Small Business Internet Marketing Tips 6-10

6. Check out your competition. Visit your competitors’ websites. Do searches for keywords related to your business. Find out what others in your vertical are doing and saying. This is a great way to get ideas and take stock of your own company’s online marketing efforts.

7. Repeat after me – “I have an ugly baby.” A lot of business owners love their websites, but the first step to improving your website is to admit that it has some deficiencies. No website is perfect, and every website can use improvement. If you have a website, you have an ugly baby [sorry]. Just how ugly your website is, however, is open to discussion.

8. Start blogging. Every business, and we mean every business, has something to gain by blogging and absolutely nothing to loose. The list of benefits is long, but here’s a short list of reasons small businesses should blog.

9. Post online video. Video is still a little cutting-edge for some, but the benefits can’t be understated. Online video is the wave of the future, and every business needs to have something on YouTube, Metacafe, etc. If you’re concerned about expense here, keep in mind there are some low-budget options that won’t damage your brand while still providing concrete benefits.

10. Contact us. We can help your small business rise above the rest. Contact us so we can discuss your business and your basic goals – our initial consultation is free of charge.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

5 Small Business Internet Marketing Tips

1. What is the goal of your website? Ultimately, it should be to drive more business, but how exactly will it do that? Start with one goal – such as increasing the number of phone calls – and branch out from there. It’s important to set goals, but it’s just as important to come up with a system for measuring those goals.

2. Evaluate your website’s content – Content is King. What does your website say? Is the content unique and useful? Will people learn anything when they visit your site? When was the last time you added new content? Does your website have content worth reading? Does your content match your business goals?

3. The title tag. Visit your website. Look at the very top of your browser window. What do you see? Does it describe the page you’re looking at? Is it a unique description? Does it contain the keywords you want people to associate with that page of your website? If you’re a local business, does it contain your key local search keywords? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, check out this article all about title tags.

4. Call tracking and analytics. You can’t improve upon what you can’t measure. Analytics provide a tremendous amount of incredibly useful data, such as where your website visitors come from, how long they stay, and what they do on your site. Google analytics is free and pretty darn good, and we recommend it. We also recommend you make sure you can track every lead that’s generated by your website.

5. Take advantage of free local business directories. There are a few great local business directories that are completely free. Get your business listed in each of the directories below and you’ll see a boost in website visitors and hopefully a boost in business too.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

5-8 Email Marketing Tips

5. Tell a Story
In All Marketers Are Liars, Godin emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a successful marketing strategy. Email offers the opportunity to tell the story in continuous installments.

“Email marketers don’t have a prayer to tell a story,” Godin says, “unless they tell it in advance, in another medium, before they get permission. Otherwise, it quickly becomes spam. The best email marketing starts with a foundation, like Amazon, and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold.”

Too much email marketing, Burke opines, is one-off offers written as if recipients “like to run home at the end of the day and turn on Home Shopping Network so they can be targeted 24×7 by commercials.”

A well-crafted newsletter should be more than just a summary of your resume or company history. For instance, each issue of Sant’s Messages That Matter offers a free tip or strategy on how to make business proposals sing. “We focus on providing specific content, messages of a page or so about the kinds of things we’re good at,” Sant says.

6. Let Readers Drive Design
As there’s no such thing as guaranteed delivery in the email business, design is especially important. Because filters often block logos, graphics, and Flash animation, they can determine whether or not a customer or prospect even sees your message. “Filters are getting extremely thorough in what they’re filtering out,” Burke says. “If you’re not careful, those filters can filter out legitimate email.”

He recommends using flat text with hyperlinks to your Web site. “It’s text so it’ll go through,” Burke says. “You can put all of the graphics in the world on your Web site and once they click through to your Web site you’re better able to capture their identity and their information for future follow up.”

Many companies offer both plain and rich text email editions, giving customers the option of registering for the html edition on their Web sites. In those editions, design becomes especially important. But Ogilvy has found that email requires something different than traditional creative marketing design: Its studies have shown that users are most likely to respond to images and copy to the left of an image.

“We have seen increases up to 75 percent in response rates by moving the call to action button up next to an image instead of below the image, or by literally changing a link to a button so it stands out more prominently in the text,” Mullen says.

She has also found that the use of industry-, company-, and brand-specific words and phrases enhances the response. For instance, the word advice generates a high response for companies considered to be the thought leaders of their industry, but companies with consumer products, such as Apple with its iPod, will generate a better response using words like new or sleek.

7. Have an Exit Strategy
People who gave you their email address did so because they wanted to hear from you. But that can change and often does.

“If they stop responding,” Mullen says, “chances are it’s for one of two reasons: either they’re not interested in your content anymore or they’re no longer getting your emails.

“In either case we recommend that you define a set number of non-response messages [after which you] stop sending them emails. It sends a negative brand message and it doesn’t do anything to help reestablish your relationship with them,” Mullen says.

That number differs by industry. Travel companies, for instance, cannot predict when their customers will be traveling and looking for discounts on rooms and airfares, so their horizon is much longer–as long as several years.

