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Lowell Area Consultant says it is more evident today than ever, the 21st century is a visual world and YouTube is a the center with 490 million users.
Online video is on of the best tools when thinking about social media marketing and small business marketing. Every business should be using more online videos. They also should be looking at the possibility of producing web shows and have them streamed to traditional tv through the over the top boxes.

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We told you to create your Google plus business page

We did an episode of our show on how to use Google Plus for business

We talked everywhere about the Google Plus hang out feature

and talked more on Google plus possibilities

and then we told you the content inside Google plus was getting indexed in the search engines.

Well, today your presence or lack of presence on Google Plus is impacting your findability- Yes, people that may be looking for something you offer might not find you or even worse find your competitors.

Google released Search plus Your World where results from Google Plus will show first.

Look what happens if I search for the word photography. This is a topic I discuss on Google Plus

Google Search Plus

Look on the right side and see suggestions from Google Plus

Now look when I do the same search when I’m not logged in. Google thinks I’m a new search

Google Plus

If you are not already seeing Google plus results in your searches go here: Google and upgrade.

Again, it is time to put hands to work and work on your Google Plus profile and create a Google plus business page. Fast.

Did I mentioned it is also extremely fun and a lot more relevant that Facebook if your business is around a topic that people have a irrational passion for? Like photography, crafts, nutrition, self-improvement etc? Try typing thing you are passionate about inside Google Plus.

If you are one of our social media agency clients, don’t worry, all is taken care for you.

Check our BuzzBooster Marketing page to see an example and don’t forget to add us to your circles.

Since content from your Google Plus page can be indexed by Google you need to have one.

Since you can have groups/circles based on topics of interest you should have one.

Since you can use the feature Hangout to have meeting with prospects, clients and showcase products, you should be using Google +

Don’t forget to populate your page with good content as you should do in any social media environment.

Don’t forget to add a Google + button on your site and to promote in other social environments.

Google understands business and I believe many more features will show up in the near future that will allow us to market our businesses better.

• Don’t forget that YouTube is a social network too.
• videos with thumbnails generate 19% more views
• video is an engagement object
• YouTube has grown 250% year after year.
• Growth of 300% tweets a year coming from YouTube
• Each tweet results in 6 new viewers
• Video moves business
• if the video comes from someone you trust, you are more likely to watch until the end.

Let’s upload some videos and get more views on YouTube folks!

click on image to see it bigger

The social media effect

Take a look on this infographic how social media and good content can impact a business.

You can see that not only social media marketing is a process it has a huge potential of reaching your target market in a very unique way.

You need to worry only about creating good content

Now Blip Tv and Dynamic logic have provided some data on the viewership of Web TV series.

According to the research, cable TV is seeing viewing drop off in this particular demographic (Blip.tv viewers) of around 9% compared to six months prior and that same demographics is watching around 26% more online video (via PC), 19% more on mobile devices and 18% more on video consoles.

Running real-time “live” social media campaigns is one way marketers can effectively use social networking to generate positive buzz for their brands, according to [pdf] a new report from WaveMetrix. Results from “Q3 2011 Benefits and Limits of a Social Media Fanbase” indicate that both Domino’s Pizza and Burberry have achieved impressive results from live social media marketing campaigns.

A brief review of each campaign follows.
Domino’s Takes Manhattan

In July 2011, Domino’s Pizza put up a billboard in Times Square streaming live comments from their customer feedback forms. Although comments are vetted for bad language and appropriateness, Domino’s maintains that they are otherwise unfiltered and that both negative and positive feedback will be streamed. This move is part of a global effort to improve the pizza brand’s image, following the controversial YouTube video in April 2009 showing Domino’s employees tampering with the food.

WaveMetrix analysis of consumer reaction to the new billboard shows that they perceive it to be a “brave” and “respectful” act. This is especially true given Domino’s previous experience with social media, but the brand is now using it as a tool to appear more open and honest. WaveMetrix analysis also shows that it is not just Domino’s Facebook fans who praise the new strategy, but also other internet users who are not all Domino’s customers, suggesting far-reaching engagement.

WaveMetrix analysis indicates that 12% of consumers reacting to the Times Square billboard say it is a “brave” move, four times the 3% who call it “foolhardy.”
Burberry and Twitter Get Exclusive

Burberry partnered with Twitter during this year’s London Fashion Week in September 2011 and introduced what the two companies are calling a “Tweetwalk.” Backstage photos of every look were taken at the Burberry Spring Summer 2012 show and shared with the brand’s Twitter followers right before the models hit the runway.

