Why is video important on my website? How can Online Video get me more business?

How video boosts your online visibility

Rather a fabulous and succinct article from opensourcemarketer.com on why you cannot afford to ignore video as part of your marketing mix anymore.
Lots of great points – here are the bits I think you particularly need to pay attention to…
Are you still “thinking” about putting video on your website? If you’re not, the evidence suggests you should be. According to ComScore, 180 million internet users in the US watched online video content in July 2011 and it’ll be interesting to see what the UK stats are – as with all things “online” we won’t be far away as we play catch up…

It would be silly & quite strange to ignore the fact that web video has become an essential part of marketing your business online. Video has always been a nice to have, or a future task, but now it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the benefits of using video online to promote your business website because of the hard and fast facts on how it makes you easier to find online. More importantly it helps build the trust & credibility with clients and potential customers that is essential for a successful and fruitful business relationship. Your customers remain loyal and buy more if they trust you and believe you care about their experience. Video helps you prove that you do!

5 reasons you should be using video to promote your business website:

• YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet!
• Videos show up in Google search results.
• Videos can actually rank better than your website.
• Videos stand out in the search results.
• Videos keep people on your website longer.

Let me guess what you’re thinking, “YouTube is full of cat owl (or owl cat) videos” or “my customers aren’t on YouTube”, but a lot has changed in the past few years and you should reconsider both of those statements. More and more people are using YouTube to learn how to do things, how to buy things, and how to get more of what they want. They’re looking for information on how things work, how they compare to other products or services, and how other people are using these items to make their live better. You need to be there with useful content if you want to be found.
Not only has YouTube become the second largest search engine on the planet, but it’s video results also show up in Google search results. That means that out of the ten search results returned by a Google search, at least one of them could be your video. In most cases, people will decide to take a chance on the two minute video clip rather than sift through nine other text search results.
In some cases, depending on the popularity of your video and the online competition in your industry, your video can actually rank higher than your website for your topic of interest. That means you have the perfect opportunity to get in front of your customers ahead of your competitors to promote your business website. There are low cost video production options open to you, and, relatively speaking, when compared to the cost of other more traditional advertising and marketing spends, video is so much more effective and far reaching if done well.
Ensure that you embed your YouTube video on your website. Not only does it give people a reason to stay on your website longer (which gives them more time to notice something else that you do or offer), but it also helps to increase the total number of views that your video has received. It’s a simple matter of creating social proof. The more views a video has, the more likely it is that people will watch it in the future. Everyone likes to do what others do, so add your videos to your website, send them out in your newsletters, and share them with your social network. The more you promote your videos, the harder they will work to promote your website.
You can read the full article here on why you should be using video in your online marketing here. If you are as yet unconvinced, why is that? What is the main obstacle you face when it comes to implementing video within your online marketing?

Why is video important on my website? How can Online Video get me more business?

Keywords – The Very Crux of the Matter:Online marketing-websites-social media-SEO – it all hangs off Keywords!

Keyword Research

Keyword research should form the basis of every type of online marketing activity you embark on.
Why? Well, for starters there are some good points covered by Mark White over on his blog on linkedintraining.net
“From Search Engines to Pay Per Click, email marketing and, of course, the elements of social networking and social search that we are interested in here. The keywords, and most commonly used keyword phrases, that result from this research dictate to a large degree how we get found and whether we are getting found for the right things or not.”
As the article goes on to say…
“How you use the keyword phrases is important but finding the right ones is critical or else all the time that you spend using them after that point will be time wasted. If you are focusing your attention on being found for one phrase but your prospective clients are using a totally different one as they search for potential suppliers then we have a mismatch – and unfortunately you are going to be the loser in this.”

If you work in the legal sector, for example, then you will probably want to consider terms such as ‘lawyer’, ‘law firm’, ‘legal services’ or ‘solicitor’ as a general start point, but then also focus in on the areas of specialism such as ‘employment law’, ‘company law’, ‘family law’ etc as well as a geographic element if you work and want to be found for your town or county.

All of these keywords and their variations can and should be woven into your online presence – for instance, in your Personal Profile in Linkedin, within the blogs you are writing as anchor links, headlines (H tags) and in the SEO tags, within Tweets that link to those blogs, in your Facebook posts so that they make it easier for you to be found and then contacted for the services you can provide, in the descriptions you write for your YouTube video uploads… you get the picture.

How to carry out Keyword Research

Back to Mark on the subject of keywords on LinkedIn…
“When we look at researching the right keywords to use then it is all too easy to get sucked into our own little world and just look at it from our own perspective – let’s face it, all of our industries have their own internal vocabulary which we use on a daily basis but may mean little to those outside of it who we want to talk to.
Some ways of identifying the best keyword phrases that you can then look at building into your LinkedIn profile or indeed your LinkedIn Company pages as well should include:

• think about what your product or service does or more importantly what benefits it offers, and also consider different ways to express that;
• talk to clients and partner organisations and ask them what words they feel best describes what you do – getting as wide a range as possible gives you the best possible start point;
• use some of the tools available to help find what words are commonly searched on and what other words and phrases are similar to them – Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a good start point – I also look at the good old thesaurus to help as well!;
• examine your direct competitors sites and their online campaigns and see what words they are focusing on.

We can also use LinkedIn itself to do the same:

• check the profiles of people who work in the same areas as you or offer similar services: see which words show up the most frequently on their profile;
• ideally, filter your search results on LinkedIn by “keywords” rather than the default of “Relevance” and you should find more hits with regard to the keywords you want to find;
• take a look at their ‘Specialties’ section which ideally would be used to highlight keyword phrases.”

