Video Marketing Online: Easy Tips to Increase Website Traffic with Videos

The majority of online video viewers fall into the 25- to 35-year-old demographic group making internet marketing videos a strong outlet to reach potential customers. In May 2008 alone, an average of 85 videos a month were watched by 142 million U.S. Internet users and by 2012 there will be an estimated 190 million video viewer audience online.

This is a significant observation because marketing is shifting to online videos and businesses are wise to shift their marketing efforts accordingly to get more website traffic and capitalize on the online video marketing trend. Currently more than 40% of video viewers watch clips five minutes or less such as TV shows, movie trailers, news and jokes.

Adding videos to videos sharing sites can drive quality traffic to your site and potentially convert interest into action. Selling your products, positioning your brand or gaining exposure is the name of the game to increasing revenue. Think beyond the normal infomercial when developing your video - get creative since the most popular online video content isn’t average material. In a YouTube dominated world, original videos get passed on the most – think about the demographic of online video watchers and create a video to speak to that audience while staying true to your brand.

Because of technology today, easy video marketing can be an inexpensive way to engage a potential customer and develop an audience who you wouldn’t normally target. The online video market is massive and eager for new content - you only must lead them to your site.

Get more video marketing tips and learn how to increase your website traffic with videos by visiting our site.

image credits to Colin Johnson

A Video Marketing Plan... Are You Ready?

So, you have perfected your social marketing plan, have you? You’re involved in blogs. You have a network of like-minded internet associates you communicate with regularly. You’ve established yourself as someone qualified to speak on topics in your niche area of expertise. Now, you’re ready to just sit back and rest on your laurels, right? Well, not so fast. If you have done all those things, then you are proficient at using the web to drive traffic to your website and interest to what you are offering. But, are there other social marketing strategies you can employ to further enhance your reputation and drive further traffic to your website? Is a video marketing plan in your future? Read on to discover how using video marketing strategies might increase your web traffic tenfold.

Viral Video... What is it?

When most computer users hear the words virus or viral they cringe with bad memories of lost data, locked up computers and general havoc. But, if you create a social marketing strategy based upon the concept of viral video you just might be pleasantly surprised. By definition a viral video is one that is uploaded to a social networking site, like You Tube, and suddenly “catches on” with users there. One person spreads it by posting it, or a link to it, in an email to all his friends. Those friends love it and soon the video has spread exponentially, like a virus, all across the internet. And, guess what… time after time these popular videos are embedded with someone’s video marketing plan, that is, a link to their website or some other contact back to the creator of the video. So, by using social marketing strategies, a business or enterprise or entrepreneur will drive new contacts to his/her site. Viral videos often get thousands, even millions, of internet hits in just a few days. What about it? You could stand that kind of exposure couldn’t you?

Video Marketing Plan... Where do you start?

How’s this for a smart aleck answer - start at the beginning. No, that’s not really a wisecrack. It’s just a statement of fact. The first step of implementing your social marketing strategies is to have, or invest in, a decent video camera that you can use to create the newest and best viral video out there. No, it doesn’t need to be a $1,000 to $2,000 dollar camera that could produce theatre quality video. In fact, you might already own one good enough to do the job. If not, $100 to $200 will get you in the game quite nicely. Do a little homework. Get a decent camera capable of delivering quality internet video for a reasonable price. With a good camera, your social marketing plan is off to a good start.

In the next installment we’ll discuss how to make a viral video that will captivate audiences and send your video marketing plan to the top of the charts. Just keep in mind these few pointers as you begin implementing social marketing strategies.

* It’s free - Where else can you get this kind of exposure, at any
price?

* It’s creative - Your video marketing strategies show who you are, and how
effectively you communicate your greatness.

* It’s fun - Seriousness is not the key of viral video… enjoyment is. A
video social marketing plan gets more results with a laugh than it does with a
sermon.

image credits to Sherman Tan

SEO Techniques #2: Keywords Are King

The first step in a search engine optimization strategy is to take a close look at your website and evaluate the words it uses. To do this you need to think like a savvy internet searcher and answer a few basic questions:

* What words would someone enter into a search engine, like Google or Yahoo, if he or she were seeking what your website offers?
* Are there catch phrases that describe your specific site’s content?
* What can you do to make your site receive a higher rank on the search
engine results page?

