1. Effective branding combines Web and off-line elements. It is much more than a customer’s reaction to your name or logo. It’s the customer’s total experience with you, your product or service.
2. Think what you sell can’t be branded? Think again. Almost anything can be branded, including you, personally.
3. The Web is the only interactive mass medium, so take advantage of it. Use interactive features whenever possible. The future belongs to the up-and-coming businesses that do the best job of building their brands on the Internet.

Business.com’s “What Works for Business” blog is a great way to keep up with the latest brand-building solutions, trends and strategies for small and medium business.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done:

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• The best brands tend to tap emotions and appeal to a person’s natural need for involvement.
• Strive for simplicity. Too much information confuses your brand message.
• Be original in identifying your brand identity – the thing that sets you apart. Hint: Not quality or service. Everybody does that!
• Be consistent with your brand’s look, feel and message whenever and wherever they appear.
• Avoid trying to be overly “cool” or in-the-moment. Too hard to sustain. The brand must be relevant, but long term.
• Base your brand on your customers’ needs. Don’t know them? Ask your customers.

As future web entrepreneurs, we already know that online marketing and offline marketing are very different entities.  We all know that this goes without saying.  But there are some questions out there that have been roaming around my brain for quite some time so I figured I would address this very topic with you guys as well.   

First, let me start off by saying neither method is better than the other.  They both take different avenues to get certain things done within their businesses.  They achieve different things.  So this isn’t a “who is better than who” debate.  This explanation really just highlights some of the differences between the two.

As the general economy presents another series of poor numbers and the terrifying face of deflation threatens, mainstream advertisers are forced to ask themselves some very difficult questions.  Limited purchasing budgets must stretch further and attract a buying public wary of spending their own limited purchasing budgets.  Coupled with the declining value of the US dollar, many companies cannot afford a failed advertising campaign but still need to attract new customers and reach out to past clients.  There are several forms of advertising media available both in the online and offline worlds, all of which have shown solid returns for advertisers and all of which, carry their pros and cons.

Being a keen SEO and online marketer, I am obviously biased to the paid form of online marketing and believe its success far outweighs the results delivered by offline marketing simply because so many people are turning to the Internet to look for absolutely anything they desire… and they will find it!

I recently read an article on ClickZ which sheds an interesting perspective on these two forms of marketing.  Basically statistics are showing that the integration of online and offline marketing is achieving results far better than they can produce on their own. “According to a new study by Jupiter Research and search marketing agency iProspect, a surprising two-thirds of searchers are led to search on a given keyword as a result of offline marketing”.

I think it is essential for companies to integrate online and offline marketing strategies (and it is a shame that so many of them don’t); we are, after all, living in a technologically driven age where if you need to know anything all you need to do is conduct a search on the Web.   How to fix your own car, how to buy a house, where best to buy rawhide bones for your pet dog.

So what better way is there to find out if an advertisement in a newspaper/magazine is really selling what it claims to be, than by searching for it on the Internet?  And what’s even better is that while offline ads are leading to searches on the web, online advertising is able to track what is or isn’t leading to purchases or sales and allow us to tweak the campaign at any time in order to achieve the results – not so easy for the offline marketing endeavours is it?

So for all those future web companies and web entrepreneurs out there who have been weary of making the move to online advertising – it’s not one or the other anymore.  By integrating the two you can achieve success… the results will speak for themselves. ]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/online-v-offline-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/facebook-your-website/ http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/facebook-your-website/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:28:25 +0000 Phil http://theonemanmission.com/?p=422 Facebook.  Everyone’s on it.  But setting aside the networking aspect where you use it as a platform to find your old school buds and friends you thought you’d never see again, marketing on facebook has become a massive stream of traffic.   Think of it as a tool to help promote your business and services by driving traffic through a number of different ways.   If you ignore the marketing method that facebook allows, you are ignoring one of the biggest and best ways to promote your business online, and thus, limiting your earning potential.  If you don’t do any other marketing through social network sites, make sure facebook is one you definately consider.

With my own project (project x), I will be certainly using facebook marketing to help build the awareness online, so I researched the different ways facebook can be used to reach masses of people and potential customers:

1. Facebook social ads. Facebook social ad is quite similar to the ads that you are seeing on search engines. You can either choose a pay-per-click or pay-for-views model. There are millions of members on Facebook and social ads allow you to target your ads to very specific audience based on demographics and geographic areas. By targeting your ads based on what people have written on their profiles, you can expect a better ROI from your social ads campaign.

2. Profile page. On your profile page, you can provide links to your websites, Squidoo pages, or articles that you have written. You can also write more information about your business so that visitors to your page can understand what services or products that you are providing.

3. Social groups. You can create a social group on Facebook for your business and invite people to join the group. This is a very good viral marketing tactic and you absolutely need to capitalise on it. With your social groups, you can post links, business updates and events so that your group members are always updated on what you are doing.

4. Facebook page for your website. A Facebook page for your website is quite similar to your profile page. On your Facebook page, you can post links, information and gather fans for your business.

5. Facebook applications. On Facebook, you can find countless applications which are excellent viral marketing tool that can help bring in more traffic to your website. If you do not know how to program a Facebook application, you can outsource the task to a freelancer at an affordable fee.

Facebook is definitely a great marketing channel for all business owners and marketers.  If you are not on Facebook, you are not part of the human race, and should create an account right now.  Once you are on Facebook, implement the tips on this page and get more traffic to your website right away.

I have been researching across the web  and looking at some of my client’ stats and have come up with a rough guide to how many unique visitors on average you can expect to get from a popular story on some of the top social tagging and news sites.  I have worked out my estimates mainly from Google Analytics, so it’s a good estimation.

