Pitch Us Your Ideas On ContinentalContact Tour and Sport Tires!

Discount Tire is our awesome client and they have asked us for some interesting ideas to promote their two exclusive tires through you, our network partners! Here are the Continental ControlContact Sport and ControlContact Tour YouTube videos. Check below for details on how to pitch us!

ControlContact Sport

ControlContact Tour

1. GTChannel is asking you to send us video ideas which you can produce on your own to promote the above two tires.  
2. Proposals will be accepted until 5PM EST May 27th, 2016. Send to info@gtchannel.com with the Subject Title: ControlContact Pitch. 
3. Include video description, length of video and cost. 
4. Video must be viewer friendly (PG) and have the ability to guide viewers to a designated link to purchase the tire. 

Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you guys!

GTChannel Crew

GTChannel and Network Partner SmurfinWRX Collaborate on Top 6 Drifting Videos

Recently we had an awesome opportunity to collaborate with one of our top creators in our network, SmurfinWRX. We asked Mike (SmurfinWRX) to host a Top 6 Drift Videos countdown show for our channel. His channel started blowing up mid 2015 and we thought it would be a great chance to collaborate and further promote his channel and also get a fresh face to host a show on our channel too.

Watch the video and leave your comments and let us know what you think.

We want to do more and more of these types of collaboration projects in the future with our network partners.  If you have a show idea you want to pitch, you can also reach out to us. You know how to get in touch with us!

Are You Using Facebook Videos To Grow Your Audience?

Facebook reported in their 2015 financial report that 100 million hours of video is being watched everyday. That is still very small compared to the 6 billion hours of video watched by YouTube everyday. But Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that "Video is an important part of the Facebook experience", and the company will continue to put resources into video. It's apparent that videos directly uploaded to Facebook have WAY better reach than YouTube links on your timeline. That's Facebook's unfair advantage it has as it can control what gets seen and what doesn't.

In October the social media team at GTChannel started to aggressively upload videos on to Facebook to increase our Page Likes and Reach.

We started at 240,000 likes in October and now we are at 314,00 and growing at an average rate of about 1,700-2,000/week.  This rate is also growing. Our goal is to reach 1M likes by the end of the year and we are trying new things everyday.

So here is what you should be doing now.

STEP 1 Create a Page.
If you don't have a Page yet, firstly you should create a Page on Facebook. Personal accounts have a limit of 5,000 friends and you also don't need to fill your personal timeline with car stuff all of the time. Pages have more features fit for what you are trying to do as a creator. You also don't want to annoy your aunts, uncles and friends who aren't into cars as much as you are. Your Page is your essentially your Facebook version of a YouTube Channel so include all of the vital information about your brand here. After you've created your page, you can go ahead and invite your friends who will appreciate your page.

STEP 2 Start Uploading Videos!
You will be really surprised with the difference videos do on Facebook compared to regular posts. But what kind of videos should I post?
Keep the long stuff for your YouTube Channel and put up shorter versions, outtakes and more viral moments on Facebook.  People's watching habits reflect which videos do well on Facebook.  Facebook videos do better on day one but YouTube videos do better in the long haul. Check out the GTChannel Facebook page as a reference and see what we are doing.  We're not just sharing our own stuff, we share everything we feel our audience will like. Even sharing Facebook videos have a greater reach than regular posts!

STEP 3 Use TEXT In Videos
Continuing on from people's watching habits...Facebook videos are all auto play but muted.  They start playing when you scroll down on your timeline.  But they are all muted so inserting large text in the first 10-15 seconds of your videos helps drastically to get people to click to listen or watch the entire video.  Once you got them hooked, you have a  better chance of them commenting, liking or even sharing that video.

STEP 4 Learn From Insights

Facebook Insights has gotten better and we can learn a lot about what is working and what is not. Don't just shoot blindly. Take a second to see the stats, learn from it and then repeat.

As a network of automotive creators, we feel it is important for our creators to get as much reach as possible. Facebook will soon roll out with a monetizing platform and we don't want to wait until then to start growing an audience. We all need to start uploading more videos to Facebook because more and more people are watching videos on Facebook.

-TK

Top 8 Car Commercials from Super Bowl 50

The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in America and always ranks top as the most watched TV events of the year. The commercials they air during the mega event has also become an event of itself and a way for brands to make a name for themselves.  Car companies have been on this bandwagon for years now and each year they try to "up" the competition. We've compiled our favorite 8 which were shown during the big game.

