Category: Social Marketing

Article Contributed by Cameron Johnson

Whenever small business owners look in to the possibility of doing some kind of video marketing, they very often find themselves presented with outdated information about what works and what doesn’t.

Successful YouTube videos share a number of important characteristics that are a combination of common sense and a better than average understanding of how people interact with broadcast media. In these respects, video isn’t really all that different from podcasts, comics or e-books. Audiences respond most positively when some basic principles are followed. Here are some to consider.

Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Putting up a couple of videos and then going home isn’t going to help anyone build an audience. Broadcast television and radio were built on a schedule. From the evening news to Saturday morning cartoons, the biggest audiences were always built by programs that maintained a regular schedule.

It didn’t really matter all that much what channel a program was on, nor did it matter all that much what kind of signal it was. As long as viewers found their program at the regularly scheduled time and channel, the chances of that program building a large audience increased. Small businesses that start a video channel should employ the same technique.

Hold the Emmys 

When you first start out, you won’t be producing award-winning episodes. That’s perfectly acceptable. What you do want to do is make sure you are producing consistent quality and maintaining an easily understood format. Your show should be straightforward and easy to get without a lot of explanation. Some entertainment channels exceed 10 million viewers and don’t over-emphasize production values.

Production Values

Of all the things a beginning video producer should pay attention to, this one is likely the most important, at least for your early material. Numerous video channels have failed because no matter how good their material might be, if shots are poorly lit, the sound is inferior quality and the video format itself is not the conventional standard, it makes things unnecessarily difficult for your audience.

With video, lighting is everything. You need to make sure you have even television-quality lighting in every shot. If possible you should work with a stationary camera unless you have a really compelling reason not to. Second comes audio. Investing in good microphones is crucial and learning to record synchronized audio with each shot is equally important. Poor lighting or audio will doom a video channel no matter what the quality of your material.

Instructional 

Where ever possible, your video materials should make some attempt to provide the audience with useful information. There are a huge number of ways to do this. Companies like Blue Coat distribute short demo videos to explain how their product can be used to solve common network and security problems. Some channels have accumulated as many as 5.6 million subscribers using this format. Other channels might explain how to bake better cookies or how to fix a shingle roof. Whatever the materials are, as long as they are providing information that can be utilized by the audience, the chances of your video channel becoming popular increase dramatically.

Accelerate

Rapid audience growth is possible if you have a rapid release schedule. This principle goes hand in hand with a short video format. Putting up hour-long episodes is generally frowned upon by audiences and is likely to put too much pressure on your production at the beginning. Try to keep your updates at five minutes or less and trade the long formats for faster episode releases. Producers like Stampy have made a career out of daily updates, and they have the ad revenues to prove it.

Video production is a career in itself. With an Internet-savvy approach, however, it can be both rewarding and financially successful for both the channel and your business.

Social media is not going away; it’s up to businesses to make the full use of it. This infographic will show you how B2B social media can generate leads for your business and connect you with your customers.

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, hosts more than 300 million users in numerous countries. As the largest B2B network in the world, the site provides a platform for job seekers and recruiters, but it also offers fabulous marketing opportunities for companies. On LinkedIn, business owners can connect with other professionals in their target market, and share info on their products and services with their connections. Therefore, as much as it helps individual users, LinkedIn is also very useful for companies. Let us see how you can use it as an effective marketing tool for your company.

CREATE A LARGE NETWORK

LinkedIn attracts a constant stream of new professionals, including executives, publishers, and journalists. To get started on LinkedIn, it is important to build a network of businesses and potential partners in the same or related fields. What you should do is reach out to people who can join your network as influencers or potential partners. Do this by focusing on companies that offer similar services or complimentary products while keeping an eye open for individuals and firms that could become customers.

As you build your network, you might find almost limitless opportunities that can help you build your business. When looking for partners, you can form mutually beneficial relationships that refer clients to one another or offer products and services that complement each other. When searching LinkedIn, also look for your employees who identify you as their employer in their profiles. When you want to get media attention, you can search for journalists. Research shows that 85 percent of journalists have LinkedIn accounts.

LinkedIn features that you can use to build your network include Advanced People Search, introduction requests, and InMail. You can also either start or join groups that relate to your target market, so you can share your expertise and perspective in ways that contribute to discussions, answer questions, and build the value and authority of your brand. Also, you can view available jobs and post your job openings to the site to interact with people who can contribute positively to your company, as well as with people who can use your skills.

LinkedIn Answers gives you another way to gain momentum for building your network. The forum gives business people like you a chance to share business knowledge and connect with like-minded colleagues. Set accumulating contacts as your overall goal for your LinkedIn marketing, and you will build a network of people with whom you can exchange knowledge and promote your business. As you engage your target audience of decision makers who can benefit from your goods and services, you can distribute your marketing messages to them.

