4 Ways to Manage Your Reputation in Youtube Search Results

If you have a YouTube channel, you are probably obsessed with generating some good traffic and spreading your videos. The chance of making a viral video is a tantalizing fantasy, and one that more and more people are realizing now that social media has become a central part of our society.

Thankfully, it isn’t that hard to optimize your search results. It is all about increasing your reputation and searchability. Here are four ways to do that.

1. Optimize Your Videos

SEO is just as relevant on YouTube as it is through standard search engines. Yet, when people think of optimization they are usually putting it into the context of standard content like text, maybe images. Video doesn’t generally factor in to their thinking. Really, you should be using the same general concept for your videos. For example, relevant keywords are one of the most important parts. What would you use to search for your video? Target “long tail” and local phrases in tags. If your video is about Georgia business profiles, you should include this as a tag.

Keep in mind the target age and other demographic information for those you want to see it. Based on these factors you might want to change the language somewhat, such as from formal to slang, or include both. Be descriptive, but without trying to “sell” the video like you might other content. Just try to draw them in by promising entertainment. If you need some help, you can try one of the many tools made to help you come up with optimized keywords for videos. YouTube has one of their own.

2. Get Your Community to Help

When you are part of a community or like minded or related individuals, you automatically have an invaluable resource for spreading content. It is this element that has led to a great deal of viral videos or memes being created. That doesn’t mean you should go around begging your community or website readers to share you out. Instead, you should engage them, especially in an interactive way. You see examples of this all the time, with large companies that host competitions through their YouTube channel that asks for submissions. Which will immediately give them something to search for. But an example of how this is done for a website itself, check out MyBlogGuest’s Create a Video Screencast competition (the result is this playlist).

3. Make the Most of Playlists

Playlists are insanely helpful for drawing interest on YouTube. Especially since you can search for playlists themselves, widening the results for users who want to see more than a single video. If you have a series or competitions, this can be even more helpful. They are very simple to make. You just start to group your uploaded videos together into a customized playlist. They show in strips on your main channel under your favorites link. Users can then click on it and play all videos, or search through them. They can also search for the playlist itself, and if you attach keywords to your videos a playlist search will bring up any that have that term.

4. Promote Your Channel

Finally, we have some good old fashion promotion. Once you get the hook in, people are more likely to go searching for the video they saw, or more like it. This will be achieved through any basic marketing means, such as social media sharing, link building, affiliates and anything else you might wish to use.

Conclusion

It takes some time and effort, but you can optimize your YouTube channel’s search by building a reputation through standard SEO tactics. Don’t fail to take advantage, or you might miss some incredible chances at creating a viral sensation!


original: SocialbleBlog

Video Marketing : Your Business Going Viral

Expanding your personal business in a world that is growing smaller and smaller by the day thanks to technology can either be easy or hard, depending on how you look at it.

On one side, the multitude of free and relatively cheap tools and applications available online, and the many other platforms such as video streaming sites especially youtube, blogs, micro-blogging sites, and social media sites, help you easily expand your market base. On the other side though, this kind of diversity and creative freedom made available online has created a diluted market of online marketers also using the internet’s potential like you.

Developing a video for sharing on youtube is always one of the first things to consider when going online for your business. Buying youtube views for your marketing video / ad, has just gotten much tougher as more and more people flood the internet.

So what can you do to help boost your video and turn it viral?

Keep it short: Keeping your video short condenses your message and it’s a fact that a

5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contest

One of the best ways to drive engagement and build word of mouth traffic about your brand is to run a contest via social media channels. Not only does it engage consumers with your brand in a fun and exciting way, it results in a treasure-trove of customer information, preferences, and feedback you can then mine to improve your business. And, best of all, launching an online contest can be very inexpensive.

However, there is a subtle art to social contests. Your brand needs to appear neither too “cheesy” nor too “salesy,” and you must deliver a prize that people really want. This can be a standard product or gift card, or a “notoriety” prize, such as publishing a winner’s video. What’s more, the contest itself has to be fun and easy to participate in. Few prizes are worth doing something extremely boring, monotonous, or complicated.

