Last week we attended iStrategy London, a digital marketing event taking place over two sunny days at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge. The keynote speakers amazed the delegation, the lunches impressed, and the event even managed to trend on Twitter during its first day with the hashtag #iStrategy. It was quite an event, and we're pleased to see that online video and content creation, were two topics right at the heart of the conversation.

The event opened with a keynote from Brian Solis, a leading voice in the industry, renowned for his no-nonsense approach to digital marketing and insightful speeches. Frictionless sharing, powered by mobile bridging the gap between the online and offline worlds was the theme of the day. According to Solis, in order for brands to leverage this new era they must create content that their community finds so interesting they are compelled to share it with their own community. Relevance, resonance, and significance will reign supreme in this new era of frictionless sharing. Check out the Dollar Shave Club video for a great example of the type of content that Solis was talking about:

Day 2 of the conference brought us another great keynote speaker in the form of Alexander Koppel, Chief Commercial Officer at Red Bull Media House. Red Bull is the third most influential social brand globally, with 28 million fans on Facebook alone. This is quite an achievement, which definitely helped to define the brand as a social powerhouse to the delegation. So, how has the brand managed to be so successful within the social landscape. Like Solis, Koppel 's main point was all about content creation being key for brands. Red Bull create their own content all the time, featuring brand advocates and extreme sports players, which the brand has helped to cultivate into international stars. The Art of Flight video is one such example of the type of content Red Bull produce, which resonates well with target audiences and creates engagement.

As you can see video plays a key part in the content creation strategies of top social brands. For our part, Ebuzzing educated the delegation on social video through our workshop Social Meets Video: Unlocking Advertising Potential on Day 1 and the Online Video panel session on Day 2. 

Andrea Febbraio, CEO of Ebuzzing's Italian operations led our social video workshop, explaining to delegates how video has become the most engaging visual advertising format. Video is great because it doesn't need to be big budget to have an impact. Creating imaginative content that helps your brand to connect with viewers is what makes a video the best format right now. Rebecca Powell, VP of Global Marketing at Ebuzzing shared the example of T-Mobile's Welcome Back video to get this point across during the online video panel.

Andrea gave the workshop audience the ingredients for the perfect social video advertising cocktail mix. Once you have great content you need to make sure that it's distributed in brand-safe environments via the most influential social publishers, Facebook apps, YouTube and mobile. Since only 0.1% of videos on YouTube go viral, it's essential that you distribute your content in the right places. The most important metric for social video is engagement, which comes from your brand's video content being shared, liked, and commented on within the social web . For example, when you look at Facebook games, the average gamer is a woman aged 35-45 who would have to use her credit card to get onto the next level, get another crop, etc. However, what social video allows is a value exchange that gives the gamer what they want for free, and the brand a chance to get in front of its target audience in a non-intrusive way. Since the gamer has chosen to watch the video they have a positive feeling towards the brand, which shows, as the sharing rate for Facebook gamers is 3 x higher than outside of a social environment.

Social Video is the next big thing for the online video industry, with a 50% increase in ad spend according to the latest IAB and pwc joint research. Harry Davies from Google, who also sat on the Online Video panel, shared some best practice for online video content; the best thing to do is to be innovative and interesting. The 2nd Tippex experience video is a great example of this, as it has helped the brand to forge relationships with old and new brand advocates by giving viewers a really great experience.

The overall mantra to remember from the Ebuzzing team is that when it comes to social video: 

Content is King, but Distribution is Queen 

Brands must remember to tell a story with their video content, rather than pushing their brand and make sure their video is distributed in the best spots on the social web high street, rather than hidden down a back alley, in order to gain maximum brand engagement.

The Business Mums Blog Carnival started back in early 2010. I’d been looking for ways of promoting my own blog, BusinessPlusBaby.com and entering a blog carnival seemed like a great idea. There was already a blog carnival for UK mum bloggers, but as a business mum blogger, my posts didn’t quite fit. So, I asked a few other mums running businesses if they’d like to join in and the Business Mums Blog Carnival was born.

Each month, mums running businesses enter their top blog post from that month into the carnival. The host for that month compiles the links into a single post and then publishes it on her own blog. It’s really easy to enter and takes just a few seconds to pick a post and email the link to the carnival host. Here is April’s carnival, hosted by Jen Stanbrook of lovechicliving.co.uk.

