This doesn’t just mean donations to local (or national/international) charities; it also starts at home too, and that means with the people around you.

However, another way that companies can become more socially responsible is via cause marketing, which is becoming a lot more mainstream and visible.

Some figures from IAB show why cause marketing is becoming something business can’t ignore any longer:

• 71% of consumers are giving as much (or more) as they were before the economy dipped.
• 87% of consumers would switch brands to deal with companies associated with good causes.
• 50% of consumers would pay more from brands associated with good causes.

As you can see, cause marketing isn’t just good business ethics, it’s good business sense too. But you need to make sure that it’s for the right reason.

The Because of Cause Marketing

Consumers are smart. Everything needs to be “just so” if you want to win their business, and that increasingly means having more than just the cheapest prices or nicest-looking product.

If you’re looking to increase your awareness to consumers via cause marketing, there needs to be a genuine “because” behind the cause.

• Is the cause relevant to you and your brand? No-one likes bandwagon jumpers, especially when it comes to charities and good causes. Picking a charity that doesn’t align with your company ethic could be seen as a sign you’re just using cause marketing for profit dollars.

• Are you a hopper or a stayer? Any worthy cause will tell you that while short-term fixes help, long-term change is where the real needs lie. Invest in your cause marketing for the long-term; grow a relationship with the cause – build and support.

• Are you engaging your employees? A solid social responsibility plan should be including your employees to start with. Make sure they’re fully engaged with your cause marketing efforts; involve at every step and look for feedback on how to improve constantly.

• Why this particular cause? Yes, it’s relevant to your business, but why your chosen one over many others like it? Be clear why you’re supporting; be clear where the dollars are going; be clear what change can be made; and be clear why the need to help now.

Local or (Inter)National

The main question many businesses ask themselves is whether they should be supporting local or national/international causes. Ideally, you’d be able to support both initiatives, which would benefit everyone. But we know ideally doesn’t always cut it.

A lot can come down to your bandwidth.

• Do you have the resources to properly support a national/international campaign?
• Is your customer/client base local or national/international?
• Are there local projects that you can make a big difference to with your support?
• Is your local community one that can work with a cause marketing mindset?

The answers to these questions, and more like them, can help you decide whether you invest locally or further afield. But again, make sure it’s for the right reasons and not simply to make you look good for a while.

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of any business. Cause marketing is joining the fray as an equally important part of your ongoing plans, especially in the eyes of your customers.

How’s your business stacking up?

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If you are unclear about social scoring systems and what they attempt to measure, it might be useful to start with this blog post about Why Klout Matters.  Like a credit score, let’s assume that companies like Klout, Kred and Appinions are beginning to measure something that correlates to an individual’s social media effectiveness.

I had an opporunity to test some of these ideas last week when I conducted a social influence workshop with a global services company in the UK.

I began with an overview of the basics behind these systems and what we can really learn from them.

Then, thanks to Andrew Grill, president of Kred, we were able to construct an internal dashboard that approximated the relative social media effectiveness of many company employees. It was nothing short af a revelation to these top executives. Here are a couple of observations:

Who is the real company spokesperson?

One of the executives said, “I don’t know any of these people on this list! You mean they are representing our company?”

Indeed.  I told him the story about how one of his IT employees — the person with the second-highest Kred score in the company — connected with me through this blog and on Twitter, and over a period of two years we had become friends. When he found out I was coming to London, he offered to introduce me to the company’s marketing team. That led to organizing the workshop.

“You see,” I said, “to me, this web developer IS the face of your company. The only reason I am here today is because he is representing you so effectively on the social web.”

This was a profound lesson for the executives. They were discovering their most effective representatives on the social web — and it was quite eye-opening.  Now they are wondering about: How do we thank them, learn from them, and find ways we can work more closely together? How do we transfer their expertise to other parts of the organization?

Where is marketing?

It was illustrative that 80% of the top influencers where in no way associated with PR, sales, service, or marketing. This was an equally shocking revelation. Shouldn’t these departments be highly visible on the social web, especially in a technology and services-oriented company?

