WDTalk

Does it surprise anyone that over one-fourth of search results – for the world’s largest brands are links to USER generated content? Peer recommendations are the know, like and trust factors that have catapulted social media into mainstream commerce.

In fact, over 75% of consumers trust – peer recommendations while less than 15% trust advertisements. Is it any wonder so many companies have jumped on the bandwagon, branding themselves via Facebook, Twitter and corporate blogs?

To be truly successful in Social Media ventures – you need to ENGAGE your potential customers. It isn’t enough to simply set up a corporate blog and allow comments to your posts. I know I read quite a few blogs and their ensuing comments, and I’m amazed how many readers ask questions that are never answered by the publisher. Where’s the engagement? Not only does your blog need fresh content – you need to field questions in the comments. It’s called dialog. In marketing circles, it’s called MONEY TALKS.

Social Media strategies – are akin to networking strategies. It’s about building your friends’ networks and keeping your profile status updated. It encompasses more than allowing others to write on your Facebook wall – it’s contributing to their success as well. There are potential clients on your friends sites (their sphere of influence) that you could or would never be able to reach on your own.

Quantity versus quality – what works, what doesn’t? Reading Tweets from a user every 30 seconds gets annoying. I’d rather see quality versus quantity, and I bet I’m not alone. I believe social media pays best via meaningful engagement.

Exchange4Me is one of a number of social media Exchange systems, and our first to review on WDTalk. Basically, the site is designed to help you increase your site traffic and popularity “FAST and FREE” through the use of coins that are can be used to get traffic for your links.

What can you do with these coins? According to Exchange4Me:

You can use the coins in your balance to place a value on your site or video. For example, you have a fans page you want gain more fans, so you set your page to give 5 Coins for any person who become fan, everytime one of our users become your fan, 5 Coins will be deducted from your account. In other words, if you have 5000 coins in your account and you set to give 5 coins for each view, that means you will get 1000 fans automatically.

You will earn coins for every Like, Follow, View, +1 or visit from you, to our users. Everytime you LIKE a page, watch a youtube video, press +1 on someone’s google plus or visiting a fellow visitor’s site you gain Coins.

Out of curiosity, I checked Exchange4Me’s Alexa ranking, which currently stands at 42,603 globally – impressive! Any time your Alexa rating ranks in the top 100,000 sites, you’re doing something right.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world - which is owned by none other than the largest search engine, Google.  Volumes have been written about video optimization, but your core objective should be about the quality of each visitor experience.

I ran across this bit of code on - Web Hosting Talk this morning (OP did not list the source), where the script sets up a YouTube video to autostart only one time, then if the visitor comes back on that page, the video will not start again.

<script language=”Javascript”>
function played(){
var ca = document.cookie.split(‘;’);
for(var i=0; i<ca.length; i++) {
var c = ca[i];
while (c.charAt(0)==’ ‘) c = c.substring(1,c.length);
if (c.indexOf(“played=”) == 0) return 1;
}
var date = new Date();
var days = 7;
date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000));
document.cookie = “played=1″+”; expires=”+date.toGMTString()+”; path=/”;
return 0;
}
if(played()==0){
document.write(“<embed src=\”http://www.youtube.com/v/W5E2Q6PW&autoplay=1\” type=\”application/x-shockwave-flash\” wmode=\”transparent\” width=\”740\” height=\”400\”></embed>”);
}
else{
document.write(“<embed src=\”http://www.youtube.com/v/W5E2Q6PW\” type=\”application/x-shockwave-flash\” wmode=\”transparent\” width=\”740\” height=\”400\”></embed>”);
}
</script>

Replace the YouTube embed with a valid URL.

Please let me know if this works for you (Or Not)

I’m constantly amazed at how technically advanced my grandchildren have become - I think because of their early exposure to TV and other visual medias. We’ve evolved into a visually rich society – actually a global community. It begins in the early learning and development years of our children. It imprints their thought processes.

Online Video Providers
Enter YouTube and other providers offering video channels, enabling small business to ramp up their marketing venues, giving them the ability to reach global markets, whereas only mega-businesses once ventured. Text is text, and a picture is worth a thousand words, but videos can propel your business to new levels.

Only a few short years ago - television commercials were financially out of the reach for the bulk of small businesses. With the development of high speed broadband networks, TV-like advertising via YouTube suddenly became affordable.

YouTube is a video sharing website - allowing its members to upload, share and comment on an expansive database of videos. While you may be struggling to increase page views to your website, YouTube registers billions of page views monthly. Why? Video sells! It’s RED HOT!

What’s the impact of online video?
I’ve seen studies that projected 3 of 4 adults have watched online videos and on average, nearly 20% do so daily – and just not by themselves. Nearly two-thirds of those shared that experience with someone else or a group. Online video ad spending is approaching $1 Billion annually, if not already there.

Why Use Online Video Marketing?

