Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

View this cartoon and others by David Horsey

The following post is excerpted from YouTube Expert, Julie Perry’s chapter in Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars.

Scoring lots of video views on YouTube is only useful to you if you can get your audience to take an action step once they’re on your channel and enjoying your videos. So how can you increase the chances they’ll make their way over to your main website, blog, or other online content?

1. Insert your website domain into your videos using video editing software. Remember that the sharing mechanisms on YouTube might lead to your video being embedded elsewhere online, such as in a forum or on someone else’s blog. Since those off-site viewers won’t have immediate access to your YouTube channel or a video’s title and description, you want to be sure your main website domain appears at the beginning, middle, and end of your video. Consider adding it via a watermark so it’s always visible (just don’t obstruct the view). You can always outsource such video editing tasks, or take a stab at using the free video editing software that should have come installed on your computer: Windows Movie Maker for PCs or iMovie for Macs. More expensive video editing programs are also available, such as Pinnacle, Final Cut, and Premiere.

2. Get your website domain into your videos using the YouTube Annotations tool. If you don’t have time or money to delve into video editing, your domain can be added to the beginning, middle, and end of your videos using YouTube Annotations—a way to add interactive commentary onto your videos from within the YouTube interface (and without having to use any video editing software of your own). Add such annotations after your video is uploaded. You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear. You can even create a live link from an annotation to another YouTube video, channel, or search result. Annotations will also show up on YouTube videos embedded elsewhere, off of the YouTube site.

3. Ask and You Shall Receive. As I mentioned earlier, it never hurts to ask your audience to do what you want them to do. My “Ask and You Shall Receive” rule goes beyond simply flashing your website domain on the screen. Say it out loud several times, and for goodness sake, tell us what all we’ll find when we get there. “Visit my website at www.xyz.com because I’ll give you (more information, a free report, a downloadable coupon).” Or just drop hints to tempt us to go there.

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The following is an excerpt from Mari Smith’s chapter of  Success Secrets Of The Social Media Marketing Superstars (Entrepreneur Press August 2010)

Facebook is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin. The college friends launched Facebook from their Harvard dorm room in February, 2004. For the first two years, Facebook was only available to colleges. Then, gradually, Facebook opened their doors to the general public along with opening their API up to third party application developers. The newest gold rush began!

Since 2006, Facebook has continued to increase in popularity and always seems to stay one step ahead of the competition such as LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, even Google – in terms of being the most popular site for connecting with friends, family, colleagues, etc.

I have great admiration for Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a modern day visionary – I often liken him to Bill Gates back in the 1980s.

Mark’s mission for Facebook is “to give people the power to share, and help make the world more open and connected such that world problems might be solved.”

Social networking, particularly Facebook, has completely changed the way we do business and the way we connect, build, and maintain our relationships on both a personal and professional basis.

These are my “rules” for succeeding on Facebook – you’re welcome to adopt them if they speak to you:

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By Keith Ferrazzi, Author of Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back and Tahl Raz

(excerpted from Success Secrets of The Social Media Marketing Superstars, Entrepreneur Press July 2010)

In today’s virtual world, you don’t need a Twitter strategy or a Facebook strategy or even a Google strategy. You need a Relationship Strategy that leverages all aspects of social media.

Relationships: they are the ultimate source of advantage, the new heavyweight champion of the marketing ring. Social media, however, is the champ’s head trainer. There’s never been a better tool for relationship building. Social media allows for two-way conversations with an entire market, a reality that would have made the innovative Madison Avenue ad men in the 1950s fall off their Eames sofas.

But you shouldn’t try approaching social media without a deep understanding of the relationship-centric reality of Web 2.0 – the reality of the ever-increasing importance of foundational mindsets like generosity, transparency, and candor. If you rush or go in without information, what you’ll get is an all-too-common experience nicely captured by Google’s Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik:

Social media [can be] like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.”

Luckily, through knowledge, practice and commitment, social media can be exciting, engaging, pleasurable and successful for any business. Read the rest of this entry »

By Denise Wakeman

When it comes to creating content, there’s a subset of four elements you want to pay attention to, and those are the four E’s: Educate, Entertain, Engage, and Enrich.

People go online for two reasons.  One: to find solutions to their problems, and two: to be entertained.  So you want to keep your content tightly focused on educating your reader about the subject of your expertise.   If you can educate with humor, you’re way ahead of the game. Let’s take each element and clarify how you can use it.

Educate. This element is straightforward. You teach, explain, or spell out how to do something. You’re providing information and knowledge. Write up case studies of successful clients or do Q&A posts, answering your readers’ burning questions about your topic.

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by Denise Wakeman

Before you get to the nitty-gritty of setting up your blog, there is some pre-work to do. This will ensure that you start right and put your best foot forward. If you already have a blog, review this list to make sure your blog is focused and on track to get the results you want.

1.  Before you do anything else, examine the reasons why you want to publish a blog. What’s the purpose for the blog?  How does the blog’s purpose relate to your business purpose?

2.  What are the business objectives or outcomes or goals you want from your business blog? Some people use a blog as a lead generator to build their database. Some are looking to build a visibility platform while others use the blog to develop content for other purposes like books, articles and programs. What do you want to get out of your blog?

3.  Who is your ideal reader? Who are you writing to/for? For most businesses I’ve worked with, the ideal reader is similar to their ideal client. It’s important to know your audience so you can meet their needs and address their concerns, challenges and what they’re looking for to improve their lives.

4.  How do you want your readers to feel when they read your blog? This may seem like a weird question, yet it will help you tap in to the emotions of your audience. Do you want your reader to be inspired, motivated and moved to action? Again, tapping into this will help you focus your content on serving your reader.