Here are five specific strategies you can follow to launch and manage a social contest, and leverage it to deliver real business value:

1.Define the marketing goal:

 Every contest you launch should meet a specific marketing goal. Do you want to drive awareness of a new product or service? Collect a list of customers interested in a specific product segment? Encourage new participants to use your company’s social networking channels? There are many valid reasons to launch a contest, but it’s important to know ahead of time what you’re trying to accomplish.

2.Get Creative:

Here’s the fun part: Creating your contest. The sky’s the limit when it comes to the type of contests you can launch. Here are a few ideas:

- A video contest inviting users to create a new commercial for one of your products

- A user-generated content contest that awards the best ‘personal experience stories’

- A photo contest related to your product or service

- A product invention contest with a large cash prize.

3.Leverage  Social Channels: 

The best part about online contests is how easy it is to take them viral, encourage participation, and link them into your social marketing activities. Promote your contest via Facebook, Twitter, your company blog, and all other social channels, as well as via traditional marketing channels such as print, e-mail, and in-store signage.

Just search the word contest on Twitter to see hundreds of contests going on right now. The best contests are intensely social by nature, because people like to play games and contests together, and most people love to share the chance to win a cool prize with friends and family. Ensure your contest is easily sharable by embedding “share this” links on the contest site, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (YouTube), and everywhere else people will come across it.

4.Finish the Contest: 

Everyone loves a winner, so make sure you don’t let your contest drag on too long. A typical social contest runs about four weeks –- longer.hen the winner is chosen, do a PR push to publicize their win. Of course, use Facebook and Twitter to promote the winner like mad. Go back to your social media tracking software and find out which people and social sites are talking most about the winner, then post comments on those networks to drive even more interest in the winner.

5.Measure the Contest: 

Of course launching a contest wasn’t just for fun, it was to achieve a specific marketing goal. So after the contest is done, you need to measure the impact it had on brand engagement, clickthrough to your site, conversion, and bottom-line sales. Again, you can use your social media tracking tool to measure all of these success metrics. Find out whether your contest drove as much traffic to your site as you had hoped, and whether this traffic resulted in conversion.

Sorce: Mashable

How To Use The Twitter Vine Video App For Your Online Business

This is probably one of the most overused-but-true sayings in the realm of marketing, whether it is within social media circles or any other kind, is the fact that “words tell but tales sell”.  I am sure that you’ve all heard that expression on a number of occasions.  However the reason any kind of saying like this becomes a cliche like that’s it’s true.  People interact with people due to things that unite us, things that we share.  And exactly how we uncover deep connections with other people is most frequently with the

Effective Instagram Marketing Secrets for Your Business

According to statistics, 63% of teens use Instagram on a daily basis. Hence, you can easily guess who the Instagram masters are. As a marketer, you must learn about the tricks you need to use to make your Instagram marketing campaign work. And knowing the secrets that the regular users don’t can definitely help you to strategize better.

Of the 1 billion monthly active Instagram users, 34% are millennials. Thus, if you don’t align your campaign with this demographic as your target audience, it is going to be a total failure. Instagram introduces new features every now and then. You have to make the right use of the same to attract the maximum number of users.

Here are some Instagram secrets you can use for promoting your brand:

1. Using effective hashtag

Twitter has shown us how hashtags can be used in a brand new manner, but Instagram is where we see the maximum use of hashtags. On Instagram, a lot depends on the correct use of the hashtags. While using the right hashtags can bring many users to your profile, the wrong hashtags can give out the impression that you are using it without having much knowledge about it. You can use different strategies for using the hashtags and see which one works for you. If you use related and local hashtags, it can bring you a better result, ensuring that your post will always reach the right people.