Yahoo! Buzz

There is a new sheriff in town, there have been reports of Yahoo! Buzz which sends over one million visitors to a frontpage story.  From what I have heard off one or two bloggers you can generally expect just short of half a million uniques.  This is something you should seriously look at in the first instance.

Frontpage Traffic: 100,000 – 1,000,000+

Digg

Social news site Digg is renowned for crashing servers, this is mainly because of the volume of visitors it sends in such a short space of time when a submission 1st hits the frontpage.   Still good numbers and definately one to seriously look at.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,000 – 60,000+

StumbleUpon

According to my research, a submission to StumbleUpon will generally go ‘popular’ and send some decent traffic  your way, when it gets to around 50 stumbles.  The bulk of the traffic will usually spread over 2-3 days, after that it will come in dribs and drabs.

Traffic: 1,000 – 50,000+

Reddit

Providing you have some decent news to share, or a story that will interest the community, Reddit is a sure thing for a quick burst of visitors.  The amount of visitors a popular link receives will depend on how far up the frontpage it goes and how long it stays there for.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,500 – 30,000+

eBaum’s World

Comedy and humour site Ebaums World is normally overlooked by internet marketers as a good traffic source.  The newly created ‘link submit’ category can drive thousands of visitors to your website.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,500 – 20,000+

I Am Bored

Another site that seems to have been overlooked by internet marketers is I Am Bored, popular submissions will generally receive many thousands of unique visitors.

Frontpage Traffic: 2,000 – 20,000+

del.icio.us

Social ‘tagging’ website Delicious tends to trickle traffic over time.   Saying that, links that hit the frontpage as a featured submission will generally receive a good couple of thousand visitors in a very short space of time.

Frontpage Traffic: 500 – 5,000+

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most highly trafficked websites online, with millions of visitors every day. If you are thinking of ways to increase the traffic to your website, you cannot leave Facebook marketing out of the picture.

Social media marketing is very popular nowadays and it is an excellent way for marketers to build brand and increase overall traffic to their sites.  I will cover Facebook Marketing seperately soon as this deserves a seperate section on how Facebook marketing can be effectively utilised to grow your online presence.

The Fark Community

If your submission is liked by the Fark community it will without doubt receive some good traffic. If a link makes it onto the frontpage it will receive huge amounts.

Frontpage Traffic: 5,000 – 45,000+

Ever wondered how you can make money from adverts on a website?  What is Google Adsense and why is everyone raving about it?  How it can help not only create revenue, but market your site?.  Here’s an explanation to yield a little light on it all…

Google Adsense and other banner advertising methods run on a method called Pay-Per-Click programs (PPC) and it is the new buzz in internet marketing. The growth in web traffic generated by pay per click services is growing and a marketing option to be seriously considered when starting or maintaining popularity on your website.

With PPC, the way it works is: you pay each time a web viewer chooses your ad listing link and clicks into your website.  It doesn’t cost anything to actually show adverts on a website as it only costs you when they click on the ad, hence the name.

Pay per click targets a very specific audience reaching up to 85% of all internet users in a cost effective and immediate way.  There can be as much as a $20 return of investment for each $1 spent.  Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

Exactly How Does Pay Per Click (PPC) Work?

The first step is to select which ad agent to use.

The biggestt PPC agent on the web is Yahoo! Sponsored Search.  Yahoo! Sponsored Search has traffic of approx 200 million searches per month reaching about 80% of all the web users.  They have the largest reach on the Web.  Yahoo! Sponsored Search’s pay per click listings appear on Yahoo Search, Yahoo Directory, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Lycos, InfoSpace, and other search engines and directories, so plenty of streams all across the web to reach your markets.

Although Yahoo has more overall visitors statistically than the mighty Google, Google AdWords is the most productive PPC platform and the place you should start with when you decide to advertise with PPC ads.

Reasons for this, firstly – it is simple to use on the basic level, you sign up, write your ads and manage campaigns with set budgets of what you are prepared to spend per day.  Secondly, in the U.S of A alone, over 80% of all Internet searches will be Google.  With Google AdWords, you can see your ads within a few hours, and you have the ability to start and stop campaigns easily.  You will show your products and services to literally millions of viewers and active shoppers using the massive reach of Google.  Additionally Google AdWords will typically out-perform Yahoo and MSN adCenter when it comes to generating conversions and return on investment.  On Google’s main search results pages?  The ‘Sponsored links’ on the very top and the column on the right are all PPC ads generated by the companies advertising them.  They have paid to be there – some, have paid lots.

The second step is to select your targeted keyword or phrases.

At this point you may want to consider increasing the density of your selected keywords in your website’s HTML code, your site’s description, and title.  However, we have found that you can still experience great returns using PPC without revising your website, as your PPC ads are triggered by the keywords you selected that are tied to your ad and not your web site’s content.  My advice is to spend time thinking of the market you are in and the best keywords to use in your ad campaigns.

The third step is to select your monthly budget.

You basically have to select the very maximum amount that you will pay each month (or day) for click-throughs to your website. How much do you want to appear on users pages?  The higher the budget, the more time you appear.  Simple as. Once the maximum amount is reached, Google will halt click-throughs to your site automatically – basically, they will stop your ad appearing. Additionally, you will select how much you are willing to pay by keyword as well, so you can break it down to £5 per day on the ‘decorating’, £2 per day on ‘painting’, etc.

With Yahoo! Sponsored Search, it’s a little different. With these guys, you will be charged your budget amount on a monthly basis in advance of the ads appearing and then the clicks.  Clicks are then deducted from your account balance on a daily basis as and when people click on them.  Much like a deposit you make, any clicks get deducted form the balance.

