I decided to do an experiment and prove the case in point. I picked one of the videos we created last month, and picked a sentence out of there that I knew was not in the description or the title, so there would be no way for this video to be found. Here is the sentence I picked:

I put the sentence in and searched it on Google video, and found it as the top result.

A great example of how you can improve your search engine rankings by being a better citizen on the web.

YouTube’s official page about Captions and Subtitles

Here is our original video on Micro Formats if you would like to take a look.

Eric interviews Shiraz from FunAsia, they are talking about the reach of online radio vs. traditional  radio.  FunAsia is a radio station in the Dallas Fort Worth area that has both FM and AM stations, and it’s also online.  According to Shiraz the reach online is much greater than the traditional venues.

Do you know anyone who actually gets paid to update Facebook, Twitter and write a blog? Mindy Smith does. She works for David Hira, a professional speaker and magic entertainer. How did she find this fun job? That’s right, on Facebook. If you are looking for a job, read on to find out how you can follow in Mindy’s footsteps.

Looking for a “real job”

Though Mindy holds a degree in Sports Marketing from Texas Wesleyan University, like many recent college graduates, after graduation she continued to work at her college job, waiting tables.

In her spare time, Mindy looked for a “real job” on sites like Monster, Career Builder and Yahoo jobs. She also submitted her resumé to company sites even if they weren’t hiring. She mostly searched online, but did place a few phone calls to local businesses as well. Then she saw the posting on Facebook.

Mindy was connected to David Hira on Facebook. An accomplished corporate motivational speaker, David uses magic in his presentations, and belongs to the same magic club as Mindy’s dad—thus the connection. One day David commented that he was so busy he needed a second assistant. Mindy sent David her resumé, and let him know she could help him with marketing. After a conversation where Mindy also promoted her accounting experience and mentioned that she could use social media to market David’s business, the two began their working relationship.

Helping an Entrepreneur Utilize Social Media Marketing

Since David’s business is derived from word of mouth and referrals, social media is a perfect medium to encourage new business and communicate with clients. Though David is in the “over 40 crowd”, he has embraced social media as a communication tool and uses it very effectively. When Mindy began work,  David already had a Facebook and Twitter account, but was mainly communicating with friends and fellow magicians. He wanted Mindy to move his social media usage from the “friends and family” mode into “social media marketing” in order to grow his business and improve customer service.

Blogging

Mindy now helps David to use social media more effectively. She’s encouraged him in writing his blog posts, explaining that his posts need to be from him (not her), in his words, should represent his ideas, and do not have to be fantastic as much as genuine. She’s also let him know he is not alone; she can help. As an example, when David is in a meeting, he can make a few notes on his iPhone and send them to Mindy, who can develop them into an article for the blog, newsletter, or both. This “back and forth” allows David to focus on the message and Mindy to focus on the tools, which include WordPress for the blog.

Facebook

David has a Facebook account for personal use and another one for business, with quite a bit of crossover between the two.  Though David does most of the updating needed, Mindy helps by suggesting content and recommending friends who can help build his fan base. Check out David Hira, Magician and Keynote Speaker.

Twitter

David and Mindy are building a Twitter network of people, including people who know David well and audience members who have heard him speak. When David gets a new follower, Mindy makes sure to respond and see if David should follow the person, too. She also does a lot of searching and listening on Twitter and connecting with meeting and event planners.

To keep organized and on top of content, Mindy uses TweetDeck with the following columns: Motivational Speaker, Inspirational Speaker, Corporate Speaker, Direct Messages, and Mentions.  Mindy and David keep Twitter fresh by posting David’s favorite quotes and “trash talking” with other magicians (which once led to a cook off in Austin due to the boasting between David and friends).

YouTube

Since David is an entertainer and keynote speaker, it’s natural that he would use video for promotion. It’s a wonderful medium for visitors to sample his work. “If you are a meeting planner, you can click on the ‘YouTube’ icon and see a quick video before contacting us about a booking,” says Mindy.

Flickr

Besides posting pictures on FaceBook, Mindy has added a Flickr account. She says, “Flickr has grown as an accepted place to search for pictures of keynote speakers and entertainers. To be effective in marketing, you have to go where your customer is.”

Newsletter

You may not think of a printed newsletter as social media, but the content in David’s newsletter ties in with the blog posts and updates on Facebook and Twitter. His newsletter formula for success consists of feature articles, favorite recipes, business recommendations, and business tips. By referencing the electronic version of the newsletter on the company website, David and Mindy extend the usefulness of the newsletter, and tie in to social media.