2. Instagram influencer marketing

This method of marketing can be effective for every business, be it a cosmetic brand or a homework help service. This marketing method uses influential people to promote your product/service on Instagram. Consumers get highly influenced by these personalities who have a significant impact on their purchase decision. An article by Variety shows that teens get more influenced by YouTube stars than the regular celebrities. It is also seen that these individuals can engage the audience in a better way than the usual stars. Thus, using them for promoting any product or service can be very beneficial for

6 Successful Podcasting Tips To Embellish Your Social Media Efforts

We have always believed that content is the king. There have been constant efforts being made by everyone to ensure their websites have exceptional content. Well, content doesn’t necessarily mean text. It could also stretch up to the other ways we have been using to communicate to the audience, like videos, podcasts and graphical representations.

The most recent technique that is being used these days is to transcript videos to make articles. However, if you want some more artistic and creative input to bring more life to your text, you might want to consider using podcasting as a tool. So, what are podcasts? Well, these are nothing but digital multimedia files that are uploaded on the for the user to

7 Old-School Ways To Build Your Brand Rep In Your Community

Branding is essentially, aligning your company’s internal activities with what it produces for the outside world. It’s not a communications strategy, but rather a business strategy; a long term, sustainable product or service that is consistent, clear, and delivers time and again.

Whether it’s with clients embarking on a new campaign or on your own trying to define your personal brand, the term “branding” seems to be the popular buzzword these days. “Branding” is often misunderstood and is frequently misused. Yet, a business’s brand represents the company’s reputation externally and reflects how employees feel about the company internally.

Currently, we are in a climate where small and medium-sized enterprises are being squeezed and forced to create a clear point of difference. Small businesses especially, need to find a way to compete.

The following are 7 old-school ways to build your brand rep in your community.

1. In a Nutshell

Ask yourself what you want the customer to feel when interacting with your business. Then, find one word or phrase that most accurately sums up what you stand for.

Continue on to your website, your offices, and other extensions of your business and ensure that they convey a similar theme. Think of ways to conjure up that feeling in customers without saying it explicitly.

Once you determine your strategy, run it through all of your activity including the logo, tone of voice, and dress code. Remember that dissatisfaction is what drives customers. Develop and communicate a relevant brand promise and deliver.

2. Get it right the First Time

Deliver on your promises. Competitive markets have and will always punish companies that are unreliable.

A relationship of trust is an integral part of growing a strong brand. Reaching the point where customers trust you allows clients to feel at ease, even if you do get it wrong on occasion.

Any advertising expense spent in a small business is better focused towards “performance marketing.” Focus on delivering an augmented product that is continuously improving.

3. Build from Within

All big business brand icons have distinctive company cultures or “value systems” that give the brands definition. A company brand should permeate the organization and drive decisions.

Involve your employees in building the brand from Day 1. Allowing them to help shape the values makes it easier to convey them to customers. Spend time on developing a message that resonates throughout your staff.

Remain flexible enough to occasionally evaluate and tweak your brand message’s effectiveness and make sure to communicate it internally. Beware of becoming too formal or risk losing engagement. The best way to get customers to trust you is to start trusting your employees.

4. Consistency is Key

Be absolutely transparent to your audience about your brand values from the outset. Your products and services are likely to evolve as you grow, but your brand values should remain consistent.

Keep in mind that for many, your marketing message is the first impression they will have of your company. Resist the urge to tweak established values.

5. Customers Contact

To some extent, your brand takes care of itself if your product is good. On the other hand, involving customers in product development has become somewhat of a trend that provides customers with a sense of co-creating products.

Customers love to feel close to the creative process, and you can build reciprocal respect, by featuring them as case studies.

6. Social Media

Stay on top of what’s out there to build a brand. Social media is just as important as a communications tactic and something that could be applied internally.

It’s a great strategy for small businesses to provide customer service and support, while getting their name in front of people.

7. Create a Community

Social media has hastened an importance of community in brand building by sharing knowledge and extending the network online. It’s important that information about the business doesn’t just come from the marketing division.

Whatever your means of communicating, show your personality. Focus on where your customers are, be that on YouTube, eBay, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, but use each medium appropriately.

