Getting More Out Of Your YouTube Videos

We’ve previously discussed the importance of using videos, and YouTube, to help build your brand. While uploading videos to YouTube is fairly straightforward, many new users don’t know how to add proper tags and annotations to their videos. In this Social Media University tip, we’ll go over how to do just that.

Adding and choosing tags
While your video is uploading to YouTube, you have the opportunity to add a title, description, and tags to your video. Tags, also known as keywords, are very important. Along with the title and description of your video, tags will be used to help people find your video.

Tags are separated by commas, and YouTube has added the helpful feature of suggesting tags. There are no limits on tags that you can use, but focus on your top 10 in priority order as much as you can. If you need additional ideas other tags than the ones you come up with and the suggestions, try searching for videos in your field that are similar to yours. By clicking the “Show more” button under a video, you can see the tags they used listed at the bottom of the description; and if you found them through a search, those are probably some useful tags!

By entering your video manager and clicking “Edit” on any of your already uploaded videos, you can add new tags at any times. There are even suggestions for you on this screen as well. Choosing relevant tags will help people find your videos through YouTube searches and related video suggestions!

Creating Annotations
If you are a regular user of YouTube, you have come across plenty of annotations. Annotations are blocks or text (or links) that pop up on top of the video that you are watching. They not only add interesting comments or links to your videos, but are searchable by Google and YouTube! This means it helps tell them what your video is all about and increases your chances of showing up in their rankings!

To add annotations to a video, go to your video manager and under “Edit” you can select “Annotations”. This will bring you to a new screen where you will see your video and have the option on the right-hand side of adding annotations.

Annotations have a variety of uses. You can add a block of text with additional information about what you are talking about in the video, add something you left out, correct a mistake, or to emphasize something you say like a date or price. “Speech Bubbles” and “Notes” are the most common annotations.
Select one under “add annotation”, and you’ll be able to see the annotation right on your video. Using YouTube’s easy to use tools, you can write your message, resize and move your annotation, select colors, and choose what time the annotation should appear and how long you want it to stay on the screen. You can also make the annotation a link to another video (say you reference an old video you did) or a link to subscribe to your channel.

Annotations can be added and removed at any time, so feel free to experiment! Once you get the hang of it, annotations can help your videos to be found, liven up your videos and provide useful information to your viewers.

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

Customizing Your Twitter Background

While just about everyone with a social media strategy uses Facebook and Twitter nowadays, not everyone uses Twitter’s background to its capacity in marketing their brands. In this Social Media University tip, we’ll go over the proper dimensions of a Twitter background and what yours should include to help market your brand.

Choosing the right dimensions

Twitter’s content is 865 pixels wide, leaving the rest of the space on the screen for backgrounds. When selecting a size for your background, be sure to use an image that is at least 1600w x 900h pixels; this will cover standard monitors such as 1024×768, and also standard 1600×900 monitors. Using an image size of 2500×1600 should cover just about all resolutions.

Keep in mind that most of the background will be obstructed by the Twitter content in the center of the site, so the image itself shouldn’t be too elaborate; it can even be a solid color or a simple design. The most important part of your background is the unobstructed part on the left hand side.

Branding in the “sweet spot” on the left side

How much space will be unobstructed on the left side depends on the resolution of your visitors screen. Try to stick to a width of 66 pixels to 194 pixels; 66 pixels will be unobstructed for anyone with a resolution of 1024×768 or larger (99% of Twitter users) while 194 pixels will be unobstructed for resolutions of 1280×720 or larger (82% of Twitter users).

Using a photo editing program, choose your solid color, simple design, or picture that is at least 1600×900 pixels as mentioned above. Then, in the top left corner, brand yourself! You can do this however you feel best represents you; a box with your picture and contact information, your logo, quotes, anything! Just remember to keep the width under 194 pixels.

The end result will have your branded content on the far left side of the image. But remember, some of the content you want people to see may bleed off the edge of the screen until you play with it a bit.

Try it out!

