Online Video Marketing for Charlottesville businesses
Online video marketing is exploding as technology finally catches up to business needs. As the web continues its evolution, there has been a change in both the quantity and quality of web videos. Many of the social media sites like YouTube began as platforms for online users to upload their own personally produced videos. With the increasing number of TV episodes shown online and the advent of premium TV content sites like Hulu, the demand for higher production values is rapidly increasing.
This increase in professional content has created a higher expectation by the typical user. This evolution does not mean that individually produced videos will not still make their way to social media sites especially, if they are out-of-the-box creatively. But it does set the bar much higher for businesses that want to remain competitive in their online marketing programs. Although a large percentage of the professionally produced videos online are derived from longer format TV shows, the growth rate for high quality videos last year was close to twenty-five percent.
YouTube will continue to be a valuable venue to help support for your business’s Internet marketing program, but it will become increasingly more important to provide production values that surpass the user-generated content that proliferates. A good starting point can be TV spots that have been custom produced for your company. Since they can be viewed from anywhere, custom spots are preferable to “donut” spots that have your name and phone number added for your market but also air elsewhere.
By working with an online media company that specializes in internet marketing, videos with high production values can be produced for your firm’s web site and for use on the social media platforms. It is also important that your partner provide complete SEO services so that your videos can be optimized for the web. Producing great video content may be key, but it is equally important to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible.
Read More2009 Internet Marketing Trend #6 – Social Marketing
Social Marketing is using the power of online social networks to communicate with your market. The two most popular social networks today are Facebook (175 million users) and Twitter (over 6 million users). I like to think of these networks as a channel for discussion – a place to listen and exchange ideas about your market, your customers, and your company. Much like any social gathering, it’s important to balance your participation between socializing and marketing.
The tools for leveraging social networks are improving daily and with the right strategy it is possible to create a substantial community within several weeks. Imagine having several hundred, even thousands of customers at your fingertips to discuss market trends, customer needs, and new product releases. It’s happening right now. LL Bean, for example, has 857 followers on Twitter as of today and can communicate with them 24/7.
Michelle MacPhearson offers a great free eBook on the trends and myths surrounding Social Media – The Social Media Myth.
If you would like to learn more about Social Marketing please contact me @ 434-806-3272.
Read MoreLocal Search 101, Part 1 – Search Engine Watch (SEW)
Local search engine optimization is more and more critical to businesses serving a specific geographic region. The front page of Google is the new Yellow Pages back page.
Read MoreAs the economy opens the door of opportunity for many people who have lost their jobs, more small businesses are on the rise — and so is the demand for local search. Are you looking to venture beyond the printed yellow pages? You should be.
According to a SBI+M article, 54 percent of Americans have substituted the Internet and local search for phone books. Ninety percent of online commercial searches result in a local offline purchase and 61 percent of all local searches results in a transaction. Do I have your attention?
How Google Reader Can Simplify Your Life
How would you like to save an hour a day and stay more informed than ever before?
Google Reader is a great to tool to help track information on the Internet, identify stories of interest, and quickly link to relavent content.
First, get a Google account and sign up for Google Reader. Next, visit the sites and blogs you normally visit and if they have an RSS feed add it to Google Reader. I like to label my feeds and categorize them based on topics.
Next, swith to the List view. Now when you load up Google Reader you have a simple window within which to scan new posts from your favorite sites. Once you find something of particular interest you can either visit the site and leave a comment, tag the posts and choose to make your tag list public, or quote the post in one of your own posts.
All three option have great implications for linking to your site and enable you to easily follow a topic or story as it unfolds.
Try Google Reader and discover one of the Internet’s best kept secrets!
Read MoreCharlottesville Search Engine Optimization – What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the combination of factors that enables indexing of a website by various search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and thousands of less popular sites. For illustrative puropses, we’ll draw from Charlottesville Search Engine Optimization examples of SEO in action.
The goal of SEO is to have search engines index or spider a site so that when people search in the search engines they can find the site. This is important for most sites, since more traffic equates to more business or raised awareness for a cause.
Some sites however have no need for SEO depending on their purpose. For example, a site may be established simply to serve as a landing page or URL devoted to a particular audience driven to the site through other means. The site may in fact be password protected.
Our focus in this discussion is on sites that do wish to draw visitors from search engine use and there are several key factors both on the website itself (on-page) and off the site (off-page) that influence how sites are indexed and for which key search terms sites are identified.
Read More