On the other hand, a high-tech B2B company is probably only going to want specific information on wireless security when it’s addressing the problem internally. After the problem is solved, continued mailings about wireless security are likely to irritate. Devising a successful exit strategy is much like determining a successful formula for content: Know your industry.

8. Best Practices–Know what you want
The key to maintaining a set of successful best practices is to know what you want from them and be prepared to rewrite them as your business needs change. Mullen suggests starting with a good awareness of what you want your best practices to achieve.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

9 Ways Video Promotes your Business

If you own a business and have a website, then you’ve likely considered video marketing. Once you learn and are determined to implement video, the next step is to decide how to use videos to promote your business. Here are just a few examples:

1. Testimonials – Ask your customers or clients to give you quick 1-minute videos of their feedback. You can also interview them about your business for a more structured testimonial.

2. Product Demos – One of the biggest drawbacks to buying online is that you can’t actually test the product. Bypass that objection and demonstrate your product on video to help increase sales.

3. Case Studies – If you’re involved in some kind of before-and-after (website design, fitness, SEO, etc.) case studies are an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise. Seeing an example helps the potential customer understand exactly what impact your service or product can have on their business.

4. Product Reviews– Video brings an added element to product reviews, particularly if you’re reviewing a physical product. But hearing you talk about a book or piece of software is effective too.

5. Education – Use video to educate your market on the use of your products. Lead them towards the sale by answering their most frequently asked questions and objections.

6. Entertainment – People love to be entertained! If you can entertain in your video and combine that with a call to action, you’ll have a winning combination.

7. Webinars – If you provide webinars or other video presentations to your market, capture them via video and offer a replay to generate leads or even sell as a product.

8. Commercial – Done correctly (meaning compelling with a clear call to action), commercials for your product or service can be very effective.

9. Business Overview – One of the first things many people look for is who they are buying from and what they stand for. Let your potential customers learn about you and your business through a business overview.

As you can see from the list above, there are many ways to use video to promote your business. Just creating video is not the only step to effective marketing. You must craft a video that responds to the wants and needs of your market. They are looking for solutions to problems and questions. It’s your job to figure out how to use a video to solve issues, answer questions, provide the right solutions and lead them to the next step.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.

1-4 Email Marketing Tips

1. Get Permission
“Email is one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communications
we have,” says Jim Cecil, president of Nurture Marketing, a customer loyalty consultancy in Seattle. “Virtually everyone uses it and in business-to-business marketing everyone you want to reach has access to email. It’s also very inexpensive and it can easily be built into existing marketing systems. But of all media, it is the one where it’s most critical that you have explicit permission.”

Without permission you not only risk losing customer goodwill and inviting CAN-SPAM penalties, you could end up blacklisted by ISPs that refuse all mail coming from your domain if spamming complaints have been lodged against you.

Permission is not difficult to get. Offer something of value–a coupon or promise of special discounts, a whitepaper or informational newsletter–in exchange for the customer agreeing to receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information and preferences. Sign-up can be done on a Web site or on paper forms distributed at trade shows and conventions or by traditional mail, resellers, and affiliated organizations in a business network.

2. Build a Targeted Mailing List
“The very best way to get permission is to have your best customers and your biggest fans ask their friends to sign up,” Godin says. It results in a self-screened database of prospects who are probably interested in your offering.

That is how Tom Sant built a mailing list that now numbers 35,000 for his newsletter, “Messages That Matter.” According to Sant, author of Persuasive Business Proposals and Giants of Sales, “We simply began by following up with people we met at trade shows or on sales calls and asked them, ‘Would you like to get a tip from us every few weeks about how to do your proposals better?’ We made it clear that people shouldn’t be getting this if they didn’t want to.”

Sant includes a Subscribe link in his mailing so new readers have a means of signing up when their friends forward it to them. His mailing list “just grew organically,” he says, “because people would pass it around. We created an entire network of people who were getting these messages. It’s very effective and it’s enabled us to strengthen our position as thought leaders or recognized experts in the field.”

3. Work with a Clean, Targeted Database
Jack Burke, author of Creating Customer Connections, advises that you should work with the cleanest permission-based list you can find that is targeted to your industry and your offering. Many companies have this information in CRM, SFA, and contact management databases. But there are places to prospect if you don’t.

“A good place to look is with traditional, established data merchants for your industry,” Burke says. In the insurance industry, for instance, Programbusiness.com allows its members to send broadcast emails to its database of some 50,000 targeted subscribers and members have the opportunity of selecting subsets of addresses categorized by insurance type such as commercial, health, life, and auto.

Coregistration services Web sites, such as www.listopt.com or www.optionsmedia.com, can help. Coregistration simply means you offer your e-zine and email promotions through a registration form that appears on multiple sites. You should, however, do some research to ensure they will reach your targeted demographic and the lists are maintained.

“Too many companies, large and small, are under the illusion that they have the email addresses of their clients,” Burke says. “If you actually go in and audit their client databases, you’ll find they’re lucky to have 20 to 25 percent–and what they do have is often out of date.”

