If you’ve been paying attention lately (and I sure hope you have), you’ve been hearing quite a bit about Video Marketing as the wave of the future for Internet Marketing and giving your site the competitive edge.
Maybe you’ve watched the video by the lovely Kimberly Castleberry or watched the new product launch video series by Andy Jenkins explaining to you how imperative it is to jump on the video marketing bandwagon.
Or maybe you don’t know who they are but have been hearing things around the bloggersphere. Either way I’m here to tell you that I too agree that Video Marketing is the wave of the future. However, hearing “why” you should do something is great, but what we really want to know is the “how”! Am I right?
So I’m going to take it a step further; I’m going to show two ways now HOW you can maximize your marketing efforts by using video. I’m going to give you some basic tips on how to create your own video today and leverage the power of video marketing; not only putting you in a position of authority, but potentially bringing in tons of traffic to your site.
Getting On Camera
This is going to be the fastest way to get a video up and running and at the same time add a personal touch to your business/blog.
Here are some tools you are going to need:
A video camera such as a Flip or Kodak Zi8; both have the capability to upload your videos directly onto YouTube. You can possibly get away with a traditional video camera or standard one, but these are designed to give you the best quality and work extremely well with video syndication sites.
If you are doing interviews, I would recommend using Skype and purchasing a recording software such as Supertintin.
At the very minimum, you will need a YouTube account. Ideally, sign up for a TubeMogul account and maximize your efforts by uploading your video to be syndicated to multiple video sites all at once.
You need the ability to upload your video to your website. For the most part, you just have to simply grab the embed code generated by these video distribution sites and plug it into your website. If you are using WordPress, plugins such as Vipers Video Quicktags makes this process even simpler; all you need is the URL the video sits on.
You may want to use a video editing software such as Windows Live Movie Maker; most Windows computers automatically have this installed. Just simply upload your video and add such features as captions and credits. Note: once you save your edited video, it will save in a .wlmp format so you will have convert your video to a mp4 format. I would suggest using the One Click Video to MP4 Converter by Brother Soft.
Some bravery! Getting on camera is a bit scary, I know. But the more you do it, the easier it will become. So practice!
Reasons to get on camera:
As a way to welcome your visitors to your site and give them a call to action such as opting into your newsletter
Interviewing other bloggers and entrepreneurs
Discussing your view on a topic, technique, product/service or business concept
Provide an inspirational tip to your audience
Can’t seem to get yourself in front of the camera just yet? Here’s an alternative…
Get Behind the Camera – Video Tutorials
Doing video tutorials is a great way to add value to others by teaching them step by step how to achieve a task and at the same time increasing your potential exposure and authority for your niche. This can also be very simple, but is going to take a bit more preparation and planning on your part.
An application to record your videos. There are free versions such as Camstudio.org. But if you are going to do tutorials often I would recommend getting paid versions. Screencast-O-Matic has a paid version; for only $9 you can record up to 60 minutes of video and have a nice selection of editing tools. If you really want to go all out, then look into Camtasia (for Windows) or Screenflow (for Mac).
You are also going to need a headset with microphone capabilities. Logitech has some good ones that you can get for $40-$50. Or you can invest a bit more an get a headless microphone. Either way, I do suggest you work with mics as oppose to using the default microphone that comes with your computer. The mics will do a much better job as dealing with background noise and audio issues.
You will need a video player installed on your website or the embed code generated once you’ve uploaded the video to a video syndication site. Of course the latter would be the simplest option and at the same time provide you the benefits of more potential exposure by hosting the video on sites such as YouTube.
Reasons to get behind the camera:
You have a technique or tactic you want to teach
You have a product you want to review
As a way to help others see what your site/product has to offer
These are just two ways you can quickly start implementing video into your marketing efforts. There are many other ways to use video and many more reasons why they can be very beneficial for your business/blog. So start small but start today. Don’t let your fear of video stop you from taking advantage of the it’s powerful leverage.
Have you used video in your marketing efforts yet? If not, are you willing to put your fears behind you and not be left behind the video marketing dust?
Paid ad placement is a traffic-building strategy that can pay off like nobody’s business. It can bring in a whole new audience, build up a reputation, and even get the attention of top-tier blogs and Websites.