This company prided itself in being on the forefront of technology and best management practices but this simple ranking made them realize they were missing an enormous opportunity to discover gaps with their customer-facing strategies.  This led to a lively discussion about further training and how some of the key ideas from Return On Influence could be incorporated into basic sales best practices.

Influencer Outreach

The exercise also started them thinking about using these scores to discover unknown or under-utilized resources at prospect companies, possible partner companies or even as a way to find high-potential new employees. How could they find like-minded and passionate individuals who have a natural interest in their ideas and technologies?  They had already observed how it could be used to find a resource like me. The possibilities seemed vast.

It was exciting for me to see some of the core ideas of Return On Influence come alive in this corporate setting and I wanted to pass along some of the experiences to you.  Can you see how some of these simple lists can help you and your sales efforts?

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Here they are:

1. Do I have permission to contact this person?

A lot of marketing is still based on interrupting people. For example:

• They send us email because our address is on some list they bought.
• They send us junk mail because they know where we live or work.
• They cold call us because they have our phone number.

Yes, you can get people’s attention by interrupting or pestering them, but it’s not the kind of attention they welcome. People repel pests, they don’t embrace them. Walking into a company unannounced and poking the boss in the chest will get their attention, but it’s unlikely to win their willing cooperation or earn their trust.

So, rather than add people to some list and pester the crap out of them, we should earn access to them instead.

A great way to achieve this, is via the type of message you are receiving right now. Everyone reading this blog post, either by email, RSS reader or on jimsmarketingblog.com, has subscribed or searched for the information. It’s seen as useful, not an interruption. I work hard to deliver as much useful, free information as I can and as a result, thousands of prospective clients read my work every day. This blog is what’s called a permission marketing asset.

Permission based marketing delivers the kind of response rates that interruption marketing can’t touch. Newsletters, blogs, YouTube channels, Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups are permission assets that take time to build, but they offer unparalleled potential, for business owners seeking to earn the attention and trust of their marketplace.

2. Am I contacting them with something they need or is it all about me?

Most marketing (and almost all small business marketing) fails because it’s all about the sender and not the recipient. This happens for a number of reasons, but mainly because business owners wrongly assume ALL marketing has to be about pushing a sales message.

That assumption is not only incorrect, it’s toxic!

Successful marketing is about building permission and earning trust among a targeted group of prospective clients. It’s about making you an obvious choice, when they need the type of service you provide.

For example:

The local health food store, which offers advice on the best foods to eat for your unique needs, is building a relationship with you. They are also positioning themselves in your mind as an authority, when it comes to health food.

Their free newsletter offers healthy recipes, the dates of their next subscriber-only, healthy cooking evenings and the latest news on the benefits of certain food types – So, it’s eagerly awaited by its readers. These readers buy the ingredients from the store because they trust it. They are a part of the community and recommend it to their health-conscious friends. People LOVE to be part of a community of like-minded people.

It’s about them

Effective marketing is not just about pushing special offers and new product lines at people. It’s about engaging with them and building a relationship with them. It’s about earning their trust. It’s about being seen as the obvious place to go, when they have a requirement you can fulfil. It’s about them.

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• Press releases
• Podcast
• Promotional video
• Slideshow
• Photos and videos from local events
• Clips from local TV stations

They’re off to a good start because there is the potential for a lot of interesting content here. But ultimately the effort will fail as merely a blip on the radar because nobody in the organization is working on the network strategy. Developing content for the social web is a waste of time if it just sits there like a bump on a Heinz dill pickle. It has to go some place if it is to attract attention and eventually compel people to do something.

To ignite a social strategy, you must ignite your content.

So to be successful, you must aggressively develop the “human pathways” that will carry your content to the world … not just write press releases that you HOPE will be buried on a community events calendar somewhere. And the larger — and more engaged — the network, the better the chances for success, so get started NOW!

Here is an action plan I provided to this charity that would result in long-term success … and it can ONLY be long-term success because it takes TIME and CONSISTENT EFFORT to build a relevant and engaged network that will share your stuff!

1) Identify all the passionate advocates of the charity. They are a powerful and critical first step in building an engaged network.