4. Adopt a Strategy of Persistence
It takes time to build customer relationships. “They used to say it takes something like 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad, and that was long before the Internet. I believe today it’s approaching 20 imprints before it makes an impression,” Burke says. “So if you aren’t touching your clients in some way at least once a month, chances are they’re going to find somebody else to do business with.”

Successful email marketing, Godin says, “starts with a foundation and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold.” That foundation requires an entrance strategy to greet new prospects and set up expectations for the relationship.

“After the customer has registered for future emails, downloaded your whitepaper, or entered your sweepstakes, there often is nothing to enhance that relationship. Companies need to think about what should happen next,” says Jeanniey Mullen, partner and director of email marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide.

Ogilvy’s research shows the first three emails are the most critical. Mullen advises there should be an introductory message in which customers accept an invitation and give permission for future communications, followed by a second that sets up customers’ expectations by explaining future benefits (discounts, coupons, or high-value informational newsletters). The third should begin to deliver on their expectations by sending the promised newsletter, whitepaper, or discount offering.

Stay tuned tomorrow for tips 5-8!


Learn more at The Media Zoo.

3 Basic Business SEO Tips

The problem is, that most small business sites don’t have what it takes to rank well in search engines. This guide will help you with the basics.
The most BASIC 3 rules of SEO?

1) Use a keyword researcher tool like Wordtracker or Google Keyword Estimator

Find what keywords are being searched for. Then create pages that specifically target those. How?

2) Use the keywords in your title tags. And once or twice in the body of your page.

Each keyword you’re targeting should have its own page specifically targeted at that keyword. Avoid repeating the word in a non-sensical format as this produces poor results.

3) Then get people to link to you!

The hardest part is getting people to link to you. That is a major topic in and of itself. FUll profile links often work better than one liner “link farm” links.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – SEO.

3 Tips for a Great Homepage

1. Keep Your Visitors Awake

Many sites waste valuable space on their home pages with either a “welcome message from our CEO!” or an interminable mission statement – sometimes both. Most often, that’s about as interesting as reading the tax code, so visitors nod off before the page even finishes loading. Unless he’s just been indicted, few visitors are interested in a company’s CEO. Give him his own vanity page and bury it deep in the site.

But your mission statement can be useful in one respect. Use it to distill your Web site’s purpose into a single compelling statement that contains important keywords. Then feature that one-liner prominently on your home page. For instance, MarsupialWorld.com might say: “The World’s Largest Selection of Marsupial Statues!” – a phrase that’s sure to entice any collector of kangaroo or opossum art.

Use that one statement to pique visitors’ interest and encourage them to scan the rest of your home page to see exactly what you have to offer.

2. Make It Short And Simple

Visitors want useful information that is served up quickly in usable, scannable chunks. Don’t expect them to scroll down through 3 or 4 screens to find out about your products. Instead, try to fit your entire home page on a single screen.

Be succinct: you’re writing for the Web. Visitors have different expectations when they read online than they do when reading printed materials. It’s also more tiring to read online, so make it easy for visitors to find the information they want:

* Bulleted items: People often scan these first and ignore text in paragraph form, so include your most important points in bullet lists. You can even create custom bullets for more emphasis.

* Clearly defined sections: Use color, header tags, or horizontal rules to structure your page into sections.

* Columns: These are easier to scan than long lines of text that spread across the whole page.

* Short paragraphs: Make your major point early in the paragraph because people often won’t read the entire text.

Use these techniques to briefly describe what you’re offering and explain why it’s valuable. Then provide links so visitors who want more information can go deeper into the site. Your home page is the appetizer that makes visitors hungry for more.

3. Tell Them Where To Go

An understandable, easy-to-use navigation system is crucial because visitors hate to get lost on a site. Frustrated visitors leave and never come back. Take steps to make sure this doesn’t happen on your site:

* Accessible navigation: Give visitors multiple navigation options to avoid locking out visitors using assistive technologies, PDA’s, or non-graphical browsers. Navigation with image maps or JavaScript menus are fine as long as you always include text navigation as well. Keyboard shortcuts are very useful to visitors who use keyboard navigation instead of a mouse.

* Search function: Visitors love to be able to search a site to find the exact information or product they want. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a coding wizard to include one. Some Web hosts provide them; other free sources include Google, and FreeFind. Learn more about how Web site search tools work at the SearchTools.com site.

* Site map: This is a must for large, complex sites – but it’s often helpful for small sites that cover a variety of topics or whose organizational structure isn’t obvious. By the way, search engine spiders love them because a site map helps them index the entire site.

Your site navigation has to be easy to use. You’re wasting your time tantalizing visitors with exciting copy on your home page if they get lost while trying to learn more.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Web.

Benefits of Corporate Video

It is always a good idea to make videos of special occasions as a way of watching them and reminiscing the good times. The videos also leave an impact and help us remember better than the photographs. The same rules apply when promoting a product or a service, or for that matter a company. The most effective way of promoting a company or a service is through the assistance of the media, and more than the audio the video format has more reach. This is probably why many corporations these days are creating videos with the help of media companies to promote their company. Videos are created keeping these things in mind, and the time frame matter a lot when trying to sell the company.

