Sunday, 25 August 2013
Monday, 19 August 2013
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Thursday, 15 August 2013
How to Make a Marketing Video: A Beginner's Guide
When people talk about inbound marketing, most agree that in theory, video is a great tool to attract new visitors, connect and engage with your leads, and delight your loyal customers ... but most marketers would say actually doing video is a whole other ball game.
Why are we so afraid of doing video? Most of us get paralyzed by the "no time, too hard" fallacy. We convince ourselves that we need fancy camera equipment and editing software to make video work ... and there is no way that is happening with our current budget. Plus, we're trying to juggle a ton of other marketing activities, so video seems like a luxury we can't afford.
But video doesn't have to be hard or time consuming. If done right, video can be made quickly and easily -- all while supercharging your engagement and click-through rates. Plus, video is easy to digest and it lets you inject personality into your message. When it’s genuine, video can make people smile and laugh, and this makes them more likely to share your message with their friends.
So, it's time for all of us to get over our fears of video. To help explain why video is so crucial to your inbound marketing and give you tips for getting started with video today, my team at Wistia teamed up with our friends at HubSpot to film the video below. (Kind of meta, right?) This video will be the first in a series about how to use video in your inbound marketing -- so stay tuned for more posts in the series.
After you're done watching the video, check out the "Quick Wins" below -- five quick actions items that will help you get your very first video out the door. Who knows ... this time next week, you could have your very first video up! So let's dive right in:
Ready to start creating videos? Here are 5 quick wins you can knock off your to-do list today:
1) Define your audience.
Before you start to script or shoot anything, establish who you want to reach. Are you trying to attract certain buyer personas? New visitors or returning leads? Or are you trying to engage your evangelists, who may never buy your products at all? Knowing who you create videos for is crucial to your success down the road.
2) Define your goal -- and limit yourself to one!
Decide whether you’re trying to bring the audience you defined in Step #1 into the top of your funnel, engage with them in the middle of your funnel, or close them at the bottom of your funnel -- and then create your videos to help accomplish that goal.
3) Pick a topic that has done well in a different content format and turn it into a video.
Repurpose content that you've already created, like a blog post or presentation, and turn the main ideas into a one- or two-page script. Then, practice reading it out loud. As you read, look for places that don’t sound right coming out of your mouth and edit them to sound more conversational. Share the script with others and edit some more.
4) Record yourself reading your script.
Use a webcam, iPhone, or whatever tools you already have -- most people will forgive production quality if you have great content.
5) Embed your video on your blog, website, or share the link on your social networks.
Use your analytics and get feedback from your target audience to find out what people liked and what they found confusing. Then, you can use your metrics and feedback to make your next video even better.
Realistically, you could achieve these five wins in a couple days if you remember not to sweat the details. Just get your first video out into the wild -- then iterate in future videos. You'll be a video pro in no time!
Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Affiliate Marketing Services Review
Why Study Affiliate Marketing?
Choosing a company that provides the best options for affiliate marketing services is a critical part in bringing in revenue. Our reviews will help you know what to look for, what to expect and what service companies go above and beyond. Affiliate marketing is a booming industry in the world today, and the more users browse online sites, the larger affiliate marketing becomes. Affiliate marketing sites are growing and with all the options available for users today, we wanted to know what characteristics set companies apart from the competition, behind or equal with others.
What Should an Affiliate Marketing Company Provide?
Good affiliate marketing companies are free to sign up for. They provide codes for advertisement links and the cookie tracking capabilities for affiliates to earn the money they deserve. Other services an affiliate marketing company should provide include:
Features
Features are a fundamental key to success for all parties involved in affiliate marketing. Features provide the key elements that create links for advertisements, provide tracking capabilities and offer the selection of advertisers needed to make an advertisement relevant to its traffic. Many service companies are always working to create more functional and easy to use feature that will increase sales and commissions.
Reporting Features
To understand what is working towards your benefit and what is holding you back, affiliate marketing services have created reporting options where users are able to track advertisement effectiveness. Reporting options include not only traffic for specific ads, but also the money you have earned and where it has been generated from. Report content, time frame and format are often large factors for large businesses when choosing a service provider.
Ease of Use
Companies and services need to provide their users with ease-of-use and smooth navigation. Internet users have been trained to expect the tools and services they require to be at their fingertips at any given point in time. Search options, tabs and links all help to create a usable service. We have tested the usability of these websites and found what makes them easy to use and keeps their affiliates coming back again and again.
Search Options
Finding the products you are looking to promote should be quick and easy. Many companies now offer advanced searches that allow users to search in a number of ways. Instead of just searching for products or advertisers, many users also appreciate the search options that allow them to search by commission price, creating more opportunities for them to up raise their commissions in a short time.
