know. View Full Entry

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Web Trend: More Power, Less Hassle, Lower Cost
By Mike Russiello	2/8/09
We've all heard someone say: "I'm sure I can find it on the web." However, I've noticed more than a few people who replace the word 'find' with 'do.' I've also noticed they are right. We do so much today via the web that it's hard to imagine doing much more. But, thanks to the never-ending improvements in web browsers and browser-based technologies, the scope of what we can accomplish via web applications is expanding faster than any one person could possible keep track of. Of course, ClicFlic is an example of what I mean. It allows virtually to perform tasks that once required a programmer. Amazingly, this steady increase in power is accompanied by reduced hassle and lower costs. View Full Entry

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Movie Games?
By Mike Russiello	2/3/09
Ever since the Internet became a consumer medium, media companies have sought a way to exploit it. However, technology has always held them back. But now, with many of the technological challenges vanquished, the real work is beginning. The question is, how will we adapt our beloved movies to this new abbreviated, interactive, 2-way medium? No crystal ball here, but the success and growth of web-based gaming probably provides some clues. In fact, it's likely that the movies will begin to take on some game-like features, such as making the viewer a part of the action and keeping score. Sounds crazy. But this new format does open up some very interesting revenue opportunities. View Full Entry

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Enhancing the Personal Touch Factor
By Mike Russiello	1/27/09
While the Internet has enabled communications and instant information sharing to an incredible degree, it has also caused a decline in personalization. For younger and future generations, this may not be a problem, since they don't know any better. But, for businesses targeting the currently affluent Baby Boomer population, lack of the personal touch can impede sales. The good news is that tools, like interactive video make it possible to increase the personal touch in many online business interactions. View Full Entry

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Interactive Video in 2009
By Mike Russiello	1/24/09	1 Comments
Interactive Video had its infancy in 2008. A concept that started as embedded playlist-style links to follow-on videos, comment forms, and external webpages is today making a slow march toward embedding virtually all website-like features into the video itself. We have no crystal ball, but from what we are seeing in our little corner of the world, the next 12 months are likely to be exciting times for all of us who are working on interactive video. We've included a set of predictions for what we expect to see happen. View Full Entry

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One Step Closer to a 2-Way Conversation
By Mike Russiello	1/24/09
Effective communication is always a two-way exchange. People want to understand what others are telling them. But what they want more than anything is to be understood. While conversation-like, two-way communications may be the holy grail for online mass media, interactive video brings it one step closer. View Full Entry

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On Widgets
By Mike Russiello	1/24/09
If there's a word that has come into its own after languishing for decades, it's "Widget." Last century, a widget was a fictional concept for a physical item that was produced by one company and purchased by another. Then, in the early 2000's, widget came to represent the decorations or 'flair' that people placed in their webpages and messages to give them some personality (think smiley face). But, now, less than a decade later, the word widget represents a game-changing technology that will shape the way services are offered and delivered via the Internet. View Full Entry

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Put the Website in the Video
By Mike Russiello	12/13/08
Everyone is rushing to put video into their websites. We ask the question, why not put the website into the video? View Full Entry

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External Hyperlinks are Not Interactive Video
By Mike Russiello	12/13/08
The term Interactive Video is getting bounced around a bit lately. But what does it really mean? Most interactive videos are a video with attached hyperlinks. But is this really interactive? View Full Entry

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