WaveMetrix analysis reveals that Burberry’s Tweetwalk show, which ran alongside its catwalk show, generated overwhelmingly positive buzz, before, during and after the show, with consumers impressed at their “bold” use of social media and appreciating the fact that they were seeing the Spring Summer collection before even those sitting in the front row of the show. Twitter users described their enjoyment at this feeling of exclusivity and expressed their excitement and anticipation about seeing the new collection.

Almost four in 10 (38%) consumers commenting on the Tweetwalk discussed feelings of exclusivity, while 30% of posts about the Burberry brand or products focused on exclusivity.
Beware Backfiring Social Media Ads

While live social media campaigns can produce dividends, other report data indicates marketers considering negative, mocking or even charitable social media promotional campaigns should first carefully consider how consumers may react, as a poorly designed social media campaign can create the wrong type of online buzz.

The top benefit of social media marketing: The number-one advantage is
generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed
by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.

Business owners were more likely to use
social media marketing (90+%) than
employees working for a business (81%).

About one in two
marketers found social media generated qualified leads

61.62% of marketers
who have been using social media
for years report it has helped them
close business. More than half
who spend 16 or more hours per
week find the same results.

Improved search engine rankings
were most prevalent among those
who’ve been using social media for
years, with nearly 80% reporting a
rise (and most reporting a strong
improvement).

Source: White paper source

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The speakers were all employed by different social media agencies talking on what they were doing and the audience was composed of small business owners most with less than 10 employees. By the look on their faces, it was easy to see there was some disconnection in place.

One common strategy to attract Facebook people to like a page was to give something like an Ipad a day as a giveaway. Just on this the investment on the devices alone was around $24 thousand a month. Were there anything in place to convert those Ipad winners into buyers? Not really but the number of people liking your page will be really high.

Lots of people seeking free stuff with no intention of buying now or ever, not necessarily a very targeted audience seems to be a good thing. What is the use of having thousands of people like a page if they are not potential buyers? None. Not for a business.

It seems that is not clear to marketers that every action in business needs to have a clear path to profit since that is what business is all about. Even engagement needs to lead to increased level of trust and at some point to sales.

Another popular strategy is the use of infographics. Don’t get me wrong, I think this one can be very useful, but I couldn’t help but laugh when the speaker pointed out that it does bring a lot of traffic to a site while the bounce rate (number of people that visit that page and leave without doing nothing) goes over 90% and conversion rates are below 1/2 percent.

Again, if it is not going to bring targeted prospects, I’ll not build a list, they will go away without looking at anything else and they won’t ever buy, why would this traffic matter?

For big dumb companies that can afford to spend a lot of money just to be more visible and claim they are popular this makes sense. For the small business owner where money spent needs to bring results in the form of hot prospects and profits, these strategies are a waste of time. They may be cool, but they are not money well spent.

It depends. Companies that need awareness for their brand need a page (even if they are ran by 1 or 2 people like ours)

Facebook pages offer tracking so you can understand your audience better and conversion.

Pages allow multiple admins to update the content.

Facebook pages allow you to customize tabs, create lead capture pages, show products and even sell.

You can use sponsored ads to promote the page and bring more people.

If these factors are not important for you, then the subscribe feature may be better for you. Less work and maybe more interaction.

Here is a comparison chart:

To allow subscribers click on edit profile and then on family and friends.

Below is an article by Mashable showing you how to benefit from the subscription feature:

When Facebook launched its Subscribe button on Wednesday, many were quick to note its implications for journalists, celebrities and other thought leaders. The new feature allows for users to follow public updates, and these are the people most often broadcasting their ideas.

Yet there’s more the average user can get on board with than meets the eye. The release came with a slew of additional features — including a more customizable News Feed and increased privacy — that users have been wanting for years. The trouble is, there are so many moving parts in this product launch. Users are now presented with a number of options, and they’ll need to dig deep to understand which pieces to take and which to leave.

We hope to make that process a little easier for you. Here are some key points you should know based on what type of user you are:

Super Users & Celebrities

If you’re kind of a big deal, you likely already have a Facebook fan page to update your followers on what you’re up to. The launch of the Subscribe button leaves you with two options:

1. Keep the fan page and continue to maintain two separate Facebook presences: profile and page. This strategy’s main pro is that pages are optimized for marketing. Profiles can’t be updated by multiple admins and fans are more acclimated to updates with an on-brand feel. Perhaps more importantly, profiles don’t have Facebook’s analytics tool Insights — and “they probably never will,” says Vadim Lavrusik, journalist program manager at Facebook and former Mashable community manger.
2. Do away with the fan page and merge your page likers into profile subscribers. By deleting your fan page, you will lose all page content. However, your likers will automatically be subscribed to your public updates. The biggest advantages? Profiles are easier to update via mobile than pages and people are prioritized over pages in search.
With either of these methods, you’ll have direct messaging capability (from your profile to your page likers or from your profile to your subscribers) and neither has a limit on the number of people who can follow your content (subscribers or likers — though profiles do have a limit of 5,000 friends).