2) Explain to them why you need their help and the benefits of helping — you’re connecting many small networks to create an enormous network.

3) Teach them how to proactively and aggressively build a targeted network and a social media presence so that you have hundreds of “beacons” for your brand.

4) Give this group tips on how to effectively share, connect, and network on their favorite social platforms.

5) Assign a central resource to “corral” real, passionate stories, videos, photos from the field to share across the ENTIRE network. Unleash the content! This will provide a constant drip-drip-drip of interesting content every week.

6) Make the content easy to share. Have easy-to-find social sharing options. Use Linked Within (like I do at the bottom of each post) to highlight similar stories of interest (this increases my page views by about 8 percent). Highlight other content of interest on the site.

7) Institute free, simple monitoring tools like Google Alerts and saved Twitter searches to measure the effort and identify the most successful networks and content. “Buzz” is a leading indicator of donations. If the buzz is going, up, up, up, the donations will eventually follow.

I care about this cause so I’m going to try to shepherd this as best I can. Hopefully it will work. Does this make sense to you? What other advice would you give this worthy cause?

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Repete? Ok, Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who’s left?

Repete? How about we just move on…

In marketing, when something works it gets repeated and repeated again and again. Never letting a good campaign go to waste, imitators will jump on board and drive it into the ground until it’s no longer effective.

We’ve seen this with the Got Milk? campaigns. It wasn’t long before we started seeing imitators touting got sand, got rice, got mold, got Jesus and even got poop! (Like, who doesn’t?)

The same thing happens with TV and movies. Someone breaks an “edginess” barrier and it’s soon a race to see how soon it can be topped without losing advertisers or getting crushed by the FCC. It’s hard to believe there was once a time when it was taboo to say “damn” in a theatrical movie, or that depicting a married couple in the same bed was just not something you did on TV!

It’s inevitable that yesterday’s “big thing” is today’s normal thing.

What’s new is old again

Online marketing runs on the same principles. While solid SEO and link-building concepts remain universal, there are a number of strategies of years past that no longer work today. Why? Because they have been done to death, rendering them almost completely ineffective.

Remember reciprocal link pages? Mass article submissions? Mass directory submissions? Comment spamming? Link wheels? These are all but virtually dead, dying or soon to be declining link-building strategies that have been used, abused and discarded in the cyber junkpile of once successful SEO strategies.

All this shows the danger of jumping on any single “trick” when pursuing the holy grail of SEO: search engine rankings. These tricks often turn into nothing more than short-term gimmicks, and sites fall down just as quickly as they rose up in the search results.

In online marketing, there are many paths to the same goal. Many will work for most, some may work for all, and others only work for a period of time. Many business owners find one strategy that works and they stick to it, even long past its usefulness. Not every marketing strategy works 100% the time. Those that put all their marketing eggs into a single basket find themselves with egg on their faces when that one strategy comes crashing to the ground with the changing tide of online marketing strategies.

But I get it. We do what we are comfortable with and venturing outside of that is the unknown. The unknown means taking risks and possibly experiencing losses. But it also means possible rewards, and that’s what businesses need to be looking at.

Developing long-term strategies that get results

In any kind of marketing, its good to have multiple strategies at play at any given time. Putting aside the whole concept of marketing to specific customer personas, it’s not a good idea to put all of your time, money or effort into a single marketing approach. I can easily make an argument for investing not only in SEO and link building, but also in social media, PPC, content, analytics, etc.

Focusing all your marketing efforts onto a single avenue of growth can be effective for a time. However, marketing diversification gives you more opportunity to be even more effective.

If you’re limiting your marketing efforts to one or even two avenues, it might be time to branch out. Look at other successful marketing avenues and see how you can venture out a bit. Look at specific tactics and campaigns and see what makes sense for both short and long-term success.

Sometimes it takes trial and error to find strategies that work. Your first attempt isn’t always the best attempt, and it should never be your final attempt. You can always piggyback on what others are doing, just don’t mimic exactly. Use others’ success to to build successful campaigns unique to you.

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As companies evolve their people, process and technology to attract, engage and inspire customers through content, I think attention on a broader view of the value that is created warrants consideration.