Corporate videos are all about giving the outside world a sneak peek into the company’s operations, what they believe in and what their specialty or focus. If they are able to convey this message to the viewers in an interesting way, they can be sure that new business will come from doing so. The aim of the video is to promote the positive points of the organization while trying to add a bit of life and excitement to the campaign. During the initial stages right after the company has been launched, they normally have a press release when they officially tell the world they have arrived. The videos can be used at this juncture or during meetings with prospective clients to show them what is in store for them if they sign a business deal with the company.

For a corporate video to be effective and have maximum reach, it is best to seek out a Public Relations Company or an Ad Agency. They will bring in their creative expertise, gather information from the company and create a video that will grab the attention of the viewer and help them take back a few words or images that caught their eye. This would be the first step to launching one’s services and products. Video promotion is used largely by Non profit organizations to spread word about their organization and the purpose behind their existence to invite sponsors and others to support their services.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

4 Social Media Myths for Businesses

Myth #1: Small Businesses Must be on Social Media

A recent study found that 31% of small business owners said they don’t use social media because their customers don’t use it. If that’s the case, find where your customers are and the best way to reach them there.

Warren Sukernek, partner and vice president of strategies at Lift9, said there’s a rush to get on Twitter and launch a blog without a plan. He stressed that spending time up front doing analysis, research, and goal setting will make a social media plan easy to execute.

He recommended first getting active as a lurker on different social media networks to see what’s happening and what people are saying. For example, check out what other companies are doing on Twitter and then assess what you like and don’t like.

Sukernek also pointed out that social media fits more naturally for certain types of businesses, but that doesn’t mean other businesses shouldn’t be on there. It may just take more time to build an audience.

“I wouldn’t dissuade that B2B company from dipping a toe in. It might make sense to dip a toe in a different pool of water,” he said. He suggested that being on an industry-specific forum or LinkedIn might work better in some cases than being on Twitter.

Depending on what the goals are, gathering competitive intelligence might turn out to be what’s most valuable to a business, according to Sukernek.

“It’s hard to put a price tag on that,” he said.

Myth #2: Set It and Forget It

Don’t expect a case of build it and they will come. Sukernek compared it to building a brick-and-mortar store and not putting a sign on the outside.

“You’ve got to promote it,” he said.

Cross promote your web site with the pages you set up on social media sites. Sukernek advised integrating these social media sites into your business’ offline activities. For example, a retailer should list their fan page URL and Twitter name along with its company’s web site.

Time spent on social media efforts depends on the type of business and the goals involved, according to Sukernek. Goals should be distilled down to revenue and key performance metrics.

“Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Set some reasonable, manageable objectives,” he said.

Myth #3: Word of Mouth Presence Isn’t There

Sukernek said small businesses think that if no one is talking specifically about their company on social networks, they don’t need to be there. He disagrees.

“They’re talking about subjects that are germane to the brand,” he said.

On the other hand, what if your small business is being talked about on social media in a bad way? Sukernek said people are probably already doing that, and suggests it’s better for small businesses to be aware of it and address it directly on those platforms.

Myth #4: Social Media is Only for Broadcasting Messages

Treating social media as a one-way communication channel is an approach that’s doomed to fail. Check in with your fans and followers by asking for feedback, responding to questions and comments, and being personable to build relationships with customers.

“It’s conversational. It’s dialogue,” Sukernek said.

Concerns of small businesses on social media aren’t much different than those of large companies. For those businesses that aren’t careful, subscribing to these social media myths can result in some big mistakes.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

Best Way to Measure Video ROI

Question: What is the best way to measure ROI on an online video campaign?

Answer: Using an analytics platform is an ideal way to track a campaign’s success because it gives marketers real-time intelligence that will allow them to continually optimize the cam-paign and ensure the highest ROI. For example, if you know that the bulk of your Web traffic is coming from ads placed on a particular site, you can increase efforts there and increase overall campaign effectiveness. The most appealing aspect of using analytics software is that it combines data from all sites so that, if advertisers are running a multiplatform campaign, they can assess the entire campaign through one analytics dashboard.

Search engine rankings are also a quick way to gauge an online campaign’s success. Since search engines now crawl and rank sites based on blended content—including images, video and audio—tracking how your ranking for various branded keywords changes over the course of an online video campaign is a great place to start.

Another benchmark of success is the traction video content gets on aggregator sites such as YouTube, MetaCafe and Blinkx. In addition to monitoring how many people watch your video, these sites allow viewers to tag, bookmark, rank and comment on videos. Such feedback is another invaluable way to gauge how video content is being perceived online.

Brand interaction is another effective way to monitor the success of an online video campaign. Several metrics can be used to address brand interaction: Tracking how long viewers watch an advertisement, what percentage of the video clip viewers watch and how often they see an advertisement can provide valuable information to online marketers. For example, if users consistently watch only a small percentage of a video ad, marketers might want to try A/B creative testing or change media placements.