1. Honda Ridgeline: Freddy Mercury maybe rolling in his grave but there is something fascinating about sheep singing Somebody to Love.

2. Runnin' with the Devil - Acura NSX: What is this, like the third year in a row Acura has aired a commercial for a car that still isn't on the showroom floor? It's beyond belief that they've pulled it off once again. David Lee Roth can't sing worth crap. But when there is no music, there is nothing to be out of tune with! This acapella version of Van Halen's Runnin' with the Devil actually works.  

3. Audi R8 V10 "Commander": An old retired astronaut gets his mojo back by sitting in the cockpit of his son's new V10 Audi R8.  If this doesn't get you going, nothing will.  

4. Kia Optima "Walken Closet": We toast for most things with Christopher Walken in it. Well, maybe not when he played Captain Hook in Peter Pan... But Kia's "Walken Closet" is worth a toast. 

5. JEEP: As a former CJ7 Jeep Scrambler owner, I had to sneak this one in.  Jeeps are not cars, they are 4x4s that happen to be allowed to drive the same roads as cars.  But Jeeps are made not only for the road but to be out in the wild and this commercial exemplifies that lifestyle.  

6. MINI #defylabels: The BMW brand bought on some celebrity power for this year's Super Bowl ad with Serena Williams, Ryan Renolds, Harvey Kytel, T-Pain, Tony Hawk, Abby Wambach etc to convey the #defylabels message. 

7. Toyota Prius "The Longest Chase": Bank robbers take the all new 2016 Toyota Prius as a getaway car. Initially the authorities scoffs at the idea of chasing, the s-l-o-w reputation, Prius but the new hybrid somehow manages to get away. Ok we get it, but just because you see it on TV, don't take the Prius to rob a bank. 

8. Hyundai Genesis "First Date": Funny Man Kevin Hart plays psycho dad and uses the Hyundai Blue Link Car Finder feature to stalk his daughter on her first date. Which agency came up with this original idea? Hart is so on fire now that he can make any lame commercial concept work. Background music "Another One Bites the Dust" by again Queen.  

YouTube Partner Program for MCN-affiliated channels

There was a message sent out by YouTube to channels that belong in MCN(multi-channel networks) this morning.

You can go ahead and click through and agree.

In a nutshell...

• This is a re-agreement to the partner program you are already apart of.  
• The verbiage in the old agreement when partners signed years ago was dated. It is updated now to take into account all the new revenue models and features YouTube offers now.  Things like Fan Funding etc.  
• There is no difference in the way you work with YouTube and GTChannel. 
• GTChannel and YouTube worked together to make this possible. You will benefit by gaining access to new features such as revenue sharing on eligible third party content in your video. (e.g.cover songs or videos that use music)

False Copyright Claim by GTChannel?!

Recently we have been receiving claims by YouTuber users outside of our network regarding false copyright claims by GTChannel.

This is unfortunate because some partners in our network are clicking on the "Enable Content ID matches" during the uploading process.

Just to clarify, you should only click on "Enable Content ID matches" if you own the copyright to the video you are uploading.  

DO NOT enable Content ID if you are uploading any of the following. 

• GAME PLAY footage. Whether or not this is footage of you playing, your friend playing or something you found on the internet, game play footage copyright is owned by the game company.  Not the player.  
• Music videos and live music performances. 
• MOVIES and TV shows. Do we really even need to get into this? Don't click it!

Check out this video that explains what Content ID is. It is there to protect the rights of the copyright holders.

When our partners click on Content ID on game play footage they do not own, the user is hit with a claim from GTChannel. Not only does this make us look like complete a__holes, it is illegal to claim content we don't own. We do not condone this action but can't stop it unless our partners learn that Content ID should only be enabled if the video was shot and produced by the partner themselves.  

If you are a YouTube user who has been hit by a false claim by GTChannel, we apologize and urge you to "dispute" the claim. That way we can see it and release the false claim. 

Here is a link on How To Dispute a Content ID Claim. 

Digital Video Ecosystem Map

Here is an interesting look at the current digital video ecosystem by Mode Media. It's grouped different platforms together into continents and spread them across a map like infographic. 

There is nothing we don't already know in here but it's a great way to sort different platforms and services and how they can be categorized in a visual way. 

Original article on Techcrunch. 

GTChannel On Comcast's Cross Platform Video Service Watchable

 Although YouTube is still GTChannel's biggest market, we feel that our creators and content need to develop new distribution channels. Our audience is consuming content in every way possible and we want to be there.