With Google AdWords, you can easily ‘pause’ a campaign or change your settings at any time.  There are no minimum monthly spending limits and no contracts or long term commitments, which makes life a lot easier when starting out a new website or company.

Bids and Keywords

There are different costs for PPC between markets and industries.  If you have a popular keyword, in a very competitive market,  be prepared to pay higher than the minimum click amount to get top listing within your category.  The big main players (aka your competition) will have a high budget, so it will be difficult to stand a chance against them.  My advice is to choose keywords that are still within your market, but more of a niche.   Do some keyword researcht to see what’s popular but with less competition.  With both Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Microsoft adCenter, the client with the highest quality score will have their ad shown first.

Google AdWords, Yahoo! Sponsored Search, and Microsoft adCenter have great programs that automatically allow you to manage your budget and to plan your bids effectively.  Check them all out and decide which (if not all) are the best suited for your requirements.

Ad Placement on the Page

With Google AdWords, Yahoo! Sponsored Search, and Microsoft adCenter, an advertiser who pay less per click than another may have their ads in the top position if the ad content is crafted well and receives more clicks per impressions versus than another and has a closely matched landing page to their ad’s theme and keyword list. The ad rank position on all three platforms is determined by quality score and the keyword bid.

Conclusion

Pay per click programs can pay off in increased website traffic, brand identification through impressions, and most importantly in increased leads, prospects, and sales. In addition to exposing your website to a wide qualified audience, targeted click throughs can turn in to sales, generating more profit for your business.

If you are looking for a great way to drive traffic to your website, you should consider adding a PPC program to your advertising plan.

]]> http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/pay-per-click-marketing/feed/ 0 http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/search-engine-optimisation-explained/ http://www.theonemanmission.com/marketing/search-engine-optimisation-explained/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:21:48 +0000 Phil http://www.TheOneManMission.com/?p=332 The internet is a big place.  It’s an extremely competitive market as everyone wants to be at the top of search results.  Companies vie for the highest attention from billions of internet users in the search engine results for basically, better revenue. A lynch pin to Internet Marketing is Google, the biggest and most popular search engine.

Search Engines (including Google amongst others) are internet portals where quite literally BILLIONS of people congregate to search for information.  Cheapest places to buy shoes, directions on how to get to their mother-in-laws, all the way to reading about how to remove that big clump of hair growing on their back.  Literally ANYTHING.  The most prominent search engine in the field are search giants Google and Yahoo. The level of traffic these .com organisations receive per hour is well, phenomenal.

So naturally, companies obviously move towards placing their links and sites on search engines as high as possible in an attempt to garner more visits to their web sites from these search engines in question.

In order to maximize their ranking on the search engine results and more importantly the placement on the results page,  companies have used tools such as SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation.  Search engine optimization is the method and process of vastly improving a web site’s ranking in a search engine listing page.   As it suggests, the higher the result in the search, the more traffic you are likely to make, which means the more revenue or return on investment youare likely to enjoy.  Highly competitive markets try even harder as their gains are likely to be far greater than a smaller niche avenue.

Legitimate search engine optimization, practices the focus and goal on the improvement of a page’s ranking in the search engine list by improving the actual site’s content, it’s usability and by using legitimate methods of promotion through various web phenomena such as Viral Marketing.  This is covered seperately in my blog, but in essence, it’s a form of advertising that spreads across the internet from person to person and can be extemely effective in the effect is has as well as the cost-efficiency side of it too.

Search engines nowadays, all use the most complex ‘algorithms’ in keeping their relevancy in the web and to keep illegal and abusive search engine optimization methods from prospering and manipulating their system.  However, what’s known as “black hat” SEO users will always be around so it is expected that search engine giant such as Google and Yahoo continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the cheating garbage out.  A cheating example includes hiding keywords within the website page by having the keywords the same colour as the background, so users can’t see it, but the search engines still read the code.  This is naughty, but the site if targeted by Google, can then be banned.  Large reputable brands (believe it or not) have been caught using this method as well, such as BMW and Disney, but they get banned too.   Google obviously takes this very seriously.   

Search engines now actually display different kinds of ‘listings’ on a result page, not just normal ‘results’.  The more common ones are pay-per-click (PPC) adverts, paid inclusion in the listings, and organic listings.  Of all these listings, SEO concerns itself mainly with organic listings for a variety of keywords.  This can increase the quality and quantity of visitors to a desired web site.  This is something I have always been aware of and offer to all my web design clients at OwenDevelopment. 

So which are the most effective?  Well from my research into this for my own project ‘Project X’, organic searches  are the way to go.   A study from Jupiter Mediarevealed that approximately 5 out of 6 commercial online purchases by users,  came from organic searches compared to paid online ads.  Are people becoming ‘blind’ to PPC adverts on sites?  I must admit that I have.  I for some reason, tend to not click on these ads and have even typed into the address bar the link to the PPC ad, rather than actually just clicking on it.  Why?  I don’t know, but it’s a habit I have just developed from somewhere unknown.  I have a few sites with these ads on, but still I just do it.  Yes, I’m a freak.

Anyway, this overall result from Jupiter Media has made traditional SEO far more in demand in creating revenue for companies as SEO is not a paid ad method, but a method of intrinsically improving the sites content.

From everywhere I have scanned on the internet, here are a few tips I think are useful on improving content on your site for an  improved result in traditional organic searches:

• Expertise - Develop your strengths.  Sites you get involved with or own, must be on subject that you consider yourself an expert on. People can smell an amateur a mile away (they smell like a crusty sock left in the back of a cupboard).  But if you are knowledgable, people will stay and view the other content and are also more likely to come back to your site regularly.