By combining the above data, marketers can have a real idea of how much traction their online video campaign is garnering. The more information, the better off marketers will be.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.

7 Small Business Marketing Tips

1. Don’t Advertise Like a Big Business
Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales. A small business can’t afford to do that. Instead, design your advertising to produce sales …now. One way to accomplish this is to always include an offer in your advertising – and an easy way for prospective customers to respond to it.

2. Offer a Cheaper Version
Some prospective customers are not willing to pay the asking price for your product or service. Others are more interested in paying a low price than in getting the best quality. You can avoid losing sales to many of these customers by offering a smaller or stripped down version of your product or service at a lower price.

3. Offer a Premium Version
Not all customers are looking for a cheap price. Many are willing to pay a higher price to get a premium product or service. You can boost your average size sale and your total revenue by offering a more comprehensive product or service …or by combining several products or services in a special premium package offer for a higher price.

4. Try Some Unusual Marketing Methods
Look for some unconventional marketing methods your competitors are overlooking. You may discover some highly profitable ways to generate sales and avoid competition. For example, print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your website or generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.

5. Trim Your Ads
Reduce the size of your ads so you can run more ads for the same cost. You may even be surprised to find that some of your short ads generate a better response than their longer versions.

6. Set up Joint Promotions with Other Small Businesses
Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market. Offer to publicize their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicizing your services to their customers. This usually produces a large number of sales for a very low cost.

7. Take Advantage of Your Customers
Your customers already know and trust you. It’s easier to get more business from them than to get any business from somebody who never bought from you. Take advantage of this by creating some special deals just for your existing customers …and announce new products and services to them before you announce them to the general market.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

5 E-Commerce Site Tips

1. Think like a consumer, and put your products in more than one category. The online businesses that make their goods and services easy to find reap rewards in two ways: People purchase more and they experience greater overall satisfaction with the Web site. Consider up sell and cross sell opportunities by offering products that make logical sense together. If you sell paintings and frames, show the frames that best complement the paintings. If you sell a line of products that have a wide range of prices, show the progression from the least expensive to the most expensive. Customers may choose to purchase the higher priced items if they’re presented as options.

2. Keep it simple. Many people cite overly complicated navigation or too many pages in the purchase path as reasons they don’t complete their online sale or abandon their shopping cart. Successful eCommerce sites simplify the checkout process and display clear pricing and shipping information. They also post clear return policies and access to customer service. Putting your brick and mortar store’s phone number in a visible place on your Web site is a good idea. Studies suggest that consumers feel more confident knowing you’re just a phone call away if they have a question or if there’s a problem with their order.

3. A picture really is worth a thousand words, so use photos of your products and go easy on the text. Online usability studies suggest that people do not read; they scan. It’s 25% harder to read on the Web, so keep these guidelines in mind for optimum readability: Headlines should be 8 words or less, shoot for 9-12 words on a line (people don’t want to read across the entire screen), keep sentences short (15-20 words) and try to keep summaries under 30 words and hold paragraphs to 40-70 words. In this way you can maintain compelling product descriptions alongside your product offerings.

4. Market your site once it’s live. It’s not enough to just build a Web site. You need to make an effort to market and promote your Web site to new and existing customers. Collect email addresses on your site to help you keep in touch with customers and consider creating a newsletter. Seek links from other sites that complement yours. Optimize your site’s content for relevance and submit it to the major search engines. With ProStore, you’ve got an incredible built-in marketing opportunity in that you can promote your products to millions of eBay customers. Take advantage of this capability to reach a whole new set of customers.

5. Make payment processing easy. Online shoppers need a way to give you money online. That’s easy these days. You can accept credit card payments with either a PayPal account or an online merchant account. PayPal is ideal for anyone trying out the eCommerce waters since there’s less of an upfront commitment, but you may end up paying more per transaction. If you know from the beginning you’re going to have strong sales and lots of online transactions each month, you may want to consider setting up an online merchant account.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

Why Online Video?

Video is so powerful because it showcases charisma and communication skills, allowing for transparency, which builds trust. Video is also powerful because it’s demonstrative, clearly depicting procedures, techniques or visual information such as charts and graphs. A web page is inferior because it can take a lot of text to explain a proceedure or concept where if you just show it in a video, it’s quick and easy, plus it is retained longer because it’s visual. Images stick better than words. Besides, it takes effort to read. Customers and prospects would much rather you spoon feed the information to them via multimedia. Listed below are the benefits of online video.

- Increase sales
- Lead generation
- Makes your website sticky and a repeat destination
- Can be used to educate
- Can be used in directories such as YouTube to drive customers to your website
- Can be used on your website to further qualify leads
- For online sales, video can close the sale
- For complex sales a video can take move prospect closer to closing
- PR vehicle for motion video news and announcements

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.

5 Social Media Tips for Businesses

Here are five tips to optimize your small business’ social networks to attract more customers online. Small business owners and marketers do not have the luxury of lots of free time to monitor social networks, so these tips are intended to help you be as efficient as possible.