Many companies that approach my agency ask about the ROI of specific tactics as if they are gambling money with a direct rate of return. If there are agencies contributing to that perspective amongst clients side marketers, I wish they would stop. It’s not helping anyone. Here’s why:

The underpinning of marketing is centered around presenting something of value to customers who hopefully exchange money for it. Many marketers use the notion of ROI to characterize the effect of their marketing investment. Of course it makes sense to understand what the return is on where you’re spending money. But I think traditional models of ROI (input – output) can miss the point of how much impact integrated search, social and content marketing can have on the overall customer relationship. Besides ROI, there are other cumulative effects that can amplify the effect of optimized online marketing efforts that are worth measuring.

Today’s digitally savvy customers are empowered to publish and prone to share their experiences with brands, friends and broader social networks. Consumer expectations of brands are evolving into participatory exchanges with multiple threads of dialog. What consumers want from socially savvy brands is not just about getting free coupons or unique content any more.

The brand / customer relationship is not just about marketing presenting offers to target customers. Brand points of contact are not limited to designated personnel in sales, customer service, media relations or recruiting. Socially empowered businesses are connecting with social savvy customers in a matrix of connections. The growth of social business means entire organizations are becoming empowered to communicate and advocate on behalf of the brand. What’s the ROI on that?

Value of Exchange – The relationship between consumers and the brands they buy from involves more than just a single transaction or a subscription. Every touchpoint between a company and a customer is an opportunity to advance or decline the relationship. Businesses have come a long way in doing that for specific departments such as marketing, PR, sales and customer service.  But with the advent of social business and social media empowerment across the organization, the threads of dialog between employees and customers becomes diverse very quickly.

How to manage that? You don’t. Not entirely at least. You inspire it with leadership and a vision for what your brand stands for and what kind of relationship you want with customers, employees, partners, the media and public.

Maybe you’ve observed or worked with companies that have singularly emphasized ROI in every marketing tactic employed without seeing the bigger picture of investing in the broader brand and customer relationship. Viewing industry relationship building as speculative and with uncertain financial ROI can cost a business substantially in the form of positive brand connections with customers, influencers and media. There’s a sort of equity of relationship that serves as an outcome of meaningful industry participation and leadership that many companies don’t  bother with because it doesn’t answer short term ROI questions.

When a competitor makes those investments, the neck and neck competition normally experienced can give way to the competitor pulling away because of the amplification effect on their marketing efforts that continued and consistent investments in network development, relationship building and goodwill have achieved – all without certain or short term ROI.

Is your company making marketing investments solely based on immediate ROI? Are you also making investments in resources and relationships as a thought leader and building your network beyond prospects, investors and industry journalists? How are you measuring the value of exchange between your employees and the public?

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Starburst Landing Tab: Wall

When users come to the Starburst fan page for the first time, they land on the wall. The numerous fan postings on this tab show the positive sentiment consumers have for the product. However, the wall lacks a call to action and does little to share brand messaging with page visitors. Starburst has long established itself as a bold, colorful brand with a sense of humor. However, by having fans land on this tab, the brand is missing an opportunity to present that fun personality and to encourage fans to explore some of the page’s more interesting features.

Starburst presents VEVO GO Shows

The VEVO Go Shows tab gives page visitors access to videos produced as part of Starburst’s partnership with the music video website VEVO. The tab includes videos of surprise concerts by a number of top artists including Weezer, Florence and the Machine and Gavin DeGraw.

The videos are entertaining and definitely add to the content of the page, but the sharing aspects of this tab seem to be lacking. The share functions on the video itself, for example, are pre-loaded with messages about VEVO and the video, but have no mention of Starburst. The tab’s other share function, a comment stream, seems to have a programing glitch with its scroll bars and, at the time of this blog post, either has only three comments or only allows you to view the last three comments made.

Starburst Tell Us About You

The colorful Tell Us About You tab does a much better job of engaging fans in the brand. It presents Starburst’s personality (Starburst are a contradiction because they are solid, yet juicy) and invites fans to share their own personalities. This seems to have to resounded with fans because a large number of them posted statements about their personalities.