Journalists & Artists

The Subscribe button is arguably most beneficial for journalists and artists. Though, in a sense, they’re public figures, these types of Facebook users likely aren’t well-known enough to justify a fan page.

If this sounds like you, the first thing you need to do is actively opt-in to allow subscriptions to your profile. You can then choose to allow subscribers to comment on your updates and control your notifications.

Another change to note is that when you unfriend someone, they stay subscribed to your public updates. This is important if you’ve been accepting friend requests from people you don’t know who want to follow your work. It can be uncomfortable to friend someone without knowing them personally. The Subscribe button allows you to unfriend these people and still reach them via public updates.

Finally, when composing updates you want your subscribers to see, be sure to set the privacy to Public. They won’t see it otherwise.

Parents & Teachers

The relationships parents and teachers should have with their kids and students on Facebook has always been a touchy subject. The Subscribe feature can help to make crossing the Facebook connection threshold less awkward.

Users can subscribe to others without enabling others to subscribe to them. This means teachers can allow their students to follow their public updates about school and classes without actually friending them (and accessing more personal information). That way, students can continue to update friends about their lives without worrying what might pop up in their teachers’ News Feeds.

For parents, this feature may work the other way around. Instead of asking your son or daughter what that Jaime So-and-So they used to hang out with is up to, you could subscribe to Jaime, whereas friending her might be uncomfortable. The feature could also be helpful if your kids aren’t OK with you watching their every virtual move. Brace yourself for a sensitive conversation at the dinner table.

Students & Average Users

For the occasional Facebookers who mostly use the service to keep up with friends and post photos, here’s the bottom line: You never have to see your Aunt Suzie’s FarmVille updates ever again. But, you can still see her photos, videos and status updates if you’d like.

Before the Subscribe button launch, it was either all or nothing when it came to blocking a person’s updates from your News Feed. Now you can control what types of updates you see from a person and how often. That means you can skip the virtual sheep without missing out on engagement notifications and puppy albums.

As of now, the feature is only available for tailoring updates from non-friends that you’re subscribed to. The Subscribe button, and this feature, will be rolled out to friend pages in the next few days, Lavrusik says.

Conclusion

As the virtual world grows, relationships and the ways we’re connecting with others are changing. The Subscribe button addresses issues about the depth of connection the term “friend” implies on Facebook.

Some critics say the feature goes against Facebook’s nature — that it was built on “friending,” not “following.” It’s important to note that the News Feed algorithm weights updates from friends as well as private posts more heavily than public ones. In addition, the Close Friends list Facebook rolled out on Tuesday makes the updates from your strongest relationships more prominent in your News Feed, and you can enable notifications specifically from friends in this list.

With the number of new social networks gaining speed, Facebook is and should be making changes to stay competitive. What’s important is that it doesn’t divert too far from its core. In this update, Facebook is only giving its users more options — which the majority may or may not take advantage.

Online videos connect customer, prospects and companies on an emotional level.

Online videos are about storytelling. Storytelling is a key component in marketing today.

In order to get more views to your videos it is important to understand you need to be authentic, real, transparent.

Don’t try to make perfect, produced videos. Better to be real.

Spread the word: It is not enough to add your video to your site or just upload to YouTube. You need to share. Use all channels you have in order to do that. Facebook, Twitter, your blog, newsletter, postcards etc.
But pay attention: Send them first to your blog. Wait 2 days and then send them to YouTube or other video sharing site you use.

It helps to have a contest or a give away every now and then. It does attract more people to your videos.

Your audience can help you get there. Release the videos to them first. Make them feel special and ask them to share.

53% male 47% female

Medium age: 33 years old

47% are married

Median income: 74,000

69% at least college educated

Evenly split: East, West, South, Midwest

71% emplyed

15% student

64% considered themselves techie savvy

What not a lot of people know is that we also helped Robert organize the event that would promote his new book, lead to a teleseminar and the sales of a new program.

Here are a few steps that helped this launch be so successful:

We started working a year before the event because Robert at that time had not a strong presence in social media environments. So this presence was created over some months and we also asked Robert to start a web show called Quick Sustainable Wealth TV. All profiles, forms and Calls to action led to a leads capture page in order to build a list coming from social media environments.