• Plan -  A good layout that is easy to navigate and view (in web-friendly colours!) can improve usability. This in turn will not unnecessarily aggravate the browser and make it easier to accomodate any user on any browser.

• Research - Check out your competition and see what they have set up. My advice is find the biggets player in the market and see any improvements that you can make that let their site down.  See what works and implement the same, and likewise, what doesn’t and improve it.  If possible try to communicate with users in forums and get useful feedback on what should or can be improved further.  I also found it useful to find complaints in review sites on your market.  Find out what people hate about the main players and shout out on your site how you guarantee to make that aspect easier and more effective. 

• Keywords - Decide which are the most important keywords to use for your sight.  Include these keywords in the metatags in the header of your site, use in the content of the page, within the page title, and also in file names if you use them.

• Remember that the Search Engine is your best friend - Get best mates with your search engine, send him a birthday card and don’t give it a hard time.  Definately don’t cheat on them. Being nice and friendly to it will make its job easier to serve your site up to your target audience.  It will make you more money period.

• Keep Focussed – Concentrate on the topic in question and nothing else. The rule is one topic per page.  Confusing content by swapping from one thing to another won’t help your site.  It’s hard to follow a physical conversation when this happens, let alone on a website.

• Get added on directories - Directories are pools of knowledge made by a human, while search engine are huge databases collected by mostly machine methods.  The relevancy of your page when joining the right directory may cause huge increases in rankings if they are the right directory for your market.   Avoid joining loads of less-known directories, as a only few directory listings on the big main ones will help more.  

• Links - An effective Optimisation method used as SEO 101.  Ask your networks, strategic partners, friends and acquaintances business parnerships to place your site’s website link on their sites.  With a short description this can draw huge amounts of traffic from other sites and increase your sites’ exposure on the web.  For example, Google ranks the importance of its sites by the sheer number of sites that are linked to it, and the better tand more reputable the site that links to you, the higher you will rise in the listings automatically.

• Repeat all the above - Keep repeating all the above tips over and over again, maintaining the optimisation and marketing of your site will keep you at the top of listings and the ££ coming in.  Doing a simple one-off campaign may see you hit the top, but not for long.  You will notice that by not treating this as a constant routine, you will gradually slip down the ranks because I GUARANTEE your competitors will be consistently applying the above. 

Meta Tags are the most basic of information every single website needs: without it, your site will never be read or found by search engines.  Meta tags have two possible attributes:

• <META HTTP-EQUIV=”name” CONTENT=”content“>
• <META NAME=”name” CONTENT=”content“>

META tags should be placed in the header section of the HTML document, between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.

Robots

Controls Search Engine Web robots on a per-page basis. E.g.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,FOLLOW”>

Robots may traverse this page but not index it.

• INDEX allows the page to be indexed by the spider
• NOINDEX prevents anything on the page from being indexed.
• FOLLOW allows all links on the page to be spidered as well
• NOFOLLOW prevents the crawler from following the links on the page and indexing the linked pages.
• ALL is the same as INDEX,FOLLOW
• NONE is the same as NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW
• NOIMAGEINDEX prevents the images on the page from being indexed but the text on the page can still be indexed.
• NOIMAGECLICK prevents the use of links directly to the images, instead there will only be a link to the page.

Keywords

Keywords used by search engines to index your document in addition to words from the title and document body. E.g.

<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”fresh oranges, cool autumn scent, living room furniture, IT solutions”>

• Think Key Phrases instead of keywords. Key Phrases will provide you with a much greater volume of internet response.
• The primary words that appear in your title and description should also appear in your keywords, plus the primary words and phrases used on the page. Also, the primary words in your title and description should also appear somewhere else on your page.
• Insert your pages keywords into at least 1 of your images ALT tags. This helps for those search engines that read these tags, but don’t overdo it.
• It is best if you keep the number of keywords, commas and spaces below 800 characters.
• Many search engines only index the first 10 to 20 keywords, so be sure to have the most relevant keywords and phrases listed first.
• Using the same word more than three times, even if used differently within a phrase, might be considered Spamdexing by the search engine and your page might not be included.

Description

A short, plain language description of the document. Used by search engines to describe your document. Particularly important if your document has very little text, is a frameset, or has extensive scripts at the top. E.g.

<META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”Citrus fruit wholesaler in North Wales. 40 varieties of mixed fruit drinks and wines available 24/7, from as little as £2.50″>

Keep your description below 250 characters.  This is SEO 101 and should always be included on every page of the site as a minimum.  Why spend on building a nice looking and informative website, when no-one will ever find it?

Summary

Remember, in the multi-coloured world of SEO, content is king.   Applying appropriate content on your site with effective keywords will do more than anything.  Keep it clear and concise, and you will have all the high rankings you will ever need. 

This guest post was written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group and lead TA for the Stanford Facebook Class.

Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.

When most people talk about “viral videos,” they’re usually referring to videos like Miss Teen South Carolina, Smirnoff’s Tea Partay music video, the Sony Bravia ads, Soulja Boy – videos that have traveled all around the internet and been posted on YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Facebook, Digg, blogs, etc. – videos with millions and millions of views.

Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme. In this post, I will share some of the techniques I use to do my job: to get at least 100,000 people to watch my clients’ “viral” videos.

Secret #1: Not all viral videos are what they seem

There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how “viral” you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it.

The members of my startup are hired guns – our clients give us videos and we make them go viral. Our rule of thumb is that if we don’t get a video 100,000 views, we don’t charge.