To make your site more appealing to search engines let’s take a look at
one of the vital search engine optimization tips – using keywords efficiently.

Understand How the Search Engine Works

Search engines are becoming more exotic and sophisticated. They are different from each other in that each one has a very unique set of algorithms that control how they seek answers to the search question typed in by the searcher. By definition an algorithm is a series of mathematical instructions used by the search engine to arrive at a specific conclusion, i.e. the answer to the searchers question. Although not entered as a question each search made is asking the search engine to find specific data, the answer, to the searcher’s entry. The search engine will literally scour the internet to find words matching the entry. As you see on search results pages, each word of the searcher’s entry are highlighted, with the highest ranking going to those with the words most closely like the search, and closest together in the text of the website. So, you must concentrate on the use of keywords in your website to obtain a high level of search engine optimization.

Choosing Correct Keywords

Your site is unique. It’s one of a kind, at least to you. But to the search engine it is one in a million. To make your site attractive to the search engine try a few search engine optimization techniques related to keywords:

* Study your site thoroughly. Keywords should flow naturally in the text of your site. Search engines are quick to detect stilted or unnatural text designed simply to use specific keywords. Be focused on making your site au naturel.
* Pick your keywords carefully. Don’t get stuck in a rut. Use current, up-to-date keywords directly related to what your website offers.
* Do not over use keywords. Search engine marketing is enhanced by quality keyword usage – not by quantity.

Go ahead. Analyze your website with particular attention paid to the keywords you are using. A little editing of your site might increase web traffic significantly. In SEO keywords are king. Properly placed in the text of your website and in the title of your main title page keywords can be catalyst to getting your site on track. They can catch the eye of the search engine as it scans the web. With proper, relevant, apropos usage they can elevate your website in the search engine's results page. And that is what search engine optimization is all about – getting more visitors to your site!

image credits to xjy

Use SEO To Improve Your Ranking After Getting Indexed

Getting indexed is a vital part of your search engine optimization strategy, but it is the first step of the journey. After you have become successfully indexed don’t drop the ball. Your next SEO technique concerns improving your ranking on search engine results pages. When a search is made you want your website to be front and center on page number one of the results if at all possible. To increase web traffic you will want to employ some fresh ideas to get your site noticed by search engines. Here’s a few to consider.

Increase Your Online Presence

The best way to get noticed online is to be there. Not just on your website. Be there in different places at different times all across the internet, particularly in areas that are pertinent to your little niche of influence and expertise. Consider signing up forums or getting involved in communities in your field. A quick internet search will probably reveal several, if not an abundance, of these sites where participants are chatting about the very things that interest you. So, get going. Make a name for yourself! And, while you are doing it, don’t forget to drop in links to your website. This is an effective search engine optimization technique, since the engines will see these as back links to your site, which has the added benefit of giving you a higher ranking in their search results. As you answer people’s questions and make interesting postings on these forums and communities you present yourself as knowledgeable in your field, which adds to your credibility. So, become an expert. After all, you are, aren’t you?

Keywords Unlock Your Website

Remember this: keywords come with a caveat. Your site needs to use them in a very natural and unobtrusive way. And they need to be winners. Try putting some serious thought into the keywords you use. Are they different? Or, are there a hundred, or a thousand, or a million other sites using exactly the same keywords? To get the search engine to notice your site and to rank it higher than competing sites use compelling keywords. Use keywords that narrow the focus to your specific talents. A keyword like “author” would give the search engine thousands of possibilities, but using “mystery author” might just get it to rank you highly on its results page. You can bring your search engine marketing to a higher level with well thought out keywords.

Directories Give You Exposure

Another great search engine optimization technique is to write articles and share them on article directory sites and on content sharing sites. These specialized websites allow you to post your writings in categories apropos to your specific interests and to those of its users. The mystery author above will find plenty of possibilities for sharing his or her talents on sites like these. Normally you can append a little biographical blurb to your article which can include a back link to your website.

Bingo! The article itself catches the search engine’s eye, and the back link further enhances your visibility to the engine. Remember, the more legitimate occurrences you offer the engine the better your ranking in its results. But, note the word “legitimate.” Avoid the temptation to share articles that are already on your website. Search engines do not like duplicate content. They thrive on originality in various locations. Write unique articles which are informative, interesting, readable, and likable by the site’s visitors. Also, make sure to employ a proper keyword density of around two percent of the text. Articles with too many keywords send up red flags to the engines, which might actually hurt your search ranking.