BUILD UP THE COMPANY´S PROFILE

When you send connection requests, people will first see your company’s LinkedIn profile. Therefore, so you should craft it to grab the attention of your audience and inspire them to join your network. Make sure you complete the profile with relevant, exciting, and updated information. You should also include your company logo, add a professional photo and clearly state what your company does, and how it can contribute to the audience.

While constructing the profile, you should include both your company’s primary physical and website addresses, and keywords related to your business. Use bold headlines to describe your expertise in the format of an interesting story. You should also include links to published articles, complete projects and case studies that you’ve created in order to reinforce your qualifications. You can use Google Docs, SlideShare, and other platforms to give people access to your events, reading lists, polls, videos, images, and other content. Finally, make sure that the profile includes links to your website and blog. Don’t forget to also put a LinkedIn sharing button on your websites and blogs, so your visitors can join your professional network.

REQUEST AND SHOW RECOMMENDATIONS

Think of LinkedIn as a place where you can showcase your company. List the products and services you provide, so you can become a recommended company that others can review. Recommendations make excellent tools for marketers because they attract prospective customers who will share your information with their network. Additionally, people can ask your connections for recommendations, contributing to the information displayed on your profile.

When your customers leave testimonials about you and your firm, you gain an invaluable boost to your marketing efforts because they come from real people who have LinkedIn profiles. However, never forget the following – before you can get recommended, you must motivate your customers by providing them with outstanding products and services, as well as with exceptional customer service. With these preconditions met, LinkedIn will enhance your marketing goals even further.

SHARE CONTENT

Never overlook the value of content creation as part of your marketing strategy. By providing additional value to your customers, you establish yourself as a team player and an authoritative source of products, services, and information. When you add content to your business profile page, you increase the likelihood of reaching your audience more than if you added it on other social networks – most LinkedIn users have a business mindset, so they are more likely to respond to your contributions.

You can share content on LinkedIn through status updates. Try posting links to helpful articles, actionable tips and in-depth analyses to position your firm as an industry leader. Present a broader, collaborative presence on LinkedIn by sharing content from other companies as well as your own. When you do that, you can add your thoughts and contribute to an online discussion that will ultimately send business your way.

While using LinkedIn, you want to cooperate with other enterprises and prospects, but you should also prioritize your interests by displaying the capabilities and personality of your company. For example, you can readily share the core attributes of your business by leveraging the LinkedIn feature that displays your blog posts on your profile. The function connects to blogging platforms such as WordPress and TypePad and automatically pulls your updates into LinkedIn. Additionally, you can cross-post your published articles from other sites to capitalize on LinkedIn’s network effect. LinkedIn editors can expand the reach of your message if they notice your content and give it featured status.

USING LINKEDIN ADS

Finally, using adds will also contribute to your marketing efforts. For example, LinkedIn Display Advertising gives you another way to reach your audience. You can use its built-in tools to target the right audience, drive traffic to your site, and measure your results. Moreover, LinkedIn Self-Service Advertising gives you another effective way to increase the visibility of your company and share information. When using the system, you pay by clicks and define your audience by job title, function, and other metrics.

When you use LinkedIn as a marketing tool, it becomes a valuable asset to your company. As a social network for professionals, LinkedIn delivers quality leads and opportunities for people who want to network and do business. Your company’s profile, network, recommendations, content, and advertising represent marketing opportunities you should begin exploiting today.

About the Author

Natalie Smith, a freelance writer from Seattle, ardently follows topics related to entrepreneurship, small businesses, social media, and customer service. For more information, reach her @Natalie Smith

If you’re not fully maximizing your website you’ll be missing out on new subscribers.

There are many ways to capture a visitor to your website, and turn them into a new subscriber, but if you’re not fully using all of the strategies available to do so, then you’re going to be missing out on filling your pipeline with potential clients and customers.

In this article I’m going to be sharing three very simple ways you can fully maximize your website so that you capture more visitors who come to your website.

Driving traffic to your website is only one side of the coin; once you’ve got visitors there you then need to get them onto your list!

Having a sign-up box on your website detailing your ‘free taste’ in exchange for your visitor’s name and email address is one way that you can do this, but deciding WHERE to place your all-important sign-up box for maximum impact is also just as important.

Depending on whether your page is a sales page, an information page, or some other type of web page will determine the strategy you use for enticing your web site visitors to sign up to your list.

I’d like to share three different, but very effective, sign-up page strategies with you.

1.  At The Top Of Every Web Page

Your sign-up box should appear at the top of every single webpage on your website – the top right-hand corner has been researched to be the most effective place to put this.

Why?

Because you never know where someone will enter your website from.  As your site grows and more pages get added, it will be getting picked up by the search engines for different terms or key phrases – and they might be phrases that aren’t on your home page, but on one of your other pages instead.

