2012 has been called the, “Year of Social Media.” Reports have found that 75% of marketers plan to increase their social media spending this year, and social media is expected to have a major impact on television and the presidential election.

With such high expectations for social media, you may feel like if your business is not in the social media loop, you could quickly go out of business. However, before rushing into multiple social media platforms in a panic, consider your business needs. Social media can certainly help your business, but some platforms aren’t the best options for your company, so don’t feel like you must enable all platforms.

Today, a wide variety of social media platforms exist that have various features to cater to specific needs. Come up with an effective social media strategy that will use your money and resources the most efficiently. Don’t believe the hype that getting thousands of Facebook followers, or sending out dozens of Tweets per day is the key to social media success for every business. To get the most out of social media marketing, you need to figure out which social media tools are right for you, and focus specifically on those.

First, identify your audience. You need to define whom it is you want to talk to. If you try to communicate with the most number of consumers possible, you won’t see much brand loyalty in return. If you want to engage with as many consumers as possible efficiently, you need to use different tools in different ways. Every social media platform has its own culture. They have specific tones and engage a specific type of person. This is why it is crucial for you to pick the platforms that best reach your target audience.

Next, define your social media needs. Are you simply trying to increase foot traffic to your stores? Or are you trying to see large sales increases? Maybe your issue is not so much about your customers as it is about your company’s communication techniques. All social media platforms don’t fit all business needs. Figure out what your goal is with social media for you company, and choose the platforms that best fit those needs.

Thirdly, make a plan for how you will use social media. The main goal of all social media platforms is to connect to others, but different platforms do this in different ways. Are you trying to get feedback from your customers? Are you trying to improve your recruiting efforts? Figuring out how you want to use your social media accounts will help narrow down the available platforms to the ones that are most relevant to your needs.

And finally, choose the right tool! After you’ve found your target audience, defined your needs, and decided how you want to use social media, you’re all set to choose the right platforms.

Now do the research necessary to find the right platform for you. If you want your social media strategy to be more private than a public network like Twitter, look into a site like Yammer. Yammer allows you to securely communicate private information.

If your business is trying to build a stronger relationship between its staff and outside contractors, use a platform that can be easily integrated into your business. Think about creating a Wiki or checking out a site like Huddle.

If you’re a local company, wanting to connect with those close to you, platforms like Gowalla or Foursquare give users rewards for check-ins and other discounts that will lead to more foot traffic to your store in a way that a larger platform like Facebook cannot do as successfully.

Clearly social media strategies are complicated and there’s no single, right answer for finding success. Investigate the available platforms and experiment. Find what’s working and what’s not. If you find that a certain platform is not generating results, don’t waste your time with it. Move on a focus on other platforms that are better suited for your business.

This was a great post from HubSpot.com

Social media and blogs are a key part to any inbound marketing strategy. Here are 6 ways they help grow your business:

1. Quick to Start. You could launch a Facebook page today or get a blog going in a few days.
2. Low Cost. You can get started in social media and blogging for very little or no money. They are among the most cost-effective methods of reaching your audience.
3. Instant Interactivity. Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on our blog; people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
4. It’s the Search Engines, Silly. Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they search.
5. Inbound Marketing. If you read our blog, you know that we’re big fans of inbound marketing at HubSpot. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, cold email blasts (not lovely nurturing emails like this one to you), TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more.  Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools.
6. First Mover Advantage. For blogs and social media, there is an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors will (if they have not already) and then you’re fighting an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now to claim that first-mover advantage.

How are you using social media today? Learn how you can build a successful inbound marketing strategy that combines social media, blogging, lead conversion, and marketing analytics. Get a complimentary Inbound Marketing Assessment from HubSpot.

This was a great post from HubSpot.com

Social media and blogs are a key part to any inbound marketing strategy. Here are 6 ways they help grow your business:

1. Quick to Start. You could launch a Facebook page today or get a blog going in a few days.
2. Low Cost. You can get started in social media and blogging for very little or no money. They are among the most cost-effective methods of reaching your audience.
3. Instant Interactivity. Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on our blog; people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
4. It’s the Search Engines, Silly. Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they search.
5. Inbound Marketing. If you read our blog, you know that we’re big fans of inbound marketing at HubSpot. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, cold email blasts (not lovely nurturing emails like this one to you), TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more.  Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools.
6. First Mover Advantage. For blogs and social media, there is an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors will (if they have not already) and then you’re fighting an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now to claim that first-mover advantage.

How are you using social media today? Learn how you can build a successful inbound marketing strategy that combines social media, blogging, lead conversion, and marketing analytics. Get a complimentary Inbound Marketing Assessment from HubSpot.

1. Grow Your Business with Social Media ...
2. Using Social Media to Improve Your Business ...

At this time of each year we think about what we accomplished over the last year – and what we want to improve on for the upcoming new year.

From a marketing perspective, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all new ideas and bright shiny objects out there to pull our attention away from the marketing strategies that matter most – those that will actually improve your business and expand your marketing reach.

So, in honor of the new year – I present to you the 12 best online marketing strategies to focus on for 2012. There could be more – but these are in my opinion the best strategies to bring you quicker to your business goals using online marketing strategies that work.

Don’t choose them all! Focus on the 2 or 3 that you feel could impact your marketing effort the most – and carve out the time and plan for implementing them next year!

1. Improve your irresistible free offer. Perhaps it’s time to replace that outdated “free report” or “eBook” with an even higher value freebie to offer site visitors. As I referred to in my post about the best freebie out there – my favorite is still the Audio CD – which has huge intrinsic value because it’s a physical “thing” and you can capture mailing addresses in addition to just email address.

2. Launch a new product or program. There is always something you can “launch” whether it’s a new product or program. You can also “re-launch” something you did this year that performed really well. My post shares some great methods for launching a new product or program. Think about what you can do differently this time around to make it even more engaging and worthwhile for your audience. Add more bonuses and juicier incentives to help increase sales.

3. Do a new webinar or teleseminar. Each new year is a great time to host a new topic using either a webinar or teleseminar. It can also be a perfect time to switch up the format and see what works best. Been doing a bunch of teleseminars lately? Try a webinar? Doing just webinars? Try a teleseminar. And, choose a topic that is new to your audience and see what kind of response you receive.

4. Connect with a new joint venture partner. Have this year be the year you establish a great partnership with a new strategic alliance or joint venture partner. I explained how to do this in my post about joint venture as a great list building strategy. Someone that you feel can really pull you and help you in a big way – while you can do the same for them. I always like to think outside the box about who to connect with – and expect something great as a result.

5. Create an affiliate program. Perhaps this is the year you launch an affiliate program. Affiliates are a great way to spread your message and build your list – while also supporting your sales of products or programs. Pretty much most shopping cart programs support affiliate programs and are easy to establish.

6. Update your website / blog. Website looking a bit outdated? Perhaps it’s time to hire a graphic designer for that new logo you’ve been craving or hire a website developer to update your entire site. I shared how important design is when it comes to marketing online in an earlier post so don’t skimp on the important details when updating your website. First impressions matter most when designing your website.

7. Be more active on social media. Are you one of the folks who has a Twitter account but hardly ever uses it? Perhaps you’re wondering exactly what to post on that new Facebook fanpage you created? Have this year be the year you be more “social” on social media. Remember, you can’t be active on these social media sites unless you show up and do the work.

8. Start a pay-per-click advertising campaign. I’m a huge fan of pay-per-click advertising. One of my earlier posts about PPC explains that it’s one of the best and most effective ways to quickly and authentically build your list with highly qualified leads. Whether it’s Google AdWords or Facebook ads – they convert brand new prospects onto your list and you can target very specific groups of people searching what you have to offer. Yes, you gotta pay for the traffic – but – it’s definitely worth it on the long run.

9. Add video to your marketing. It’s 2012 and you’re still not using video in your online marketing? It’s time to jump onboard with the most powerful and effective way to connect and build trust online with visitors to your site. With the advances of technology and video equipment costs plummeting – you really have no excuse to do more video and start reaping the benefits immediately.

10. Generate more content. Only posting to your blog once every other week or once a month? This is the year you need to generate a ton more content – way more than you’re even doing now (unless you blog every single day.) Putting out high-content and high-value articles and blog posts is how you get new traffic as well as nurture the existing audience you have on your list. Content is king.

11. Be smart about SEO. Still don’t have a clue about search engine optimization or how it relates to your blog or website? SEO is critical for having massive success online – and can’t be ignored or overlooked anymore. Develop a comprehensive SEO strategy about how to improve your search engine rankings for your best keywords and let’s get to work.

12. Email your list more often. Only sending the email newsletter out when you have the time for it? This is the year we get you on a consistent and frequent schedule of emailing your list all this great content you’re now generating. If you’re doing monthly now – consider bi-weekly. Sending the newsletter every other week? Let’s make it happen by sending it weekly. The more you email your list – the higher your open rates and consumption of your content – which is all good.

There you have it! The official 12 best marketing strategies to grow your business with online marketing for 2012.

Until next time… Learn It, Love It, Live It!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6785650

This was a great article I came across and wanted to share with you . . .

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise.  Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works.  In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.  That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons.  Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive.  Plus, online videos stay online forever.  If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.

In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

Six Quick Tips to Optimize Your Videos

Once you record your video, follow these tips to make sure it reaches your core audience and gets the views it deserves.

#1: Make your title count

Just like a headline to a blog post, video titles can pull powerful traffic.  There are two main reasons why the title is so important.  One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention.  Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.  And remember Google owns YouTube, so there’s a story connection between video and searching.

#2: Provide excellent content

Take some time to think about your ideal viewer.  What do you know that they’ll find valuable?  What can you teach them?  “How-to” videos are extremely successful because not only do they offer great value to your viewer, but also you’re able to showcase your knowledge and skill, thus positioning yourself as an expert.  This is key as you continue to grow your brand.

Also, no matter how good your content is, it won’t matter if your video is too long and you lose your viewer’s attention.  Try to keep them short.

In late 2009, ComScore reported that the average video was 3.8 minutes in length.

#3: Include your URL in your video

When you edit your video, take advantage of the different editing features.  One easy feature is to add a text box to your video.  This is where you can display your website address and it’s a great way to get exposure.

Here’s a screen shot of Mari Smith’s YouTube channel.  Notice how she used a text box in her video to display key information, including her website URL at the end of her video.  Smart move!

#4: Take advantage of video’s branding opportunities

For branding purposes, have your company logo displayed prominently somewhere on the screen.  You can do this at all times, or during key times in your video.

In the image below, notice how the company logo is displayed in the upper-left corner.  You can display your logo throughout your video or only at key times.

#5: Always provide an HTML link

When you post on YouTube, you have the option to write a short description of your video.  Always start with the link you want to drive your viewers to so you don’t miss this key opportunity.

Here’s a snapshot of the description boxes from one of my YouTube videos.  Notice the placement of my website URL (it’s the first thing you want to put in the box!) and the keywords I used in my title as well as the description.

#6: Go beyond YouTube

Most people post their videos on YouTube.  In addition to this, make sure to always embed your video on your own website.  This will increase the amount of time people spend on your website and help grow a captive audience.

Also, Google’s algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and embedded video views you receive get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube.  This is important for showing up in Google search results!

How to Supercharge Your Videos

To make sure your video stands out above all the clutter on the web, here are a few strategies that will give your videos an extra boost.

1. Create a Campaign: To get noticed, think beyond stand-alone videos.  For greater reach and exposure, create a series of content-rich videos that you publish regularly.  Not only will this create a great synergy around your content, but it will also allow you to build upon your brand identity as each video is released.
2. Always Include a Call to Action: Never miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to take some type of action at the end of your video.  You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, go to a specific website, leave a comment about your video or visit your blog.  If your video is good, you’ll likely have their full attention; make sure to take advantage of it!
3. Don’t Make a Sales Pitch: There is a lot of sales clutter on the web and you want to make sure you come out above this.  There is nothing wrong with selling your products or services, but use your video to define a problem, discuss solutions and support others—when you combine the three, your video will attract the right following.

Basic Keyword Strategies

There’s no shortage of information online for keyword strategies.  Here are some of the basics you will want to pay attention to as you create your videos:

• To optimize your YouTube videos, make sure to use keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Use your website’s text pages as a kind of “map” for Google. To help the search engines figure out what your videos are about, embed videos into text pages on your site that are relevant to your video.
• Target specific search phrases, not just search words.  For example, instead of using “cupcakes” as a keyword for an organic bakery, use “cupcakes with organic frosting” for a better chance of showing up on the front of search results.

Ten Ideas to Spark Your Video Creativity

#1: Educate

Tell people about your product or services.  Give the details on features and benefits.  Tell them everything they’ll receive once they make the purchase.

#2: Answer questions

What do you get asked most about your product or services?  Most of us can think of a list of at least 5 to 10 questions we get asked often.  Make short 2- to 3-minute videos clips where you state the question and then the answer.  These are easy to make and extremely valuable to your prospects.

#3: Do a product review

 Find a product or service that would be of interest to your niche and your audience and do a review on its benefits and features.

#4: Grow your list

If you have a business, you need a list of potential clients.  Make a video to encourage your prospects to give you their name and email in exchange for something you will give them.  You can give away an ebook, an article (tips, strategies and how-tos are always popular), a tutorial video, a free consultation, a type of assessment, etc.  Figure out what your prospects would find most valuable and create a giveaway around that. (Here’s a hint:  give away your best stuff.  Don’t hold back.)

#5: Talk about your case studies and results

Make a video about the results you were able to achieve while working with a client or talk about a case study and show what you did for them and how you can do the same for the viewer.  You can also show a case study of someone who did not follow your guidance or use the method you teach and failed. Another similar idea is to read testimonials from your most satisfied customers while weaving in key examples.

#6: Tell a story

People can relate to you when you tell a compelling story.  Weave a lesson into your story as a takeaway.  You can also tell about an event from your past that has shaped who you are or how you do business today.

#7: Debunk myths

Talk about the top three myths in your industry and give real examples to show why they are truly myths.

#8: Take your viewers behind the scenes

Take your viewers outside of your office and show yourself in your “natural surroundings.”  If appropriate, introduce your family and show things that are meaningful to you.  Tie in some of your business secrets—how you organize your business, what type of setup you use to get things done, etc.  Pull back the curtains and give tips on how you do business.