While this tab is well conceived on the whole, I do think it was a misstep to invite fans to sort entries based on what their friends had written. When I clicked on that option, I saw that none of my Facebook friends had submitted entries. Instead of comments about Starbursts from my friends, I was presented with a large space full of empty tiles. This function of the tab felt like a dead end on what had otherwise been an engaging experience.

Starburst iPhone App

It’s always confusing to me when brands create Facebook tabs encouraging people to download their smartphone apps because custom tabs (i.e. tabs other than the wall, info and photos tabs) cannot be viewed on the mobile version of Facebook or on the app Facebook has created for smartphones. Starburst’s iPhone App tab has two different links directing fans to the App Store, but once you click on the link there’s little you can do to actually interact with the app on your computer.

The app itself invites fans to play a game called Spot the Contradiction, which does a good job of engaging fans in the brand’s messaging. This tab would be more fun if it gave fans the opportunity to play the game from their computer right away, even if they don’t have an iPhone handy.

Starburst Wall Engagement

The majority of Starburst’s wall posts are in keeping with their overall messaging that the candy is solid, yet juicy, and thus a contradiction. Many of these posts are clever and receive an acceptable amount of response from fans; however, by only posting every two or three days, Starburst is missing an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with its fans.

This missed opportunity is best illustrated by comparing Starburst’s fan engagement to that of a competing candy brand, Reese’s. With about 8.5 million fans, Reese’s has a smaller following than Starburst, but it maintains a more consistent conversation with the fans it does have by posting updates about twice as frequently as Starburst.

If you compare Starburst’s last ten wall posts with Reese’s, the brands have similar rates of engagement.

But, compare the response to the brands’ wall posts from a single week and you’ll see something different. During the week of January 22 to January 28, Starburst posted three updates on its wall and 3,350 fans commented on, liked or shared those posts. During that same week, Reese’s posted on its wall five times and received more than twice as much response from fans with 7,613 total likes, comments or shares. Starburst could take better advantage of this opportunity to connect with its large fan base by posting updates as often as two or three times a day.

Starburst has all the raw materials it needs to become a major presence on Facebook: a clear message and a large fan base. But, it has not yet taken full advantage of this opportunity to engage that fan base. By increasing its wall engagement and creating smart, interactive tabs, Starburst could develop a following that is not only large, but that is also invested in interacting with and sharing the brand’s marketing efforts.

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There’s been no shortage of commentary about G+ and SPYW but I think there are a few pros and cons that are worth exploring.

Google+ Pros:

As a social network, there are inherent social engagement benefits of Google+.  The Google+ shares, pluses, comments and overall interaction behaviors necessary to improve Google+ inspired search visibility also benefit social network development and community engagement. Starting with SEO and Google+ seems a little backwards to me compared to leveraging it first as a social network.

Along the lines of optimizing for customers before keywords, what about starting on Google+ with engagement and building a network for the sake of growing a community first? As you grow content and community, then bring in the SEO component – or at least simultaneously.

Google+ can definitely serve as another spoke in a hub and spoke content distribution and social engagement model. While Google+ has been reported to have 90 million users, it’s a far cry from the 800 million on Facebook. That said, Google is doing everything it can to “encourage” mass adoption. As that happens, it can become a very productive channel in an overall content and social media marketing mix.

As for SEO and G+, there’s no reason Google+ optimization best practices and social networking efforts cannot happen simultaneously. G+ has rich social networking opportunities that have value on their own vs. viewing G+ solely for it’s SEO value. Together, they represent true social media optimization opportunity.

Google+ Cons:

Is Google+ participation mandatory? The clear advantages of Google+ presence and activity in search make it impossible for companies that value online visibility not to join in. But that incentive is not the same thing as joining a social network because you know that’s where customers and influentials are. As companies mature in their social media participation, those choices are increasingly based on customers vs. chasing shiny objects, the competition or because everyone is doing it. Joining Google+ for the wrong reasons is a bit of a con to me.