• They’re practical for businesses wanting to show demonstrations of products or services.
• They’re great for introducing your staff or doing a virtual tour of your facilities.
• They can drive prospects to your website, jumpstarting sales.
• It’s extremely cost effective compared to other advertising venues.

What is everyone watching?
News captures attention across all generations, followed by comedy or humorous videos. Still over 20% view educational videos, and all markets continue to grow exponentially as broadband expands its reach.

Some Tips

• Be Entertaining: To maximize your reach for market penetration, your video must be entertaining and have perceived value to the prospects you’re targeting.
• Be Professional: Presently, over 60% of viewers prefer professionally developed videos versus those developed by amateurs. That gap diminishes with the younger generation, but still holds true.
• Focus on the core product or service you’re featuring: If you’re featuring dedicated servers, save shared hosting for another clip. Spreading your message across multiple platforms distracts your viewers.
• Be Consistent: Branding is important. We all know IBM, HP and Dell, but their marketing campaigns drive home their respective messages with regularity. Consistency is KEY to growing traffic.

My Recommendation
Have some fun. Be creative. Think out of the box. Break out of the direct mail, phone tag day-after-day routine of driving business. Video works! Like every other advertising venue, measure its results, then tweak your presentation and re-measure your results. Practice may not make perfect, but it will improve sales and your bottom line. And that’s where I want to be, right along with you.

YouTube recently published a Creator Playbook – that delves (extensively) into how to BEST create and optimize your videos. Included are recommendations for metadata optimization, programming/production and social media connections.

Two key topics are “audience approval” and “relevance to query.”  Audience approval simply measures the popularity of your video in terms of views and playing time, and to some extent community factors like comments, subscribers and channel activity. Relevance to query ties into metadata and tags.

Unlike conventional search query - exact match titles carry less weight. You do want to position primary keywords at the beginning of the title, though and branding toward the end.

A key variance from conventional search – lies with meta descriptions because they can be much longer, but here again YouTube recommends putting the most compelling information at the beginning (of course, using keywords).

A little research on what tags – your competitors are using to rank well goes a long way to enhance how your video will fare.

Drive business with social networking

Social networks are essentially online communities. Their success has translated into business opportunites, and have rapidly become a vital ingredient in diverse marketing strategies. So what are some of the reasons businesses have taken this plunge?

Increased Customer Loyalty: Loyalty and sales increase tenfold (as churn nose dives) if you consistently share quality knowledge base information in a format your clients can relate to. It allows for dynamic colaboration with prospects and clients beyond the scope of your corporate website.

Additional Revenue Streams: Social networking sites can be monetized in a variety of fashions, e.g., micropayments or partnerships, but social networks tend to be more content focused, diverting drift from the distraction of ads.

Branding Opportunities: Design your network to be customer-facing and customer-centric, thus expanding opportunities to promote your goods and services.

Enhance Customer Support: Are you looking to raise the bar from satisfied customers to ‘Raving Fans’ – clients who will advocate your products and services in the industry? Social networks are a great support resource. Raving fans invite their friends, share their stories and promote your business for you. Peer-to-peer recommendations on social media platforms are worth their weight in gold.

Creating videos that draw traffic and produce results (ROI) – isn’t as hard as you might imagine. You don’t need a $7000 video camera or production crew, but you do need to follow some simple guidelines – to separate your video from the millions already out there competing for your time. The cold hard facts – you have just 8 seconds on average to capture your viewer’s attention. If you don’t have a HOOK that underscores a unique perspective, achievement, offer or curiosity – that causes some sensory stimulation, 80% of your prospects will move on without watching the entire video.

If you’re presenting a hidden benefit – (something your audience may not have heard of), that’s a unique curiosity hook. A lot of HOW TO videos are based on hidden benefits.

If you’re presenting a better way to do something – or looking at a solution from a different angle, that’s a unique perspective hook. I can envision using this hook to sell any number of products or services, from SEO consulting to building a deck in your backyard.

If you start your video by underscoring your awards or successes – that’s a unique achievement hook. Would visitors rather watch a video on self-defense from a white belt or a black belt martial artist?

And the most often used HOOK in business videos – the unique powerful offer, which normally revolves around words such as FREE, risk free, exceeds your expectations and so on.

Design your hook to last no more than 30 seconds to 1 minute – then transition to your explanation on how you intend to help them get from the promise of the hook to the results they want.

Always, always - start the meat of your video with, “In this video, I’m going to … show you (how to get from point “query” to point “results”). Then show how it works, how they can do it and what they need to produce results – and finally, when they can expect to realize those results.

End your video with a call to action – if you do this, you will get that.

My Recommendation – educate your viewer, using a mixture of graphics that forces them to look. Demonstrate ownership experience by showing them a working example, which attributes to goal manifestation.

To increase your ROI – remember that a confused prospect never buys – present your video with a SINGLE action oriented goal, and match that to what the viewer AND you want.