#9: Ask questions and answer them

Ask your viewers some key questions that will spark conversation about their wants and needs as they relate to your niche.  Personally answer the question yourself and then ask your viewers to leave their answers below in the comments section.  This will start discussion.

#10: Additional video opportunities

There is so much you can do with video.  Besides filming yourself, you can also do screen captures (ScreenFlow for Macs and Camtasia for PCs are great options), slideshows, and use Keynote or PowerPoint slides to tell your story.

Here’s a short video to show you how ScreenFlow works:

One more piece of advice:  Don’t try to be perfect! I can guarantee that you will not like your first take of any video you record.  And it is of course fine to redo it a few times.  But don’t let multiple video takes slow you down.  Make a promise to yourself that you will do your best, and then move on.  With each video you publish, your confidence will increase and you will get better with time.

Here’s my challenge to you. If you are new at video, make the commitment that you will record a video in the next 24 hours.  Just dive in and try it!  The longer you wait, the faster your competition will claim their video space and run with it.

Give it a try and report back to let us know about your successes.

What’s been your experience with video? Share your video making tips and experiences in the comment box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/16-tips-for-successful-online-video-marketing/#

There are various ways of advertising or marketing your business. Internet marketing is one of the most effective ways of marketing and making your business visible all over the globe. Effective marketing strategies can help you gain more visibility and increase product sales. In this article we are going to look at internet marketing strategies that can boost your business sales and promote its growth worldwide. Some of the well known marketing strategies that are proven to have good results are:

• Through the use of Search engine optimization {SEO} – This is one of the best of driving traffic to your site or business and thus increasing web recognition or visibility. In general the use of SEO in your website helps in improving website ranking. There are various form of SEO that can help you increase traffic in your site, let’s look at some form of SEO. There is the use of selected keywords phrases or words and placing them in search engines such as Google, yahoo, Bing among others. The choice of the keywords should be chosen diligently and in case you already know your targeted audience you can target them by using keywords that mostly use when browsing. In this way you will achieve your goals of drive traffic to your website. Keywords mainly helps web users to find website that have related content that they maybe looking for. Another way of improving ranking through the use of SEO is placing ads on search engines. Ads help in making your site or business visible in the search engines and this is a sure way of driving traffic to your site. Although placing ads on search engine site have a cost it is a perfect and proven way of increasing traffic.

• Article marketing – Writing original content related to your site and submitting to article sites is another proven way of increase traffic to your site. All you need to do is to write quality and informative content and when submitting put anchor text that will help reader to click back to your site. You can also place part of the article as adverts on newspaper or daily magazines. Article marketing is an effective and long term marketing strategies as it brings steady stream of targeted traffic over time and will also continue to produce results even years down the road provided you do not remove the article from the sites that you had submitted it.

• The use of social networking sites – Networking sites such as Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook among others can be used and most people use them to market their product and their website. The use of social networking sites helps you keep your clients update. For instance you can use LinkedIn to build your credibility simply by participating in its Answers forum. One advantage of using social networking sites for marketing your business is that you can reach a large number of targeted customers and you can be able to keep them updated on any special offers or even on arrival of new products.

In conclusion internet marketing helps you to draw potential customers who are already looking for the products and services that you offer. In this way you can make more sales and grow you business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6702694

This was a great article I came across and wanted to share with you . . .

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise.  Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works.  In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.  That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons.  Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive.  Plus, online videos stay online forever.  If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.

In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

Six Quick Tips to Optimize Your Videos

Once you record your video, follow these tips to make sure it reaches your core audience and gets the views it deserves.

#1: Make your title count

Just like a headline to a blog post, video titles can pull powerful traffic.  There are two main reasons why the title is so important.  One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention.  Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.  And remember Google owns YouTube, so there’s a story connection between video and searching.

#2: Provide excellent content

Take some time to think about your ideal viewer.  What do you know that they’ll find valuable?  What can you teach them?  “How-to” videos are extremely successful because not only do they offer great value to your viewer, but also you’re able to showcase your knowledge and skill, thus positioning yourself as an expert.  This is key as you continue to grow your brand.

Also, no matter how good your content is, it won’t matter if your video is too long and you lose your viewer’s attention.  Try to keep them short.

In late 2009, ComScore reported that the average video was 3.8 minutes in length.

#3: Include your URL in your video

When you edit your video, take advantage of the different editing features.  One easy feature is to add a text box to your video.  This is where you can display your website address and it’s a great way to get exposure.

Here’s a screen shot of Mari Smith’s YouTube channel.  Notice how she used a text box in her video to display key information, including her website URL at the end of her video.  Smart move!

#4: Take advantage of video’s branding opportunities

For branding purposes, have your company logo displayed prominently somewhere on the screen.  You can do this at all times, or during key times in your video.

In the image below, notice how the company logo is displayed in the upper-left corner.  You can display your logo throughout your video or only at key times.

#5: Always provide an HTML link

When you post on YouTube, you have the option to write a short description of your video.  Always start with the link you want to drive your viewers to so you don’t miss this key opportunity.

Here’s a snapshot of the description boxes from one of my YouTube videos.  Notice the placement of my website URL (it’s the first thing you want to put in the box!) and the keywords I used in my title as well as the description.

#6: Go beyond YouTube

Most people post their videos on YouTube.  In addition to this, make sure to always embed your video on your own website.  This will increase the amount of time people spend on your website and help grow a captive audience.

Also, Google’s algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and embedded video views you receive get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube.  This is important for showing up in Google search results!

How to Supercharge Your Videos

To make sure your video stands out above all the clutter on the web, here are a few strategies that will give your videos an extra boost.

1. Create a Campaign: To get noticed, think beyond stand-alone videos.  For greater reach and exposure, create a series of content-rich videos that you publish regularly.  Not only will this create a great synergy around your content, but it will also allow you to build upon your brand identity as each video is released.
2. Always Include a Call to Action: Never miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to take some type of action at the end of your video.  You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, go to a specific website, leave a comment about your video or visit your blog.  If your video is good, you’ll likely have their full attention; make sure to take advantage of it!
3. Don’t Make a Sales Pitch: There is a lot of sales clutter on the web and you want to make sure you come out above this.  There is nothing wrong with selling your products or services, but use your video to define a problem, discuss solutions and support others—when you combine the three, your video will attract the right following.

Basic Keyword Strategies

There’s no shortage of information online for keyword strategies.  Here are some of the basics you will want to pay attention to as you create your videos:

• To optimize your YouTube videos, make sure to use keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Use your website’s text pages as a kind of “map” for Google. To help the search engines figure out what your videos are about, embed videos into text pages on your site that are relevant to your video.
• Target specific search phrases, not just search words.  For example, instead of using “cupcakes” as a keyword for an organic bakery, use “cupcakes with organic frosting” for a better chance of showing up on the front of search results.

Ten Ideas to Spark Your Video Creativity

#1: Educate

Tell people about your product or services.  Give the details on features and benefits.  Tell them everything they’ll receive once they make the purchase.

#2: Answer questions

What do you get asked most about your product or services?  Most of us can think of a list of at least 5 to 10 questions we get asked often.  Make short 2- to 3-minute videos clips where you state the question and then the answer.  These are easy to make and extremely valuable to your prospects.

#3: Do a product review

 Find a product or service that would be of interest to your niche and your audience and do a review on its benefits and features.

#4: Grow your list

If you have a business, you need a list of potential clients.  Make a video to encourage your prospects to give you their name and email in exchange for something you will give them.  You can give away an ebook, an article (tips, strategies and how-tos are always popular), a tutorial video, a free consultation, a type of assessment, etc.  Figure out what your prospects would find most valuable and create a giveaway around that. (Here’s a hint:  give away your best stuff.  Don’t hold back.)

#5: Talk about your case studies and results

Make a video about the results you were able to achieve while working with a client or talk about a case study and show what you did for them and how you can do the same for the viewer.  You can also show a case study of someone who did not follow your guidance or use the method you teach and failed. Another similar idea is to read testimonials from your most satisfied customers while weaving in key examples.

#6: Tell a story

People can relate to you when you tell a compelling story.  Weave a lesson into your story as a takeaway.  You can also tell about an event from your past that has shaped who you are or how you do business today.

#7: Debunk myths

Talk about the top three myths in your industry and give real examples to show why they are truly myths.

#8: Take your viewers behind the scenes

Take your viewers outside of your office and show yourself in your “natural surroundings.”  If appropriate, introduce your family and show things that are meaningful to you.  Tie in some of your business secrets—how you organize your business, what type of setup you use to get things done, etc.  Pull back the curtains and give tips on how you do business.

#9: Ask questions and answer them

Ask your viewers some key questions that will spark conversation about their wants and needs as they relate to your niche.  Personally answer the question yourself and then ask your viewers to leave their answers below in the comments section.  This will start discussion.

#10: Additional video opportunities

There is so much you can do with video.  Besides filming yourself, you can also do screen captures (ScreenFlow for Macs and Camtasia for PCs are great options), slideshows, and use Keynote or PowerPoint slides to tell your story.

Here’s a short video to show you how ScreenFlow works:

One more piece of advice:  Don’t try to be perfect! I can guarantee that you will not like your first take of any video you record.  And it is of course fine to redo it a few times.  But don’t let multiple video takes slow you down.  Make a promise to yourself that you will do your best, and then move on.  With each video you publish, your confidence will increase and you will get better with time.

Here’s my challenge to you. If you are new at video, make the commitment that you will record a video in the next 24 hours.  Just dive in and try it!  The longer you wait, the faster your competition will claim their video space and run with it.

Give it a try and report back to let us know about your successes.

What’s been your experience with video? Share your video making tips and experiences in the comment box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/16-tips-for-successful-online-video-marketing/#

There are various ways of advertising or marketing your business. Internet marketing is one of the most effective ways of marketing and making your business visible all over the globe. Effective marketing strategies can help you gain more visibility and increase product sales. In this article we are going to look at internet marketing strategies that can boost your business sales and promote its growth worldwide. Some of the well known marketing strategies that are proven to have good results are:

• Through the use of Search engine optimization {SEO} – This is one of the best of driving traffic to your site or business and thus increasing web recognition or visibility. In general the use of SEO in your website helps in improving website ranking. There are various form of SEO that can help you increase traffic in your site, let’s look at some form of SEO. There is the use of selected keywords phrases or words and placing them in search engines such as Google, yahoo, Bing among others. The choice of the keywords should be chosen diligently and in case you already know your targeted audience you can target them by using keywords that mostly use when browsing. In this way you will achieve your goals of drive traffic to your website. Keywords mainly helps web users to find website that have related content that they maybe looking for. Another way of improving ranking through the use of SEO is placing ads on search engines. Ads help in making your site or business visible in the search engines and this is a sure way of driving traffic to your site. Although placing ads on search engine site have a cost it is a perfect and proven way of increasing traffic.

• Article marketing – Writing original content related to your site and submitting to article sites is another proven way of increase traffic to your site. All you need to do is to write quality and informative content and when submitting put anchor text that will help reader to click back to your site. You can also place part of the article as adverts on newspaper or daily magazines. Article marketing is an effective and long term marketing strategies as it brings steady stream of targeted traffic over time and will also continue to produce results even years down the road provided you do not remove the article from the sites that you had submitted it.

• The use of social networking sites – Networking sites such as Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook among others can be used and most people use them to market their product and their website. The use of social networking sites helps you keep your clients update. For instance you can use LinkedIn to build your credibility simply by participating in its Answers forum. One advantage of using social networking sites for marketing your business is that you can reach a large number of targeted customers and you can be able to keep them updated on any special offers or even on arrival of new products.

In conclusion internet marketing helps you to draw potential customers who are already looking for the products and services that you offer. In this way you can make more sales and grow you business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6702694

1. 16 Tips for Successful Online Video Marketing ...
2. Internet Marketing Strategies That Can Boost Your Products Sales Share...
3. Social Media Marketing Strategies ...

There are various ways of advertising or marketing your business. Internet marketing is one of the most effective ways of marketing and making your business visible all over the globe. Effective marketing strategies can help you gain more visibility and increase product sales. In this article we are going to look at internet marketing strategies that can boost your business sales and promote its growth worldwide. Some of the well known marketing strategies that are proven to have good results are:

• Through the use of Search engine optimization {SEO} – This is one of the best of driving traffic to your site or business and thus increasing web recognition or visibility. In general the use of SEO in your website helps in improving website ranking. There are various form of SEO that can help you increase traffic in your site, let’s look at some form of SEO. There is the use of selected keywords phrases or words and placing them in search engines such as Google, yahoo, Bing among others. The choice of the keywords should be chosen diligently and in case you already know your targeted audience you can target them by using keywords that mostly use when browsing. In this way you will achieve your goals of drive traffic to your website. Keywords mainly helps web users to find website that have related content that they maybe looking for. Another way of improving ranking through the use of SEO is placing ads on search engines. Ads help in making your site or business visible in the search engines and this is a sure way of driving traffic to your site. Although placing ads on search engine site have a cost it is a perfect and proven way of increasing traffic.

• Article marketing – Writing original content related to your site and submitting to article sites is another proven way of increase traffic to your site. All you need to do is to write quality and informative content and when submitting put anchor text that will help reader to click back to your site. You can also place part of the article as adverts on newspaper or daily magazines. Article marketing is an effective and long term marketing strategies as it brings steady stream of targeted traffic over time and will also continue to produce results even years down the road provided you do not remove the article from the sites that you had submitted it.

• The use of social networking sites – Networking sites such as Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook among others can be used and most people use them to market their product and their website. The use of social networking sites helps you keep your clients update. For instance you can use LinkedIn to build your credibility simply by participating in its Answers forum. One advantage of using social networking sites for marketing your business is that you can reach a large number of targeted customers and you can be able to keep them updated on any special offers or even on arrival of new products.

In conclusion internet marketing helps you to draw potential customers who are already looking for the products and services that you offer. In this way you can make more sales and grow you business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6702694

1. Social Media Marketing Strategies ...

This is a great article:

After doing some videos I realized that I was NOT posting them to my blog! I cannot believe I did not do that. So I wanted to share with you a few videos that I have done to help you with your Internet Marketing. If you need help in any of these areas or have questions please feel free to contact me. Enjoy!

This is a great article I found by Frank Barry http://socialmediatoday.com/frankbarry/328381/social-media-best-practices-12-tips-making-best-facebook-twitter-google-or-any-oth?utm_source=smt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Do you know how many of your supporters use popular social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?