The best way to see how it looks on your Twitter page is to test it! Once you have created your background image, upload it within your Twitter profile under Settings > Design to see how it looks. Through trial and error, you should be able to find the perfect size and spacing just for you!

If you are a regular user of Twitter, you have seen this left-side personal branding before; now you know how to utilize it on your site! When someone visits your Twitter page, they’ll have a fast and easy way to learn more about you and your small business as it will be featured right on their screen!

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

The Importance Of Google Analytics

An age-old adage states that “knowledge is power”, and this is especially true today when it comes to developing a successful social media marketing strategy. Fortunately, there is a free tool out there available to all small business owners that provides them with valuable knowledge about their incoming traffic; Google Analytics. In this Social Media University tip, we’ll discuss some of the reasons why tracking with Google Analytics is so important to you and your small business.

Where Traffic is Coming From

One of the most valuable features on Google Analytics is the “Traffic Sources” feature, which tracks how many visits your website is receiving on a daily basis. Not only are you given the number of visits, but you can also see how many visits are new (“unique”) and how many are returning. You can also see where these visits came from. How many come from the search engines? From other sites (referral) or how many people type your URL in directly?

New and returning visitors are both valuable; the amount of new visitors you are receiving gives you an idea of how well your strategies to drive traffic to your website are working, and returning visitors let you know how well you are retaining visitors (loyalty). And each group will most likely interact with your site very differently. It is important to know those differences and how to cater to each audience.

This information can help guide your social media marketing strategy. If you are receiving most of your traffic from one place, you can focus more energy on that or spend more time building up your other avenues. Regardless of what you do, you can make educated decisions based on the numbers instead of taking guesses.

Quality of Visits

Not only are you able to see how many visits you are receiving and where they are coming from, but you can also gauge the quality of those visits.

Your site’s “bounce rate” measures how many visitors left your site, via the back button or typing something into their browser, without clicking on any links on your webpage. “Time on site” measures how long a visitor stayed on your site. This is measured from the first link they click; if a visitor’s “time on site” reads 0:00, it means that that visit was a bounce.

If your site’s bounce rate is very high (over 80%, for example), you may want to make some changes to entice visitors to click on other areas of your website and engage further. You can study which parts of your website are visited most often and least often to see what is working and what isn’t.

Keyword Research

Google Analytics will show you the top keywords that drive visitors to your site, and you will be able to analyze how people interact with your site (as mentioned above) based on the keywords they used to find you. The differences of interaction with your site may be very different based on what they were searching for!

This is very helpful in developing SEO strategies and optimizing your content. If certain words and phrases are drawing traffic that engages well, you can start putting more of an emphasis on these phrases and words in future blog posts to help make your way up the results page when those searches are entered.

This post just scratches the surface of what Google Analytics can do; and as we mentioned above, it’s free! This is an extremely valuable tool that all small business owners should be putting to use. The Practical Social Media University has an entire training area dedicated to Google Analytics for our members!

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

Embedding YouTube Videos On Your WordPress Blog

WordPress provides small business owners a fantastic and easy to use program to manage their blogs without needing to know “computer languages” like HTML. While code can be intimidating without instruction, in this Social Media University tip we will give you some easy to follow instructions on how to embed your YouTube videos into your WordPress.org posts or pages.

Finding the Embed Code on YouTube

Once a video is uploaded to YouTube and is accessible to the public, the following buttons can be seen below the play button; “Like” (Thumbs Up), “Dislike” (Thumbs Down), “Add To” (Drop Down Menu), “Share”, and “Flag”. If you click on the “Share” button, you are given a shortened link to the video (for easy access to copy and paste), an “Embed” button, an “Email” button, and links to various social media sites. Click on the “Embed” button. Now, you are given an embedding code, along with options that are explained in more detail on the site. You can select what size you’d like your video to be on your blog and YouTube will automatically adjust the embedding code per your specifications. Once you’ve made your size selection your embedding code is ready! It will look something like this:

iframe width=”640″ height=”480″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/XEq-dM0z9as?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen…

