• by Justin Foster , December 2, 2011

Social is big.  Video is big.  E-commerce is big.  But social video commerce? Puh-lease! 

I’m a natural skeptic when it comes to buzzwords like this.  That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to host a webinar with retailers Crutchfield and Advance Auto Parts to try and dissect this latest video trend like a seventh grader working on his first lab frog.  Let’s bypass the fluff.  Enjoy!

1.     In aggregate, “long-tail” product videos are shared almost as often as the craziest viral sensations.  A jolting reality check for creatives among us: my company found that plain vanilla “product videos” focused on the simple presentation of features and benefits of a product accounted for 48% of all videos shared among retail and consumer brands.  Such a finding indicates there may be substantial untapped opportunity for brands to create a high volume of video content geared toward shoppers considering a purchase.  These shoppers may choose to share videos with friends to solicit their advice and opinions on an item, rather than because the video is funny or catchy.  The sample consisted of 7,000 randomly selected videos across 25 consumer brand and retail sites.

2.     But video sharing behavior still accelerates rapidly when content offers emotional appeal. In the study, the top 1% of all videos accounted for 23.4% of overall sharing activity, while the top 5% of videos accounted for 52% of total shares.  Such tactics, while they may work well with certain niche products, can be hard to translate to most products or brands.

3.     Still, the most-shared videos generate the fewest dollars per share.  The most-shared videos in a random sample of 1,000 videos across 25 consumer and retail brand sites generated $2.60 per share, while the least-shared videos generated $4.87 per share. 

4.     Social video distribution is key.  94% of retail and consumer brands that attended the webinar said that achieving social distribution of their videos was “somewhat important” or “important” to the company’s overall video commerce strategy, with 63% of those ranking social video distribution as “important.”  Nine of the top ten brands and retailers [by shares] posted interactive videos to Facebook.  Eight out of the top ten enabled sharing on the product page.  Nine out of the top ten enabled sharing from a video gallery or video SEO site.

5.     So if you believe your “boring” videos shouldn’t be shared, you may want to think again.  The most-shared videos on product landing pages, which tended to be simple features and benefits productions lasting no more than 3 minutes, included a share button on the video player that was visible when the page rendered.  Other top traits included of the most shared videos included the prominent placement of share options for Facebook, email, and Twitter.  15% of webinar attendees currently also posted their videos to Google+.