Where do you turn if you want to learn a new skill or purchase some new fancy gadget? The internet? That’s what I thought.
Recently, I decided I wanted to learn how to photograph a water drop so I headed over to our trusty friend, Google and typed ‘photograph water drops’ in the search box. Here are the results:
But I wanted more information. So I bopped over to www.youtube and found a wonderful video from PhotoGavin titled How to photograph a splash of water.
Bingo, everything came clear. Before I went off to experiment though, I subscribed to the author’s Youtube channel so I could come back and watch the rest of his movies.
The point here isn’t to teach you how to photograph water drops, it is to show you how effective video is when it is mixed into your marketing efforts.
Concepts become clearer when we can watch them in action.
Fact – most people would rather watch a movie than read.
A video of your company’s doings, facilities or employees makes you more “real” in the eyes of the viewers.
Videos add value to your brand, they can make you the go-to expert.
They can show the heart of your company. Do you do good deeds? Video, upload and share them.
Video testimonials are powerful and much more believable than a list of text tributes.
I was impressed by the video so I went to PhotoGavin’s website and bookmarked it (I use delicious.com). I noticed that he has some DVDs for sale and they look interesting. And heck, I’m telling you about him too. So I’d say his video did a great job of establishing him as an expert, wouldn’t you?
Oh Google, we love you so but why do you have to keep stirring the pot? Oh yes, because it is your job, I forgot.
Last month Google rolled out their ‘personalized search’ for everyone. This isn’t new technology. It has previously been available to only those folks who were signed into their Google account. Now, we all get to have it, whether we want it or not.
‘Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible. For example, since I always search for [recipes] and often click on results from epicurious.com, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes. Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others.’
The long and short of it is now when I put ‘get hamster out of wall’ in the search box on my computer I will probably get a different list of sites than when you enter it on your computer.
This provides a whole host of perplexing problems for search engine optimizers starting with, oh, say keywords. Back in the old days (you know – the days of 2009) the search engines analyzed the words on a web page, then they psychoanalyzed each and every other component and Viola! a page rank is born.
Well, that was then and this is now. And this ‘now’ has your search history prominently filtered into your very own, private search results. (It’s just between you and Google and a few hundred million advertisers.)
So what is a site optimizer or owner to do?
Start with the two things that will always (probably) help with your search ranking
Update you site often with great content your audience will want to read
Outback Steakhouse recently offered a free ‘Bloomin’ Onion‘ to the first 5,000 folks who signed up on their Facebook Fan page. The results? They added 24,000 new fans in the first week. And the numbers just keep on growing.
Social marketing, at its core, is like a wagon wheel. It has a hub and 5 spokes which can conveniently be arranged into a fine circular object that will handily take you down the social track.
The hub is your blog
Spoke #1 – a social networking account on Facebook.
Spoke #2 – a microblogging account on Twitter.
Spoke #3- a video sharing account on Youtube.
Spoke #4 – a photo sharing account on Flickr.
Spoke #5 – a network of like-minded blogs to follow and comment uponst.
The invisible spoke – patience, keen listening skills and time.
In this wonderful new world of business models there are lots of folks who have reached ‘wizard’ status…and there are lots and lots and lots more who are just trying to figure out where to start. As a way to help the later group we are putting together a series of videos created by members of the ‘wizard’ ilk. We will start with a Youtube video called Blogs in Plain English by Lee LeFever.
I do all the time. I know he likes to eat. Every time I come home he picks up a shoe or a shawl or a shard of printed out news and brings it to me, tail wagging – happy and welcoming. Like the well trained owner that I am, I dig the dog food cup into his food bucket and after a couple of cool tricks on his part I pour the nuggets into his bowl.
It’s a heartwarming routine for me and a satisfying one for him.
Tonight he is lying next to my chair, sleeping. That is something else he enjoys. He is also a passionate lover of walks, playing and chasing anything that crawls, runs or flies. All of those activities are well covered. So we are happy.
You might say, in this case, I know my audience. I rarely tell him how awesome I am, I don’t preach the superb quality of his dog food ingredients. I have never shown him a power point presentation of the huge variety of bees, spiders, birds and squirrels his big back yard has to offer.
I just give him what he wants and it works splendidly. Simplistic I know. But a warm, fuzzy marketing success story none the less.
On June 22nd Amazon acquired online shoe/clothing merchant Zappos.com with a stock deal valued somewhere between $850 – $920 million.
I’m sure there a more reasons for this acquisition than meets the eye but the most stated reason is Zappos’ CEO’s philosophy of “karmic capitalism”. What goes around comes around couldn’t be truer in this case.
Tony Hsieh is Zappos’ CEO. He is a Harvard graduate with a degree in computer science. He made a bunch of money back in 1998 when he co-founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft. He joined the Zappos team in 2000 and has taken the company’s gross sales from $1.6 million to $1 billion in his tenure there.
What is remarkable about this young man is what how he accomplished this feet. He and his team created a Zappos ‘culture’ that is completely customer-centric. You can read Zappos 10 Core Values here. http://about.zappos.com/our-unique-culture/zappos-core-values They included their employees and customers in this ‘culture’ and they tweeted – a lot. Not just a little bit of alot, they tweeted a lot of alot.
Search Engine Watch’s Sage Lewis wrote Zappos + Twitter = Innovative Success http://searchenginewatch.com/3631269 back in October of 2008. It is worth the read.
One thing that caught my eye was Sage Lewis’ point that dedicated Twitter activity garners links from other sites. At the time the article was written, Zappos had 2467 pages linking to their site. I did a link check when I read the article. Now they have 7116. Wow!
For those not obsessed with search engine optimization, incoming links from other sites is a significant factor (some say less so now) in who’s site show up where in a searched listing. They also bring very valuable, targeted direct traffic. In other words, incoming links add value to your company’s bottom line.
So does being a Twitter rockstar. And in the case of rock star, Zappos, it brings about 1 billion tidbits of value.
Where do you turn if you want to learn a new skill or purchase some new fancy gadget? The internet? That’s what I thought.