Unfortunately, many bloggers play it fast and loose when buying up real estate on other sites, even when intentions are pure. But instead of blowing your hard-earned cash on worthless, traffic-free adspace, here are the top 7 ad-buying mistakes you can make as a blogger, and how to avoid them like the plague.
Bad Placement
Under the guise that internet traffic is so diverse that demographics no longer matter since any kind of site can attract any kind of audience, countless bloggers have placed ads on absurdly irrelevant sites. Ensure that your blog is targeting precisely the same audience as the ad site to avoid placing ads about a Mozart blog on bieberfever.com or a quilting blog on youporn.com.
Bad Positioning
If you’re advertising on a site crammed with skyscrapers stuffed to the rafters with tiny ads, you might have been better off buying a single pixel on The Million Dollar Home Page. Google juice dilutes to homeopathic levels when you’re divvying up the pie to that extent and it all becomes a gray mass to the reader who will simply not bother to click on any of the ads.
Bad Content
As difficult it may be to imagine, a recent blogger’s ad read: “Beleive your sailsmen! There all talknig alot about my blog to!” Having illiteracy attempt to draw traffic to a blog is somewhat akin to hiring a 600 pound spokesperson to extol the virtues of your diet aids. Don’t just rely on your word processor’s spell check as: “Any miss steaks? Nun eye am a wear off!” passes the test but it’s still gobbledygook!
Bad Design
Does your blog ad look like a kindergartener designed it in MS Paint? There is no substitute for expert design to appeal to an audience and unless you have the Photoshop chops to conceive and execute a professional looking ad, you’re just wasting your time and money. Hire a freelance graphic artist and have them take over the design duties.
Bad Timing
All blogs have some level of inherent timing, from snowmobile blogs that go dormant in the summer to tech blogs that have nothing to report on Sundays. Your ads should be set to drive traffic to your blog at the times when there is actually content of immediate interest being posted. Placing your ads to fall at the wrong time is only going to succeed in speeding you off to bankruptcy court.
Bad Diffusion
Many bloggers are cash strapped so when they choose to place ads, they tend to make a big investment in one or two sites and then cry the blues when their traffic chart doesn’t show a single blip. Instead of handing over a big check to a single site, using an ad network will allow you to place your ad on various sites at once.
Bad Capacity
You’ve mortgaged your house, hocked your wedding ring, and borrowed money from Vito The Loanshark to place dynamite ads all over the web that are resulting in avalanches of traffic to your site… so much traffic that your server crashes. Or your host or blogging platform yanks your blog for exceeding your bandwidth limits and your visitors are treated to an embarrassing “Blog Suspended” page. In the blogging world great success is only a few gigabytes of traffic away from great failure.
Somewhere out there you’ll find bloggers who have committed all seven of these bad mistakes, thanks to poor planning, poor execution and other problems. Now that you can identify the pitfalls in buying ads, you can tackle ad buying with confidence instead of throwing money down the drain.
A blogger always looks for ways to pull traffic towards his blog, be it for commercial purpose or just for getting some fan followings. In order to cater to a larger mass which can earn him greater revenue it is important to know some basic promotional strategies. Blogging is so much in vogue these days that it has become difficult to pull traffic. Keeping in mind some following simple tips and methods while blogging can draw more audience and in turn earn more money.
To begin with the blog should be spelling and grammatical error free. Since packaging is the key instrument for marketing a product, customizing the look and feel of a blog is important. Choosing a color scheme and layout with the help of HTML or CSS can help.
Secondly a blogger should tell his or her friends and family about his blogs to promote it. One can keep updating his or her social networking sites about the blogs. Posting blogs in one’s social networking site doesn’t necessarily do it all. A blogger has to spend some time viewing other people’s blog post and actively participate in commenting on them as well. A blogger can ask a friend who is already in a blog promoting social networking site to promote his blog and not forget to return his favor.
Most importantly one of the best methods to attract traffic to a blog is to choose the correct keyword that is search engine friendly and make sure that the blog description contains innumerable forms of the chosen keyword throughout the content.
Again another tip to pull traffic towards a blog is to avoid advertisements until the blogger’s blogs have already accumulated a number of fan followings and regular readers. Because a new visitor or a new reader will most likely not stick to a blog which has advertisements associated with it. So the best way is to wait till one’s blogs have already gathered certain number of fan followings and then add advertisements which will ensure greater profit margins.