Twitter has more than 16 million users, and 42.3 percent of the entire American population is on Facebook. YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world. Google recently made a big social medial play by introducing Google+ which saw 20 million users within the first three weeks.

With usage stats like that it’s probably safe to assume that a large portion of your supporters, customers and/or prospects use at least one of these sites on a regular basis, right?

Which means you need to get laser focused on figuring out how to best utilize sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

But as with anything, it can be challenging to figure out where to start or how to ensure your efforts are going to be effective.

With that in mind, here are 12 tips that will help you succeed no matter what social-networking site you apply them to.

1. CLAIM YOUR LAND

As you get more and more involved in using social media, be sure to claim your land by creating your organization’s Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, Google+ profile, etc.

Think about it like when the Internet became popular — you wanted to secure your domain even if you didn’t plan on using it right away so others wouldn’t register it.

2. FILL OUT YOUR PROFILE COMPLETELY

The social Web is essentially a place where relationships are built, maintained and enhanced in a digital space.

It’s really no different than real life in that people want to get to know who you are, what you stand for, how you’re changing the world and what they can get by connecting with you. So make sure to take advantage of all the profile space you have by adding a picture, putting up information about your organization, providing links back to your website and so on. This way others know you’re a real nonprofit doing real things.

3. SPEND SOME TIME OBSERVING (AKA LISTENING)

An easy way to understand this concept is to think about attending a party where you don’t know many people.

It’s doubtful that you’d go barging in to conversations or groups of people without first getting the lay of the land by observing the room, looking for others who you may know or know of, and thinking about what you could talk about with those attending. The social Web is no different. It requires that you learn the culture, people and way to interact on each specific site. Twitter is different than Facebook, and Facebook is different than LinkedIn.

Spend some time observing how others interact, speak, share and communicate before you dive in. Creating a social-media listening dashboard helps as you get started. You can get one up and running in 30 minutes or less for free.

4. LOCATE YOUR PEEPS

Once you’ve begun to get acclimated with the culture and overall way to interact on each social site, start to look for those who are talking about or interested in things you find interesting.

For example: If you’re a nonprofit that focuses on disaster-relief efforts in places like New Zealand, then you may want to connect with the Red Cross and begin building a relationship with it. Or you may want to find individuals who are talking about the events around the world where disaster relief is needed.

This allows you to engage with people who are interested in the things you do and who might become supporters of yours one day. You should also get familiar with using search features like Twitter Search to help you find the right people to engage with.

Here are 13 simple twitter search examples to get you started.

5. ENGAGE, BUT DON’T YELL (OR ASK FOR DONATIONS)

After you’ve been observing for a while and locating like-minded organizations and individuals, you want to begin building relationships with them.

The key point to remember here is that you should not start by selling your wares or promoting your programs or asking for donations. Even though Social Fundraising is a great way to empower your supporters it shouldn’t be the first thing you focus on. Start by getting to know the individuals who run the social-media accounts you interact with — offer your help, assistance and support to them. Be the initiator and giver.

Spend some time in chitchat-type conversations to build real connections and relationships with others — it will pay off in the long run.

6. BUILD YOUR FAN BASE (JUST LIKE BUILDING YOUR HOUSE FILE)

As you start to engage with the right individuals and organizations, you naturally begin to build your fan base — it’s the organic way of doing things on the social Web.

In addition to that, once you’ve developed a solid presence, part of your fan-, friend- and follower-growth strategy should include promoting your presence on social-media sites to your current supporter base. You can do this by putting social-media links on your main website and sending e-mail communications to your housefile, letting all your supporters know where to find you on the various social-networking sites you participate on.

This helps build your social-network fan base in two ways.

First, it gets all those who you have e-mails addresses for to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter and so on.

Second, it gives you exposure to your fans’ networks and provides the opportunity for many more to find out about you.

7. CREATE MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS

Now that you’re building a nice-sized following and engaging with the right crowd, you should focus on building relationships that are useful to others.

Sticking with the disaster-relief example, if you were engaged in helping those affected by a natural disaster in New Zealand, then you could help others by providing them up-to-the-minute news, pointing them to resources that would allow them to help or participate in the relief efforts, and creating conversations with others that help draw attention to the cause.

By being a resource to your community and helping others, you quickly build a great reputation online.

8. IDENTIFY AND INTERACT WITH INFLUENCERS

A key part of any social-media strategy involves identifying influencers — those who have nice-sized online networks can effectively spread your message and are able to activate others.

These individuals can help you reach more people because of the trusted relationships they’ve already built. As you build relationships with people online, look for the influencers and be thoughtful about how you engage and build relationships with them.

It’s very possible they can help amplify your message like you’ve never been able to do.

9. CONNECT THE DOTS

The social Web is very much a game of relationships and a place where those who are genuinely using the tools for good want to connect with other like-minded individuals.

As you build your network of fans, help them to get to know each other by connecting them. Make introductions on Facebook. Share something that one of your fans has done with another on Twitter. Help build a tight-knit network by being a connector who’s always looking for ways to build beneficial relationships between others.

10. PUMP OUT USEFUL INFO. AND CONTENT

Think of participating on the social Web like you think about your website.

Would people come back if you failed to update your website with useful information on a regular basis? Doubtful. The same holds true on the social Web, so make sure to consistently share great content that’s relevant and useful to your fan base. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be content that you wrote or created. It can be news stories, resources from other websites, information from a partner organization, etc.

The key is that you become valuable by sharing useful content.

11. ACTIVATE YOUR NETWORK

At the end of the day, doing the steps outlined above have a purpose.

That purpose is to build a community of people who are supporters of your organization and willing to take action in support of your cause.

Your online network will respond when you ask if you’ve built real relationships, engaged with people, proved to be a useful resource, connected others and had an overall positive impact on your online community.

12. SAY THANK YOU

Good manners apply in any social setting, and the Web is no different.

Make sure to continually show appreciation when you’re fans support you by donating, volunteering, sharing your content, retweeting a tweet, liking a Facebook status update, attending an event or any other action you’ve requested them to take. It shows that you’re paying attention and that you’re grateful for every bit of support.

And that keeps people coming back to support you every time you need them.

What one tip would you add? There’s plenty more out there that you’re doing a great job at, I’m sure!

This was a great article I came across and wanted to share with you . . .

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise.  Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works.  In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.  That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons.  Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive.  Plus, online videos stay online forever.  If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.

In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

Six Quick Tips to Optimize Your Videos

Once you record your video, follow these tips to make sure it reaches your core audience and gets the views it deserves.

#1: Make your title count

Just like a headline to a blog post, video titles can pull powerful traffic.  There are two main reasons why the title is so important.  One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention.  Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.  And remember Google owns YouTube, so there’s a story connection between video and searching.

#2: Provide excellent content

Take some time to think about your ideal viewer.  What do you know that they’ll find valuable?  What can you teach them?  “How-to” videos are extremely successful because not only do they offer great value to your viewer, but also you’re able to showcase your knowledge and skill, thus positioning yourself as an expert.  This is key as you continue to grow your brand.

Also, no matter how good your content is, it won’t matter if your video is too long and you lose your viewer’s attention.  Try to keep them short.

In late 2009, ComScore reported that the average video was 3.8 minutes in length.

#3: Include your URL in your video

When you edit your video, take advantage of the different editing features.  One easy feature is to add a text box to your video.  This is where you can display your website address and it’s a great way to get exposure.

Here’s a screen shot of Mari Smith’s YouTube channel.  Notice how she used a text box in her video to display key information, including her website URL at the end of her video.  Smart move!

#4: Take advantage of video’s branding opportunities

For branding purposes, have your company logo displayed prominently somewhere on the screen.  You can do this at all times, or during key times in your video.

In the image below, notice how the company logo is displayed in the upper-left corner.  You can display your logo throughout your video or only at key times.

#5: Always provide an HTML link

When you post on YouTube, you have the option to write a short description of your video.  Always start with the link you want to drive your viewers to so you don’t miss this key opportunity.

Here’s a snapshot of the description boxes from one of my YouTube videos.  Notice the placement of my website URL (it’s the first thing you want to put in the box!) and the keywords I used in my title as well as the description.

#6: Go beyond YouTube

Most people post their videos on YouTube.  In addition to this, make sure to always embed your video on your own website.  This will increase the amount of time people spend on your website and help grow a captive audience.

Also, Google’s algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and embedded video views you receive get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube.  This is important for showing up in Google search results!

How to Supercharge Your Videos

To make sure your video stands out above all the clutter on the web, here are a few strategies that will give your videos an extra boost.

1. Create a Campaign: To get noticed, think beyond stand-alone videos.  For greater reach and exposure, create a series of content-rich videos that you publish regularly.  Not only will this create a great synergy around your content, but it will also allow you to build upon your brand identity as each video is released.
2. Always Include a Call to Action: Never miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to take some type of action at the end of your video.  You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, go to a specific website, leave a comment about your video or visit your blog.  If your video is good, you’ll likely have their full attention; make sure to take advantage of it!
3. Don’t Make a Sales Pitch: There is a lot of sales clutter on the web and you want to make sure you come out above this.  There is nothing wrong with selling your products or services, but use your video to define a problem, discuss solutions and support others—when you combine the three, your video will attract the right following.

Basic Keyword Strategies

There’s no shortage of information online for keyword strategies.  Here are some of the basics you will want to pay attention to as you create your videos:

• To optimize your YouTube videos, make sure to use keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Use your website’s text pages as a kind of “map” for Google. To help the search engines figure out what your videos are about, embed videos into text pages on your site that are relevant to your video.
• Target specific search phrases, not just search words.  For example, instead of using “cupcakes” as a keyword for an organic bakery, use “cupcakes with organic frosting” for a better chance of showing up on the front of search results.

Ten Ideas to Spark Your Video Creativity

#1: Educate

Tell people about your product or services.  Give the details on features and benefits.  Tell them everything they’ll receive once they make the purchase.

#2: Answer questions

What do you get asked most about your product or services?  Most of us can think of a list of at least 5 to 10 questions we get asked often.  Make short 2- to 3-minute videos clips where you state the question and then the answer.  These are easy to make and extremely valuable to your prospects.

#3: Do a product review

 Find a product or service that would be of interest to your niche and your audience and do a review on its benefits and features.

#4: Grow your list

If you have a business, you need a list of potential clients.  Make a video to encourage your prospects to give you their name and email in exchange for something you will give them.  You can give away an ebook, an article (tips, strategies and how-tos are always popular), a tutorial video, a free consultation, a type of assessment, etc.  Figure out what your prospects would find most valuable and create a giveaway around that. (Here’s a hint:  give away your best stuff.  Don’t hold back.)

#5: Talk about your case studies and results

Make a video about the results you were able to achieve while working with a client or talk about a case study and show what you did for them and how you can do the same for the viewer.  You can also show a case study of someone who did not follow your guidance or use the method you teach and failed. Another similar idea is to read testimonials from your most satisfied customers while weaving in key examples.

#6: Tell a story

People can relate to you when you tell a compelling story.  Weave a lesson into your story as a takeaway.  You can also tell about an event from your past that has shaped who you are or how you do business today.

#7: Debunk myths

Talk about the top three myths in your industry and give real examples to show why they are truly myths.

#8: Take your viewers behind the scenes

Take your viewers outside of your office and show yourself in your “natural surroundings.”  If appropriate, introduce your family and show things that are meaningful to you.  Tie in some of your business secrets—how you organize your business, what type of setup you use to get things done, etc.  Pull back the curtains and give tips on how you do business.

#9: Ask questions and answer them

Ask your viewers some key questions that will spark conversation about their wants and needs as they relate to your niche.  Personally answer the question yourself and then ask your viewers to leave their answers below in the comments section.  This will start discussion.

#10: Additional video opportunities

There is so much you can do with video.  Besides filming yourself, you can also do screen captures (ScreenFlow for Macs and Camtasia for PCs are great options), slideshows, and use Keynote or PowerPoint slides to tell your story.

Here’s a short video to show you how ScreenFlow works:

One more piece of advice:  Don’t try to be perfect! I can guarantee that you will not like your first take of any video you record.  And it is of course fine to redo it a few times.  But don’t let multiple video takes slow you down.  Make a promise to yourself that you will do your best, and then move on.  With each video you publish, your confidence will increase and you will get better with time.

Here’s my challenge to you. If you are new at video, make the commitment that you will record a video in the next 24 hours.  Just dive in and try it!  The longer you wait, the faster your competition will claim their video space and run with it.

Give it a try and report back to let us know about your successes.

What’s been your experience with video? Share your video making tips and experiences in the comment box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/16-tips-for-successful-online-video-marketing/#

After doing some videos I realized that I was NOT posting them to my blog! I cannot believe I did not do that. So I wanted to share with you a few videos that I have done to help you with your Internet Marketing. If you need help in any of these areas or have questions please feel free to contact me. Enjoy!

This is a great article I found by Frank Barry http://socialmediatoday.com/frankbarry/328381/social-media-best-practices-12-tips-making-best-facebook-twitter-google-or-any-oth?utm_source=smt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Do you know how many of your supporters use popular social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?

Twitter has more than 16 million users, and 42.3 percent of the entire American population is on Facebook. YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world. Google recently made a big social medial play by introducing Google+ which saw 20 million users within the first three weeks.

With usage stats like that it’s probably safe to assume that a large portion of your supporters, customers and/or prospects use at least one of these sites on a regular basis, right?

Which means you need to get laser focused on figuring out how to best utilize sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

But as with anything, it can be challenging to figure out where to start or how to ensure your efforts are going to be effective.

With that in mind, here are 12 tips that will help you succeed no matter what social-networking site you apply them to.

1. CLAIM YOUR LAND

As you get more and more involved in using social media, be sure to claim your land by creating your organization’s Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, Google+ profile, etc.

Think about it like when the Internet became popular — you wanted to secure your domain even if you didn’t plan on using it right away so others wouldn’t register it.

2. FILL OUT YOUR PROFILE COMPLETELY

The social Web is essentially a place where relationships are built, maintained and enhanced in a digital space.

It’s really no different than real life in that people want to get to know who you are, what you stand for, how you’re changing the world and what they can get by connecting with you. So make sure to take advantage of all the profile space you have by adding a picture, putting up information about your organization, providing links back to your website and so on. This way others know you’re a real nonprofit doing real things.