#1: Make Your Profiles About More Than Just Your Industry

While you should be demonstrating expertise on your Facebook fan page and your blog, you should also be adding local context to this information. What does the information you are providing mean for your specific region?

If you are selling homes, provide information and links about the local area, as well as the real estate you are offering. As a small business, you are competing against large national news sources, so provide something the big guys can’t afford to give—local perspective.

#2: Offer Value

By far the most important tip to getting value from social media for your business is offering value to the customers you want to interact with. First, make sure your social media presences contain all the information a customer needs to find you on and offline, and provide a clear idea of what your business offers.

Second, define what you’ll be offering your potential customers in return for their attention and time. You can offer promotions or discounts specifically for fans of your Facebook page, for instance.

If you do not have the budget for special offers, make sure the content you are offering is valuable to the potential customers you are trying to reach. Envision the need you are filling for the target customer and serve the customer with useful information related to your business or industry.

#3: Show Consistency

Nothing is more likely to reduce the effectiveness of small business social media outreach than inconsistency and spotty participation. You can’t expect potential customers to revisit your Facebook profile if it is hasn’t been updated in the two weeks since they first visited, or expect them to make a purchase from your Twitter outreach if you only post 2 updates per month.

For example, Naked Pizza, based in New Orleans, messages its followers on Twitter 1 to 15 times per day. It is now receiving 20 percent of its total revenue from these interactions.

#4: Diversify and Connect

It takes some time investment on the front end, but reaching out on multiple social platforms—then connecting the different presences with the same themes and message—is crucial to reaching the most possible customers on social networks. You don’t want to replicate the same message on every platform, either. Though services like ping.fm are great for simplifying content posting, try to add something unique to each social media presence you maintain.

#5: Be Competitive

Observe your competition and their social media activity. If your business is the only one in your industry and region interacting on social networks, congrats, you’re ahead of the curve. But more likely than not, your competitors are experimenting on social networks, too. Observe what they are doing to grow their base. Which tactics are working? Which are not? This is exactly what you’d do in a competitive assessment offline, looking for ways to improve your process by evaluating your competitors.

Remember to stay persistent, as it takes time to establish robust presences on social media sites. If you act on these five tips in your social media outreach, you will leverage your time effectively, and see improved results from promoting your small business on social networks.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

Top 10 YouTube Tips for Businesses

1. Create and Customize Your Channel

First things first, customizing your channel is well worth the time it will take to set it up. You should add your company’s branding, customize the colors to compliment your company’s look, and add relevant information and links. A channel setup also offers YouTube users the option to subscribe to your content via the click of one button and the option to search just your uploaded content. The channel structure also allows you to highlight just uploads, playlists, favorites or all.

2. Add Subtitles

Since March 2010 auto-captioning has been available to all YouTube users, so there’s no technical excuse not to. Doing so adds captions for the hundreds of millions of hearing impaired folk across the world, ensuring your content is accessible to anyone who’d like to watch it. It’s an easy enough process that uses voice recognition, the results of which can be (and frankly need to be) edited for accuracy.

3. Don’t Overuse Annotations

A recent “improvement” from YouTube is the ability to add comments that display over the top of the footage. Don’t be tempted to go down this route, the annotations look unprofessional, are a distraction to viewers and depending how overused they are, can be a downright annoyance. Sure, you want to grab people’s attention and make an immediate impression, but your video content and other info you’ve added to the site should be enough to not have to rely on extraneous text.

4. Act To Remove Offensive Comments

While you can’t stop trolls from adding nasty comments to your videos or channel, you have the power to delete offensive or spammy remarks from the worst offenders. Taking advantage of this option requires good judgment. It’s obviously not a great idea to instantly remove any negative or critical comments, especially relevant ones, but you can certainly remove any spam or comments that use offensive language. If challenged over the removal make a simple statement to the effect that such comments will not be tolerated. If you’re getting seriously spammed or abused by a particular person, you can also block that user, but this should be a last resort. There are also options open to you to moderate comments before they go live, so you can nip any nasties in the bud before they are posted.

5. Engage With the YouTube Community

Don’t be a YouTube island. After all, it’s a social platform, so be sure to check out other content on the site, favorite appropriate videos and make suitable YouTube “friends.” If you really can’t, or don’t want to associate your company with other companies or individuals, then think wider. Why not look at content or channels that cover your local area, or that are for a good cause that you/your company supports. As well as engaging with other users, be sure to keep up to date with YouTube’s own news. The site goes through some fairly major changes from time to time and adds new features on a regular basis, so it’s well worth following the official YouTube blog, at the very least, to be kept up to date with site and community news.

6. Organize Your Content

Be sure to organize your content to be viewer-friendly rather than just offer a linear stream of video uploads. Create playlists to group relevant videos together, or lump older content into time-related (March 2010, Spring 2010, etc) folders if that’s more relevant to your organization. Remember that YouTube offers users the option to embed entire playlists (in addition to individual videos) into external sites, so give the creation of them, their titles and description, some decent thought.