Key takeaway here, on whatever social media marketing platform you are working on…

The important point to work on is understanding how others perceive you and the service or product you offer. How do they search for what you do?
Work from that standpoint and you are well on the way to success!
You can read Mark’s full article on keyword research for LinkedIn here.
Keywords – The Very Crux of the Matter:Online marketing-websites-social media-SEO – it all hangs off Keywords!

Social Media Marketing Intern Wanted

S

Social Media Marketing Job Opportunity

We’re hiring!
And it all starts with a search – a search for the absolute crème de la crème.
We’re looking for the Saucy Horse Social Media & Video marketing superstars of 2012!
Here’s the deal : if you’re just looking for a “job” or if you’re just looking to pass the time till something better comes along this is NOT for you – don’t waste your time.
If, on the other hand, you know that working in the cutting edge of online marketing with a company that aspires to excellence, originality, innovation and FUN every single day (and whose clients say we achieve that) then we might just be what you’ve been looking for… now to prove that you are what WE are looking for!
Read some of our testimonials and see if this is what you want to be part of…
http://www.saucyhorsesocialmedia.co.uk/testimonials/
LinkedIn Summary – read our testimonials
What you have (in spades):
1. Passion that is palpable (for everything you do)
2. Commitment (to every mission you get involved with – and we’re on a mission…)
3. An HPO – (hugely positive outlook )
4. Respect – for yourself. You’ll want to learn, develop & grow and you’ll love being in an environment that encourages that.
5. Respect – for others. You will care about the team around you and about our customers and clients – we want to make them happy!
What you need:
1. The ability to make people feel good. When you’re with the team and our clients, everyone is happy about that!
2. You’re SMS (social media savvy) in terms of what the possibilities may be.
3. You have real talent – websites, design, SM platforms, copywriting, video production, something else : you’ll have something practical to add to the Saucy Horse Sauce! It doesn’t matter what it is – tell us what you can do for us!
4. The ability to write well – you take grammar seriously.
5. Organisational Head – yes, we want you to be able to plan, prepare and execute – because you’ll be taking projects through to completion.
What you’ll do…
You’ll join the rest of our small team who handle day to day support and office management, including:
• Answering incoming telephone calls. First line voice of the company so it’s your chance to shine! Displaying attention to detail in taking both names and numbers down correctly before fielding to the most suitable member of our team, or helping them yourself which we will empower you to do as soon as possible.
• Welcoming all guests to our offices – soooo important in terms of first impressions. Preparing meeting rooms in advance. Providing basic catering for all meetings.
• Checking team diaries on a daily basis – Keeping us organised & being aware of forthcoming events and staff movements.
• Managing our social media admin – our clients expect us to keep on top of things and you’d be part of that, using social media monitoring software & the platforms themselves.
• Content Research – we work with an eclectic range of clients. You’d spend time understanding their businesses and researching topics we need to talk about on the social media platforms.
• Acting as a production runner. We make videos so you’d be on location & studio filming duties when necessary.
• Clerical Marketing work including Excel, Word, Publisher, Powerpoint, photocopying, filing, data cleansing and assisting with mailings, and all that jazz. Communication with our clients is key & you’d be working on keeping our communication channels open.
• Ordering of Thank You/Congratulation gifts for clients and Saucy Horse friends.
You’d be learning, developing and utilising technical and design skills across Facebook, Websites & Video Editing packages, and any other new platforms we come across!
Most importantly, you’d be in an environment where your ideas and input would be expected and welcomed.
This is a 3 month internship – we want the best from you because we plan on you being with us a lot longer. Successful interns will join us on a full time basis.
The detail:
1. Our internships are for 3 months initially.
2. We pay travel & lunch expenses and there’s the possibility of an additional discretionary payment based on what you bring to the party.
3. We are based in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire & there may be travel depending on film locations.
Here’s how to tell us you want this:
1. Add your name, town & county in the comments section of this blog. Also tell us how to find you on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and we will be in touch with details of how we want you to apply – it’ll be fun!
2. That’s it!
CLOSING DATE : Initial applications on blog by 7th December. Full applications by 14th December 2011
Looking forward to meeting the Saucy Horse Superstars of the future…
ocial+Media+Marketing+Intern+wanted+:+Only+those+with+the+WOW+factor+need+apply!+Job+Opportunity+to+die+for...

Video for your Blog, YouTube & your Social Media Profiles – Why you need to carry your video camera with you.

Video for your Blog, YouTube & your Social Media Profiles – Why you need to carry your video camera with you.

Video For Websites – Who’s That Lady? Saucy Horse Cowgirl needs a name…

You may have noticed on our Facebook page, or if you have seen us at exhibitions, that we have a new addition to the Saucy Horse stable.

Meet… and there’s the rub. Poor lovely new Saucy Horse Cowgirl doesn’t have a name. We’ve all thought about it and had various suggestions. Luanne? Betsy? Shelby? Phoenix? We couldn’t agree and decided to open it up for all suggestions. We will put them all in a (cowgirl) hat and pick one – and the namer gets a Team Saucy prize

Tracy has her hat at the ready waiting for your suggestions. You can either leave them in the comments box here or on ourFacebook page. Win a great Saucy Horse prize and the glory of knowing that every time we mention our lovely cowgirl, you picked her name!

What is Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneur’s Circle? Is it worth joining?

What is Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneur’s Circle? Is it worth joining?