We have continued to expand our reach onto other platforms and in October we launched on Comcast's new video service called Watchable.  Watchable curates the best content from popular video networks and we are proud to be one of the select content providers for this new service.

Other content service providers include Buzzfeed, GoPro, Maker Studio, Vice, Discovery Networks, Vox Media etc.
 - TK

How To Do SEMA - SEMA 2015 Report

The 2015 SEMA Show took place from Nov 3 to 6 and GTChannel was on site to cover the best of the best of the show. It was personally one of my best show experiences because we were able to focus on a few goals we set out to achieve. 

Top 13 Tuner Cars of SEMA 2015

1. Create Good Video: We really just focused on making two videos from the show.  The first piece was going to be a "Top Tuner Car" video because that is what our (at least my) expertise lies in. I'm not going to pretend I know everything about trucks and muscle cars because I don't.  We're producing videos for GTChannel's home channel so let's just stick to what our audience wants to see and what we do best.  We also didn't want to go in blind to the show and end up with a highlight video. The show is enormous and just absolutely impossible to cover everything. (Not according to our friends at Speed Academy...) So we chose to focus on selecting a number of "tuner cars" and list them as our favorites. That direction ended up saving our time and prevented us from scattering our resources all over the place.  

Our second video is on the GT Awards with an interview with Sung Kang (Han from Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift) and Kenji Sumino from GReddy.  You may have seen his Z Dream series on the Speed -Fox YouTube Channel which was beautifully shot by eGarage.  We had interviewed Sung and Kenji at the Fugu Z reveal event in Irvine the week prior to the show so we didn't have to interview them during the crazy SEMA week. It just happened that we were also working with Sony to produce a GT Awards video so it turned out perfect that they also won Best of Show for GT Awards. It's extremely rare that things fall into place this perfectly but when it does, it feels really good!  That video with the Fugu Z featuring Sung and Kenji is scheduled for release in the next couple of days. 

                            

                               Sung and Kazunori Yamauchi, creator of PlayStation's Gran Turismo

In partnership with the ID Agency, I directed videos for CTEK Battery Chargers. We have created a series of videos leading up to the show featuring builders and the CTEK Battery Charger. It's a brand/product integrated video series that could be a good template for future video projects. We hope to get more partner channels involved in these types of brand/product integration projects. It's a great way to earn additional revenue from the videos we create.

How LTMW Became The Go-To Builder - Road 2 SEMA Presented by CTEK

2. Partners: The SEMA Show is a once a year event where many of our Network Partner Channels get together in one location. Since we sponsor the Honda Soiree, we took advantage of the situation to get a little corner to hang out and enjoy a few drinks together.  Individually we were also able to see a bunch of partners on the show floor, at restaurants or on the dance floor. It's always great to see our partners in person. Maybe next year we'll even plan a bigger get together at SEMA with more of our awesome partners.  

SEMA Show Day 1 

The Speed Academy guys unfortunately were not able to come out to any of the parties but heck they got a lot of work done.  This video was released on the first night of the show and it already has 123K views.  Way to go guys! 

MotoIQ was also there to cover the SEMA Show. These guys cover the industry from the car nerd perspective and we love their stuff.  

Photo M.D. Media looks like he got some great footage. Let's see the video now!

SuperspeedersRob walks the floor and shows us what's hot or not.  

3. Taking Care of Biz: The SEMA Show is also a time for us to wheel and deal. But the reality is that not much ever really gets done at the SEMA Show floor because people are just so busy and hard to get their attention. You have to do the ground work before SEMA so you can follow up at SEMA or actually close the deal as a formality.  We took the opportunity to meet face to face with several potential brand clients which we hope to work with in 2016.  

This is also a great time to just hang out with folks you normally only work with. The after hours of SEMA is just as important to what is going on during show hours. The big difference with other trade shows is that we are all there to share a common passion which is cars. So when we get to relax over a drink or a meal, we're still talking about CARS!  

Out of my 10+ years of going to SEMA, the key is not to try to do too much.  If you try to grab too much candy, you're hand is going to get stuck and you won't be able to pull it out of the jar. So focus your efforts on a few important things. Set those goals and spend your time wisely.  And drink a LOT of water! 

- Taro Koki 

President & Co-founder of GTChannel Inc.

See our Instagram for car pics from the SEMA Show.

Get a YouTube Custom URL Today

Now it's easier than ever to obtain a custom URL.  

When you create a new channel, it usually looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo after youtube.com/channel/.  No one will remember this and it also looks amateurish. 

You want a custom URL like https://www.youtube.com/gtchannel. 