7. Don’t Overlook Tags

As with many other sites, YouTube’s content is organized on a tag word basis. It’s more than worth taking the time to add the correct tags to your videos. The beauty of a tag word system is that it works on the basis of logic, but also on the more-the-merrier principle as you can’t know what search terms people will use. Really try and brainstorm around the tags you’re adding. For example, if your company offers dog products add “puppy,” “pooch,” “mutt,” “hound,” etc, too. As far as categories go, YouTube offers around 15 to choose from. Obviously try to use the most relevant, but don’t be afraid to experiment if your content could fall into one or the other, but be sure to monitor how the different videos perform so you can make an educated decision about categories in the future.

8. Promote Your YouTube Videos Elsewhere

Don’t assume viewers will come to you, or automatically think to look you up on YouTube. Every time you post a video that’s relevant for general sharing, blog about it, tweet it or add it to your Facebook (Facebook) Page. The last two actions are easy through YouTube’s account settings that automatically publishes news of a new video if you’ve linked up the social services. While YouTube is due to retire its “Link to Blog (blog)” option from the account settings soon, it’s easy enough to embed the relevant video in a blog post using HTML and will help push users towards your video content. In addition, don’t shy away from allowing embedding of your videos on other sites — the more views the better.

9. Use YouTube’s Free Analytics Tools

YouTube offers every user free analytics data via the “Insight” button on every uploaded video. This free-to-view info should not be overlooked as it can offer you some valuable info on not only views stats, but demographics, community, and the most useful — “discovery” data — info on how users came across the video, including the popular links they followed to get there. The tools are there – be sure to use them.

10. Don’t Neglect Your Channel

There are so many neglected YouTube channels, even from social, or web 2.0 firms that you’d think would realize the value in an up-to-date video resource for their company. While we’re by no means advocating needlessly creating video content, if you’re looking to go down the YouTube route then don’t let your resolve or enthusiasm for the service dwindle a couple of months in. Even if you have no new content to post, still keep logging in to stay on top of comments, friend requests, add favorites, etc, so as not to relegate your channel to the ranks of the unloved.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

Video SEO tips

1. Optimize with keywords.
Just like any type of text-based content, video SEO involves optimizing with target relevant keywords — both for search engines and for user experience. Use keywords in:

• File name
• Title
• Tags
• URL
• Link text

Beyond that, include a paragraph of optimized text that provides a brief description of the video. Again, the benefits are twofold: You’ll improve the user experience and your search rankings.

2. Distribute videos on video-sharing sites.
In addition to posting videos on your own site, video-sharing sites are effective tools for gaining visibility and additional links. Remember these few points to maximize results:

• Don’t forget that videos hosted on YouTube and other video-sharing sites should be optimized for keywords
• YouTube channel pages — and those of other video-sharing sites — should be optimized, as well
• Use a video distribution service like TubeMogul to deploy your videos to the top sharing sites

3. Implement a linking strategy.
Video is judged by the same linking standards as all other forms of digital content. So building both internal and external links is crucial for video SEO. Ideas for a linking strategy include:

• Cross-linking to other videos
• Linking to videos from relevant web pages
• Linking to videos in blog posts
• Tweeting the video
• Linking to videos from social media pages
• Bookmarking the video

4. Encourage viewers to share your videos.
First thing is first — if you want users to share your videos, you must create content worth sharing. If your video isn’t interesting, relevant, entertaining or informative, users aren’t likely to share it, let alone view it. From there:

• Allow and encourage users to comment on the video
• Make it easy for users to share your video on You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
• Offer video content in multiple formats so users can choose the one that best suited to their platform and connectivity speed

5. Re-purpose your videos.
As with text content, the more optimized video, the better. Get creative in order to re-purpose videos across the web:

• Embed videos in blog posts
• Break up long videos and create multiple shorter ones
• Use transcriptions of videos to create blog posts or content for web pages
• Take screen shots from videos and post them to Flickr and other image-sharing sites
• Turn offline content, such as training videos or videos of a conference keynote speech, into optimized digital assets for your website