And what are the benefits? Well from purely search engine optimization terms, it’s a very easy way to get a link back to your website. But that’s just scratching the surface. Most of us mums work from home around our children. Often at strange times of the night! It can be lonely and it’s incredibly important to have a network of like-minded people around you, even if that’s online rather than face-to-face. The blog carnival is a way of meeting new mums and keeping up with what other business mums have been up to.

I always say that blogging is a team sport! You need other bloggers around you to comment on your posts and to share them around their followers. Our blog carnival is a way of gathering a network of bloggers together and staying in touch.

Another key challenge of running a ‘micro’ business is marketing. Your marketing efforts need to be seriously efficient:  you need maximum impact for minimum effort and cost. That’s why blogging is so popular among mums running businesses, it’s practically free and it’s a really effective way of reaching out to our audiences. Add the blog carnival to the mix and blogging becomes an even more effective way of spreading the word.

Besides all of these benefits, the blog carnival is quite simply a great read. We don’t have a theme because we want to make the carnival quick and easy to enter. That means we get entries on all kinds of subjects, right from business and marketing all the way through to health, interiors and parenting.  So why not take a look?

Helen Lindop writes about running a business around a young family at BusinessPlusBaby.com and is coordinator of the Business Mums Blog Carnival. To find out more about the carnival, including how to enter, click here:  Business Mums Blog Carnival.

In just 4 days iStrategy Global Digital Media conference will be coming to London and we'll be there too - speaking on both days around the topic of social video advertising. The two-day event from 22nd - 23rd May, taking place at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge will bring leading brands together, who are looking to transform their digital strategies in 2012.

Andrea Febbraio,Italy co-founder, will be leading our interactive workshop, Social Meets Video: Unlocking Advertising Potential on Tues, 22nd May. The key takeaways from the session will be:

• What is so social about social video, and why do we need to focus on engagement rather than video views?
• Look at seeding strategies YouTube and the tipping point – how to supersize your video to make a viral hit
• Understand regional trends and cultural differences

Whilst on Weds, 23rd May, Rebecca Powell, VP, Global Marketing will be taking to the main stage for the Online Video: Great to Watch, Even Better to Share. She'll be sharing her insights about the growing social video market, and discussing the key trends we're seeing in online video with fellow panellists.

We've also teamed up with iStrategy to produce a video buzz chart, which is a real-time measure of the best branded video content on the social web. It is based on the level of engagement a video creates, measured on the number of social shares, comments, and articles (blog or media) the video generates. You can check it out here.

If you're coming along too, then let us know, as we'd love to meet you!

We're pleased to announce that Ebuzzing has been recognised as the highest ranking social video company by the 2012 Media Momentum Awards in Berlin. Ranked as the 16^th fastest growing digital media company in Europe is great news for Ebuzzing.  The invitation-only event, organised by investment bank GP Bullhound brings together Europe’s most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders in the digital landscape.

Explaining the significance of the award, CEO Bertrand Quesada commented: “Ebuzzing are at the forefront of social video advertising, delivering innovative campaigns for world renowned brands. It’s an honour to be recognized by such an esteemed group of judges. This award is testimony that social video is one of the most exciting and fastest growing sectors in the digital space, and that Ebuzzing is a clear leader in this industry.”

“The web today is social: it’s about connections between individuals and brands need to adapt to the new landscape in order to stay relevant in the new world order. Asadvertisers continue to take advantage of the wealth of opportunity presented through the social web, 2012 looks set to be the year that social media advertising tops the agenda for brands,” explained Ebuzzing CEO Bertrand Quesada. “This award is testimony to our confidence and capabilities in leading the charge to help brands become more meaningful and relevant on the social web.”

Manish Madhvani, Managing Partner at GP Bullhound, comments: “Every year the Media Momentum Top 50 companies demonstrate the continuing health and vitality of the digital industry, despite continuing global economic pressures. I would like to congratulate them all, as they’re playing a key role in driving innovation, jobs and growth within their sectors and they should be very proud of their achievements.”

At Ebuzzing, we're pleased to be part of the 9th annual Awards ceremony, in which Media Momentum celebrates the 50 hottest stars of the European digital economy and their successes and achievements. We're looking forward to the rest of 2012, and growing the social video market.