As you apply your search engine optimization program you will want to evaluate your success along the way. Begin by measuring web traffic prior to using your SEO techniques. This gives you a baseline to relate to. Then, as you implement various techniques, measure your traffic periodically to determine the effectiveness of certain strategies you are using. If you notice more increase in web traffic from article directories than from forums, then reevaluate your postings on the forums. Decide how to make them more effective for maximum search engine optimization.

image credits to Sven Werk

Pump Up Your Blogging with an Email Strategy

Blogging was founded on the principle of engaging in a conversation, yet one of the earliest and still most popular ways to have a conversation on the Internet is email. This makes blogging and email natural marketing partners. If you are looking for a way to boost your business blogging objectives you need to bring email to your small business blogging or corporate blogging marketing plan.

One of the earliest challenges of blogging was alerting readers to new posts. Unlike the typical website, blogs make web publishing a snap. The simplicity of blogging makes for a dynamic and high frequency of new and valuable content, but how do your readers know?

Using Email and Blogs Together

RSS and blog ping servers were designed to help solve this problem. They have arguably done a great job, but they still have not eclipsed the popularity of email. Email, in contrast to an RSS reader, is a multi-use communication tool. It is the foundation of most people's communication with friends, family, and work colleagues. I might read my RSS reader a few times a day. However, I will be in my email all day.

This is precisely why email is an important opportunity for any blogging initiative.
If you want a consumers attention--use email. If you want instant traffic--use email. If you want to stay top of mind--use email. Email marketing is the secret gem of online marketing. You need to plug it into your corporate blogging plan. It can raise your small business blogging efforts to a new level.

In addition to simple alerting your readers to new blog posts email can be a tool to engage your subscribers. Injecting unique content, email only tips, and special incentives can pave your way into the "sacred" marketing place--permission based email marketing.

Blogging Can Be a Sales Agent for Email

Email also gives you the opportunity to pre-qualify customers or drive them deeper into the buying cycle. An email can only hold so much content effectively and your audience may be overly broad. However, when you combine email with a business blog you can direct them to additional information or purchase. Likewise, using email you can test a variety of concepts and messages in email(s) and let the customers funnel themselves into appropriate sales channel(s).

Email + Blogging = Big Results

Combining these two powerhouses in Internet marketing can be the boost you need for your business. Never leave your business blogging to do all the heavy lifting. Blend in email marketing to drive traffic and engage readers. These blogging tips and email techniques will make monetizing your web publishing or building up your sales leads very easy to accomplish.

image credits to Joey Rozier

Outsource Your Email or Autoresponder Service for Better Results

Email marketing is increasingly one of the toughest marketing techniques to get right, but when executed well is still a hands down leader in effectiveness. The key to that direct email marketing success is execution--reliable email delivery and credibility. For these key components to a successful email marketing strategy I go straight to a reputable email or autoresponder service provider.

You can attempt to reliably deliver email messages and avoid spam filters on your own. However, it is a short cut I do not recommend. It is likely to end in frustration, poor results, and possibly expensive CAN-SPAM (compliance) fines.

Message Delivery

Reliable and consistent delivery of emails is probably the trickiest part of email marketing. Even the most legitimate, permission-based direct email marketing is likely to land in spam filters without professional help.

An autoresponder service spends 100 percent of their time and resources on understanding the latest email technologies and regulatory compliance. This is their value to the process freeing you to put 100 percent of your focus on the email campaign design and sales content.
A service provider can also add value by providing you the latest in email marketing tips, email conversion, and small business email marketing success strategies.

Reputation, Trust

Credibility, reputation, and trust are important concepts in any small business email marketing strategy. Giving your small business email marketing a professional look and feel can do as much for email conversion and response rates as the content itself. Simply, using a reputable autoresponder service like ConstantContact, iContact, or AWeber can increase credibility with the consumer.

Service provider strictly adhere to current rules and regulations around email marketing. Their services can help keep you on top of things like: opt-in requirements, appropriate company contact information, and unsubscribe compliance.