So far, we’ve worked on 80-90 videos and we’ve seen overwhelming success. In the past 3 months, we’ve achieved over 20 million views for our clients, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to upwards of 1.5 million views each. In other words, not all videos go viral organically – there is a method to the madness.

I can’t reveal our clients’ names and I can’t link to the videos we’ve worked on, because YouTube surely doesn’t like what we’re doing and our clients hate to admit that they need professional help with their “viral” videos. But I can give you a general idea of who we’ve worked with: two top Hollywood movie studios, a major record label, a variety of very well known consumer brands, and a number of different startups, both domestic and international.

This summer, we were approached by a Hollywood movie studio and asked to help market a series of viral clips they had created in advance of a blockbuster. The videos were 10-20 seconds each, were shot from what appeared to be a camera phone, and captured a series of unexpected and shocking events that required professional post-production and CGI. Needless to say, the studio had invested a significant amount of money in creating the videos but every time they put them online, they couldn’t get more than a few thousand views.

We took six videos and achieved:

• 6 million views on YouTube
• ~30,000 ratings
• ~10,000 favorites
• ~10,000 comments
• 200+ blog posts linking back to the videos
• All six videos made it into the top 5 Most Viewed of the Day, and the two that went truly viral (1.5 million views each) were #1 and #2 Most Viewed of the Week.

The following principles were the secrets to our success.

2. Content is NOT King

If you want a truly viral video that will get millions of people to watch and share it, then yes, content is key. But good content is not necessary to get 100,000 views if you follow these strategies.

Don’t get me wrong: the content is what will drive visitors back to a site. So a video must have a decent concept, but one shouldn’t agonize over determining the best “viral” video possible. Generally, a concept should not be forced because it fits a brand. Rather, a brand should be fit into a great concept. Here are some guidelines we follow:

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”
• Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes”

These recent videos would have been perfect had they been viral “ads” pointing people back to websites:

• Model Falls in Hole on Runway
• Cheerleader Gets Run Over By Football Team
• PacMan: The Chase
• Dude
• Dog Drives Car
• Snowball – Dancing Cockatoo

3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page

Now that a video is ready to go, how the hell is it going to attract 100,000 viewers?

The core concept of video marketing on YouTube is to harness the power of the site’s traffic. Here’s the idea: something like 80 million videos are watched each day on YouTube, and a significant number of those views come from people clicking the “Videos” tab at the top. The goal is to get a video on that Videos page, which lists the Daily Most Viewed videos.

If we succeed, the video will no longer be a single needle in the haystack of 10,000 new videos per day. It will be one of the twenty videos on the Most Viewed page, which means that we can grab 1/20th of the clicks on that page! And the higher up on the page our video is, the more views we are going to get.

So how do we get the first 50,000 views we need to get our videos onto the Most Viewed list?

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

Each video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list, so it’s important that this happens quickly. As I mentioned before, when done right, this is a tremendously successful strategy.

4. Title Optimization

Once a video is on the Most Viewed page, what can be done to maximize views?

It seems obvious, but people see hundreds of videos on YouTube, and the title and thumbnail are an easy way for video publishers to actively persuade someone to click on a video. Titles can be changed a limitless number of times, so we sometimes have a catchy (and somewhat misleading) title for the first few days, then later switch to something more relevant to the brand. Recently, I’ve noticed a trend towards titling videos with the phrases “exclusive,” “behind the scenes,” and “leaked video.”

5. Thumbnail Optimization

If a video is sitting on the Most Viewed page with nineteen other videos, a compelling video thumbnail is the single best strategy to maximize the number of clicks the video gets.

YouTube provides three choices for a video’s thumbnail, one of which is grabbed from the exact middle of the video. As we edit our videos, we make sure that the frame at the very middle is interesting. It’s no surprise that videos with thumbnails of half naked women get hundreds of thousands of views. Not to say that this is the best strategy, but you get the idea. Two rules of thumb: the thumbnail should be clear (suggesting high video quality) and ideally it should have a face or at least a person in it.

Also, when we feel particularly creative, we optimize all three thumbnails then change the thumbnail every few hours. This is definitely an underused strategy, but it’s an interesting way to keep a video fresh once it’s on the Most Viewed list.

See the highlighted videos in the screenshot below for a good example of how a compelling title and screenshot can make all the difference once the video is on the Most Viewed page.

6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself

Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this). Everyone loves a good, heated discussion in the comments section – especially if the comments are related to a brand/startup.

Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.

We usually get one comment for every thousand views, since most people watching YouTube videos aren’t logged in. But a heated comment thread (done well) will engage viewers and will drive traffic back to our sites.

7. Releasing all videos simultaneously

Once people are watching a video, how do we keep them engaged and bring them back to a website?

A lot of the time our clients say: “We’ve got 5 videos and we’re going to release one every few days so that viewers look forward to each video.”

This is the wrong way to think about YouTube marketing. If we have multiple videos, we post all of them at once. If someone sees our first video and is so intrigued that they want to watch more, why would we make them wait until we post the next one? We give them everything up front. If a user wants to watch all five of our videos right now, there’s a much better chance that we’ll be able to persuade them to click through to our website. We don’t make them wait after seeing the first video, because they’re never going to see the next four.

Once our first video is done, we delete our second video then re-upload it. Now we have another 48-hour window to push it to the Most Viewed page. Rinse and repeat. Using this strategy, we give our most interested viewers the chance to fully engage with a campaign without compromising the opportunity to individually release and market each consecutive video.

8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole

This is one of my favorite strategies and one that I think we invented. YouTube allows you to tag your videos with keywords that make your videos show up in relevant searches. For the first week that our video is online, we don’t use keyword tags to optimize the video for searches on YouTube. Instead, we’ve discovered that you can use tags to control the videos that show up in the Related Videos box.