You can claim your URL right from your YouTube account. You used to need 500 subscribers but now you only need 100 subs.  

Think hard about what your URL should be.  You can never change this!  Watch the video below to see how to create your custom URL! 

No More BS! Strike Social Can Predict And Analyze Your Next Online Video Campaign- Part 2

In our Part 1 of "No More BS! Strike Social Can Predict And Analyze Your Next Online Video Campaign" post we introduced the Contagious Index(CI).  This index is based on how much your video is getting shared around the various social media platforms out there.
Let's take one of our videos for an example.

Drifting Top 6 Reasons Why We Love It is a video we released on August 27th, 2015.  It has 30,387 views as of today on September 24, 2015.  So it's been a little short of a month since we released this video.

Our goal from the beginning was to produce a video that would get shared by many of our viewers.  That is actually the number one objective when coming up with video ideas these days.  We question ourselves, "hmm, that's a cool video concept but would my friends want to watch and share this video"?

We figured if we compiled videos from our library and made a humorous list of why we love drifting, our viewers would share the videos on social media. Everyone loves lists as Buzzfeed has proven.

On Strike, you are able to conduct individual video analysis and even predictions.  Let's take a look at our above drifting video.

The Contagious Index is 241 which is not too bad but not that great either.  There are substantially more "Likes" than "Dislikes" so that is a good sign. 

Below you can see the engagement on various social media platforms from YouTube, Twitter, G+ and Facebook.  YT and FB count for the majority of the engagement with FB doing just a little more than a point more than YT.  The 160 Shares on FB is not that bad I suppose.  So we can say we somewhat achieved our goal.  Except we would be happy with more. These things take time and the more we practice, analyze and re-try, we get better at it.  

The following tab "PREDICT" is where it starts to get really interesting.  With this tool, we can predict how many views we can generate both artificially/PAID and ORGANIC.  And even run the campaign via the site, by clicking on PROMOTE to run your own Programmatic ad campaign. 

Now creators and online video marketers can analyze video performance, also plan promotional campaigns and even implement campaigns all on this platform.   

Even after campaigns, we can go back to export reports on how the entire campaign performed.  We have used this tool so far to report back to brands on how their videos are performing on GTChannel.  

So partners, use these metrics when pitching to clients and brands and also understand that although you want to have a strong organic view baseline,  you have that option to buy views on YouTube to fulfill view count obligations. 

- TK

More NASCAR And REDBULL GLOBAL RALLYCROSS Partnerships With Brian Wong And World Stage Racing

GTChannel signed on as a marketing partner as Brian Wong challenged the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for the first time.  

Brian climbing into the Chevrolet Silverado 250 at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park formerly known as Mosport.

At Redbull Global Rallycross Long Beach.  Brian was running a Hyundai Veloster rallycross car built by Rhys Millen Racing.

"Yahoooo!" 

One of the best things about the Redbull Global Rallycross is the jumps they have on the course. 

Our friends at Superstreet Magazine were also supporting Brian's efforts for his GRC Super Car debut.  

Videos from Brian's weekend competing in GRC coming soon to GTChannel!

You can follow Brian Wong here.
Twitter: @BWMotorsports
http://www.worldstageracing.com

No More BS! Strike Social Can Predict And Analyze Your Next Online Video Campaign

No more, guestimates and bull shitting your way through presentations because now you and your clients have access to intelligent online tools like Strike Social.

Some GTChannel partners already produce online videos for brands and individual clients. Even for those partners without clients yet, this tool can help you predict the performance of your videos and an accurate return on investment. We suggest you give it a try on your next marketing proposal or even when you are just planning for your next video release.

Strike Social is an awesome tool we found that enables creators and marketers smarter media planning, buying and competitive analysis.  The best part about it is that it's absolutely free.  Here at GTChannel, we love data and we love free shit. Especially if it helps our partners. Let's walk through the site.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

The first Competitive Analysis section enable users of the site to run a competitive analysis on brands with YouTube channels. We entered the Toyota USA and Nissan USA YouTube channels just for kicks.

Since we are on the PAID tab, it shows how many YouTube TrueView advertising views each brand has paid for.  (Basically the pre-roll ads we see in front of the videos most people skip automatically)We can see that Toyota has paid for 69.6M views and Nissan 34.3M views.

Toyota has a bigger budget so they buy more views. There is nothing wrong with that.  Now let's see the next tab "EARNED".