Finally making sure a blogger chooses the right column to post his or her blogs can definitely draw the target audience and visitors towards the blog posts. Blogs should be submitted to the RSS feed directories on a regular basis for the best results as far as getting fan followings and money making are concerned.
Keeping these above mentioned tips or methods in mind a blogger can definitely stand out of the crowd and make his mark in the world of blogging.
Am I the only one out of all of my friends who know about SEO? I mean seriously, whenever I bring out a topic about Page Ranks I would get blank stares.
Has this ever happened to you? It certainly has to me. It astounds me just how many people actually use SEO but are unaware of it. Whenever you use facebook, isn’t that Social Media? Whenever you post in forums, aren’t you promoting? Whenever you comment, aren’t you instigating interaction?
People do these things on a daily basis and have no idea that they are already practicing SEO. Even If we use the term all the time and is common knowledge to us, I must tell you that outside these walls, it is a very unheard of term. And these people are not stupid either, they are just uninformed.
You don’t know how many times I have to re-explain to other people what Do Follow is, and some would say that I should dumb it down, and I’m like, but this is the dumbest I can explain it! I have to say: you see, when you comment it gives you a link to your site. So what you should do is place a keyword…
Other: What’s a keyword?
Me: It’s a word that many people would search for in Google.
…on the name field so that it would count.
Other: Oh, I do this all the time, I comment on a lot of blogs!
Me: Yeah, but I checked and those doesn’t count because they are No Follow.
Other: What you mean they don’t count; it’s a link isn’t it?
Me: Well yeah, but…
Other: So they count.
SEO is seriously just a search away but only a few people actually bother with it. Isn’t this just sad? Just like with any other game, there are a lot of newbs in the blogging world. Perhaps they are less irritating because they don’t know enough to bother us, but it’s still disheartening. I mean, a lot of people have awesome content out there but are not recognized just because they did not know an aspect about blogging, like how to gain more traffic.
That is why it is our job to educate. Don’t think of it as more competition, but more people to dupe into clicking your ads. You see, teaching more people to blog can be beneficial for everyone.
Whether they like it or not, SEO has now become a reality they cannot ignore, it’s part of the real world baby!
Over the last two years I have written many articles regarding blog engage. More specifically I always tried to teach our members how to market using blog engage to benefit them and their blog the most.
Today I’m going to bring you one the largest articles ever written on blog engage and how to use it to your advantage as a blog marketer. I’m a big fan of marketing and social media as you all know and perhaps this is what has made blog engage so successful.
First I want to make sure everyone understand the point of blog engage. The idea of our community is so basic sometimes people look for something that isn’t there.
“Blog Engage allows you to submit your Blog Article(s) that will be placed in queue and promoted by our members to the front page. The ideal of Blog Engage is to promote interaction between bloggers by “Engaging” with each others blogs. Interaction that builds up quality comments and interactive discussions.”
So in general you submit your articles daily as your write them and if our members like it they will vote for you. When you receive enough votes (always changing) your story will be published by me or our soon to be power users to the front page. If your story doesn’t get enough votes it remains on the upcoming age until it does.
Over the past year Blog Engage has added many unique features that has helped our community grow into what it is today. We have the ability to track and add status updates. Blog Engage allows members to add each other as friends. When you add a friend you can easily track their submissions and what they are voting on.
As you can see from the above picture I have added Blazingminds aka Karen as a friend. Behind the vote button you will see the little star/head indicating this this member is a friend f mine. I will always vote for these articles.
We also allow our members to create groups allowing bloggers with similar interested to see each others articles. You can submit your blog to both the main site and a group during the submissions process.
Blog engage makes it’s easy for you to socially share with other bloggers and it’s at the convenience of once direct place. See the image below as I circled the share this button.
Blog Engage allows for easy access to submit stories to social networks. Under all articles you will see a share this link that will submit your blog article to your favorite social networks. The benefit is having all the options in one central location.
When trying to use a forum to promote and advertise your blogs it’s of most importance to remain professional and to promote using the appropriate forums. Today I want to discuss how we can use the blog engage blog forum to our advantage when marketing or promoting our professional or personal blogs.
When done correctly this forum can provide a decent amount of web traffic. If you post the correct questions leaving a link back to your blog our visitors will normally follow. Hence building back links and generating web traffic.