I like to think about it as leading viewers down the rabbit hole. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to engage with all your content, rather than jumping away to “related” content that actually has nothing to do with your brand/startup.

So how do we strategically tag? We choose three or four unique tags and use only these tags for all of the videos we post. I’m not talking about obscure tags; I’m talking about unique tags, tags that are not used by any other YouTube videos. Done correctly, this will allow us to have full control over the videos that show up as “Related Videos.”

When views start trailing off after a few days to a week, it’s time to add some more generic tags, tags that draw out the long tail of a video as it starts to appear in search results on YouTube and Google.

9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness

The following is how we measure the success of our viral videos.

For one, we tweak the links put up on YouTube (whether in a YouTube channel or in a video description) by adding “?video=1” to the end of each URL. This makes it much easier to track inbound links using Google Analytics or another metrics tool.

TubeMogul and VidMetrix also track views/comments/ratings on each individual video and draw out nice graphs that can be shared with the team. Additionally, these tools follow the viral spread of a video outside of YouTube and throughout other social media sites and blogs.

Conclusion

The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can’t expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.

Contrary to what some people may believe about Google across the interweb, the general consensus is that you can still make really good income streams from some cleverly thought-out sites and optimising them for a lot of traffic = pots of gold.  It can be done easily with the correct strategic approach…

Lets skip the theory and get to what I know works from time proven methods on Google. I know the following system works 100% of the time with Google to attain rankings across a wide range of keywords. This is what I do with clients to build a successful site and has worked every time. The level of success will depend largely on the subject matter, it’s potential audience, and it’s level of competition on the net. The following will build a successful site in 1 years time via Google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyones favorite a self starter.

A) Prep work and begin building content. Long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a 100 page site. That’s just for openers. That’s 100 pages of real content, as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright/tos…etc eg: fluff pages.

B) Domain name:
Easily brandable. You want “google.com” and not “mykeyword.com”. Keyword domains are out – branding and name recognition are in – big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to se’s. Learn the lesson of “goto.com” becomes “Overture.com” and why they did it. It’s one of the most powerful gut check calls I’ve ever seen on the internet. That took serious resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding. (that is a whole ‘nother article, but learn the lesson as it applies to all of us).

C) Site Design:
The simpler the better. Rule of thumb: text content should out weight the html content. The pages should validate and be usable in everything from Lynx to leading edge browsers. eg: keep it close to html 3.2 if you can. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring. Stay away from heavy: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them – there is little reason to have them that I can see – they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don’t appreciate (search engines distaste for js is just one of them).
Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit.
You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root (this is rather controversial, but it’s been producing good long term results across many engines).
Don’t clutter and don’t spam your site with frivolous links like “best viewed” or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability.

Learn the lesson of Google itself – simple is retro cool – simple is what surfers want.

Speed isn’t everything, it’s almost the only thing. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until “something happens” in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request. Longer than that, and you’ll lose 10% of your audience for every second. That 10% could be the difference between success and not.

The pages:

D) Page Size:
The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can – I trust you are getting the idea here. Over 5k and under 10k. Ya – that bites – it’s tough to do, but it works. It works for search engines, and it works for surfers. Remember, 80% of your surfers will be at 56k or even less.

E) Content:
Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren’t sure what you need for content, start with the Overture keyword suggester and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

F) Density, position, yada…
Simple old fashioned seo from the ground up.
Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don’t fret about it). Use good sentences and speel check it Spell checking is becoming important as se’s are moving to auto correction during searches. There is no longer a reason to look like you can’t spell (unless you really are phonetically challenged).

G) Outbound Links:
From every page, link to one or two high ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text (this is ultra important for the future).

H) Insite Cross links.
(cross links in this context are links WITHIN the same site)
Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with Google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your pr value across your site. You do NOT want an “all star” page that out performs the rest of your site. You want 50 pages that produce 1 referral each a day and do NOT want 1 page that produces 50 referrals a day. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with Google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily. It’s the old share the wealth thing.

I) Put it Online.
Don’t go with virtual hosting – go with a stand alone ip.
Make sure the site is “crawlable” by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main “topic index” pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content).
Don’t put it online before you have a quality site to put online. It’s worse to put a “nothing” site online, than no site at all. You want it flushed out from the start.

Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don’t have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo (don’t hold your breath).

J) Submit
Submit the root to: Google, Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, (write Teoma), DirectHit, and Hotbot. Now comes the hard part – forget about submissions for the next six months. That’s right – submit and forget.

K) Logging and Tracking:
Get a quality logger/tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files (don’t use a lame graphic counter – you need the real deal). If your host doesn’t support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can’t run a modern site without full referrals available 24×7x365 in real time.

L) Spiderlings:
Watch for spiders from se’s. Make sure those that are crawling the full site, can do so easily. If not, double check your linking system (use standard hrefs) to make sure the spider found it’s way throughout the site. Don’t fret if it takes two spiderings to get your whole site done by Google or Fast. Other se’s are pot luck and doubtful that you will be added at all if not within 6 months.

M) Topic directories.
Almost every keyword sector has an authority hub on it’s topic. Go submit within the guidelines.

N) Links
Look around your keyword sector in Googles version of the ODP. (this is best done AFTER getting an odp listing – or two). Find sites that have links pages or freely exchange links. Simply request a swap. Put a page of on topic, in context links up your self as a collection spot.
Don’t freak if you can’t get people to swap links – move on. Try to swap links with one fresh site a day. A simple personal email is enough. Stay low key about it and don’t worry if site Z won’t link with you – they will – eventually they will.