Boom! Nissan has twice as many EARNED views at 7.76 M compared to Toyota's 3.52 M.  This is the most important figure since this reflects how many people are sharing, reposting, commenting and reviewing the content. It's essentially the virality(if that's even a word) of the video content.

For the next OWNED views come from the brands own channel, blogs, websites and social media accounts.  This reflects how much effort the brands itself puts into getting the content out on their own. Most definitely an important index as well as it shows how effective their own PR and marketing team is doing.

TOTAL VIEWS is obvious.  This shows the overall reach whether attained through PAID, EARNED or OWNED.

The second part "Top Industry Videos" are sorted by Best Videos as default. This is sorted by the Contagious Index.  The lower the better.  The CI identifies videos that are being highly shared, commented on and viewed at real time. Three out of the top 4 videos are by Nissan as shown above. The top video by Nissan comes up with a low Contagious Index(CI) of 68 points.


To be continued...

-TK

GTChannel Does NASCAR?!

Last weekend GTChannel had an opportunity to partner with Brian Wong for the K&N East Pro Series as part of the NASCAR Sprint Cup last weekend.

The track was the legendary Watkins Glen and we were proud to have Brian run our name across the hood and rear panel of his MDM Hillman Racing prepped race car!

Read full story here. 

How Much Is My Brand Worth?

Do you know how much advertisers or brands are willing to spend on you?  For example, how much would it cost for a brand to have you upload a brand influencer video or a product placement in your video?

When GTChannel has these conversations with brands, the formula is something like this:

Cost to Produce Content + Reach & Engagement = Brand Integration Quote Amount

This has always been difficult to come up with because all the data is sprawled throughout several different platforms and it's changing everyday.  So then came Social Blue Book.  SBB is like a social media version of Kelley Blue Book we car guys know very well.  It gives you a "suggested price" of anything from a custom brand integration to a shout out.  No need to take it literally but it gives you and brands a ball park figure of what we're dealing with here.  Obviously if there are extra specific production requests from the brands, those kind of things need to be reflected in the pricing.  So take it as a starting point but not the end all solution. 

The app just went live in July and the service is fairly new but it already has platform integration with YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Vine.  It looks like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitch and Blog integration is in the works.  

Give it a shot and see how much your brand is worth.  It's all about building your brand, whether it's on YouTube or any platform for that matter.  

- TK

So Long Google+

Who's really a fan of Google+?  Like really a fan?  

I thought so.

Google/YouTube finally got the message after two years of trying to force creators to make G+ accounts and integrating G+ commenting.  Today they announced that:

1. You will be able to use YouTube without a G+ account.

2. Comments will be completely separated between the two services. Basically comments made on YouTube will stay on YouTube and G+ comments will stay where no one will ever see...

If you're happy with how things are going or don't care, there is no need to change anything.  Just leave it as is.

But just remember, DON'T DELETE YOUR G+ ACCOUNT YET.  This will delete your YouTube channel now.

See the YouTube Official Blog post on this topic here.

3 Tips for YouTube Entrepreneurs

GTChannel Co-founder and President talks three important tips for YouTube entrepreneurs on Business Rockstars.  

GTChannel Founders on Business Rockstars

GTChannel founders Scott Schlichter and Taro Koki was invited to be on Business Rockstars with Kevin Rutkowski.  Business Rockstars is the largest producer of live audio and video content for entrepreneurs featuring rockstar CEO's, startups and entrepreneurs.  The Business Rockstars daily radio and streaming show airs LIVE 2 hours daily, Monday to Friday from 10am - noon PST.

Go to http://www.businessrockstars.com for more shows and information. 

10 New Features for YouTube Creators

1. Comments: New system that reduces the spam and unpopular "dislike" comments. 
2. Sub Notification: New mobile and email notifications when your fav channel publishes a new video. 
3. Sub Feeds: Easier access to for your subscription feed for the YT mobile app. 
4. Creator Studio App! 
5. Mobile Video Management: Update thumbnails and manage monetization from mobile. 
6. Cards: Are you using Cards? You should!
7. 360 degree videos: Don't get dizzy. 
8. Live Stream: Improvements on the livestreams.  
9. Creator Community: Find like minded creators. 
10. Updated Creator Academy

Papago! GOSAFE 520 Product Review

GTChannel just reviewed the GOSAFE 520 dashcam from Papago!  This little dashcam can shoot 2560x1080 at 30P at a wide aspect ratio of 21:9.  We were pretty impressed with the video quality.  

Read the full review here with actual video samples.  

If you are GTChannel Partner and would like to review a Papago! product, hit us up and we'll send you what we have here in our office.