Someone could enter your website and leave via the same page (in other words they don’t stop to look around), and if you haven’t got a sign-up box on that page, you’ve got no chance of getting their name and email address – and they won’t know you offer a ‘free taste’.

2. Using Exit Grabber Software

Another sign-up strategy that I’m currently using is Exit Grabber software.  This is a clever piece of software that knows when a visitor is about to leave my website and only pops up just before they leave.

The popup box reminds a visitor not to leave without first grabbing their free gift, whether that’s a report, checklist, tip sheet, or some of kind of gift that you’re offering in exchange for a visitor giving you their name and email address.

3. Adding A PS To A Sales Page

Internet marketers have done their research and the conclusion is that a lot of visitors to your sales page are going to scroll straight down to the bottom of your sales page first to read your PS’s!

So, if the first two strategies aren’t suitable for a particular page on your website or one of your sales pages, be sure to include a PS that tells your visitor what your ‘free taste’ is. And rather than include the sign-up box in the PS, provide a hyperlink that takes them to your sign-up page.

All three sign-up page strategies offer something slightly different, depending on your particular web page, and are very effective for getting your web site visitors to sign up to your list.

So once you’ve got traffic coming to your website ensure that you’re capturing your visitor’s information by implementing at least one of the three different strategies I’ve shared with you today.

Website traffic is not a problem. Getting it to visit YOUR website is!

There are an abundance of your ideal clients out there all searching for the solutions that your services offer.  But the problem is they don’t know about you … yet!

As a solopreneur, one ingredient you need for a successful online business is traffic… and lots of it!  But there are so many websites out there, all competing for the same traffic, that it can be difficult to attract visitors to YOUR website!

Today, I’d like to share with you my top five strategies for attracting highly targeted visitors:

1.       Offer a Free Taste

Your free taste is something that you give to someone in exchange for them giving you their name and email address, and signing up to your list.  Your free taste is also your chance to show off your expertise, and give your new subscriber a sampling of what it is you offer.

It must be something of value to your subscriber, without giving away the whole shop!

Then you simply promote your free taste on your website, in your email signature, in your Resource Bio, and any other place you can think of!  Place a call to action and people will read it, and click through to your website to get what it is you’re offering.

2.       Get Others To Promote Your website For You

If you have products and programs for sale then you can easily get other people to promote them for you by offering an affiliate program.   People will sign up to your affiliate program and promote your products and programs through their website, newsletter, and/or blog.  In exchange you offer them a percentage commission for each sale that your affiliate makes – and make it a generous commission so that they have a real incentive to promote you.

If you’re currently using a shopping cart service, check out everything they have to offer – they may have an affiliate program included as part of their service.  Mine does!

3.       Participate in a Joint Venture (JV)

This is an excellent way to drive highly targeted traffic back to your website, and very easy for you to organize.  Gather together some of you colleagues who offer complementary products and services to you and agree to promote each other’s products and services to your list.

I participated in a joint venture earlier this year where the organizer created a dedicated web page for this promotion.  Everyone’s promotional ‘blurb’ was listed on the website, and each ‘joint venturee’ sent an announcement out to their list during a specified period directing their subscribers to this webpage.  I got a TON of new subscribers as a result!

4.       Content Marketing

Several years ago, think around 2008-09, one of the most successful and cost effective online marketing strategies that you could do is to submit your articles to various online article submission websites. But now, with the onslaught of social media and video, this strategy has now expanded and you have to think in terms of a complete content marketing strategy.

Content marketing involves taking your written article and making it available on:

• Your blog
• Article directories
• Social media
• Recording as an audio file (podcast)
• Recording as a video

Whilst this may sound like a lot of work, it really isn’t once you get a system going for it, and this is a great way to:

• promote your services;
• elevate you to ‘expert’ status within your chosen niche; and
• grow your subscriber list.

Remember … your content marketing strategy has one purpose, and that is to drive traffic back to your website.  The search engines love it when you have lots of different links coming back to your website, so content marketing is also great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)!  With each piece of content you submit, you need to include some kind of call to action (and if you’re using Twitter, you don’t have many characters to play around with) that contains information about you, your business, and an active hyperlink back to your website.  For example, my calls to action always direct readers back to a blog post which, in turn, directs them to sign up for my free taste.

5.       Host a Free Teleclass

Hosting a free teleclass is a great way for you to get out in front of your target audience. They actually get to listen to you presenting your information, and have the opportunity to ask you questions on the call – all of which can’t be achieved just by writing articles!

And it also gives you to chance to interact with your target market, and find out valuable information about their struggles and pains. It all goes towards building the like, know, and trust factor that is so important when building a solo service business.

All of these strategies work well on their own, and I’ve had a huge amount of success with each one of them!  You can choose to implement just one strategy, or use a combination.  Whichever you choose, they all achieve the same goal… to drive highly targeted traffic to your website!