Help and Support
No service or company is ever complete without a great customer help and support program. Top companies will provide guides for new users, step-by-step tutorials and customer representatives who are able to help you with your account questions and concerns. Many companies are moving away from offering customer support over the telephone and only offering online help. We feel that options are still important and that the user needs to feel like they are taken care of, otherwise they stop using the service.
We have created a side-by-side matrix that compares the features, usability, options and support of top companies providing affiliate marketing services. The top ten companies that we have included in the list were selected and ranked above all other affiliate marketing service providers we reviewed. Some of the lower- ranked options do not offer the features and options the higher- ranked products provide, but are still excellent choices in their field. Details are provided in the reviews and side by side comparisons are offered through the matrix. Also, be sure to read articles on affiliate marketing services.
To read the review matrix, click on the link below:
Sunday, 11 August 2013
3 Tips for Increasing Twitter Engagement
Do you feel like when you tweet no one is listening?
Are you beginning to feel like using Twitter is a waste of time?
When you first get started with Twitter (or even if you have been going for a while) it can be hard to find traction.
It can be hard to get followers, so you really are tweeting into an empty room.
However, don’t let that stop you.
Why Use Twitter?
Twitter is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with people easily – especially the big wigs in your niche.
The beauty of twitter is because of the 140 character limit, it somehow makes it easier for you to converse with important influencers because it takes less time than responding to an email.
Apart from being a powerful tool for networking, it is also a great way to drive traffic to your blog. For me, Twitter is the second highest source of traffic to my blog, second only to Google. And the best news – it takes minimal time and is completely free!
Once you have built up a base of followers (and it doesn’t have to be a large number), you will start seeing the rewards for your efforts.
Tip #1: Who to tweet
To get some engagement out of Twitter, you can’t just sit around and wait for people to talk to you. You have to engage with them first.
With Twitter, it is not expected that you be able to read every single post. It takes up way too much time for no return. Instead, create your own lists of people that you want to engage with. You can do this through twitter, by going to your profile and clicking on “Lists” in the sidebar.
Set up lists of your peers and also your influencers. This allows you to easily track some people that you would love to interact with. Don’t make a huge long list of each. Choose 5-10 key people that you would like to track.
Once you have these lists you can easily see what these people are tweeting. Now, interact with them. Reply to their tweets, or ask them a question. Start re-tweeting what they say, or promoting their blog posts on twitter.
Don’t be a stalker. No need to go overboard. But these small interactions over time start to add up, and you will start to grow a strong network of people who will take interest in what you do and promote what you do.
Tip #2: When to tweet
You don’t have to post only once a day on twitter. As I mentioned earlier, it is impossible to read every single tweet on your following list. The same is true for the people following you.
With this in mind, don’t be afraid to post multiple times a day. You don’t want to tweet the same message over and over again, and you don’t want to post 10 times within a matter of minutes. Spread your tweets out over the day so you have more potential to reach a wider range of people.
One great tool that allows you to see the best time to post to reach the majority of your followers is Tweriod. Tweriod analyses both your tweets and your followers’ tweets to find the best time to post for maximum exposure.
With Tweriod you can see what times to post the tweets you want people to respond to the most to increase your engagement on Twitter.
Tip #3: What to tweet
There are many ways to measure what posts perform the best on twitter. One of my favorite tools is Buffer. Buffer is a tool that allows you to queue up your twitter posts. The great thing about Buffer is that you can easily track how each of your tweets performs.
With buffer you can see what types of tweets perform the best, and at what times. With this information you can make informed decisions about what types of posts and when to post. Experiment and see if you can get some more engagement.
Increase Your Twitter Engagement Today
If you want more engagement, the basic things to do are to:
- seek engagement
- experiment with what to post at what time, and
- measure to see if it is working or not.
You can build up your network and get more traffic back to your website.
Friday, 9 August 2013
Video Marketing Strategy 2013 | Increase Your Video Traffic Formula
By now you probably should have your own YouTube Channel, making videos consistently and increasing your revenue as a YouTube star right? Not exactly how you think YouTube marketing with videos actually is. In this post I am going to share a video marketing strategy in 2013 that will clean up your old and new videos.
One of the challenges I faced before getting noticed on YouTube as a partner was how to get targeted traffic. Some of you making videos and putting up whatever you want or feel like talking about is not helping you get results. Your basically shooting blanks against a red bulls eye target and its a waste of time. It’s not your fault as I use to do the same thing until I took the time to study and learn the formula of generating leads with video marketing.
