New kinds of social media are popping up like wildfire, but which ones are catching the eyes of consumers?
We all know the social media big timers—Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—but a new wave of alternative social media sites are worth looking into. Some have been around a while, but they can still help your business’ visibility and discoverability.
Relatively new to the social media mix: Pinterest.com
YouTube has been around since 2005 as a video sharing website. Recently, companies have been using this online tool to promote their services and advertise themselves. YouTube videos work because they are easily accessible and can be shared easily. Not to mention they help with Google Optimization.
StumbleUpon was created to let users “stumble” through sites related to their interests. All companies have to do to become a part of StumbleUpon is submit their website and associated categories. From here, whenever a person clicks “stumble,” their website has a chance to pop up on the site. On StumbleUpon, a link to a company’s blog or specific product pages would be most effective.
Pinterest (pictured above) is a different kind of social media site. A mix between StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Facebook, users can see images other users have “pinned,” or uploaded. You can “re-pin” an image someone else has already pinned onto your own boards. Users create boards and categorize them however they want, such as fitness, food, crafts, or weddings. Business can get into it, too. A bakery could utilize this site by uploading pictures of their wedding cakes and linking the pin on their website. Just one re-pin can reach hundreds of people. Uses of this site can be limitless to a company.
It involves both an aesthetic and structural update meant to keep users more engaged and on the site longer. YouTube’s ultimate goal is most certainly to increase their (thus, Google’s) advertising revenue potential, but put your cynicism away, because the key is: It’s designed to keep users more engaged and on the site longer. That is what you really need to know.
Here are the 2 key changes to the site and why they should matter to you:
More emphasis on Channels and Subscriptions than just on individual videos What Does This Mean? On the home page, users will now see handy channel categories helping them browse for content that interests them–even stuff they may not have considered being on YouTube. There’s also recommended channels, which is based on previous searches and views. And a customizable feed of new videos added by channels they subscribe to. Users can also connect from YouTube to Google+ and Facebook to see what theirs friends are sharing.
What Does This Mean For Your Business? YouTube currently reports 3 billion video views per day, which will start translating into lots more engaged viewers, with all the redesign alerts YouTube has all over the site. As video watchers start to more actively peruse content through YouTube’s cleaner structure, you need to take steps to get in front of them!
Develop videos that you can upload on a fairly consistent basis: seasonal tips/motivation/ideas/inspiration, how-to’s on something your company produces, footage from events (especially great if you run a club, restaurant, or store and had customers in attendance–most people love seeing themselves and will share that content), footage of your company building a house for charity, even silly antics around the business.
Social media is a huge part of marketing these days, and a great way to reach out and captivate your audience. When utilizing these channels there are some important steps you should take to make sure you cover all the bases when continuing to develop your brand on these networks.
So you have an active Facebook page… check. You’re active on Twitter… check. But what about Youtube? Do you have a channel set up? Youtube channels are a necessity these days, and there is much more that you can do to your channel than just uploading videos. Just check out the new promotion Dreamworks is running for the new Kung Fu Panda 2 movie coming out. And MAKE SURE you click for epicness at the end of the first video..
Branding Your Youtube Channel
Not every business has hundreds of thousands of dollars to dedicate to developing Youtube Pages like Dreamworks does. However, all businesses should want their Youtube channel to be cohesive with their brand, and Youtube makes their channels fairly customizable to allow you to do so.
The first step is to change the colors on your channel to represent your brand and drop in a custom background image. Get creative with your Youtube background! You have the opportunity to drive users viewing your videos to your other social media platforms and even your website, so use the space wisely. Check out Home Run Inn Pizza’s Youtube Page to see what I’m talking about.
SEO value of Youtube
Youtube is a great way to boost your SEO rankings for your website as well. If you host all of the videos on your website through Youtube it then creates cross-linking that is great for boosting your organic rankings. Also, make sure you are Optimizing your Youtube videos correctly so they can be properly crawled by the search engines, and give you the most bang for your buck as possible.
What is the best way to get your YouTube Video to rank? There are a thousand sites that are out there to try and convince you there is an exact science to this, but there is only one way to truly make your video rank, which is to pay for it…Which we don’t want to do, so here are a few quick and easy optimizations to give your video the best shot at ranking on YouTube
1) Do your keyword research for your video title
Don’t just title your video something random, make sure you use relevant keywords to that are about the video
Check your keyword tool to make sure that the keywords in your title will generate traffic
i. A great video is a great video, but is it really that great if no one can find it?
Make sure you check-out the autocomplete function for YouTube video search for video title ideas
i. This is the easiest way to do keyword research for your video, just start typing in adjectives about your video and let the autocomplete function guide you
When creating the title, add keywords to the front of the title as they are deemed more important by the engines
Keep your title under 60 characters, titles are truncated around this number
2) Add a transcript to your video
Always add a transcript to your video for closed captioning purposes
i. Transcripts are crawlable by the search engines and therefore with transcripts for the videos, there is more content on the page/channel
I thought for my last post of the year I’d give you something fun to read. After all, I know you’re all getting holiday-antsy. Yep, we are too. Multiple cookie breaks throughout the day, quick MI Ave runs during lunch, a YouTube video or two to end the day…so here’s something fun for you to take a look at. And if you get caught watching videos at work, I’ve provided some educational tips to YouTube Search as well
This week, YouTube announced their top videos of the year. You may have seen some of these, and some may be new to you. Either way, check it out. My all-time fave is still David After Dentist but I think that’s a few years old….
Now for the educational part…
If you still don’t think video is an integral part of a marketing mix as we begin 2011, you are mistaken! During 2010, over 700 billion YouTube videos were viewed. 700 BILLION! People are watching video, folks, and if there is any opportunity to add video to your website as well as to YouTube, DO IT. In fact, since YouTube is the second largest search engine right now, and it does have its own algorithm for ranking videos, you should also do the following:
Create a customized channel with your company name and look and feel to be consistent to your site or other marketing materials – but give it a kick! Have fun!
Upload all your videos first and use the Embed functionality to showcase them on your site. This allows YouTube, not your website, to host the video (less bandwidth and hosting expense for you) as well as the ability to have more people view them – one important ranking feature that is part of the algorithm
The Apple iPhone’s inability to display Adobe’s flash technology has been a source of much controversy ever since the iPhone first conquered the market 3 years ago. While many have speculated either a software update to existing devices, or the introduction of Flash support to the next generation iPhone, few have considered that Apple would just not support Flash entirely moving into the future.
With the recent introduction of the iPad, Apple’s intentions of Flash support on their devices in the future is quite clear…there will be none. Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, has recently been publically quoted, venting his frustration with both Adobe and Flash technology altogether. “Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.”
Google has already made use of HTML5, most notably in their Google Voice software. What makes this so interesting is that Apple has famously prevented Google from including Voice as an application within their App Store. The answer from Google a few weeks ago was the launch of Google Voice coded in HTML5 that can be accessed through the iPhone’s Safari browser. With the recent success of that product, Google, this week, has now rolled out YouTube support that does not rely on Flash, again utilizing HTML5. iPhone users can now access YouTube via their Safari browser, rather than relying on the traditional YouTube App.
So what does this mean for the future? A world without Flash? Only time will tell, but at long last, it does look like there is at least some hope for those caught between the Apple vs. Adobe Flash debate.