A great team

David and Mindy make a great team, blending the experience of an entertainer and speaker with the enthusiasm and social media awareness of a recent college graduate. By hiring youth and matching it with experience, they’ve come up with a winning combination. Whether you’re looking for a job, or looking for a way to leverage social media for your business, you’d do well to follow their example.

In the video, Eric goes over how to use Social media as part of your sales pipeline.

Google uses the news feed generated by press releases and other major news media outlets, and intermixes the information from the feed on a search results page:

Here’s an example of Google intermixing videos on the search page.

(read our post about closed captioning to learn more about video.):

Even images can be seen on the search page.

(A tip: Before uploading image files to your website, name them using keywords or search terms in order to get the best search results from images):

Do you sell things online? Time to think about product search:

Today social media results are being included. Below you will see Twitter included in a Google search result:

or blog results:

Your search may even be personalized by your social network and what your friends are saying. I lay out these examples and results just to keep you thinking. Search provides a lot of opportunities, but are you using them? Are you optimizing your website so that it’s found, not just in primary search, but in the previously mentioned search results? Take advantage of the many opportunities now offered by search engines.

Well, what are you offering your readers? What’s in it for them? Is it real, solid information? News they can use? Or has your blog become just another advertising platform and every post is a 250-word commercial your readers just tune out? Your readers visit your blog because they trust you as an authority, but they keep coming back because of good information, not sales pitches. Coming up with good content is a challenge, sure, but if you’ve resorted to hawking products over helping people, it might be time to re-examine your blog.

You need to give people a reason to read one more thing on top of everything else they have going on in their lives. Providing your clients and readers with a little taste of your expertise on a regular basis builds trust in your brand and establishes thought leadership. You want to be an innovator? Throw all your big ideas on your blog. Give your (well-researched) opinion on current events and new developments in your field. Don’t be afraid to get a little controversial. People love big ideas, and they love to talk about what excites them. Give people a reason to spread the word about you, and they will.

I understand the logic there, and sure, on the surface it seems like a free blog would be the best kind: turnkey blogging services like LiveJournal, Tumblr and Blogger are great for people just dipping their toes into writing on the web. However, for business purposes, there are several reasons why these just don’t work for your brand.

•    You’re at the whim of a third party. If your blogging platform decides to plaster banner ads at the top of your blog, there’s nothing you can do about it. If their favicon changes into a pinecone, you’re stuck with it. You have control over your blog’s seamless design integration with your website ONLY if it’s actually integrated with your website.
•    You become a subdomain or subfolder on someone else’s website. You lose the cache attached to blogging on your own domain, and if your content goes viral, all those links get pointed to someone else’s website, whose links may or may not be passing juice to your actual website. All that work for a little brand recognition, but no guaranteed site traffic.
•    With a self-hosted blog, you have access to all the back-end development you need to make necessary changes to your blog for seamless design integration and search optimization. Based on which content management system you use, you can also add widgets and plugins that customize both the user interface and the outward appearance of your blog for a truly unique new face of your company’s brand.

There are several ways to easily set up your blog on your domain and get writing again in the same day. Wordpress is an open source content management system and installs with Fantastico or manually. Also, it’s free! Don’t let time or cost be a factor keeping you from taking on a truly professional company blog.

Like some help integrating a blog on your existing site? Give us a call.

1-888-480-4583

If you don’t know what to write, look through your inbox. Do you consistently get the same questions over and over about a particular product or service from your customers? Your blog is a perfect place to spotlight that with an informative and useful post. Take a look at your analytics: does one of your main keywords need a rankings boost? Create a blog post with optimized links and anchor text back to your website. If you have an interesting take on a current event related to your industry (i.e. a software company’s opinion on the iPad) that’s a great topic too. You have a lot to say, but you may not have considered blogging as a marketing/PR channel for your brand. That should change.

If you simply haven’t got the time each week to sit down and blog, consider writing a few posts in one sitting and then using your Content Management System (what you use to manage your self-hosted blog, but we’ll get to that) to schedule the posts and stagger out the days they actually publish. That way your readers keep coming back all month long for new content, even if it only took you one morning’s work. If you’re just not the writing type, consider an audio podcast or video blog/vlog. These mediums can be used to great effect and can easily go viral if the content behind them is solid. Get creative! Post consistently on your company blog and new visitors and potential clients are sure to come your way.