I am sure you noticed by now through internet marketing that video is powerful. Through creating videos of information that holds value to share with your viewers is what converts a op-tin to a lead. But, some network marketers who are new to video marketing end up failing to understand how to record videos and don’t follow the formula.
Let’s start with the #1 video marketing platform YouTube is where the majority of video marketing traffic is coming from so if you put your focus into the video you are creating for that audience you are going to start attracting the right quality type of leads.
Here are some facts to know:
- YouTube is owned by the search engine Google.
- YouTube is considered the number two search engine right behind Google (people want video answers!)
- YouTube has it’s own sharing portal to easily share through social networking.
- Overall average of time spent on watching videos is 15 minutes per day.
- YouTube mobile gets over 100 million views per day!
- YouTube is responsible for changing the game with small businesses, network marketing and MLM.
- Now that we know the facts of why you should be focused on creating more videos here is the formula to follow before uploading your next video.
Video Marketing Strategy 2013 | Formula For Video Marketing
1. Video SEO Optimization ~ Before uploading or pressing the record button on your smart phone or webcam you must first do your “Keyword” research. It makes sense to keyword video titles based on the most searched keywords people are searching for online in Google. What I use and recommend for beginners is free and available online a tool known as Google Keyword Tool.
2. Video Has Value ~ Create videos that is content rich with value. No one cares about how much or the facts of your expenses in the production of your product or service. You want to answer your potential customer or leads questions and provide solutions to their problems. Toss in some bonus tips and strategies so you can bring in even more value. Consistency and relevancy for video marketing is important, if you skip around and shoot videos at random then your not going to get the results you want.
3. Video Aftermath ~ Unless you are a hollywood celebrity or singer who is uploading videos and has a enormous following your not going to get noticed. In order for you to reach the top of Google with your YouTube Channel is to stand out from your competition doing the 3 steps and learning the fundementals of video marketing.
Video Marketing Strategy 2013 | How To Make A Great Video
1. Plan ahead and write your script out for informational videos but if your ranting no script is needed.
2. Film your video with a white, black or nature outdoor background. Avoid crappy lighting it will come out horrible
in your videos.
3. Brand your video.
4. Keep your video under 3 minutes.
5. Include the keyword in the video, in the title, and in the description but don’t have it look spammy let it flow.
6. Avoid long boring titles and headlines.
7. Use a microphone or headset but not webcam audio because it will sound choppy.
8. Give a call to action.
I trust this information will help your Video Marketing Strategy 2013 go to the next level.
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Social Networking Reaches Nearly One in Four Around the World
By 2014, the ranking of regions by social network users will reflect regional shares of the global population
According to a new eMarketer report, “Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates,” nearly one in four people worldwide will use social networks in 2013. The number of social network users around the world will rise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion this year, an 18% increase. By 2017, the global social network audience will total 2.55 billion.
The rapidly expanding social network audiences in the emerging markets of Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa will be huge drivers of social user growth. Though Asia-Pacific will have the largest social network population worldwide through 2017 and the Middle East and Africa will have the second-largest audience starting next year, their population penetration rates are among the lowest.
Out of the countries included in the forecast, eMarketer expects the fastest increases to come from the social network user populations of India, Indonesia, Mexico, China and Brazil.
eMarketer has increased our 2013 forecast for total social network users worldwide by 100 million since our August 2012 forecast. This upward adjustment is based on new data that indicates higher-than-expected totals for internet users in India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the Middle East and Africa; new data showing higher estimates for UK social network users than previously forecast; and a new breakout of social network users in the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden.
Asia-Pacific has the largest social network user base, with an audience of 777 million people and a share of 44.8% of social network users worldwide expected by the end of this year. This is more than triple the size of Latin America’s social network audience, which is the second-largest worldwide.
eMarketer expects the regional portions to shift in ranking throughout the forecast period. Next year, the Middle East and Africa will surpass Latin America in share to become the region with the second-largest social network audience, while Central and Eastern Europe’s share will exceed that of North America for the first time. The ranking of social network users by region will largely reflect the regional shares of the global population by 2014. This was an inevitable development, as social network usage has moved from taking place primarily in advanced markets to being a common activity for people around the world.
The Middle East and Africa will have the fastest gains in new users this year, followed by Asia-Pacific. Internet usage is expanding in both regions and is driving rising social network usage.
Through 2015, the more advanced social network markets of North America, Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe will have the highest penetration rates worldwide. Beginning in 2016, Latin America will pass Western Europe in social network user penetration. Throughout the forecast period, Asia-Pacific’s and the Middle East and Africa’s penetration rates will be lower than the global figure.
This year, 67.7% of internet users around the world will use a social network at least once per month. This figure will rise to more than three out of four internet users by 2016.