Making delivery on your email, building trust, and doing it consistently are integral parts of email marketing success. Outsourcing those duties to an email or autoresponder service is one of the smartest email marketing tips you can follow.

image credits to photobunny

Engaging Subscribers, 3 Strategies that Improve Your Email Marketing Success

Email marketing is more than blasting email and hoping for a reaction. Even getting a great autoresponders service and building a few great emails is not enough. To get real, meaningful email conversion you need to engage your subscribers--this is what makes real direct email marketing.

Small business email marketing is where a lot of great email marketers get started. Small business owners know the power of engaging the customer personally. That is precisely the strategy you want in your direct email marketing. Optimizing email conversion has to be the main objective.

Here are some email marketing tips with get you on that path to success:

1. A Friendly Face

When that email lands in your customers inbox they are unlikely to remember you. So, unless you are a celebrity you had better put a friendly face on it. You be the judge of this common mistake. Are you likely to open any of these sender's emails?

• info@bademail.com
• do-not-reply@bademail.com
• admin@bademail.com

I didn't think so. You just expedited your email campaign to the trash bin or spam bucket. How about these equally suspicious characters?

• John@bademail.com
• Joe@bademail.com
• Jane@bademail.com
• Sally@bademail.com

Are you seeing the pattern? A good autoresponder service will guide you around these common gotchas. The bottom line is make your email marketing messages as much like your every day emails, as possible. Use a real name from your company. It doesn't have to be your email address, but it should have a real name. Getting good email conversion typically is helped by adding a last name to the address as well. Also don't forget this common mistake--make the email address match any email signature in the body of the email.

2. Subject, Make it About Me

Subject lines are the keystones of email marketing strategies. There are lots of email marketing tips to improve your email conversion, but here are some of the basics:

• Use their name
• Remind them of email list or opt-in source
• Be descriptive and direct about the content
• Don't use high spam words like money, cash, mortgage
• Make it brief

Sometime you can't make all of this work together, but good testing will help you get the right combination and approach for your email list.

3. Opener, Don't Waste Time

If the email is open your corporate or small business email marketing plan is working. Be careful though. This is when many email marketers get sloppy.

Give you customer immediate clarity. Give me benefit and value. Give me a reason not to trash it with the other 200 emails in my inbox.

Start with an immediate benefit statement then tell them briefly what is to come. We used to call these Johnson boxes in the classic sales letter days. Often a small offer or freebie can entice a consumer to the next step.

Making your direct email marketing work is all about coaxing your prospect to the next step of action. These email marketing tips are a great way to build that framework for consistent email conversion.

Turning LinkedIn into a Small Business Contact and Lead Management System

LinkedIn is full of tens of millions of affluent, well-connected, decision makers. No small business marketing database you could create would have a better base to harvest for sales. So stop working so hard to generate sales from your social marketing plan--building your campaign on one of the top social sites on the Web.

LinkedIn Marketing is an Internet marketing dream. LinkedIn is full of people ready and willing to connect and transact on the Web. But, how do you get them to transact with you? The first step to success is stop looking at LinkedIn as a social networking site and start thinking of it as a marketing database or contact management system. Selling with LinkedIn is like using a super-charged CRM.

Contact Management
LinkedIn is already constructed much like the top small business marketing software. You can import contacts from all of the popular electronic address books (i.e., Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail, Yahoo!, etc.). LinkedIn helps you segment connections and prospects into affinity groups (i.e., industries, schools, jobs, positions, and even interests).

However, one of the key advantages of LinkedIn being your contact database--prospects segment themselves. With LinkedIn, you have access to search your potential customers' own descriptions and profiles. These same prospects ask questions, answer questions, join groups, and participate in this social network.

No better contact database can put you in the cat-bird seat to observe your customers expressing their wants and needs.

Social Marketing
A social marketing plan is simply the extension of your contact management strategy when managed from LinkedIn. As you assemble connections into your LinkedIn lead management strategy you automatically begin social marketing. Typical contact or marketing management solutions require you to continually push incentives, offers, and teasers. LinkedIn shifts this paradigm, allowing prospects to pull your marketing feed and cause attractions.

Here are some clever strategies to optimize your Internet marketing strategy on LinkedIn:
• Use keywords in your personal profile and descriptions
• Post questions and answers to LinkedIN Answers
• Join an participate in relative LinkedIn Groups
• Create a LinkedIN Group of customer advocates for your business
• Search, visit, and learn from competitors, prospects, and experts in your industry
• Request connections and referrals from your customers and vendors

Connections naturally build trust, credibility, and loyalty for you. Center your marketing with LinkedIn on this strategy.