This is an amazing section to increase you web traffic. This is a free opportunity to introduce your blog to our members. Don’t be shy come and visit the forum to show off your log.
Asking for a blog review really is an amazing way to get traffic to your blog. In order for people to say what they think they have to visit your site.
The Blog Engage Chat can be used to post your most recent blog articles or to simply say hello to our members. We sue to have the chat displayed on the forum index but found it took away from the main forum activities so we moved it to it’s own page.
Depending on how much time you have to market your blog social networking websites geared towards bloggers might be for you. See what happens here is a social website specific to a bloggers allows you to pick and chose the blogs you want to comment on individually and or by category.
Building quality comments on blogs can generate you free traffic and develop relationships with other bloggers. Adding a useful comment to another bloggers blog has been found to be the most unique and targeted way to make a scene in the industry.
Where do I find new articles?
I welcome you all to a social network that I started specifically for bloggers, Blog Engage. What happens here is you can sort by so many ways and this allows you to target your traffic and blogs you comment on.
Don’t find yourself posting comments on out dated and dead blogs. Simply visit our website and you can sort by category or newest to oldest. This ensure the blog articles you read are new and again relevant to your niche market.
You can sort the blogs by accessing this section of the main website.
The sort functionality allows you to see and easily link to the most popular for the year, month, or week and allows you to see what’s hot right now and what’s new. The social networking part of this allows you to stay into contact with fellow bloggers, vote for each other and demonstrate how loyal of a reader you are.
What blogs should you comment on?
There are 2 main factors when determining what blogs you should be commenting on. For one you need to look at your interests. The comments you leave should be useful and therefore should be something you have an interest in. Secondly you should comment on blogs within your blogs niche. This way if anyone follows your comment url you can ensure it’s relevant and the follower will be interested in what you’re writing as well.
3 Rules of Engagement!
1. Don’t post worthless comments. Ensure you have quality information and you are adding to the topic and not taking away from it.
2. Leave positive feedback regarding the topic and what other bloggers have written as comments. Try to engage everyone into your comment.
3. Don’t make controversy unless you know for sure what your saying is true! There’s nothing worse then being wrong on your own blog.
We will review your account and upgrade it so you can write for the blog
Write your post, save it and it will be reviewed and published
Market your blog and yourself. Every blogger gets an about him or her section at the end of each article. Your name is a link back to your blog.
Allowed Links, Twitter, linkedin, facebook, etc…
Introduce yourself to the community – New to blog engage and feel lost? Take this opportunity to introduce yourself and your blog to our community. tell us a little about your interested, blogging habits and more.
Promote your blog engage group – Have a group created but don’t know how to advertise it? Trying to get more bloggers with similar interests in your group This is the perfect way. guest blog about your group, introduce it to our members and invite them to join.
Exposure for your blog – Maybe you just started your blog and your looking to get word out about it. Guest blogging is a great way to tell a larger established group of readers as your post will usually include a plug about yourself and your blog. Just be sure you are guest blogging on a blog that relates to your own blog.
Exposure for yourself – Maybe your interested in getting your freelance writing skills notice, or your knowledge on a specific topic. Like I mentioned in your plug you can introduce yourself and give a way for others to get in touch with you.
A link back to your own blog – It is generally acceptable to include a link back to an article you wrote previously on your blog as long as it fits in the article and offers the reader value. At the very least your plug will include a link back to your blog offering you another valuable incoming link.
Our marketing Videos
Some information is out dated but still worth watching.
I know it’s going to take sometime in order to accomplish all of what I ask but I must admit we have had such a strong and positive start it looks good from here on out.
I know it’s hard to keep up with everything that is going on with blog engage because you all have your own blogs but it’s really important we try and stay connected to fully understand the purpose behind our internal changes.
Today’s article is going to be a very basic reminder or even update to some of the changes that are happening within the community. These changes help and benefit all our members and will only make our community stronger and smarter than the rest.
I know we have already had questions on how the voting works and why stories aren’t going to the front page after 10 votes. Hopefully this article will answer all your questions. I no longer guarantee an article will be published based on votes and it will never be that way again.
What’s taken into consideration when publishing articles?