O) Content.
One page of quality content per day. Timely, topical articles are always the best. Try to stay away from to much “bloggin” type personal stuff and look more for “article” topics that a general audience will like. Hone your writing skills and read up on the right style of “web speak” that tends to work with the fast and furious web crowd.

Lots of text breaks – short sentences – lots of dashes – something that reads quickly.

Most web users don’t actually read, they scan. This is why it is so important to keep low key pages today. People see a huge overblown page by random, and a portion of them will hit the back button before trying to decipher it. They’ve got better things to do that waste 15 seconds (a stretch) at understanding your whiz bang flash menu system. Because some big support site can run flashed out motorhead pages, that is no indication that you can. You don’t have the pull factor they do.

Use headers, and bold standout text liberally on your pages as logical separators. I call them scanner stoppers where the eye will logically come to rest on the page.

P) Gimmicks.
Stay far away from any “fades of the day” or anything that appears spammy, unethical, or tricky. Plant yourself firmly on the high ground in the middle of the road.

Q) Link backs
When YOU receive requests for links, check the site out before linking back with them. Check them through Google and their pr value. Look for directory listings. Don’t link back to junk just because they asked. Make sure it is a site similar to yours and on topic.

R) Rounding out the offerings:
Use options such as Email-a-friend, forums, and mailing lists to round out your sites offerings. Hit the top forums in your market and read, read, read until your eyes hurt you read so much.
Stay away from “affiliate fades” that insert content on to your site.

S) Beware of Flyer and Brochure Syndrome
If you have an ecom site or online version of bricks and mortar, be careful not to turn your site into a brochure. These don’t work at all. Think about what people want. They aren’t coming to your site to view “your content”, they are coming to your site looking for “their content“. Talk as little about your products and yourself as possible in articles (raise eyebrows…yes, I know).

T) Build one page of content per day.
Head back to the Overture suggestion tool to get ideas for fresh pages.

U) Study those logs.
After 30-60 days you will start to see a few referrals from places you’ve gotten listed. Look for the keywords people are using. See any bizarre combinations? Why are people using those to find your site? If there is something you have over looked, then build a page around that topic. Retro engineer your site to feed the search engine what it wants.
If your site is about “oranges”, but your referrals are all about “orange citrus fruit”, then you can get busy building articles around “citrus” and “fruit” instead of the generic “oranges”.
The search engines will tell you exactly what they want to be fed – listen closely, there is gold in referral logs, it’s just a matter of panning for it.

V) Timely Topics
Nothing breeds success like success. Stay abreast of developments in your keyword sector. If big site “Z” is coming out with product “A” at the end of the year, then build a page and have it ready in October so that search engines get it by December. eg: go look at all the Xbox and XP sites in Google right now – those are sites that were on the ball last summer.

W) Friends and Family
Networking is critical to the success of a site. This is where all that time you spend in forums will pay off. pssst: Here’s the catch-22 about forums: lurking is almost useless. The value of a forum is in the interaction with your fellow colleagues and cohorts. You learn long term by the interaction – not by just reading.
Networking will pay off in link backs, tips, email exchanges, and it will put you “in the loop” of your keyword sector.

X) Notes, Notes, Notes
If you build one page per day, you will find that brain storm like inspiration will hit you in the head at some magic point. Whether it is in the shower (dry off first), driving down the road (please pull over), or just parked at your desk, write it down! 10 minutes of work later, you will have forgotten all about that great idea you just had. Write it down, and get detailed about what you are thinking. When the inspirational juices are no longer flowing, come back to those content ideas. It sounds simple, but it’s a life saver when the ideas stop coming.

Y) Submission check at six months
Walk back through your submissions and see if you got listed in all the search engines you submitted to after six months. If not, then resubmit and forget again. Try those freebie directories again too.

Z) Build one page of quality content per day.
Starting to see a theme here? Google loves content, lots of quality content. Broad based over a wide range of keywords. At the end of a years time, you should have around 400 pages of content. That will get you good placement under a wide range of keywords, generate recip links, and overall position your site to stand on it’s own two feet.

Article pinched from: www.webmasterworld.com, author Brett_Tabke

Trends are far easier to observe than time. Timing of entering into a growing trend market can be costly if the trend has yet to enter public consciousness. The best time to enter the market is when the trend is entering mass awareness so educating a market is less expensive. The following 4 trends were selected for longevity, market awareness & potential profitability.

Hottest Trends in Business

Youth Market: The Y generation is a market force to be reckoned with. This power is why a small-town pop sensation, Avril Lavigne, can go from obscurity to the 5th most searched word on the Internet and move to the number 2 music spot on Billboard’s Top 200 charts. This power is also, why the auto industry can expect peak numbers from 27 million teen car buyers, and 4 million new buyers, a year for the next 8 years.

A quick, trend-spotting technique is to take a stroll to your local magazine rack. You can get a fast take on a market by looking at the thickness of the publication. Computer & business magazines, Red Herring and Fast Company, have thinned from an absence of advertisers. Take a look at the huge size of Muscle Magazine and Muscle & Fitness as the teenage bodybuilding markets have grown, so has the advertising.

Opportunities: Serving the teen auto aftermarket with customization should be hot. Try the Classic Driving School, a unique, teen driver training experience with a Porsche. Youth sport supplements should continue growing but with fierce competition. Look for avenues in fitness mixed with extreme attitudes.