Of course, Robert invited marketers for the event that have a strong presence online and as JVs they helped promote the event.

For the event, because there were quite a few technological components, many guests and many things could go wrong, we made sure we had some rehearsals to cover all possibilities.

Livestreaming has some limitations at the moment. Companies don’t record the sound of guests or cohosts. image of guests is pixelated, Cohosts don’t get the sound through their speakers. If cohost has the show page open, there will be echo.

All guests received detailed instructions ahead of time and constant communication.

So we decided to have Robert on camera and all guests coming through a phone line. This proved to avoid some problems, improve some quality issues and the attendees enjoyed the results. We this option we also guarantee less stress and unforeseen problems the guests could have.

Instead of having everyone go to the Ustream show page, we created a page for the event where we embedded the livestream, added a chat so people could interact during the whole 3 hours of the event and ask questions and added a banner leading to the book that was going to be promoted during the event.

In the back end, we had 3 people monitoring sound, chat and answering questions.

After 1 hour and a half into the event, a storm came by where Robert lives and the lights went out for a minute. Robert had a power source on and we didn’t lose the video but we did lose the audio. The assistants kept talking to people on the chat, everything was back in less than 5 minutes and we lost less than 20 people because of this glitch. We are talking about an event that was attended by thousands. One guest didn’t show up and another came in a different time than the one set but these didn’t cause the event to miss a beat. We had different option ahead of time to deal with some unforeseen possibilities.

The event was a huge success and Robert is now a pioneer in this type of launches. Yes there have been some product launches using livestreaming but all guests and host are in one location. In this case, each guest was in a different location.

The success was not only because of the caliber of all guests and the quality of information, follow-up with the list before, during and after the event but because of all the preparation, tests and rehearsals before the event.
We are looking forward to the next one.

So:

Under 30
Facebook 77%

30-39
Facebook 76%

40-49
Facebook 77%

50-59

Facebook 84%

60 and over

Facebook 84%

1. Respect Quora culture. They expect expertise, so give good answers with the best sources of information.

2. Quora is designed for individuals. Your focus should be on building an expert profile. You can use to address questions from users of your products.

3 Don’t promote too much.

4. It is ok to give your case studies as examples as long as they are relevant.

5. Don’t pitch to the media on Quora.

6. If you are an affiliate, disclose that please.

1. Raise your profile

Using your own profile the right way can be the gateway for potential clients, employees and industry partners to contact you.

The more complete your profile, the easier it will be for people to find you through search engines. Make sure your summary is complete and include a photo of yourself to increase your credibility. Add skills to your profile to highlight your expertise and make it easier for other users seeking certian abilities.

Related Stories
How Small Businesses Can Harness the Power of LinkedIn

You can remind people who you are by keeping your profile active with regular status updates.

2. Create a company page

Increase the visibility of your business by creating a company profile. Company profiles give members an opportunity to view information about a company and should include a description, number of employees and the industry it operates in. Develop your company profile with a logo, locations and add a feed from your company blog.

3. Grow and monitor your network

Import your existing contact lists from your e-mail client to find out which of your contacts are already on LinkedIn. LinkedIn automatically recommends people you might know based on your details and existing contacts, and you should regularly scour through your existing contacts for people you might want to connect with.

Offering to connect with a variety of people is a great idea because it shows customers you are online and gives you an edge on the competition who is probably not engaging customers in the same way.

4. Get recommendations

Recommendations are the most looked for feature when viewing a new profile and are a great way to secure new clients.

Recommendations enhance your professional credibility and create a great impression on people reading your profile. Ensure you request LinkedIn recommendations from happy customers willing to provide testimonials. Satisfied customers are the best source of new customers.

5. Engage with your connections through LinkedIn Groups and Answers

Join a small business group to engage with like-minded people who can provide you support and answer business-specific questions. Joining groups that are related to your industry or other small business matters is also a great way to make new connections. Whether these connections are local or international, having a wide and diverse group will serve you well.

Potential clients can find you through groups, as the group members have the ability to directly message each other, even if they aren’t directly connected.

Answer questions from connections in the ‘answers section’ of LinkedIn without self promotion, and ask contacts questions to get a feel for what customers and prospects want or think. People can vote for the answers they think are the best, and the week’s top experts receive a profile badge and are shown on the Answers homepage, giving you the chance to be an expert in your field.

6. Recruit the right people

Use LinkedIn’s search tools to find people from a pool of passive candidates who might be best suited to your business’ key roles. Change your status to “hiring” and post the job listing to your LinkedIn groups to attract relevant talent. A LinkedIn premium account will enable you to send direct messages to prospects with whom you are not connected.