3. SPEND SOME TIME OBSERVING (AKA LISTENING)

An easy way to understand this concept is to think about attending a party where you don’t know many people.

It’s doubtful that you’d go barging in to conversations or groups of people without first getting the lay of the land by observing the room, looking for others who you may know or know of, and thinking about what you could talk about with those attending. The social Web is no different. It requires that you learn the culture, people and way to interact on each specific site. Twitter is different than Facebook, and Facebook is different than LinkedIn.

Spend some time observing how others interact, speak, share and communicate before you dive in. Creating a social-media listening dashboard helps as you get started. You can get one up and running in 30 minutes or less for free.

4. LOCATE YOUR PEEPS

Once you’ve begun to get acclimated with the culture and overall way to interact on each social site, start to look for those who are talking about or interested in things you find interesting.

For example: If you’re a nonprofit that focuses on disaster-relief efforts in places like New Zealand, then you may want to connect with the Red Cross and begin building a relationship with it. Or you may want to find individuals who are talking about the events around the world where disaster relief is needed.

This allows you to engage with people who are interested in the things you do and who might become supporters of yours one day. You should also get familiar with using search features like Twitter Search to help you find the right people to engage with.

Here are 13 simple twitter search examples to get you started.

5. ENGAGE, BUT DON’T YELL (OR ASK FOR DONATIONS)

After you’ve been observing for a while and locating like-minded organizations and individuals, you want to begin building relationships with them.

The key point to remember here is that you should not start by selling your wares or promoting your programs or asking for donations. Even though Social Fundraising is a great way to empower your supporters it shouldn’t be the first thing you focus on. Start by getting to know the individuals who run the social-media accounts you interact with — offer your help, assistance and support to them. Be the initiator and giver.

Spend some time in chitchat-type conversations to build real connections and relationships with others — it will pay off in the long run.

6. BUILD YOUR FAN BASE (JUST LIKE BUILDING YOUR HOUSE FILE)

As you start to engage with the right individuals and organizations, you naturally begin to build your fan base — it’s the organic way of doing things on the social Web.

In addition to that, once you’ve developed a solid presence, part of your fan-, friend- and follower-growth strategy should include promoting your presence on social-media sites to your current supporter base. You can do this by putting social-media links on your main website and sending e-mail communications to your housefile, letting all your supporters know where to find you on the various social-networking sites you participate on.

This helps build your social-network fan base in two ways.

First, it gets all those who you have e-mails addresses for to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter and so on.

Second, it gives you exposure to your fans’ networks and provides the opportunity for many more to find out about you.

7. CREATE MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS

Now that you’re building a nice-sized following and engaging with the right crowd, you should focus on building relationships that are useful to others.

Sticking with the disaster-relief example, if you were engaged in helping those affected by a natural disaster in New Zealand, then you could help others by providing them up-to-the-minute news, pointing them to resources that would allow them to help or participate in the relief efforts, and creating conversations with others that help draw attention to the cause.

By being a resource to your community and helping others, you quickly build a great reputation online.

8. IDENTIFY AND INTERACT WITH INFLUENCERS

A key part of any social-media strategy involves identifying influencers — those who have nice-sized online networks can effectively spread your message and are able to activate others.

These individuals can help you reach more people because of the trusted relationships they’ve already built. As you build relationships with people online, look for the influencers and be thoughtful about how you engage and build relationships with them.

It’s very possible they can help amplify your message like you’ve never been able to do.

9. CONNECT THE DOTS

The social Web is very much a game of relationships and a place where those who are genuinely using the tools for good want to connect with other like-minded individuals.

As you build your network of fans, help them to get to know each other by connecting them. Make introductions on Facebook. Share something that one of your fans has done with another on Twitter. Help build a tight-knit network by being a connector who’s always looking for ways to build beneficial relationships between others.

10. PUMP OUT USEFUL INFO. AND CONTENT

Think of participating on the social Web like you think about your website.

Would people come back if you failed to update your website with useful information on a regular basis? Doubtful. The same holds true on the social Web, so make sure to consistently share great content that’s relevant and useful to your fan base. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be content that you wrote or created. It can be news stories, resources from other websites, information from a partner organization, etc.

The key is that you become valuable by sharing useful content.

11. ACTIVATE YOUR NETWORK

At the end of the day, doing the steps outlined above have a purpose.

That purpose is to build a community of people who are supporters of your organization and willing to take action in support of your cause.

Your online network will respond when you ask if you’ve built real relationships, engaged with people, proved to be a useful resource, connected others and had an overall positive impact on your online community.

12. SAY THANK YOU

Good manners apply in any social setting, and the Web is no different.

Make sure to continually show appreciation when you’re fans support you by donating, volunteering, sharing your content, retweeting a tweet, liking a Facebook status update, attending an event or any other action you’ve requested them to take. It shows that you’re paying attention and that you’re grateful for every bit of support.

And that keeps people coming back to support you every time you need them.

What one tip would you add? There’s plenty more out there that you’re doing a great job at, I’m sure!

This was a great article I came across and wanted to share with you . . .

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise.  Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works.  In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.  That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons.  Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive.  Plus, online videos stay online forever.  If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.

In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

Six Quick Tips to Optimize Your Videos

Once you record your video, follow these tips to make sure it reaches your core audience and gets the views it deserves.

#1: Make your title count

Just like a headline to a blog post, video titles can pull powerful traffic.  There are two main reasons why the title is so important.  One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention.  Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.  And remember Google owns YouTube, so there’s a story connection between video and searching.

#2: Provide excellent content

Take some time to think about your ideal viewer.  What do you know that they’ll find valuable?  What can you teach them?  “How-to” videos are extremely successful because not only do they offer great value to your viewer, but also you’re able to showcase your knowledge and skill, thus positioning yourself as an expert.  This is key as you continue to grow your brand.

Also, no matter how good your content is, it won’t matter if your video is too long and you lose your viewer’s attention.  Try to keep them short.

In late 2009, ComScore reported that the average video was 3.8 minutes in length.

#3: Include your URL in your video

When you edit your video, take advantage of the different editing features.  One easy feature is to add a text box to your video.  This is where you can display your website address and it’s a great way to get exposure.

Here’s a screen shot of Mari Smith’s YouTube channel.  Notice how she used a text box in her video to display key information, including her website URL at the end of her video.  Smart move!

#4: Take advantage of video’s branding opportunities

For branding purposes, have your company logo displayed prominently somewhere on the screen.  You can do this at all times, or during key times in your video.

In the image below, notice how the company logo is displayed in the upper-left corner.  You can display your logo throughout your video or only at key times.

#5: Always provide an HTML link

When you post on YouTube, you have the option to write a short description of your video.  Always start with the link you want to drive your viewers to so you don’t miss this key opportunity.

Here’s a snapshot of the description boxes from one of my YouTube videos.  Notice the placement of my website URL (it’s the first thing you want to put in the box!) and the keywords I used in my title as well as the description.

#6: Go beyond YouTube

Most people post their videos on YouTube.  In addition to this, make sure to always embed your video on your own website.  This will increase the amount of time people spend on your website and help grow a captive audience.

Also, Google’s algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and embedded video views you receive get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube.  This is important for showing up in Google search results!

How to Supercharge Your Videos

To make sure your video stands out above all the clutter on the web, here are a few strategies that will give your videos an extra boost.

1. Create a Campaign: To get noticed, think beyond stand-alone videos.  For greater reach and exposure, create a series of content-rich videos that you publish regularly.  Not only will this create a great synergy around your content, but it will also allow you to build upon your brand identity as each video is released.
2. Always Include a Call to Action: Never miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to take some type of action at the end of your video.  You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, go to a specific website, leave a comment about your video or visit your blog.  If your video is good, you’ll likely have their full attention; make sure to take advantage of it!
3. Don’t Make a Sales Pitch: There is a lot of sales clutter on the web and you want to make sure you come out above this.  There is nothing wrong with selling your products or services, but use your video to define a problem, discuss solutions and support others—when you combine the three, your video will attract the right following.

Basic Keyword Strategies

There’s no shortage of information online for keyword strategies.  Here are some of the basics you will want to pay attention to as you create your videos:

• To optimize your YouTube videos, make sure to use keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Use your website’s text pages as a kind of “map” for Google. To help the search engines figure out what your videos are about, embed videos into text pages on your site that are relevant to your video.
• Target specific search phrases, not just search words.  For example, instead of using “cupcakes” as a keyword for an organic bakery, use “cupcakes with organic frosting” for a better chance of showing up on the front of search results.

Ten Ideas to Spark Your Video Creativity

#1: Educate

Tell people about your product or services.  Give the details on features and benefits.  Tell them everything they’ll receive once they make the purchase.

#2: Answer questions

What do you get asked most about your product or services?  Most of us can think of a list of at least 5 to 10 questions we get asked often.  Make short 2- to 3-minute videos clips where you state the question and then the answer.  These are easy to make and extremely valuable to your prospects.

#3: Do a product review

 Find a product or service that would be of interest to your niche and your audience and do a review on its benefits and features.

#4: Grow your list

If you have a business, you need a list of potential clients.  Make a video to encourage your prospects to give you their name and email in exchange for something you will give them.  You can give away an ebook, an article (tips, strategies and how-tos are always popular), a tutorial video, a free consultation, a type of assessment, etc.  Figure out what your prospects would find most valuable and create a giveaway around that. (Here’s a hint:  give away your best stuff.  Don’t hold back.)

#5: Talk about your case studies and results

Make a video about the results you were able to achieve while working with a client or talk about a case study and show what you did for them and how you can do the same for the viewer.  You can also show a case study of someone who did not follow your guidance or use the method you teach and failed. Another similar idea is to read testimonials from your most satisfied customers while weaving in key examples.

#6: Tell a story

People can relate to you when you tell a compelling story.  Weave a lesson into your story as a takeaway.  You can also tell about an event from your past that has shaped who you are or how you do business today.

#7: Debunk myths

Talk about the top three myths in your industry and give real examples to show why they are truly myths.

#8: Take your viewers behind the scenes

Take your viewers outside of your office and show yourself in your “natural surroundings.”  If appropriate, introduce your family and show things that are meaningful to you.  Tie in some of your business secrets—how you organize your business, what type of setup you use to get things done, etc.  Pull back the curtains and give tips on how you do business.

#9: Ask questions and answer them

Ask your viewers some key questions that will spark conversation about their wants and needs as they relate to your niche.  Personally answer the question yourself and then ask your viewers to leave their answers below in the comments section.  This will start discussion.

#10: Additional video opportunities

There is so much you can do with video.  Besides filming yourself, you can also do screen captures (ScreenFlow for Macs and Camtasia for PCs are great options), slideshows, and use Keynote or PowerPoint slides to tell your story.

Here’s a short video to show you how ScreenFlow works:

One more piece of advice:  Don’t try to be perfect! I can guarantee that you will not like your first take of any video you record.  And it is of course fine to redo it a few times.  But don’t let multiple video takes slow you down.  Make a promise to yourself that you will do your best, and then move on.  With each video you publish, your confidence will increase and you will get better with time.

Here’s my challenge to you. If you are new at video, make the commitment that you will record a video in the next 24 hours.  Just dive in and try it!  The longer you wait, the faster your competition will claim their video space and run with it.

Give it a try and report back to let us know about your successes.

What’s been your experience with video? Share your video making tips and experiences in the comment box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/16-tips-for-successful-online-video-marketing/#

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This is a great article I wanted to share with you . . .

I’ve recently made the switch to Google’s Chrome as my default web browser, almost out of necessity. Firefox had gotten to be a bit of a memory hog on my machine, and I began using Chrome  to try and ease the pain. What I found was a browser experience I greatly enjoyed. Being a video junkie, I’ve recently discovered a few awesome Chrome extensions that most of you will find incredibly useful, whether you use YouTube for business or pleasure.

1) Chrome Extension to Force YouTube Videos in HD Automatically

I’m a huge fan of YouTube’s HD capabilities, and choose to view their videos that way whenever possible. In fact, I prefer YouTube in HD to YouTube in standard definition so much… I could use a browser extension that makes it happen automatically.

Enter Auto HD. Auto HD is a Chrome extension that plays every video you watch in HD automatically, whenever the video has that capability. I’ve been using it for several weeks now, and I simply couldn’t go back if I had to.

2) Download YouTube Videos With Chrome Extensions

There is a tremendous demand out there for the ability to download videos from YouTube. Traditionally, Google has been quick to squash downloading sites–their terms of service still states that videos are for streaming only. A year ago, I rounded up some of the best YouTube downloaders I could find (along with some legitimate reasons why one might wish to download a YouTube video), and some of those have since become unreliable.

But a new contender has arrived, in the form of a Chrome extension–one you can download right on the Chrome website. It’s called YouTube Downloader, which definitely has a nice “obvious” ring to it. It places a “download” button down below the video player next to the standard “Share” button.

It’s entirely possible that this extension will have a short life, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Google shuts it down. But it’s been out for several months without an issue, and there are several more like it currently available.

3) Smart Video Enlarger Chrome Extension for YouTube

Another new Chrome extension that should enhance your YouTube experience is the Smart Video Enlarger. The extension automatically enlarges YouTube videos to full-screen resolution. There’s also an “Intelligent Scrolling” feature that allows for the maximum video size while the user explores the comments. Smart Video Enlarger is also compatible with the AutoHD extension.

Chrome users: did I miss any? What are your favorite Chrome extensions (or Firefox extensions) for enhancing the way you create, view, and market online videos?

More Web Video Industry Analysis –> YouTube Chrome Extensions: 3 Great Chrome Extensions for YouTube Video
(via ReelSEO Video Marketing) 

http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-chrome-extensions/

Social Media can be a little overwhelming sometimes and time consuming. When you started your business or got into the industry you are in, did you start it to do Social Media? Probably not! Social Media has become so popular over the past couple years that every type of business is doing it. Now, there are companies like mine you can outsource your Social Media campaign to, but not everyone has the budget to do that yet.

Today I am going to share with you a couple tools you can use to make your life much simpler. With Social Media you need to have a plan behind your efforts or you WILL be sucked into the black hole of Facebook, you know what I’m talking about.