A boost in Google+ is a boost for “Unknown” keywords. The more people that are logged in to Google+ and other Google services, the more that search keywords will be reported as “Unknown” to website owners. I think this is the biggest potential con for Google+ success. Search encryption enables privacy with organic search results but not for PPC search clicks. Is that double standard?

The “unknown” segment of referring keywords for our most popular site is now over 25%. That’s a lot of traffic that we know comes from Google but we don’t know which specific keyword phrase it was. As a result, optimization refinement for better search visibility is a much bigger challenge for those phrases. Additionally, optimizing content for better user experience also suffers.

Of course, we’re an adaptable bunch and we’ll simply find another way to make connections between how customers discover our content and what inspires engagement and conversions.

Can Google create their own weather by incentivizing participation? Will it be enough to create momentum and the network effect that will create “true” value for membership? Yes or no, the incentive is too strong not to join. Now it’s a matter of what can brands do to actually make it meaningful vs. mechanical.

When I posted this question on my Google+ account, here are a few of the replies:

Mike Grinberg –  Google is using a push strategy with G+. They are pretty much “forcing” people to join by integrating as much as possible with all their other services. As more people join, this will become more than just a “power user’s/geeks/nerds paradise” It is slowly happening already.

Benjamin Wright –  I like G+ because I can post comments like this, including comments with links, immediately, without CAPTCHAs and without waiting for the blog/post owner’s approval. G+ is able to allow this, I believe, because it bans spammers.

Rohn Jay Miller – Lee, I’ve joined and I check and participate–at least some times. But I’m still using blogs and Twitter far more to keep in touch with communities I’m a part of. What’s the incentive to pay the switching costs? This seems like Google-think again: it’s a technology driven idea that’s cool in the overview, even compelling.

But down here at my user level Google+ is just a “mini-net” that I look at once a day. And that’s me, a full-time social media / content professional. What about my brother in law? This has a long way to go before it’s more compelling than compelled

Ian Lurie – Google is taking this 1-2 steps further by creating a strong marketing incentive FIRST, and using that to drag us all to their property. But that kinda makes sense given that they already have the audience. Facebook didn’t, so they went about it a different way.

I DO think Google can create their own weather. Their huge advantage is their audience. It’s easy to forget, but they own the two most-used search engines on the planet. If they don’t get plowed under for anti-competitive practices they’ll likely win through brute force.

How have you approached Google+ personally or for your business?

Are you optimizing or building community? Are you doing both at the same time? How are you incorporating Google+ with the rest of your online marketing mix?

Be sure to check out TopRank’s Google+ account here.

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Like reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, liking and authority before it, scarcity has an undue influence on us due to our desire for shortcuts.

We have been trained that things that are rarer have more value than things that are common. Therefore, to make things appear to have more value, marketers can promote or even fake the scarcity of an object or information.

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of daily deals, like LivingSocial. I know that if I don’t act now, I’ll miss out on 50% off a massage, food or snow tires. Interestingly, I’ve noticed I’m less compelled to buy a daily deal these days because I know that if I miss this half-off yoga class, there will be another one from a competing studio next week. The deal is still a good one, but the scarcity has been removed.

Scarcity also plays on our fear of loss. In one example from the book, homeowners who were told how much they would lose by not insulating their house bought at a much higher rate than another group that was told how much they would save.

We also hate to lose our freedom; when an object becomes scarce or won’t be available much longer, we don’t want to lose our freedom of choice, so we find the object more desirable. In one study, people who tasted a cookie from a jar with only two cookies found the cookie more delicious than an identical cookie in a nearly full jar.

What I found even more interesting was a sales experiment for a beef company. The first group of customers were given the standard sales pitch. The second group heard the sales pitch plus were told that there would soon be a beef shortage, and not all orders would be filled. The third group heard what the second group heard, but they were also told that this information was secret, and most people didn’t know about the upcoming shortage.

The evidence was clear, as the second group bought more beef than the first group, but the third group bought even more. Scarcity of product combined with a scarcity of information proved an overwhelming sales tool.

So, how can you use scarcity to improve your web marketing and social media activity?