Lead Nurturing
Although we want every lead to convert that is simply not the real world. This is where Selling with LinkedIn again shows power of LinkedIn being your prospect database. Most contact databases often make non-active prospect difficult to track and activate.

LinkedIn makes a great platform for internet marketing and lead nurturing. These inactive leads still see you, see your activities, are still exposed to your LinkedIn questions and answers. Social marketing is always on with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn becomes a hands-off small business marketing and lead nurturing campaign to your connections, whether they are ready to buy or not.

Facebook Ad Network, Do They Hate You or Love You?

Facebook is in a constant battle between user privacy demands and necessary monetization. That puts advertisers in a weird box. However, smart social marketing can put you in the winners circle.

Join the Conversation

Facebook is an enormous social network with over 100 million users. That certainly will get any advertisers excited. Now, add tight self-segmentation and viral communities and you have advertising Utopia.

The challenge to any Facebook marketing strategy of course is penetration. The same characteristics that make it appealing can challenge efficient access to all those wallets.

The trick is learning social marketing. Learning how to get access to the various communities that will help execute your social syndication strategy.

There is a formula and it starts with joining the conversation.

Any effective social media strategy has to begin by becoming a natural part of the community. In Facebook, that means becoming a user, participating, joining groups, and adding value. The more you connect and the more you participate the more capable your reach.

Build a Social Brand

Step two is becoming useful and valuable to the community. There are a variety of ways you can add value quickly on Facebook:

• Creating a social application

• Being a community organizer

• Adding expertise to one or more groups

Regardless of your approach, that value creation needs to translate into an identifiable social brand. A brand message that says, "I do [blank] for my friends and here is why they say they love it..."

Socialize Sales

Now, to close deals...that is the art of socializing sales. Do it right and you score in the "love ya" group, do it wrong and you are unfriended to the "hate ya" trash bin.

2008 Presidential Marketing Online - Who Is Best Online Generally?

The 2008 presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain have been exercising an interesting twist on conventional political marketing, employing online marketing techniques that might even be branded "black hat" with some of the seasoned Internet marketing crowd. However, the technique does not violate anyone's terms of service and does appear to be highly effective.

An example of the 2008 election marketing touches that could be considered a bit underhand is the term, "economic crisis." Search for that on Google, and especially if you are in north California, you could be presented with a small AdWords advert on the right-hand side of the page that tells you how much John McCain is out of touch with the economic situation facing the USA. You'd also be right if you think that the Democratic Party paid for the ad.

It's not all one-sided either. A search for "Joe Biden" can reveal an ad that takes you to a video of Mr. Biden being surprisingly critical of Mr. Obama during the primary elections. It seems that whoever is willing to throw the most money at a keyword within Google AdWords can control it for their own purposes, and those purposes can often be damaging to the other 2008 presidential candidate.

This kind of electron snowball fight, while fascinating to idly watch from a distance, is deadly serious stuff. The Obama camp spent in excess of one million dollars on Google AdWords in a single week in February. That was more than the Bush and Kerry camps combined spent on AdWords during the entire 2004 election circus! Obama seems to be spending more than McCain on AdWords, but that's not to say that McCain is far behind where it matters - he's not.

Modern political marketing still relies to a large degree on the kind of time honored face-to-face confrontational rhetoric we see on our screens day after day, but increasingly the battle is being fought through online marketing and is relying on ever more sophisticated technology.

Even comparing the technological sophistication, or lack of it, in the 2004 election to the 2008 election is no match. The four intervening years has seen online tricks for presidential hopefuls come of age. Now there are serious email campaigns that have details of the recipients such as name, age, sex, zip code, and a host of other relevant details. The email you receive can be personalized to an amazing degree to make you feel special. The technological psychology employed is capable of swaying an undecided voter either way, and often it depends on who gets there first.

So, who is winning in the Internet miscellany of techniques and technologies? It's hard to say. The Republicans, despite a poor email campaign in the early days, have been streets ahead for several months. However, the Democrats have more than fought back. They are leading in some quarters and seem set to continue. When it comes to exchanging the shoe leather for the mouse pad, the Democrats are taking to it like ducks to water. It's really all still up for grabs in this 2008 election marketing section at least, but for now the Democrats seem to have the slight edge.