LinkedIn recruiter, a specialized product for companies, allows you to regularly hire from and engage with a network of passive candidates.

7. Improve productivity through LinkedIn mobile

Accessing LinkedIn through smartphone apps enabling you to update your profile and search for others on LinkedIn to help recall and connect with business acquaintances at events and conferences.

You can use the LinkedIn mobile application to pull up background details of the person you are meeting on-the-go, putting you in good stead for a great introduction and conversation points.

No videos no ranking. It is like giving business on a silver plate for your competitors.
and you are leaving your company out of consideration when people are researching for a solution you offer..

Now, if you are using video marketing here are a few tips to optimize your videos.

1. Focus on entertaining your audience. Fun works but don’t force it.

2. Clearly demonstrate your product or talk about your services.

3. You need to build up friends and subscribers on YouTube to leverage the reach of your videos.

4. Measure and improve metrics. Use insights inside YouTube for that. They track likes, dislikes, embeds, tweets, video replies and attention span

5. Aim to rank not only on YouTube but also in Google’s main web results.

6. Add url at the beginning of the description.

7. Use voot.net as a tracking tool.

8. upload a transcription to YouTube. Some services for you to dot this: Dotsub and Automatic sync.

9. Don’t forget to tag your video. Use relevant keywords. Use adjectives as well and separate by comma. YouTube allows 120 characters.

10 Use the annotations features for call to action: like this video, subscribe, go to.

First you need to answer if your videos are for general use of the end consumer, like people watching from home or if it is to be watched by a business audience, during work hours.

Second you need to take into consideration where in the world the majority of your audience is and take into consideration the time frame there.

Prime time to post online videos:

For home audience: Between 4pm and 9pm

For a business audience: 7am to 9am, 11am to 1pm, 3pm to 5pm

You should avoid posting outside these frames

Well, let me give you some data about mobile marketing and e-mails:

A look overall at how US consumers with mobile internet access spend their mobile online time, the study finds email represents a leading 38.5% of time spent. No other activity comes close, with social networking coming in a
distant second (10.7%). This data comes from The Nielsen Company’s “State of the Media 2010.″

77% goes to Youtube while 3.1% goes to Hulu

Did I mentioned all businesses should be using online videos in their social media marketing efforts. Let me say that in different words: Small business marketing needs to contain online videos.

Don’t forget that YouTube is a social network. On average people spend 19.2 hours on YouTube a month. Facebook gets 64.3 hours. Twitter just 1 hours. What is going on here?

Facebook 64.2%
YouTube 19.6%
MySpace 1.4%
Yahoo! Answers 1.2%
Twitter 1.1%
Tagged 0.8%
myYearbook 0.4%
Linkedin 0.4%
Mylife 0.4%
Club Penguin 0.3%

Take a look on the difference between YouTube and Twitter and Linkedin

but the point here is that some companies and service professionals put all their coins on Facebook thinking that will be enough as a marketing strategy.

Well, here is some data that will get you thinking:

Gallup data indicates men (42%) are about as likely as women (45%) to have a Facebook page. However, men (63%) are 12.5% more likely than women (56%) to say they visit Google in a given week.
Overall, 40% more US adults say they use Google in a typical week (60%) than have a Facebook page (43%).

As you probably know, online videos is one of the best tools when thinking of social media marketing and all businesses should take advantage of videos.

Listen to the full interview now: Video Velocity

I can tell you how often you should post on social media environments when you are doing it for business. There is no rule on this topic but some tests have been done for optimum results.

The world is not going to end if you cannot follow one of them.
Remember social media marketing is a process and you have to set your goals to get attention from your market, not only visibility.

Also take into consideration that you have to provide good content most of the time and 2% of the time have a call to action. Your audience needs to be educated on the fact that you are doing this for business and they should not expect everything for free.

i know this is a touchy point but remember you are marketing a business and businesses need to have sales in order to have profits. Lead with good content but remind them of your business.

Here it goes:

Twitter: 8 to 18 posts a day. Twitter has a short shelf life.

Facebook: No more than 3 posts.

YouTube: 3 a week (for generic videos, not a Web Show)

Blogs: Once a day.

Here are a few tips on how to use Twitter to generate sales.
It is all about the approach you have while using this social media tool.
Your approach should be to talk in ways that could generate questions that your services answer and to find which conversations happening on Twitter are worth having from a business perspective.
You are looking to discover customers evolving needs.

Ask questions that would reveal details about their need.
Don’t forget to have a call to action to connect prospects with your sales funnel. Do CTA’s only 2% of the time.

Provide a stream of useful content.
Send them to different, useful destinations but include your service among them every now and then.