Green Power: The environment trend has been around and been a struggle for many companies, such as automakers with electric cars trying to capitalize on the green awareness. The care of Mother Earth is still a big concern of society. According to a recent Harris Poll, over 74% of American adults believe in the global warming theory. Over 73% of U.S. citizens approve of the Kyoto agreement for countries to limit their carbon monoxide and greenhouse gas emissions. Although, the United States has not signed the accord, countries like Canada, that have accepted, the accord will be a watch place for the impact.

Opportunities: This trend will be supported by businesses reducing reliance on oil & gas with new forms of energy like wind power. Wind power experienced a 1.7 billion dollar increase in new equipment during 2001 (American Wind Energy Association). Also, look to companies helping companies reduce energy consumption with new forms of energy saving products. For example, one small business is profiting from installing energy efficient shipping doors for corporate shipping operations.

Quality of Life: The wellness and health trend shows no sign of slow down since it’s early infancy during the 80’s fitness movement. This trend is the convergence of rising health care costs in all developed countries, the aging of the baby boomer, the desire to keep our youth, and growing life expectancy.

Paul Zane Pilzer, world economist & entrepreneur; predicted with accuracy, the U.S. Savings & Loans crisis, foresees the wellness industry will be worth a trillion dollars by the year 2010. Wellness encompasses: looking good, feeling great, being healthy, and fighting aging and disease.

Opportunities: A wide range of products and services such as; botox and energy drinks, to nutraceuticals & wrinkle creams, to serve this large and steady trend. The energy drink market alone grossed $275 million in 2001, more than doubling the profits from the previous year.

Internet: The Internet meltdown was a period of shakeout for capitalists wanting to make a quick million. At the beginning of the century, many companies were formed to take advantage of the birth of the auto industry. Only a handful of players emerged to become household names but opportunities were plentiful in the area of; building roads, suburban communities, and restaurants. The Internet represents a similar venue.

Internet usage continues to grow. Pollster, Ipsos-Reid’s, Internet usage survey shows 72% of Americans have gone online at least once during 30 days in the past year. Canada has the second largest usage penetration with 62% of Canadians online. With increased usage comes more online spending. According to the Internet measurement firm, comScore Networks, total online spending in 2004, grew by 26 percent to a record level of more than $117 billion.

Opportunities: With billions of dollars of goods sold online, many businesses will need assistance in website rebuilds and search engine optimization. Look for growing markets in e-learning and online gaming. Don’t forget computer security. Gartner Group estimates only 35% of small & medium businesses have disaster recovery.

The impact of these long-term trends will continue to shape markets and industries. For new entrepreneurs, gauge the market closely. If you are expanding a business, look for complementary markets to those you are currently serving. For existing businesses with no growth plans, observe and plan for how these trends may impact your industry.  http://sbinformation.about.com

Every owner will undoubtedly have their own idea of becoming ’successful’ – some when they can afford their Bentley or Rolls etc.  I guess for me, a successful business is all the above, but a particular importance must be made on improving and offering the very best service tothe customer/client.  Without customer experience, people will leave your company for competitor A, who takes better care of them, thus reducing your revenue, reducing your profits.

The world revolves around customer satisfaction, and businesses must realise that the customer is always right.  There’s a known saying, that a happy customer will tell another person about you, but an unhappy customer will tell ten people about their complaints.  It’s true.

So how the hell are you meant to keep all your customers happy?  Surely you can’t please everyone… can you?

I scanned the internet this morning, and came across an interesting page at www.jobbankusa.com who list the top 10 criteria when choosing your market:

Whatever target market -TM- you choose, check to see that it meets the following 10 essential criteria:

1. Your TM has a big problem. They think about it all the time, it keeps them awake at night.

2. Your TM wants the problem solved. The impact and cost of the problem is big enough that they will act to solve it (some people have problems they are quite happy to live with!).

3. You can easily find your TM. Do they belong to associations? Are there conferences for this target market? Are there publications? Where do they hangout? If it’s not easy to find your target market, it will cost you a lot of money to find them.

4. Your TM has money to spend. No point having a terrific service if your target market hasn’t the money to pay for it. I know this sounds basic but it’s often overlooked.

5. Your TM has a history of paying to have this problem solved. You want to focus on a target market where there is a proven track record of problems and people paying to solve them. A good sign is if your competitors are selling similar services to the target market.

6. There’s enough of your TM out there to sustain a business. How many people or businesses are in your target market? Realistically how many will become your clients and what will that be worth to you? Is that enough?

7. You enjoy working with your TM. Think about what types of people are in your target market and visualize being with them day in and day out. How does that feel? Will you feel energized or drained at the end of the day? Remember, you are also in business to enjoy yourself so make sure you will enjoy working with this target market.

8. You have a passion for helping and serving this TM. Passion is an essential ingredient for selling your services.

9. You have valuable expertise and experience you can offer. Your target market will want to buy from people who are experts in their field. Think about what specific expertise and experience you can offer your target market.

10. Your TM fits with your ultimate lifestyle package. What hours do you want to work? Where do you want to work? How do you want to work? Does this fit in with your target market? Ensure that working with your target market will enable you to live the kind of life you want to live.

Once you have found your target market, the next step is to refine it even further. Decide on the profile of your ideal client. What sort of person are they? Decide on their demographics and psychographics. Demographics are the basic facts like age, gender, income, location, etc. Psychographics are their characteristics, values etc. This will enable you to focus even more.

The clearer you are about who you want to do business with, the more you will attract exactly the clientele you’re looking for. You will then need your Sales Conversation skills to convert them from prospects into clients.  A handy tip I did when targeting an audience, was to visit review sites across the web for reviews of competitors, read people throughts: what they thought was good and bad.  I used the good stuff, and fixed the bad for Project X.  Win-Win.

Anyway, I have a few things on today, so this is Phil Owen, signing off…