Scarcity works well in all types of marketing and sales, but here are a few ways you can use it yourself:

Create a member-only group. Provide these members with information only available to them and sell membership at a premium.
Limit seats. Limit the number of seats for your next webinar or seminar.
Use early bird discounts. Offer discounts for people who purchase before an upcoming date. Announce this when tickets first go on sale, and then again as the deadline approaches. An alternative approach is to off a certain number of discounted seats and once those are gone, they’re gone for good.
Give special offers to a small mailing list. Start by giving people on your internal list a special opportunity to buy early, before you announce it to everyone.

Scarcity is a powerful motivator. Do you have any other ideas on how to use scarcity in your web marketing? If so, please leave a comment below. But please hurry…comments will only be open for one week, then they’ll be closed forever!

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Part 1, How To Design Powerpoint Slides for Videos
Part 2, How To Choose a Topic for Your Marketing Videos.
Part 3, Adding Animation to Powerpoint Slides
Part 4, Choosing Music or Voice Over for Your Powerpoint video
Part 5, Testing Your Powerpoint Slides with a Slideshow
Part 6, How to Film PowerPoint Slides Using Jing vs. Camtasia

The last step of this PowerPoint video series is about syndicating and marketing your video for others to see. It’s not enough to just post it on your blog and on YouTube. You need to use your keywords carefully and publicize it.

Using Social Media to Publicize Your Video

YouTube is considered the 2nd most popular search engine so creating a YouTube channel and uploading every video is very important. Even more important is using carefully selected keywords in the title and description so your video is found in the search engines.

Also important is placing your website URL at the very beginning of your description. This helps with SEO but also gives the viewer an easy way to find your website for more information.

Obviously, post the video to your website – either in a main post or in the sidebar – and tell all your social media friends about it. Always include the link to your video in your tweets or posts, especially on Facebook so the thumbnail photo appears in the post, sparking peoples’ interest. Start a discussion about your video topic on your Facebook wall and on Twitter. Ask for comments and discussion among your YouTube subscribers.

Syndicating Your Video to Other Video Sites

YouTube is obviously the leader of video sites but consider taking a few minutes to submit to other video sites. Why bother? Submitting to multiple video sites gives you the opportunity to have multiple search engine rankings for the same video, all on one page.

For instance, if you use your keywords and descriptions carefully and have your video posted on your website, YouTube and 5 other video sites, chances are very good that you could get up to 7 search engine listings for that one video and they usually appear very close to each other. Your other option is to just post the video on your website and on YouTube which gives you only 2 search engine listings.

The more listings your videos gets in the search engines, the more people see you as an expert in your field, which in turn will lead to more people visiting your site and possibly buying your products or services.

How To Syndicate To Other Video Sites

There’s great debate in how best to syndicate your videos and to how many sites. There are certain automated tools that will syndicate to multiple video sharing sites all at once but the prices differ dramatically and there’s no way to customize each video for each platform. These tools include Traffic Geyser, Hey! Spread, and Content Buzz.

To submit videos manually, you will first need to setup accounts at the video sharing sites you choose. This takes some time initially but after the set up all that’s involved is logging in to the site, writing your title & description, then uploading the video.

Some of the other popular video sharing sites include: Google Video, Brightcove, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip.tv, Metacafe, Photobucket and Daily Motion. These sites all have a page rank of 6 or higher, which may be good for your rankings (there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer on that yet). At the very least, you will have large communities exposed to your video and your company branding.

Also do some research for any niche video sharing sites that might apply to your business. Highly targeted viewers will always have a higher conversion rate than just random people seeing your video.

Following the Terms of Service

Do yourself a favor and read the Terms of Service for each of the video sharing sites you want to use. They will have different rules about the size of the videos and also what types of videos are acceptable. I once had a client lose his Blip.tv account because they thought he violated the TOS.

Video marketing can be a very powerful marketing tactic but you definitely need to make a plan to implement it well. Plan out how many videos you want to make each month / quarter / year. Plan out the topics, create your profiles at the various video sharing sites, and mark on your calendar the days you will film each video. Also decide if you want or need to outsource the production and / or syndication portion and how best to publicize your videos.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on video syndication and on this series as a whole so please do leave your comments below!

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