The respective social network user penetration rates as a percentage of internet users for North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific (specifically, Japan, South Korea and Australia) are lower than the worldwide figure. The advanced countries in these regions tend to have more diverse internet user populations, as users often access the web for a variety of reasons such as shopping or searching. However, in countries with less-developed online markets in the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America, internet users skew younger and more tech-savvy, and they are more likely to use social networks. Many people in these emerging markets primarily go online via both desktop and mobile devices to gain access to social platforms.
Monday, 5 August 2013
INTERNET MARKETING TRENDS YOU NEED TO BE FOLLOWING IN 2013
The previous year was very eventful in Internet marketing. Several trends emerged that will influence the progress of internet marketing during this year. Based on the trends from the previous year and WSI Online experience we can make some predictions what the year 2013 will bring in internet marketing.
Internet marketing is developing extremely fast
In the beginning of the previous year Google announced that they plan to roll out more than 500 algorithms and data based updates in 2012. World’s biggest search engine kept its word and last year brought substantial development in search results quality. Google is only a small part of internet marketing and it must be noted that other internet marketing channels develop as fast as Google.
More business owners search for opportunities to gain extra value from the opportunities internet has to offer. Competition in internet marketing channels is only growing and to compete with competitors you need to be up to date with the latest internet marketing trends.
The main trends of internet marketing in 2013
1. Increase in internet and internet marketing users
The number of internet and internet marketing users grow rapidly worldwide. Compared to the previous year there was an 8% growth in internet users around the world, which forms 34% of the whole population. In Europe alone 500 million internet users exist, which is 63% of the European population. The growing internet community affects the media market where more money is directed online. The competition goes fiercer and businesses must implement new strategies to stay in competition.
Internet is a continuously growing marketing channel where penetration grows each year.
2. Search engine marketing
Google has made a clear statement that they will improve their search engine results in expense of content that offers little or no value to users. Author Rank is a new tool by Google that evaluates authors the same way as Page Rank evaluates websites reliability. Author Rank links authors Google+ account with author-generated content. Google will evaluate reliable links that originate from the same author and makes its conclusions about the authors’ authority. This is an effective method to fight against copyright violators and raise awareness about quality content. Google has not yet rolled out with Author Rank but it’s predicted that in the end of 2013 Author Rank will be part of Page rank.
Search engine marketing will remain an important activity in website marketing.
3. Social media revolution continues
Businesses that are active in social media should already get considerable amount of traffic via social channels. Facebook reached 1 billion users in 2012 and the social media king will continue with the growth this year. Lately they announced Graph Search that will give the social network a whole new perspective. It’s been discussed that Facebook will overtake search function from Google and they put some effort to achieve this.
As mentioned above Google+ will gain more importance in SEO which results in growth in users’ rate. But the transition to G+ is not because of the social network itself but because it’s a vital part of optimization.
LinkedIn will stay on top of its niche. And for Twitter it’s a question whether to IPO or not to IPO.
Don’t forget: “What happens in life stays in Facebook and Twitter”
4. Content marketing
Content marketing has been a trend for a few years now. But content is going only stronger and Agent Rank with other algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin will push the content to be more valuable. Great content includes quality information, pictures, videos, whitepapers, e-books and interactive infographs. In addition, killer content spreads like wildfire in social media which also boosts your SEO.
Quality content is worth investment as you gain loyal followers whom may become your next customers.
5. Smartphones will continue their triumph
There are 1.1 billion smartphone users which include about 17% of the whole population. To consider that there are 5 billion mobile users the number of smartphone users has grown extremely fast. In addition, 13% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices. It is predicted that by the year 2014 global mobile internet usage will exceed the internet usage on PC’s (Morgan Stanley). This kind of vast development is driven by 3G internet, the fast development of gadgets and the development of e-commerce.
When planning your marketing strategy don’t forget that users will change the big screen for smaller devices that they will carry 24/7.
6. Analytics become even more important
When you start investing into internet marketing you need to analyse the metrics to know the return on investments. Today there are countless abilities to measure web analytics but the chances are not used wisely. For example, free analytical tools like Google Analytics offer amazing opportunities to measure your marketing activities and make conclusions that will help to make better investments but business owners’ lack of knowledge to use all these abilities. Furthermore, Google says that in the end of 2013 Analytics will be unrecognizably changed. Improved functionality, of course! You can read more from here: http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/google-analytics-summit-2013-whats-new.html.
What you can measure you can also fix.
Conclusion
Internet marketing changes really quickly bringing substantial developments every year. New opportunities emerge for businesses to be visible and interact with customers online. The best advice to give all internet marketers is to follow the emerging trends and implement them to your marketing strategy.
Have a successful marketing year!