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

Landing Page Tips

5 Landing Page Tips for Higher Conversions:

1. Simplify your content. Landing page content should be in bullet form, not paragraphs. In addition, it should focus on the benefits of your products/services, not the features. A visitor to your site is already interested, so why sell them on what your offering does? Instead, sell them on how they can benefit from it. Keep it short, simple, and to the point. Remember, this is your opportunity to add value to their experience and keep their eyes on your site instead of the competition’s.
2. Shorten your lead form. Think about what you truly need from your customers in order to consider them a lead. At this point in the process, do you really need to know their industry or the size of their organization? Or would you be better off simplifying their commitment and only asking for an email address, name, name of company, and a telephone number? The shorter your lead form, the more likely a potential customer is to fill it out.
3. Use your analytics to drive decisions. Your site analytics package offers a lot of useful data that you can leverage to improve the performance of your landing pages. For instance, do you know the screen resolution that 75% of your top prospects are using? Tapping into this data for current site profiles could tell you exactly that. Moreover, it could help you determine whether visitors can actually see the benefits of your offering or the lead form, and the specific browser types they are using.
4. Keep the conversion path in mind when using images. The use of images on landing pages can be powerful as they attract the eye and can help keep a user on the page. However, they are not risk free. For example, some images might distract the eye from the conversion path, or sit front and center while pushing a lead form below the fold or off to the side. When considering the using of images, think about driving the user down the path to conversion. You want to be sure that your imagery enhances the experience, and does not detract from the optimal path.
5. Leverage landing pages for extended user engagement. Beyond driving visitors down a conversion path, think about how you can leverage landing pages to engage the consumer beyond today. For instance, do you have a Facebook fan page, a blog, press releases, a newsletter, or an RSS feed? If so, think about how you can offer such content to visitors so that they continue to engage with your brand beyond the initial lead form. Adding simple links, or teasers for content such as white papers, behind the lead form will allow you to keep your customers engaged throughout the sales process and beyond.

For a FREE CONSULTATION on how to improve your landing page, call The Media Zoo at (954) 229-1933 or click here to learn more.

Top 11 SEO tips

1. Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

2. Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

3. Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

4. Social bookmarking. Make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark your website, creating important links that the search engines value. There are plenty of free social bookmarking widgets available. We offer The Bookmarketer

5. Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

6. First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

7. Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

8. Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

9. Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

10. Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop” occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.

11. Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

Learn more at The Media Zoo – SEO.

Top 7 Reasons for Web Video

Web video and video email marketing can differentiate you from the competition in many ways.

1. Stand Out from the Crowd – While everyone’s ramping up their budget to send plain text emails, you can send video emails to gain the competitive advantage.

2. Be Remembered – It has been proven that the combination of audio and visual stimulus increases retention.

3. Stay on the Cutting-Edge – Web video and video email are a staple of communication, they’re not going to go away. Usage of this new medium will only increase.

4. Be a Leader in Your Field – Usage of web video is on the rise, but it hasn’t yet hit the mainstream markets.

5. Put a Face to the Name – For the most part, people like to do business with people they know. Video emails let your prospects get to know you before you even meet them.

6. Capitalize on Your Greatest Assets… You and Your Team – Unlike copy, you and your team can produce marketing videos with little more than a $60 webcam. Sales copy can be expensive and time consuming to author. The difference between making a sale and losing a customer can often be as simple as adding the human touch – that’s you and your team!

7. Improve Your Credibility – When people can see and hear you talking about the benefits of your products and services, they are much more likely to trust you. When you have trust, you have sales.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.

Video Benefits

Create Better Call to Actions

When an actor says to fill out a form, statistics show that 43% more will do this task. If part of your websites sales objective is to get people to your site and then do a specific action plan, adding video will help your customers accomplish this task.

Saving Time in Man Hours

By having a quality video spokesperson answering confusing questions or showing a presentation of a confusing product, time and energy will be saved from having to answer these questions yourself.

What Do Customers See at Your Front Door

Your website is a reflection of your commitment to excellence and the look and feel of your website is no different. By having an informative video welcoming or conveying a strong call to action will let your visitors know you mean business.

You Can Increase Sales by Having Strong Call to Actions

Did you know that video is the best way for customers to identify with the branding of your company? Why do Coke and McDonald’s still advertise on TV; because it works!

More than Just Text for Testimonials

Testimonials look great on paper, but when someone sees a real person giving testimonials about a product or service, sales can increase exponentially.

Introduce Your Team

A great way for potential new customers to meet your staff and your office is by having them on your website.

Ask For the Sale

This may be a silly example, but if you were to ask people to follow you and started walking around the building, many people would follow you, simply because you asked them to. You always have to ask for the sale. Your script should have the actor ask for you, every time.

Video simply increases sales, builds rapport, and establishes trust.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.

Why Website Videos?

Using Website Videos is an easy, innovative way to promote your business, improve customer relations, and increase sales. What does your business offer you customers and prospects when they visit your website? Is there just a wealth of text? What is the first impression a customer receives of your business?

With a Website Video, professionally produced and customized, tell your customers what you want them to hear about your business. Think of your Video Spokesperson as an extra sales person who requires no sales training or supervision, does not expect commissions, company benefits or vacations; and delivers perfect presentations every time.

• Of the people viewing marketing-orientated videos, over half will take some sort of action after viewing a video…including 12% who will actually buy the product being offered. To put this into perspective, typically only .5% to 2% of visitors

to a “text only” web site will end up purchasing a service or product.

• 65% of online surfers will view video advertisements to the end

(less than 20% read “text only” sites to completion).

• 68% of people who watch website videos, will in turn, forward links for these

videos onto their friends…turning them into viral traffic machines.

• 72% of online surfers are watching web videos every week. By the

year 2011, it’s estimated this number will climb to 87% of web surfers.

• An estimated 1 billion dollars will be spent on video ads in this year. By 2011, that number will climb to at least 4.3 billion dollars.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.