Here is a schedule you can go by:
Monday- Schedule your posts (using Hootsuite and Onlywire, read further down in blog for link)
Tuesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Wednesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 20 connections on LinkedIn
Thursday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Friday – Add 20 connections and LinkedIn and 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them) Suggest your business page to your new friends

There are two tools I like to use that allows me to schedule my posts out to my networks weeks in advance and one that allows you to post to 40 different profiles.
The first one is called Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/p_1748 this is a FREE service and an amazing tool. You can add you Twitter, Facebook, Business Page, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Mixi, and Wordpress to this service. Once you have all your profiles set up you can schedule your messages to go out.

The second one I like to use is OnlyWire http://www.OnlyWire.com now with this account you don’t need to post to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn but you can post to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, FriendFeed, and much more. This is a great tool to reach out to all of those other Social Media profiles that Hootsuite does not post to.

I hope these are helpful tips, if you need help on how to use these tools please check out my YouTube videos http://www.YouTube.com/YourMarketingVoice

After doing some videos I realized that I was NOT posting them to my blog! I cannot believe I did not do that. So I wanted to share with you a few videos that I have done to help you with your Internet Marketing. If you need help in any of these areas or have questions please feel free to contact me. Enjoy!

This is a great article I wanted to share with you . . .

I’ve recently made the switch to Google’s Chrome as my default web browser, almost out of necessity. Firefox had gotten to be a bit of a memory hog on my machine, and I began using Chrome  to try and ease the pain. What I found was a browser experience I greatly enjoyed. Being a video junkie, I’ve recently discovered a few awesome Chrome extensions that most of you will find incredibly useful, whether you use YouTube for business or pleasure.

1) Chrome Extension to Force YouTube Videos in HD Automatically

I’m a huge fan of YouTube’s HD capabilities, and choose to view their videos that way whenever possible. In fact, I prefer YouTube in HD to YouTube in standard definition so much… I could use a browser extension that makes it happen automatically.

Enter Auto HD. Auto HD is a Chrome extension that plays every video you watch in HD automatically, whenever the video has that capability. I’ve been using it for several weeks now, and I simply couldn’t go back if I had to.

2) Download YouTube Videos With Chrome Extensions

There is a tremendous demand out there for the ability to download videos from YouTube. Traditionally, Google has been quick to squash downloading sites–their terms of service still states that videos are for streaming only. A year ago, I rounded up some of the best YouTube downloaders I could find (along with some legitimate reasons why one might wish to download a YouTube video), and some of those have since become unreliable.

But a new contender has arrived, in the form of a Chrome extension–one you can download right on the Chrome website. It’s called YouTube Downloader, which definitely has a nice “obvious” ring to it. It places a “download” button down below the video player next to the standard “Share” button.

It’s entirely possible that this extension will have a short life, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Google shuts it down. But it’s been out for several months without an issue, and there are several more like it currently available.

3) Smart Video Enlarger Chrome Extension for YouTube

Another new Chrome extension that should enhance your YouTube experience is the Smart Video Enlarger. The extension automatically enlarges YouTube videos to full-screen resolution. There’s also an “Intelligent Scrolling” feature that allows for the maximum video size while the user explores the comments. Smart Video Enlarger is also compatible with the AutoHD extension.

Chrome users: did I miss any? What are your favorite Chrome extensions (or Firefox extensions) for enhancing the way you create, view, and market online videos?

More Web Video Industry Analysis –> YouTube Chrome Extensions: 3 Great Chrome Extensions for YouTube Video
(via ReelSEO Video Marketing) 

http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-chrome-extensions/

Social Media can be a little overwhelming sometimes and time consuming. When you started your business or got into the industry you are in, did you start it to do Social Media? Probably not! Social Media has become so popular over the past couple years that every type of business is doing it. Now, there are companies like mine you can outsource your Social Media campaign to, but not everyone has the budget to do that yet.

Today I am going to share with you a couple tools you can use to make your life much simpler. With Social Media you need to have a plan behind your efforts or you WILL be sucked into the black hole of Facebook, you know what I’m talking about.

Here is a schedule you can go by:
Monday- Schedule your posts (using Hootsuite and Onlywire, read further down in blog for link)
Tuesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Wednesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 20 connections on LinkedIn
Thursday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Friday – Add 20 connections and LinkedIn and 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them) Suggest your business page to your new friends

There are two tools I like to use that allows me to schedule my posts out to my networks weeks in advance and one that allows you to post to 40 different profiles.
The first one is called Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/p_1748 this is a FREE service and an amazing tool. You can add you Twitter, Facebook, Business Page, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Mixi, and Wordpress to this service. Once you have all your profiles set up you can schedule your messages to go out.

The second one I like to use is OnlyWire http://www.OnlyWire.com now with this account you don’t need to post to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn but you can post to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, FriendFeed, and much more. This is a great tool to reach out to all of those other Social Media profiles that Hootsuite does not post to.

I hope these are helpful tips, if you need help on how to use these tools please check out my YouTube videos http://www.YouTube.com/YourMarketingVoice

After doing some videos I realized that I was NOT posting them to my blog! I cannot believe I did not do that. So I wanted to share with you a few videos that I have done to help you with your Internet Marketing. If you need help in any of these areas or have questions please feel free to contact me. Enjoy!

1. 3 Chrome Extensions to Improve your YouTube Experience ...
2. How to Manage Social Media ...
3. Social Media Video Tips and How To’s Share...

Social Media can be a little overwhelming sometimes and time consuming. When you started your business or got into the industry you are in, did you start it to do Social Media? Probably not! Social Media has become so popular over the past couple years that every type of business is doing it. Now, there are companies like mine you can outsource your Social Media campaign to, but not everyone has the budget to do that yet.

Today I am going to share with you a couple tools you can use to make your life much simpler. With Social Media you need to have a plan behind your efforts or you WILL be sucked into the black hole of Facebook, you know what I’m talking about.

Here is a schedule you can go by:
Monday- Schedule your posts (using Hootsuite and Onlywire, read further down in blog for link)
Tuesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Wednesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 20 connections on LinkedIn
Thursday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Friday – Add 20 connections and LinkedIn and 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them) Suggest your business page to your new friends

There are two tools I like to use that allows me to schedule my posts out to my networks weeks in advance and one that allows you to post to 40 different profiles.
The first one is called Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/p_1748 this is a FREE service and an amazing tool. You can add you Twitter, Facebook, Business Page, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Mixi, and Wordpress to this service. Once you have all your profiles set up you can schedule your messages to go out.

The second one I like to use is OnlyWire http://www.OnlyWire.com now with this account you don’t need to post to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn but you can post to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, FriendFeed, and much more. This is a great tool to reach out to all of those other Social Media profiles that Hootsuite does not post to.

I hope these are helpful tips, if you need help on how to use these tools please check out my YouTube videos http://www.YouTube.com/YourMarketingVoice

Huge Disclaimer, it is no wonder that I say you SHOULD outsource your social media, I have a social media marketing company!

 What Is A Social Media Marketing Expert

A true social media marketing expert is actually a marketing expert who is using social media as ONE of the tools in their marketing arsenal. Every bit of marketing touches the social media platform including branding, sending a cohesive message, targeting the correct prospect, lead follow-up and more, all the way through the sales cycle and onto a sale. Okay, so a social media guru is actually an expert marketer. I get asked the question a lot which social media outlet do you like the most and if you could choose only one to use what would it be? Well each of them have a unique way of helping to grow your business. Such as Facebook builds an online community and is an easy way to reach out to people, Twitter is a huge traffic driver to your website, LinkedIn a wonderful online resume tool and a way for people to see what your experience has been also to connect to ideal clients, YouTube is such a popular tool people use and allows people to see your personality, also allowing them to learn from you while driving traffic to your site, Blogging is great because you are staying in front of Google and you show people why you are an expert in what you do.

Who Is NOT A Social Media Marketing Expert?

I am on A LOT of mailing lists and get all kinds of come-ons from people wanting to sell me get rich quick schemes. One of the biggies right now is to sell either social media marketing or local marketing and start raking in the dough. An expert has NOT taken a class called anything like this:

• New Webinar! Become a Local Marketing Expert
• 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert
• Make money as a social media strategist
• How to become an internet marketing expert in a short time…
• This came in when I was writing this post, “The real kicker is that: most of your revenue is pure profit! Stuff we consider “basic” is mind blowing to most, if not all, local business owners.”

Should You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing Or Keep In In House?

So now we have established what a social media marketing expert is, the next question is should you outsource it to an agency or company or keep it in-house?

• If you are not looking at hiring someone who has just left college, the kid who types really fast or a 10-to-4 day “expert”, you are looking at paying that person between 60K and 80K a year. We have some great horror stories from the trenches about how “the kid” set up the whole business network under his own name, left the company and reeked havoc for the next few months. Hiring a reputable company to do your social media eliminates this problem.

• You are going to have to provide benefits and taxes for that employee which would not be necessary if you outsource.
• If you are hiring a marketing guru, you are still probably going to have to get them some admin help. I can tell you this from experience, the person who is creative and has a brilliant marketing mind does not always have the best admin skills like the everyday tasks that go on in a business. We hire people  who implement the marketing plans that we work out with our customers and make sure the daily tasks get done for your business needs.
• There are economies of scale for a business to buy the latest software and attend the high level trainings needed to stay up-to-date. When you are spreading the cost of these items over multiple clients, it makes sense to keep to the cutting edge! We are always keeping up to date with the new software, tips & tricks. Remember that is what we do for a living!
• We have programmers and others resources to help when the Social Networks change what we need to do. The easiest example of this is Facebook eliminating the FBML capabilities that we used to use to make pages. I got our programmer on it and he sent over the two page document on how we should do it now!

Okay, Why SHOULD You Keep Your Social Media Marketing In House?

It comes down to CONTROL you want to have control over what that person is doing and how they are spending your money and time! That is a valid point and will have to be taken into consideration. I CAN tell you that with frequent communication with your marketing company, you can stay on top of this easily. There will always still be a personal responsibility you will have in your marketing.

No one loves my company like I do – If you are a small company or a start-up, the owner or manager can probably do a bit of social media marketing. My question to you is, I KNOW you love your company, but do you love marketing? Having the best intentions in the world doesn’t help if you do not have the technical and education chops to back them up.

I can get an intern to do it for free – I have tried interns, you teach them, they work for a bit and then leave. Walking back the cat to figure out what they did can take your next marketing person hours or days to figure out! Additionally, you get what you pay for and when you are paying nothing it is hard to expect the kind of dedication that you can get from a real business. Remember they can probably take care of some easy daily social media tasks but they probably do not understand the marketing side of social media and internet marketing in order to get you a ROI. (Return on Investment)

What Types Of Business Should Outsource Their Social Media Marketing?

• Business to consumer businesses do well on Social Media as they have a product that people would be interested when they are just surfing around having fun on Facebook or Twitter. Additionally there are neat ways to bring items to market that consumers look on favorably if done right.
• Business to business marketing is trickier, as you need to position yourself correctly to find comparable areas to market in and be very careful to make sure that your offerings are social, not salesy. I see this done wrong all the time!
• Local companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the power of social media because of the ability to target geographic regions in friending and following. These types of businesses fair VERY well in the social media realm.
• Businesses with lots of “stuff” are great to promote. If you hold meetings with different topics, sell a million kinds of shoes or have a ton of different product offerings (like pawn shops and ebayers, social media can be a great way to get the word out!
• Highly regulated industries. Okay I know that I am going to take heat on this one, BUT I have to say that a financial services guy who positions himself correctly would have a very bare playing field to compete on. This takes finesse and should work within the bounds of your state or federal licensing.
• Restaurants and bars have fun people doing fun things. We have a couple of restaurants that we work with and they are the neatest peeps because of the activity and the fact that they are inherently social anyways!

There you have it, multiple reasons to outsource your social media marketing. If you are interested in finding out more about social media marketing, give us a call 720-338-6996 or email us with questions YourMarketingVoice@yahoo.com

Found on http://www.Marketingartfully.com

Social Media can be a little overwhelming sometimes and time consuming. When you started your business or got into the industry you are in, did you start it to do Social Media? Probably not! Social Media has become so popular over the past couple years that every type of business is doing it. Now, there are companies like mine you can outsource your Social Media campaign to, but not everyone has the budget to do that yet.

Today I am going to share with you a couple tools you can use to make your life much simpler. With Social Media you need to have a plan behind your efforts or you WILL be sucked into the black hole of Facebook, you know what I’m talking about.

Here is a schedule you can go by:
Monday- Schedule your posts (using Hootsuite and Onlywire, read further down in blog for link)
Tuesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Wednesday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 20 connections on LinkedIn
Thursday – Follow 50 people on Twitter using www.Twellow.com and add 10 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them)
Friday – Add 20 connections and LinkedIn and 10 new friends on Facebook (add them to your business list to suggest your business page to them) Suggest your business page to your new friends

There are two tools I like to use that allows me to schedule my posts out to my networks weeks in advance and one that allows you to post to 40 different profiles.
The first one is called Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/p_1748 this is a FREE service and an amazing tool. You can add you Twitter, Facebook, Business Page, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Mixi, and Wordpress to this service. Once you have all your profiles set up you can schedule your messages to go out.

The second one I like to use is OnlyWire http://www.OnlyWire.com now with this account you don’t need to post to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn but you can post to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, FriendFeed, and much more. This is a great tool to reach out to all of those other Social Media profiles that Hootsuite does not post to.

I hope these are helpful tips, if you need help on how to use these tools please check out my YouTube videos http://www.YouTube.com/YourMarketingVoice

Huge Disclaimer, it is no wonder that I say you SHOULD outsource your social media, I have a social media marketing company!

 What Is A Social Media Marketing Expert

A true social media marketing expert is actually a marketing expert who is using social media as ONE of the tools in their marketing arsenal. Every bit of marketing touches the social media platform including branding, sending a cohesive message, targeting the correct prospect, lead follow-up and more, all the way through the sales cycle and onto a sale. Okay, so a social media guru is actually an expert marketer. I get asked the question a lot which social media outlet do you like the most and if you could choose only one to use what would it be? Well each of them have a unique way of helping to grow your business. Such as Facebook builds an online community and is an easy way to reach out to people, Twitter is a huge traffic driver to your website, LinkedIn a wonderful online resume tool and a way for people to see what your experience has been also to connect to ideal clients, YouTube is such a popular tool people use and allows people to see your personality, also allowing them to learn from you while driving traffic to your site, Blogging is great because you are staying in front of Google and you show people why you are an expert in what you do.