Differentiate yourself by what you stand for and let the personality and values formulate organically. Innovate beyond the familiar and keep these 7 old-school tips in mind when developing a brand rep in your community.

original:SociableBlog

How Should Niche Businesses Use Social Media to Best Effect?

This article gives suggestions and best practice tips to niche businesses around capitalizing on the potential of social media.

Time to Socialise

The big mistake that many smaller niche businesses make is to forsake social media platforms completely. There is a prevailing attitude that, because only a few people will probably be seeking out a social media presence, that there isn’t any point in doing it.

Instead, these businesses should view social media in much the same way that they view search engine optimisation. Accept that yes, fewer people will be seeking you out, however take that opportunity to focus on the specific market that has an interest in you and make your social media content as relevant as possible.

How to Stand Out

If you are a niche business then it is not easy to stand out in a world where the biggest

Facebook for Business is Dead

Don’t just read this title and go delete your personal profile and business page, fire your social media expert or virtual assistant and leave the social media giant behind forever. Don’t fire your marketing director who swears by Facebook ads and algorithms, and move on to some other media avenue. Read on first

Because Facebook is not dead. In fact, social media is a vital component to any business public relations strategy. “The unique ability that we have through social media

Social Media Profiles for Online Reputation Management

Your reputation, online or offline is vital extremely important. Recently, a friend of mine owned a travel business. After hiring an employee with a light criminal background and having thousands of dollars embezzled from him, he started to pursue legal action against this individual. This person decided to get revenge by badmouthing the owner and business through Rip Off Report and other online platforms. Now, anytime you Google his name or business some very offensive things are displayed as a #1 result. Consequently, his business has suffered tremendously.

This situation is the perfect example of the need for reputation management. One of the most powerful (and easiest) methods to begin to control your reputation in the search engine result pages (SERPs) is to create social profiles on major social media websites. Since domains like Twitter or MySpace have such high authority it takes a lot less effort to rank, than creating your own site, by creating a profile that will outrank and push down undesired search results. Also, these search results gives you the added benefit of having control over your brand and being accessible and available on multiple platforms strengthens your overall branding efforts.

Which social profiles should I have?

Once you understand that you should be monitoring and repairing your reputation, you will need to figure out how to do it. As a rule of thumb the Big 4 social media sites are a great place to start. Generally your goal would be to obtain user profiles that are an exact match as the keyword you are trying to manage. In most cases this is a branded term such as your company name. Additioanly branded usernames are generally available on social media websites. Many sites, particularly niche sites, can be useful to your company and your specific ORM situation. But the 4 you must have are:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• MySpace

If you want to check across 120 different social sites to see which keywords or names are taken you can do so very easily with one of the best social media monitoring tools out there called KnowEm.com. Just type the desired username and click “Check Username”. Additionally, they offer a service that will register you on all those different social media sites as well for .50 cents per social media site.

Steps to Take

Once you have your accounts setup, you will need to do a few things before your campaign can be effective.

1. Create a complete profile
Simply obtaining the name twitter.com/companyname, isn’t enough. You need a complete and full profile to have a legitimate working account, this includes bios, avatars etc. As much information that you can fill in and feed to search engine spiders, the better.

2. Engage and Interact
Participating in the community strengthens your profile and gives your account credibility. An account that has your name but nothing else looks like a spam account.

Also, you gain the added benefit of internal links from these social sites. If you just create a profile and let it sit then it doesn’t gain internal link equity it needs, for high SERP rankings, from other profile pages, group pages, etc.
Interacting (e.g. returning messages, commenting, voting) is vital to the strength of your profile. For an example, check out the hat tip to Steve Espinosa for showing how to get DoFollowed links on YouTube here.

3. Monitor
When a company engages in social media they are opening themselves up for a lot of commentary regarding their brand. Be prepared to monitor the sentiment to measure if it’s positive or negative. Have a contingency plan for when you come across negative sentiment. I’ll spare the lesson on monitoring and handling sentiment and direct you to The Online Reputation Management Guide by Outspoken Media.

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