After being named by Media Momentum last week as one of the top 50 fastest growing and innovative companies in E

 We were selected by the Red Herring editorial team as one of the most innovative companies from a pool of hundreds from across Europe. Finalists for the 2012 edition of the Red Herring 100 Europe award are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. 

Frederic Montagnon, Director of Strategy at Ebuzzing has been invited to present Ebuzzing’s winning strategy at the Red Herring Europe Forum in Amsterdam, April 23-25, 2012. The Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony the evening of April 25.

This month, we're finding out more about Simon, who is responsible for the supervision of all Ebuzzing’s local and international video campaigns signed in France. He is always in contact with publishers, ad networks and game editors, developing the Ebuzzing network and taking care of our existing relationships.

He heads up the video department, which includes three campaign managers: Thomas, Alexis and Laura; and one affiliate manager, Aude.

From Mexico to Russia and the Middle East to Scandinavia, the video team delivers campaigns all around the world - sometimes 10 in a day!  The international part of the job is something they all really enjoy since they have the opportunity to get in touch with people in every corner of the world.

Simon is known for his great technology and industry news; staying informed on everything that happens in the online video market, he always makes sure to share the best news on Yammer, Ebuzzing’s internal social network.

Simon’s daily fight is to deliver the best video advertising service on the market.

And, after work, there’s a little space left for… partying!

Yesterday, Facebook finished a deal to acquire mobile photo sharing app, Instagram, for $1 billion in cash and stock.  As this is such a huge story for the tech and social media industries, TechCrunch have honoured the founders of Instagram, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, by incorporating them into their banner image.

 The Instagram founders may have got themselves an incredibly good deal, but what's in it for Facebook? Well, Instagram was not only a photo sharing app; with 30 million users, it had become a social network in its own right. Not only that, Instagram just launched to the Android market, tapping into millions of new users, who Facebook now have access to. In addition to this, given that Facebook grew so popular thanks to its photo sharing and tagging facility, and has been having a hard time finding success in the mobile market, Instagram was becoming too big a threat. It's understandable that they paid such a huge sum for Instagram, given the huge value and opportunity it represents to the company. In the future Instagrams capabilities will be incorporated within Facebook's offering, making the social media giant even more powerful.

Whilst Facebook and Instagram already have an established relationship, there is still a lot more the two companies could do together now they're part of the same company. TechCrunch have come up with the following five features that could be launched soon:

1. Filter your Facebook photos

2. Import photos

3. Facebook sign-up/login to Instagram

4. Using Facebook Places database to turn geo-tagged instagrams into check-ins

5. Tag Facebook friends in instagrams

So, what does this relationship mean for the social media industry? Well, it just further proves that images and visual content are becoming more and more important to our everyday lives, and becoming more entrenched as the most important social currency available. The advent of Pinterest has already shown us that visaul content works best for users, however, this acquisition further cements the idea that videos, images and all things visual are what matters to the social web right now. Marketers, and bloggers will need to ensure that they have a more visual approach when targeting their audience, and using the most visual platforms to get their message across. 

However, not all users are happy with the new relationship, and whilst Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has stressed that the Instagram brand will be left as an independent brand, users of Instagram, journalists, and techies aren't so sure, and have already voiced their anger at the acquisition on Twitter. Mashable has given disgruntled users Instagram alternatives, if they're now thinking about jumping ship. The main issue is that users feel the deal was done solely to help Facebook gather more data on users and target them for ads. 

Are you an Instagram user? What do you think of Facebook's latest acquisition?

Ebuzzing is one of the leading global social video advertising platforms, and has recently made it to the Media Momentum top list. The awards recognise the most innovative and fastest growing companies in the European digital economy, organised by GP Bullhound. Companies are ranked by their annual revenue growth rate between the three most recent financial years.

As Ebuzzing has been listed as one of the 50 fastest growing companies in Europe, Bertrand Quesada, Ebuzzing CEO, has been invited to attend the exclusive Nhow in Berlin, to participate in the CEO Summit and the Media Momentum Awards celebrations.

We're excited to be one of the hottest digital companies of 2012. We'll let you know how we get on at the awards, so stay tuned.