Who Is NOT A Social Media Marketing Expert?

I am on A LOT of mailing lists and get all kinds of come-ons from people wanting to sell me get rich quick schemes. One of the biggies right now is to sell either social media marketing or local marketing and start raking in the dough. An expert has NOT taken a class called anything like this:

• New Webinar! Become a Local Marketing Expert
• 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert
• Make money as a social media strategist
• How to become an internet marketing expert in a short time…
• This came in when I was writing this post, “The real kicker is that: most of your revenue is pure profit! Stuff we consider “basic” is mind blowing to most, if not all, local business owners.”

Should You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing Or Keep In In House?

So now we have established what a social media marketing expert is, the next question is should you outsource it to an agency or company or keep it in-house?

• If you are not looking at hiring someone who has just left college, the kid who types really fast or a 10-to-4 day “expert”, you are looking at paying that person between 60K and 80K a year. We have some great horror stories from the trenches about how “the kid” set up the whole business network under his own name, left the company and reeked havoc for the next few months. Hiring a reputable company to do your social media eliminates this problem.

• You are going to have to provide benefits and taxes for that employee which would not be necessary if you outsource.
• If you are hiring a marketing guru, you are still probably going to have to get them some admin help. I can tell you this from experience, the person who is creative and has a brilliant marketing mind does not always have the best admin skills like the everyday tasks that go on in a business. We hire people  who implement the marketing plans that we work out with our customers and make sure the daily tasks get done for your business needs.
• There are economies of scale for a business to buy the latest software and attend the high level trainings needed to stay up-to-date. When you are spreading the cost of these items over multiple clients, it makes sense to keep to the cutting edge! We are always keeping up to date with the new software, tips & tricks. Remember that is what we do for a living!
• We have programmers and others resources to help when the Social Networks change what we need to do. The easiest example of this is Facebook eliminating the FBML capabilities that we used to use to make pages. I got our programmer on it and he sent over the two page document on how we should do it now!

Okay, Why SHOULD You Keep Your Social Media Marketing In House?

It comes down to CONTROL you want to have control over what that person is doing and how they are spending your money and time! That is a valid point and will have to be taken into consideration. I CAN tell you that with frequent communication with your marketing company, you can stay on top of this easily. There will always still be a personal responsibility you will have in your marketing.

No one loves my company like I do – If you are a small company or a start-up, the owner or manager can probably do a bit of social media marketing. My question to you is, I KNOW you love your company, but do you love marketing? Having the best intentions in the world doesn’t help if you do not have the technical and education chops to back them up.

I can get an intern to do it for free – I have tried interns, you teach them, they work for a bit and then leave. Walking back the cat to figure out what they did can take your next marketing person hours or days to figure out! Additionally, you get what you pay for and when you are paying nothing it is hard to expect the kind of dedication that you can get from a real business. Remember they can probably take care of some easy daily social media tasks but they probably do not understand the marketing side of social media and internet marketing in order to get you a ROI. (Return on Investment)

What Types Of Business Should Outsource Their Social Media Marketing?

• Business to consumer businesses do well on Social Media as they have a product that people would be interested when they are just surfing around having fun on Facebook or Twitter. Additionally there are neat ways to bring items to market that consumers look on favorably if done right.
• Business to business marketing is trickier, as you need to position yourself correctly to find comparable areas to market in and be very careful to make sure that your offerings are social, not salesy. I see this done wrong all the time!
• Local companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the power of social media because of the ability to target geographic regions in friending and following. These types of businesses fair VERY well in the social media realm.
• Businesses with lots of “stuff” are great to promote. If you hold meetings with different topics, sell a million kinds of shoes or have a ton of different product offerings (like pawn shops and ebayers, social media can be a great way to get the word out!
• Highly regulated industries. Okay I know that I am going to take heat on this one, BUT I have to say that a financial services guy who positions himself correctly would have a very bare playing field to compete on. This takes finesse and should work within the bounds of your state or federal licensing.
• Restaurants and bars have fun people doing fun things. We have a couple of restaurants that we work with and they are the neatest peeps because of the activity and the fact that they are inherently social anyways!

There you have it, multiple reasons to outsource your social media marketing. If you are interested in finding out more about social media marketing, give us a call 720-338-6996 or email us with questions YourMarketingVoice@yahoo.com

Found on http://www.Marketingartfully.com

1. How to Manage Social Media ...
2. Why You Should Outsource Your Social Media Marketing ...
3. Social Media Marketing – Social Media REAL Results ...

The usage of video on the web offers certain distinct, from SEO advantages right through to increased sales conversion, let’s look at the benefits of video content in detail.

1. Increasing your SEO

If you did not know . . . social media as a marketing tool is growing exponentially. No business can stick to age-old marketing methods. The major search engines now give a lot of value to video content. If your website or business has a video and an article about the same keyword, chances are that your video will rank higher every time.

Visitors are more likely to watch a quick 2 minute video demonstration of your services than they are to read a long wall of text. In addition, you can target several long-tail keywords with videos to scale your rankings even further.

2. Video Distribution

There are several video distribution sites that allow users to upload their videos to many websites at once. Tools such as TubeMogul, VideoWildfire and Hey!Spread allow you to add your videos to a lot of the popular video-sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and others simultaneously. These websites usually offer optimized videos for their mobile platforms too, thus automatically expanding the reach of the uploader’s brand.

3. The Social Media Effect

Since popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow users to share interesting links, having your own video on the major sites drastically increases your chances of exposure. Also, people are more likely to share an interesting video they came across rather than an article.

4. Automatically Increase Traffic to Your Website

If you have been surfing the web long enough, inevitably you have visited a Web 2.0 property which features a video on the homepage. Having this kind of a setup increases the visitor retention on the page. People are more likely to be intrigued by the service and might stay around to find out more if they are presented with an entertaining video explaining the purpose of the website or the service.

5. Increase Sales by Having a Great 1^st Impression

For example, assume the case of a website that reviews cameras and includes the webmaster’s affiliate links at the end of each review. Now for a physical product such as a camera, a video review can show things to the visitor that simply cannot be conveyed effectively through text. In these cases, a video is a far more effective tool to increase the chance of conversions, and subsequently helping the webmaster make money online.

6. More Success with Opt-in and Subscriber Lists for Video Based Feeds

People are used to getting walls of text and promotional offers in their inbox all day long. Not many marketers out there offer informational videos to their subscribers. Since most people are already signed up to one or more textual newsletters, a weekly video-based feed can be a nice change. Also, some concepts are better demonstrated over video.

7. Personalized Experience for Your Customers

You can guide your visitors to different sections of your website using videos making the whole experience similar to visiting an actual store. Videos put a face on the merchant and make the users more comfortable doing business with them.

8. Automation of Video Creation

Earlier, video production used to be a lengthy process involving half a dozen people and a lot of equipment. But nowadays, video production is seamless and in a lot of cases, completely automated. All in all, video marketing is highly beneficial for improving brand recognition and customer retention. Online businesses that haven’t jumped onto the video bandwagon already should look at it as a serious option for improving the quality of their websites.

Video marketing is nothing new when it comes to effective internet marketing tools. The internet is always changing and if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to know how to effectively use videos the right way. In other words, you cannot create a video, place it on your website and expect to get results. Video training is a must and I can tell you from personal experience that creating short videos and uploading them to the internet without effective strategies will not get you very far.

Your message needs to capture the attention of your audience. Let’s face it… the internet marketing game has definitely changed. Consider the fact that just several years ago, no one was talking about video to promote businesses. Nowadays, I think it is fair to say that most business owners realize just how important video is to their income.

Benefits That Video Brings To Your Business

•Videos equate to a great response (Everyone loves to watch videos)
•Excellent conversion rates
•The ability to create a captive audience
•Videos build trust!
•Builds relationships with potential customers
•Better online SEO (Google loves videos!)
•Videos are more personal giving you and your business that “personal touch”

Videos are fast becoming the way that people do business. Whether you are an online or an offline business, it does not matter. What matters most is that you get the business exposure and videos will give you the edge over your competition.

5 Tips When Marketing With Video

•Tell your personal story with an interesting video… the more compelling, the better
•Introduce YOU and your company with a testimonial from one of your customers because this will show your credibility
•Integrate video with social media by offering people something for free when they “like” you
•Creating videos will help you stay in touch and maintain relationships… following up is a must when marketing online
•Create videos as a way to automate your business using campaigns… doing so will allow your videos to work on autopilot!

The idea is not just to simply create business videos and then upload them on the internet. Instead, you need to do the following…

Separate Yourself From Your Competitors!

You can easily do this by creating videos to attract people to you and your business but again, knowing how to effectively do just that is essential to getting exceptional results. I believe that the majority of marketers understand how videos are playing a major role with marketing their business, especially over the last couple of years. My personal belief is that those who effectively use it with a compelling video will not only get noticed, but make a significant amount of money because of the power that this has on ones business results.

Just think about how many people are online marketing to others for just a moment. Think about when you go to a marketing event. Chances are you meet a lot of people but do you really remember everyone’s name, let alone what company they are with? Unless you have met the person before or have seen them in a video, it can be downright difficult to remember everyone. Videos can be a great tool to help build a relationship that truly lasts and they have the great potential of getting the results that equal more profit!

Sure, business cards, newsletters, brochures, flyers, postcards can be effective with your marketing efforts but I do believe that when given a choice, most people are more likely to watch a video which is why more and more online and offline business owners are taking massive action using videos to promote their business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Josephine_Monty

This was a great article I came across and wanted to share with you . . .

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise.  Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works.  In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.  That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons.  Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive.  Plus, online videos stay online forever.  If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.

In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

Six Quick Tips to Optimize Your Videos

Once you record your video, follow these tips to make sure it reaches your core audience and gets the views it deserves.

#1: Make your title count

Just like a headline to a blog post, video titles can pull powerful traffic.  There are two main reasons why the title is so important.  One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention.  Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.  And remember Google owns YouTube, so there’s a story connection between video and searching.

#2: Provide excellent content

Take some time to think about your ideal viewer.  What do you know that they’ll find valuable?  What can you teach them?  “How-to” videos are extremely successful because not only do they offer great value to your viewer, but also you’re able to showcase your knowledge and skill, thus positioning yourself as an expert.  This is key as you continue to grow your brand.

Also, no matter how good your content is, it won’t matter if your video is too long and you lose your viewer’s attention.  Try to keep them short.

In late 2009, ComScore reported that the average video was 3.8 minutes in length.

#3: Include your URL in your video

When you edit your video, take advantage of the different editing features.  One easy feature is to add a text box to your video.  This is where you can display your website address and it’s a great way to get exposure.

Here’s a screen shot of Mari Smith’s YouTube channel.  Notice how she used a text box in her video to display key information, including her website URL at the end of her video.  Smart move!

#4: Take advantage of video’s branding opportunities

For branding purposes, have your company logo displayed prominently somewhere on the screen.  You can do this at all times, or during key times in your video.

In the image below, notice how the company logo is displayed in the upper-left corner.  You can display your logo throughout your video or only at key times.

#5: Always provide an HTML link

When you post on YouTube, you have the option to write a short description of your video.  Always start with the link you want to drive your viewers to so you don’t miss this key opportunity.

Here’s a snapshot of the description boxes from one of my YouTube videos.  Notice the placement of my website URL (it’s the first thing you want to put in the box!) and the keywords I used in my title as well as the description.

#6: Go beyond YouTube

Most people post their videos on YouTube.  In addition to this, make sure to always embed your video on your own website.  This will increase the amount of time people spend on your website and help grow a captive audience.

Also, Google’s algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and embedded video views you receive get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube.  This is important for showing up in Google search results!

How to Supercharge Your Videos

To make sure your video stands out above all the clutter on the web, here are a few strategies that will give your videos an extra boost.

1. Create a Campaign: To get noticed, think beyond stand-alone videos.  For greater reach and exposure, create a series of content-rich videos that you publish regularly.  Not only will this create a great synergy around your content, but it will also allow you to build upon your brand identity as each video is released.
2. Always Include a Call to Action: Never miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to take some type of action at the end of your video.  You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, go to a specific website, leave a comment about your video or visit your blog.  If your video is good, you’ll likely have their full attention; make sure to take advantage of it!
3. Don’t Make a Sales Pitch: There is a lot of sales clutter on the web and you want to make sure you come out above this.  There is nothing wrong with selling your products or services, but use your video to define a problem, discuss solutions and support others—when you combine the three, your video will attract the right following.

Basic Keyword Strategies

There’s no shortage of information online for keyword strategies.  Here are some of the basics you will want to pay attention to as you create your videos:

• To optimize your YouTube videos, make sure to use keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Use your website’s text pages as a kind of “map” for Google. To help the search engines figure out what your videos are about, embed videos into text pages on your site that are relevant to your video.
• Target specific search phrases, not just search words.  For example, instead of using “cupcakes” as a keyword for an organic bakery, use “cupcakes with organic frosting” for a better chance of showing up on the front of search results.

Ten Ideas to Spark Your Video Creativity

#1: Educate

Tell people about your product or services.  Give the details on features and benefits.  Tell them everything they’ll receive once they make the purchase.

#2: Answer questions

What do you get asked most about your product or services?  Most of us can think of a list of at least 5 to 10 questions we get asked often.  Make short 2- to 3-minute videos clips where you state the question and then the answer.  These are easy to make and extremely valuable to your prospects.

#3: Do a product review

 Find a product or service that would be of interest to your niche and your audience and do a review on its benefits and features.

#4: Grow your list

If you have a business, you need a list of potential clients.  Make a video to encourage your prospects to give you their name and email in exchange for something you will give them.  You can give away an ebook, an article (tips, strategies and how-tos are always popular), a tutorial video, a free consultation, a type of assessment, etc.  Figure out what your prospects would find most valuable and create a giveaway around that. (Here’s a hint:  give away your best stuff.  Don’t hold back.)

#5: Talk about your case studies and results

Make a video about the results you were able to achieve while working with a client or talk about a case study and show what you did for them and how you can do the same for the viewer.  You can also show a case study of someone who did not follow your guidance or use the method you teach and failed. Another similar idea is to read testimonials from your most satisfied customers while weaving in key examples.

#6: Tell a story

People can relate to you when you tell a compelling story.  Weave a lesson into your story as a takeaway.  You can also tell about an event from your past that has shaped who you are or how you do business today.