Total amount of votes
Community participation (votes, comments)
Article submissions V.S total votes for others
Website design
Quality of the content
Updated profile picture and data
Main reasons your article didn’t get published
No Blog Engage Image
Duplicate content
Poor Design
Pop up ads
More ads then content
Little or no content within the article
Website name in story title
No updated profile or profile picture
How to improve on this?
Add the blog engage image
Consider changing your current template
Remove some ads
Write more characters within your article
Remove website name in story title
To ensure the quality of content I make all bloggers pass these minimum expectations. If you do not pass your content will remain on the upcoming page until promoted by our members over time and or manually removed from our website.
Your account will not be deleted.
I get a lot of questions about inactivity and inconsistent blogging habits. It seems many of our members are afraid their account will be removed if they are not active. This is incorrect and your account will NOT be removed for inactivity.
If you are active you must vote for other bloggers. If you haven’t logged in for a month or more you don’t have to worry about being deleted. I’m also asking active members that are submitting their articles to vote for other bloggers and to be active.
Rule #1
At minimum you must vote for the three times the amount of articles you submit. If you do not follow this rule from here on out as mentioned your account will be deleted and banned. So if you submit 1 article you must vote for three others.
Rule #2
I’m asking our members to start removing their blog or website names from the story titles when submitting to the website. I know this will take some time getting used to so please try and remember.
Please ask any questions you have here and I will update this article with the answers. Let’s work together and make blog engage the best online social media marketing community on the web. I don’t see why we cannot accomplish this.
It’s us who make this community work, it’s us that vote for each other. Let’s make blog engage better for each other.
Thank to everyone for your dedication and commitment to our social network. Please help us promote by proudly adding the blog engage image in your sidebar.
Have you looked at the quality of blogs being submitted to our website? If you have you know as well as I do blogengage has some really great looking blogs. So for this quality I say thanks. Without your hard work, dedication and commitment our community would be less of value then it is today.
Thankfully we are great bloggers and have great blogs and for that we have a high quality blog article submission website.
Pay close attention over the next 4 or 5 visits to the website. Read some articles that interest you and based on quality of content and design you will be satisfied.
I personally take the time to moderate the first submission from all our new members. I visit their blogs and moderate their content and design. Based on these results I deleted or approve the account.
Many of our members talk highly of our community. If you ever meet a true blog blogengager you will know it. They are real true bloggers. The kind that will read your about us page. The kind that will read your content and comment.
For this I extend a thank you to all the members who have been with us for the last two years. It’s been a blast and I look forward to our growth in 2010
What a crazy day it’s been. My hotmail account stopped sending and receiving e-mails from a few of my domain names. So in general I didn’t get any e-mails for the past 4 days. Have you have tried to catch up on over 400 e-mails that require some sort of action to be taken? Trust me it’s a ridiculous process and I don’t wish it upon my worst enemy. So I got a new e-mail address and starting setting up the alias to all my domains and I had to reset the old forwarding address to my new ones. Let’s say it was a wasted Friday and I hope to never experience it again. Lesson learned don’t use a free e-mail service when you have your own dedicated server LOL @ me.
Ok now we are here for a reason and it’s the end of our first Weekly Word Challenge. I was very happy to see our members participating and in total we got 6 submissions. What I would like to do is share them here with you for you to read, engage and comment with. Remember everyone is allowed participating in the word challenge you simply write an article about or regaridng the picked words and submit it to here via a comment reply. Just so you know our weekly word challenge was Marketing and Promotion. Sorry if I missed anyone somehow, simply reply with a comment and I will add you.
Because all article submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our social linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself with over 1700 followers.
Next Weeks Word Challenge
Now it’s time for next weeks weekly word challenge. Over the weekend we will vote for the words in which we will be blogging about. This is always the most exciting for me seeing I like the element of surprise. I do however have some changes I will be making. last week I got some feedback regarding all the words being to similar. This made perfect sense to me so for this weeks word I’m selecting a wide range of topics. This weeks words are,
Building Relationships
Time Management
Community Involvement
Blog Commenting
Blogging
Please vote for our words in the blogengage forums. (separate registration needed from mian site)
The challenge
I challenge all the members here in our community to write an article about or regaridng the weekly word which is Marketing and Promotion. The article doesn’t have to be of any special length simply write about the topics and submit your article to the blogengage site. I also ask that you post a comment including the website url to where your article has been published.
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