Internet Marketing Tools

In the last post, I commented on the SEO power in using videos for your small business marketing.  Before I leave this point, let me share with you a post from Lou Bortone, a guest blogger on how he see videos increasing the visibility of your business on the internet.  As we move through our journey on video marketing, we will dig into more depth on some of the additional areas he mentions in his post.  Enjoy and prosper.

Boost Your Visibility Bigtime with Video!

by LOU BORTONE, guest blogger on OCTOBER 23, 2009

How to make your video work for you again and again…

One of the great things about creating an online video to market your business is that it can significantly increase your visibility.  After all, posting videos online gives you worldwide exposure on the Internet, 24/7!

Now is the perfect time to enhance your online exposure with video. Video viewership is at an all time high, with 97 million Americans watching videos online.  In fact, there are now more 18-34 year old adults watching online video than are watching traditional television!

In addition to boosting your visibility, having a video web presence will also improve your SEO rankings. The personal nature of video will increase your “know, like and trust” factor, and make you more familiar and approachable with potential clients.  All of that accelerates the sales process and gets you more business!

However, creating your video is only half the story.  Distribution is the key to greater visibility.  Here are a few simple ways you can get more mileage out of your video:

• Start with YouTube, the 800-pound gorilla of video hosting sites.
• From there, YouTube makes it incredibly easy to share your video to Facebook and MySpace with one simple click in their “share” section.
• Once you’ve shared your video to Facebook, make sure you encourage comments and feedback.  If your friends comment on your video, it will appear on their Facebook page, as well!
• Remember to post the link to your video on Twitter.  You can just use the URL from YouTube to direct people to your video.  If you really want to promote your video on Twitter, post your video to a few of the Twitter-friendly video hosting sites such as Tweetube.com or Twiddeo.com.
• Obviously, you want to put your video on your own website or blog.  This can be easily achieved by taking the “embed” code that YouTube provides and adding it to your site.
• Finally, hit a large variety of video hosting sites by posting your video to TubeMogul.com.  TubeMogul is a free web service that blasts your video to dozens of popular video websites.  Just upload once, and send to many places with one click!

One video + Many sites + Many uses = Viral Video Potential!  Leverage your time and your visibility by maximizing your video distribution.  Soon you’ll be hearing the sweet sound of colleagues and clients saying “I see you everywhere!”  Post from VIDEO & VIRAL MARKETING.

About the Author:

Lou Bortone is a long-time marketing and branding consultant who helps entrepreneurs build breakthrough brands on the Internet, with services such as online video production, video branding, coaching and creative support. Lou is a former television executive who worked for E! Entertainment Television and later served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Advertising for Fox Family Worldwide, a division of Fox in Los Angeles. Lou is an author and ghostwriter of six business books, a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and a Book Yourself Solid Certified Coach. Visit Lou’s website at http://www.OnlineVideoBranding.com and you can learn more about Lou’s Video Traffic Blast system athttp://www.VideoTrafficBlast.com

To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…

Al Hanzal

As I mentioned in a previous post, I will begin dissecting Twitter to uncover how it can be used for small business marketing. I will focus my posts around five major topics and provide step by step processes for using Twitter in your small business marketing.

• What is Twitter?
• Why would I want to do Twitter marketing?
• How can you create an effective Twitter presence?
• How to do Twitter marketing
• Twitter tools you can use to do Twitter marketing

Let me start with a description of Twitter.

What is Twitter?

By now you have probably hear the Twitter description. It is a social networking site, a micro blog, that allows you to tell people in 140 characters or less “What you are doing right now.” Let me break that description down into marketing terms.

• Twitter is a social media website. It is one of the many social media websites that make up Web 2.0. As a website it gives your business an additional presence on the internet that can be used to drive potential customers to your business.
• Like other social media sites, Facebook, Linkedin and thousands of other sites, it is an interactive website. People who join Twitter are expected to participate in the conversations by listening and commenting.
• Last year Twitter had 8 million participants. This year that number is 22 million. It is the fastest growing social media site on the internet. Already, Twitter has more businesses on its site than Facebook has with its 200 million participants.
• The people who use Twitter tend to be older (45-54) than other social media sites. People who use social media sites have 25% more disposal able income than those who don’t.
• If you searched Twitter’s top 75 topics, you would find 30% of these topics deal with entertainment. This heavy emphasis on entertainment may reflect the current bias against using Twitter to promote business to retail sites. However, with the growth of Twitter, it will become more diverse.
• Twitter is real time communication tool. The real time quality was dramatically shown during the recent Iranian crisis when the government shut down traditional media sources and the world learned about the events via Twitter. Communications is instantaneous.
• Tweets are not caught in spam filters like many emails. There is no need to open a Tweet, because the entire Tweet (140 characters) is right there on your home page.) Twitter will have an impact on traditional email marketing efforts.
• The key to Twitter’s marketing functions is getting “followers”. You can grow a list of potential customers very rapidly using Twitter without the usual limitations involved in list building. No stamps; no stuffing of envelopes.
• Twitter can be linked to cell phones with internet connections so it becomes a very portable tool for everyone to use.
• Twitter is FREE.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed…

Al Hanzal