#7: Debunk myths

Talk about the top three myths in your industry and give real examples to show why they are truly myths.

#8: Take your viewers behind the scenes

Take your viewers outside of your office and show yourself in your “natural surroundings.”  If appropriate, introduce your family and show things that are meaningful to you.  Tie in some of your business secrets—how you organize your business, what type of setup you use to get things done, etc.  Pull back the curtains and give tips on how you do business.

#9: Ask questions and answer them

Ask your viewers some key questions that will spark conversation about their wants and needs as they relate to your niche.  Personally answer the question yourself and then ask your viewers to leave their answers below in the comments section.  This will start discussion.

#10: Additional video opportunities

There is so much you can do with video.  Besides filming yourself, you can also do screen captures (ScreenFlow for Macs and Camtasia for PCs are great options), slideshows, and use Keynote or PowerPoint slides to tell your story.

Here’s a short video to show you how ScreenFlow works:

One more piece of advice:  Don’t try to be perfect! I can guarantee that you will not like your first take of any video you record.  And it is of course fine to redo it a few times.  But don’t let multiple video takes slow you down.  Make a promise to yourself that you will do your best, and then move on.  With each video you publish, your confidence will increase and you will get better with time.

Here’s my challenge to you. If you are new at video, make the commitment that you will record a video in the next 24 hours.  Just dive in and try it!  The longer you wait, the faster your competition will claim their video space and run with it.

Give it a try and report back to let us know about your successes.

What’s been your experience with video? Share your video making tips and experiences in the comment box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/16-tips-for-successful-online-video-marketing/#

Video marketing is nothing new when it comes to effective internet marketing tools. The internet is always changing and if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to know how to effectively use videos the right way. In other words, you cannot create a video, place it on your website and expect to get results. Video training is a must and I can tell you from personal experience that creating short videos and uploading them to the internet without effective strategies will not get you very far.

Your message needs to capture the attention of your audience. Let’s face it… the internet marketing game has definitely changed. Consider the fact that just several years ago, no one was talking about video to promote businesses. Nowadays, I think it is fair to say that most business owners realize just how important video is to their income.

Benefits That Video Brings To Your Business

•Videos equate to a great response (Everyone loves to watch videos)
•Excellent conversion rates
•The ability to create a captive audience
•Videos build trust!
•Builds relationships with potential customers
•Better online SEO (Google loves videos!)
•Videos are more personal giving you and your business that “personal touch”

Videos are fast becoming the way that people do business. Whether you are an online or an offline business, it does not matter. What matters most is that you get the business exposure and videos will give you the edge over your competition.

5 Tips When Marketing With Video

•Tell your personal story with an interesting video… the more compelling, the better
•Introduce YOU and your company with a testimonial from one of your customers because this will show your credibility
•Integrate video with social media by offering people something for free when they “like” you
•Creating videos will help you stay in touch and maintain relationships… following up is a must when marketing online
•Create videos as a way to automate your business using campaigns… doing so will allow your videos to work on autopilot!

The idea is not just to simply create business videos and then upload them on the internet. Instead, you need to do the following…

Separate Yourself From Your Competitors!

You can easily do this by creating videos to attract people to you and your business but again, knowing how to effectively do just that is essential to getting exceptional results. I believe that the majority of marketers understand how videos are playing a major role with marketing their business, especially over the last couple of years. My personal belief is that those who effectively use it with a compelling video will not only get noticed, but make a significant amount of money because of the power that this has on ones business results.

Just think about how many people are online marketing to others for just a moment. Think about when you go to a marketing event. Chances are you meet a lot of people but do you really remember everyone’s name, let alone what company they are with? Unless you have met the person before or have seen them in a video, it can be downright difficult to remember everyone. Videos can be a great tool to help build a relationship that truly lasts and they have the great potential of getting the results that equal more profit!

Sure, business cards, newsletters, brochures, flyers, postcards can be effective with your marketing efforts but I do believe that when given a choice, most people are more likely to watch a video which is why more and more online and offline business owners are taking massive action using videos to promote their business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Josephine_Monty

This was a great article I came across and wanted to share with you . . .

There’s no doubt that online video marketing is on the rise.  Numerous studies and statistics prove that video works.  In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 50 times more likely to receive an organic first page ranking than traditional text pages.  That’s a pretty impressive stat!

Online video marketing is attractive to many businesses today for numerous reasons.  Making videos and posting them online is fairly inexpensive.  Plus, online videos stay online forever.  If you spend the money to record once, your video could still be getting views a year from now.

In addition, social media sites and video go hand in hand and most sites encourage video posting and sharing. The viral video opportunities are endless when you use the right strategies to create and post your videos online.

If you’re new to video, or have been thinking about flipping on your camera for the first time, here are some tips and strategies to get you going.

Six Quick Tips to Optimize Your Videos

Once you record your video, follow these tips to make sure it reaches your core audience and gets the views it deserves.

#1: Make your title count

Just like a headline to a blog post, video titles can pull powerful traffic.  There are two main reasons why the title is so important.  One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention.  Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.  And remember Google owns YouTube, so there’s a story connection between video and searching.

#2: Provide excellent content

Take some time to think about your ideal viewer.  What do you know that they’ll find valuable?  What can you teach them?  “How-to” videos are extremely successful because not only do they offer great value to your viewer, but also you’re able to showcase your knowledge and skill, thus positioning yourself as an expert.  This is key as you continue to grow your brand.

Also, no matter how good your content is, it won’t matter if your video is too long and you lose your viewer’s attention.  Try to keep them short.

In late 2009, ComScore reported that the average video was 3.8 minutes in length.

#3: Include your URL in your video

When you edit your video, take advantage of the different editing features.  One easy feature is to add a text box to your video.  This is where you can display your website address and it’s a great way to get exposure.

Here’s a screen shot of Mari Smith’s YouTube channel.  Notice how she used a text box in her video to display key information, including her website URL at the end of her video.  Smart move!

#4: Take advantage of video’s branding opportunities

For branding purposes, have your company logo displayed prominently somewhere on the screen.  You can do this at all times, or during key times in your video.

In the image below, notice how the company logo is displayed in the upper-left corner.  You can display your logo throughout your video or only at key times.

#5: Always provide an HTML link

When you post on YouTube, you have the option to write a short description of your video.  Always start with the link you want to drive your viewers to so you don’t miss this key opportunity.

Here’s a snapshot of the description boxes from one of my YouTube videos.  Notice the placement of my website URL (it’s the first thing you want to put in the box!) and the keywords I used in my title as well as the description.

#6: Go beyond YouTube

Most people post their videos on YouTube.  In addition to this, make sure to always embed your video on your own website.  This will increase the amount of time people spend on your website and help grow a captive audience.

Also, Google’s algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and embedded video views you receive get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube.  This is important for showing up in Google search results!

How to Supercharge Your Videos

To make sure your video stands out above all the clutter on the web, here are a few strategies that will give your videos an extra boost.

1. Create a Campaign: To get noticed, think beyond stand-alone videos.  For greater reach and exposure, create a series of content-rich videos that you publish regularly.  Not only will this create a great synergy around your content, but it will also allow you to build upon your brand identity as each video is released.
2. Always Include a Call to Action: Never miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to take some type of action at the end of your video.  You can ask them to sign up for your newsletter, go to a specific website, leave a comment about your video or visit your blog.  If your video is good, you’ll likely have their full attention; make sure to take advantage of it!
3. Don’t Make a Sales Pitch: There is a lot of sales clutter on the web and you want to make sure you come out above this.  There is nothing wrong with selling your products or services, but use your video to define a problem, discuss solutions and support others—when you combine the three, your video will attract the right following.

Basic Keyword Strategies

There’s no shortage of information online for keyword strategies.  Here are some of the basics you will want to pay attention to as you create your videos:

• To optimize your YouTube videos, make sure to use keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
• Use your website’s text pages as a kind of “map” for Google. To help the search engines figure out what your videos are about, embed videos into text pages on your site that are relevant to your video.
• Target specific search phrases, not just search words.  For example, instead of using “cupcakes” as a keyword for an organic bakery, use “cupcakes with organic frosting” for a better chance of showing up on the front of search results.

Ten Ideas to Spark Your Video Creativity

#1: Educate

Tell people about your product or services.  Give the details on features and benefits.  Tell them everything they’ll receive once they make the purchase.

#2: Answer questions

What do you get asked most about your product or services?  Most of us can think of a list of at least 5 to 10 questions we get asked often.  Make short 2- to 3-minute videos clips where you state the question and then the answer.  These are easy to make and extremely valuable to your prospects.

#3: Do a product review

 Find a product or service that would be of interest to your niche and your audience and do a review on its benefits and features.

#4: Grow your list

If you have a business, you need a list of potential clients.  Make a video to encourage your prospects to give you their name and email in exchange for something you will give them.  You can give away an ebook, an article (tips, strategies and how-tos are always popular), a tutorial video, a free consultation, a type of assessment, etc.  Figure out what your prospects would find most valuable and create a giveaway around that. (Here’s a hint:  give away your best stuff.  Don’t hold back.)

#5: Talk about your case studies and results

Make a video about the results you were able to achieve while working with a client or talk about a case study and show what you did for them and how you can do the same for the viewer.  You can also show a case study of someone who did not follow your guidance or use the method you teach and failed. Another similar idea is to read testimonials from your most satisfied customers while weaving in key examples.

#6: Tell a story

People can relate to you when you tell a compelling story.  Weave a lesson into your story as a takeaway.  You can also tell about an event from your past that has shaped who you are or how you do business today.

#7: Debunk myths

Talk about the top three myths in your industry and give real examples to show why they are truly myths.

#8: Take your viewers behind the scenes

Take your viewers outside of your office and show yourself in your “natural surroundings.”  If appropriate, introduce your family and show things that are meaningful to you.  Tie in some of your business secrets—how you organize your business, what type of setup you use to get things done, etc.  Pull back the curtains and give tips on how you do business.

#9: Ask questions and answer them

Ask your viewers some key questions that will spark conversation about their wants and needs as they relate to your niche.  Personally answer the question yourself and then ask your viewers to leave their answers below in the comments section.  This will start discussion.

#10: Additional video opportunities

There is so much you can do with video.  Besides filming yourself, you can also do screen captures (ScreenFlow for Macs and Camtasia for PCs are great options), slideshows, and use Keynote or PowerPoint slides to tell your story.

Here’s a short video to show you how ScreenFlow works:

One more piece of advice:  Don’t try to be perfect! I can guarantee that you will not like your first take of any video you record.  And it is of course fine to redo it a few times.  But don’t let multiple video takes slow you down.  Make a promise to yourself that you will do your best, and then move on.  With each video you publish, your confidence will increase and you will get better with time.

Here’s my challenge to you. If you are new at video, make the commitment that you will record a video in the next 24 hours.  Just dive in and try it!  The longer you wait, the faster your competition will claim their video space and run with it.

Give it a try and report back to let us know about your successes.

What’s been your experience with video? Share your video making tips and experiences in the comment box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/16-tips-for-successful-online-video-marketing/#

1. Video Marketing: Discover These 5 Tips When Marketing With Video ...
2. Are You Using The Power of Video to Promote Your Brand ...
3. 16 Tips for Successful Online Video Marketing ...

This was a great article from Marketing Artfully

Social media marketing is a bear! It can feel like you are posting all day and no one is commenting or even listening. Don’t let a lack of comments get you down, you never know who might be out there watching and not talking.

The picture that I have on this post was taken out front of my house with an iPhone and the app TruHDR (one of my faves). I noticed when I got inside that I had my thumb in the picture – doh! If I was “smart” I would have cropped it out and had a “good” picture to post (most of our clients want everything to be perfect). What I did was post it to my Facebook with the comment, “they are paving the road! and my thumb…:)”. I got 7 comments and a couple of likes. Social media is about being human and humans are not always scripted and perfect.

This goes for companies too! When Dominos Pizza started losing market share, they did not curl up and die, they said that they would have to change their sauce and the quality of their pizza and sales rose. Many small biz owners are SO concerned that they look perfect that they become bland and boring! Snazzy it up a bit! If you would like to find out about other companies who have admitted to being less than perfect, check out the Washington Post’s, Behind Domino’s mea culpa ad campaign.

Does It Matter How Many Comments You Get?

Getting blog comments and getting social media comments follow the same formula as all regular human interaction. There is research from 2006 that shows this perfectly (and given that the stats haven’t changed in the intervening years, tend to be pretty compelling). According to Jakob Nielsen,

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

So think about that, for each commenter you have on one of your posts, there are potentially 90 people who will see it and never comment, BUT they saw it none-the-less! This is why you will go to a party and have someone you have never heard of say, “I am your Facebook friend” or “I see you on Google Plus all the time”. They see YOU and what you are doing, whether they talk to you online or not!

Funniest part of the Participation Inequality post was, “How to Overcome Participation Inequality – You can’t.” You can’t make people comment if they don’t want to, you can only post things that ENCOURAGE commenting and hope that someone jumps in to get the ball rolling.

Additionally, (I promise I will get to ideas of what to post to get comments soon), you need to be aware of WHEN you are posting things and who might be online at the time. If you are a nightbird and posting all your “stuff” at midnight, it may be pushed down everyone’s wall by the time they get up, OR you may have a hoard of people who are all up in the middle of the night with you who jump in to comment because there is not all that much else going on.

Timezones and posting matter too! If you are trying to target overseas customers, working on Eastern time won’t cut it. You are going to have to do some posting and commenting when it is mid morning and early evening THEIR time. Test this and see if it makes a difference in how many comments you get!

Social Media Ideas – What To Post To Get Comments On Your Posts

If you skipped down here, go up and read the rest, we will wait for you..:)

• Personal items – The people working on the street outside my house are not inherently interesting, BUT it shows that I do not talk about marketing and small business all the time! It makes me more of a person and less of a company. I would say if you use social media for business that you should not talk about your baby, dog, husband, girlfriend or any other super personal thing TOO MUCH but that doesn’t mean that you can never talk about them! One guy who really gets this right is Daniel Webster Johnson. He is a Colorado Realtor who traipses around every morning taking pretty pictures of the Colorado countryside and his dog. It REALLY works for him!
• Quotations – Now please note, these should only be quotations that have meaning to you. Just popping something up there everyday with no background as to why it is interesting is not that great a practive. I like quotationspage.com for quotes, the search engine is good and they have LOTS! Another good things to do is make up your own quotes – one fellow, Imran Rahman, has Imranisms. It always gives me a chuckle to see what he has posted!
• Selling With People – You CAN sell if you are giving credit to other people at the same time! Kirsten McKay Smith is especially good at it on her Passion Rockstars pagewhich is a clearinghouse for her to talk to her team (and people who follow it may also want to become a member of her team after seeing how neat she is!)
• Great Links From Your Industry– I am always looking for new things that could help my clients increase traffic or get more clients. Frequently I find good resources that I share with my online community. I also save these for my newsletter so they do double duty!
• Post your videos– people like to see interesting things and if you can pop out a quicky video about your industry or a topic that will appeal to everyone, you can get some good interaction. Remember to be QUICK! 2 minutes or less.
• Things from your past that are interesting– Could be reference to Woodstock from our baby boomer friends or a really great Muppet Movie clip. Just make sure you let us know WHY it is important to you!
• Open Ended Questions – Ask your friends and circles an INTERESTING question that does not work with a yes or no answer. According to Buddy Media, Posts that END with a question (rather than having it at the beginning or middle) have a 15% higher engagement rate.
• Trending topics – It is okay to comment on current events, I just make sure to stay out of religion and politics. Just think, if you are PRO REPUBLICAN or PRO DEMOCRAT, you are effectively alienating about half of the rest of your customers. I had a funny thing happen the other day, a fellow who was selling insurance threw out the term “Obamacare” and giggled like it was stupid. I can tell you, he DID NOT KNOW that would be offensive to some people in the room who would then choose someone else to work with. I KNOW, some people like to be very partisan on their social media and that is their choice. As a small business owner, I cannot afford to lose that many potential new clients. Nuff said.

The NUMBER ONE Most Important Social Media Commenting Idea!

Talk back. That is right, if you get one comment, talk back. If you get two, talk back again. People are more apt to interact with your posts if they know that there is a real person on the other side! If someone posts something nice on your wall, thank them. In general, just interact as you would with plain old humans you would come into contact in your day-to-day life.

Huge Disclaimer, it is no wonder that I say you SHOULD outsource your social media, I have a social media marketing company!

 What Is A Social Media Marketing Expert

A true social media marketing expert is actually a marketing expert who is using social media as ONE of the tools in their marketing arsenal. Every bit of marketing touches the social media platform including branding, sending a cohesive message, targeting the correct prospect, lead follow-up and more, all the way through the sales cycle and onto a sale. Okay, so a social media guru is actually an expert marketer. I get asked the question a lot which social media outlet do you like the most and if you could choose only one to use what would it be? Well each of them have a unique way of helping to grow your business. Such as Facebook builds an online community and is an easy way to reach out to people, Twitter is a huge traffic driver to your website, LinkedIn a wonderful online resume tool and a way for people to see what your experience has been also to connect to ideal clients, YouTube is such a popular tool people use and allows people to see your personality, also allowing them to learn from you while driving traffic to your site, Blogging is great because you are staying in front of Google and you show people why you are an expert in what you do.

Who Is NOT A Social Media Marketing Expert?

I am on A LOT of mailing lists and get all kinds of come-ons from people wanting to sell me get rich quick schemes. One of the biggies right now is to sell either social media marketing or local marketing and start raking in the dough. An expert has NOT taken a class called anything like this:

• New Webinar! Become a Local Marketing Expert
• 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert
• Make money as a social media strategist
• How to become an internet marketing expert in a short time…
• This came in when I was writing this post, “The real kicker is that: most of your revenue is pure profit! Stuff we consider “basic” is mind blowing to most, if not all, local business owners.”

Should You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing Or Keep In In House?

So now we have established what a social media marketing expert is, the next question is should you outsource it to an agency or company or keep it in-house?

• If you are not looking at hiring someone who has just left college, the kid who types really fast or a 10-to-4 day “expert”, you are looking at paying that person between 60K and 80K a year. We have some great horror stories from the trenches about how “the kid” set up the whole business network under his own name, left the company and reeked havoc for the next few months. Hiring a reputable company to do your social media eliminates this problem.

• You are going to have to provide benefits and taxes for that employee which would not be necessary if you outsource.
• If you are hiring a marketing guru, you are still probably going to have to get them some admin help. I can tell you this from experience, the person who is creative and has a brilliant marketing mind does not always have the best admin skills like the everyday tasks that go on in a business. We hire people  who implement the marketing plans that we work out with our customers and make sure the daily tasks get done for your business needs.
• There are economies of scale for a business to buy the latest software and attend the high level trainings needed to stay up-to-date. When you are spreading the cost of these items over multiple clients, it makes sense to keep to the cutting edge! We are always keeping up to date with the new software, tips & tricks. Remember that is what we do for a living!
• We have programmers and others resources to help when the Social Networks change what we need to do. The easiest example of this is Facebook eliminating the FBML capabilities that we used to use to make pages. I got our programmer on it and he sent over the two page document on how we should do it now!

Okay, Why SHOULD You Keep Your Social Media Marketing In House?

It comes down to CONTROL you want to have control over what that person is doing and how they are spending your money and time! That is a valid point and will have to be taken into consideration. I CAN tell you that with frequent communication with your marketing company, you can stay on top of this easily. There will always still be a personal responsibility you will have in your marketing.

No one loves my company like I do – If you are a small company or a start-up, the owner or manager can probably do a bit of social media marketing. My question to you is, I KNOW you love your company, but do you love marketing? Having the best intentions in the world doesn’t help if you do not have the technical and education chops to back them up.

I can get an intern to do it for free – I have tried interns, you teach them, they work for a bit and then leave. Walking back the cat to figure out what they did can take your next marketing person hours or days to figure out! Additionally, you get what you pay for and when you are paying nothing it is hard to expect the kind of dedication that you can get from a real business. Remember they can probably take care of some easy daily social media tasks but they probably do not understand the marketing side of social media and internet marketing in order to get you a ROI. (Return on Investment)

What Types Of Business Should Outsource Their Social Media Marketing?

• Business to consumer businesses do well on Social Media as they have a product that people would be interested when they are just surfing around having fun on Facebook or Twitter. Additionally there are neat ways to bring items to market that consumers look on favorably if done right.
• Business to business marketing is trickier, as you need to position yourself correctly to find comparable areas to market in and be very careful to make sure that your offerings are social, not salesy. I see this done wrong all the time!
• Local companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the power of social media because of the ability to target geographic regions in friending and following. These types of businesses fair VERY well in the social media realm.
• Businesses with lots of “stuff” are great to promote. If you hold meetings with different topics, sell a million kinds of shoes or have a ton of different product offerings (like pawn shops and ebayers, social media can be a great way to get the word out!
• Highly regulated industries. Okay I know that I am going to take heat on this one, BUT I have to say that a financial services guy who positions himself correctly would have a very bare playing field to compete on. This takes finesse and should work within the bounds of your state or federal licensing.
• Restaurants and bars have fun people doing fun things. We have a couple of restaurants that we work with and they are the neatest peeps because of the activity and the fact that they are inherently social anyways!

There you have it, multiple reasons to outsource your social media marketing. If you are interested in finding out more about social media marketing, give us a call 720-338-6996 or email us with questions YourMarketingVoice@yahoo.com

This was a great post from HubSpot.com

Social media and blogs are a key part to any inbound marketing strategy. Here are 6 ways they help grow your business:

1. Quick to Start. You could launch a Facebook page today or get a blog going in a few days.
2. Low Cost. You can get started in social media and blogging for very little or no money. They are among the most cost-effective methods of reaching your audience.
3. Instant Interactivity. Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on our blog; people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
4. It’s the Search Engines, Silly. Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they search.
5. Inbound Marketing. If you read our blog, you know that we’re big fans of inbound marketing at HubSpot. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, cold email blasts (not lovely nurturing emails like this one to you), TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more.  Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools.
6. First Mover Advantage. For blogs and social media, there is an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors will (if they have not already) and then you’re fighting an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now to claim that first-mover advantage.

How are you using social media today? Learn how you can build a successful inbound marketing strategy that combines social media, blogging, lead conversion, and marketing analytics. Get a complimentary Inbound Marketing Assessment from HubSpot.

Found on http://www.Marketingartfully.com

Huge Disclaimer, it is no wonder that I say you SHOULD outsource your social media, I have a social media marketing company!

 What Is A Social Media Marketing Expert

A true social media marketing expert is actually a marketing expert who is using social media as ONE of the tools in their marketing arsenal. Every bit of marketing touches the social media platform including branding, sending a cohesive message, targeting the correct prospect, lead follow-up and more, all the way through the sales cycle and onto a sale. Okay, so a social media guru is actually an expert marketer. I get asked the question a lot which social media outlet do you like the most and if you could choose only one to use what would it be? Well each of them have a unique way of helping to grow your business. Such as Facebook builds an online community and is an easy way to reach out to people, Twitter is a huge traffic driver to your website, LinkedIn a wonderful online resume tool and a way for people to see what your experience has been also to connect to ideal clients, YouTube is such a popular tool people use and allows people to see your personality, also allowing them to learn from you while driving traffic to your site, Blogging is great because you are staying in front of Google and you show people why you are an expert in what you do.

Who Is NOT A Social Media Marketing Expert?

I am on A LOT of mailing lists and get all kinds of come-ons from people wanting to sell me get rich quick schemes. One of the biggies right now is to sell either social media marketing or local marketing and start raking in the dough. An expert has NOT taken a class called anything like this:

• New Webinar! Become a Local Marketing Expert
• 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert
• Make money as a social media strategist
• How to become an internet marketing expert in a short time…
• This came in when I was writing this post, “The real kicker is that: most of your revenue is pure profit! Stuff we consider “basic” is mind blowing to most, if not all, local business owners.”

Should You Outsource Your Social Media Marketing Or Keep In In House?

So now we have established what a social media marketing expert is, the next question is should you outsource it to an agency or company or keep it in-house?

• If you are not looking at hiring someone who has just left college, the kid who types really fast or a 10-to-4 day “expert”, you are looking at paying that person between 60K and 80K a year. We have some great horror stories from the trenches about how “the kid” set up the whole business network under his own name, left the company and reeked havoc for the next few months. Hiring a reputable company to do your social media eliminates this problem.

• You are going to have to provide benefits and taxes for that employee which would not be necessary if you outsource.
• If you are hiring a marketing guru, you are still probably going to have to get them some admin help. I can tell you this from experience, the person who is creative and has a brilliant marketing mind does not always have the best admin skills like the everyday tasks that go on in a business. We hire people  who implement the marketing plans that we work out with our customers and make sure the daily tasks get done for your business needs.
• There are economies of scale for a business to buy the latest software and attend the high level trainings needed to stay up-to-date. When you are spreading the cost of these items over multiple clients, it makes sense to keep to the cutting edge! We are always keeping up to date with the new software, tips & tricks. Remember that is what we do for a living!
• We have programmers and others resources to help when the Social Networks change what we need to do. The easiest example of this is Facebook eliminating the FBML capabilities that we used to use to make pages. I got our programmer on it and he sent over the two page document on how we should do it now!

Okay, Why SHOULD You Keep Your Social Media Marketing In House?

It comes down to CONTROL you want to have control over what that person is doing and how they are spending your money and time! That is a valid point and will have to be taken into consideration. I CAN tell you that with frequent communication with your marketing company, you can stay on top of this easily. There will always still be a personal responsibility you will have in your marketing.

No one loves my company like I do – If you are a small company or a start-up, the owner or manager can probably do a bit of social media marketing. My question to you is, I KNOW you love your company, but do you love marketing? Having the best intentions in the world doesn’t help if you do not have the technical and education chops to back them up.

I can get an intern to do it for free – I have tried interns, you teach them, they work for a bit and then leave. Walking back the cat to figure out what they did can take your next marketing person hours or days to figure out! Additionally, you get what you pay for and when you are paying nothing it is hard to expect the kind of dedication that you can get from a real business. Remember they can probably take care of some easy daily social media tasks but they probably do not understand the marketing side of social media and internet marketing in order to get you a ROI. (Return on Investment)

What Types Of Business Should Outsource Their Social Media Marketing?

• Business to consumer businesses do well on Social Media as they have a product that people would be interested when they are just surfing around having fun on Facebook or Twitter. Additionally there are neat ways to bring items to market that consumers look on favorably if done right.
• Business to business marketing is trickier, as you need to position yourself correctly to find comparable areas to market in and be very careful to make sure that your offerings are social, not salesy. I see this done wrong all the time!
• Local companies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the power of social media because of the ability to target geographic regions in friending and following. These types of businesses fair VERY well in the social media realm.
• Businesses with lots of “stuff” are great to promote. If you hold meetings with different topics, sell a million kinds of shoes or have a ton of different product offerings (like pawn shops and ebayers, social media can be a great way to get the word out!
• Highly regulated industries. Okay I know that I am going to take heat on this one, BUT I have to say that a financial services guy who positions himself correctly would have a very bare playing field to compete on. This takes finesse and should work within the bounds of your state or federal licensing.
• Restaurants and bars have fun people doing fun things. We have a couple of restaurants that we work with and they are the neatest peeps because of the activity and the fact that they are inherently social anyways!

There you have it, multiple reasons to outsource your social media marketing. If you are interested in finding out more about social media marketing, give us a call 720-338-6996 or email us with questions YourMarketingVoice@yahoo.com

This was a great post from HubSpot.com

Social media and blogs are a key part to any inbound marketing strategy. Here are 6 ways they help grow your business:

1. Quick to Start. You could launch a Facebook page today or get a blog going in a few days.
2. Low Cost. You can get started in social media and blogging for very little or no money. They are among the most cost-effective methods of reaching your audience.
3. Instant Interactivity. Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on our blog; people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
4. It’s the Search Engines, Silly. Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they search.
5. Inbound Marketing. If you read our blog, you know that we’re big fans of inbound marketing at HubSpot. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, cold email blasts (not lovely nurturing emails like this one to you), TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more.  Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools.
6. First Mover Advantage. For blogs and social media, there is an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors will (if they have not already) and then you’re fighting an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now to claim that first-mover advantage.

How are you using social media today? Learn how you can build a successful inbound marketing strategy that combines social media, blogging, lead conversion, and marketing analytics. Get a complimentary Inbound Marketing Assessment from HubSpot.

Found on http://www.Marketingartfully.com

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