Now, in a different window (or the same one if you’ve copied and pasted your embed code elsewhere for safe keeping; not a bad habit to get into), go into the WordPress page or post that you want to embed your selected video into. In the top right hand corner of the text box of your post/page, there are tabs for “Visual” and “HTML”. You are likely used to working in Visual. Click on the “HTML” tab. Some things may look different in HTML form, such as italic and bold fonts, but don’t be intimidated by the code. Scroll down to the part of your post that you want your video to be in, and copy and paste the embed code in. That’s it! If you want your video at the top of the post, simply enter everything down a space or two so you have room to post the embed code above your content. Now switch back to Visual. Your video box will appear in your post as a yellow flash box. When you hit “update post”, your video will be visible online! With these step-by-step instructions, you should be on your way to posting videos into you blog in no time!

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

Embedding YouTube Videos On Your WordPress Blog

Many small business owners that are active bloggers on WordPress.org are also active in other social media platforms such as Twitter. As a result, it makes sense that bloggers want their readers to be able to see their tweets right on their webpage! In Social Media University tip, we’ll guide you through the steps of adding Twitter activity to your WordPress blog.

Downloading a WordPress Plugin

When you are logged in to your WordPress’s back-end or dashboard, on the left-hand side underneath the “Dashboard” you can see the following menus: “Posts”, “Media”, “Links”, “Pages”, “Comments”, “Appearance”, “Plugins”, “Users”, “Tools”, and “Settings”. Click on “Plugins”. In the Plugins dropdown menu, you can choose “Installed”, “Add New”, or “Editor”. Click on “Add New”. On this screen, there is a search box in which you can search for plugins to install onto your WordPress blog. In that box, write “(Un)offical Twitter Widget” (without the quotation marks), then click “search plugins”. While there are other Twitter plugins that perform the same function, this one is one of the most reliable and customizeable. When the search results load, (Un)offical Twitter Widget will be the only result found. On the right hand side, under “Actions”, click “Install” and then “Install Now”. This will install the plugin to your WordPress blog. Once it is successfully installed, select the option to “Activate Plugin”.

Activating and Customizing

Now that you have installed and activated the (Un)offical Twitter Widget, now it is time to add it to your blog! On the left hand side of the page that you clicked on “Plugins” previously for, click on “Appearance” for this step. From the dropdown menu, select “Widgets”. Under your “Available Widgets”, you now have “Twitter” available. Click and drag the “Twitter” widget to the right into the spot that you want it to appear on your sidebar. Now you just have to fill out the details! Under “Account:”, put in your twitter handle (without the “@”). Under “Title:”, put in a title you’d like over your Twitter widget, such as “My Twitter” or “Twitter Updates”. Under “Show:”, choose how many of your recent tweets you’d like to be shown; you can choose three, five, 10, however many you think looks good in that space on the sidebar on your blog (you can change this at any time to experiment). Lastly, Under “Colours:” you can change the color scheme of the widget to match your blog’s color scheme! Save once you have made the changes, and your Twitter widget should be up and running on your WordPress blog! You can always go back to the Widget screen and select “Twitter” to change the settings you selected.

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

Social Media Prospecting Etiquette

The main goal for small business owners and entrepreneurs is too make money, but a successful social media strategy requires more than just the quickest route from point A to point B. In this Social Media University tip, we’ll go over resisting the urge to be in constant sell-mode, and instead using proper social media etiquette to get the most out of your social media experience in the long run.

Building Relationships is the Key

Selling may be your primary goal, but to achieve that goal you’ll need the right social media etiquette. And the most important thing to keep in mind when you are using social media platforms is that you want to build relationships with your customers and prospects. Take an honest and genuine interest in them and what they have to say. The golden rule of etiquette states that you should do unto others as you would have done to you, and the same rule applies in the world of social media. If you are attentive and engaging with someone, there’s a good chance they’ll return the favor! Just remember that you are always there to help. If you keep that in mind, people will get more out of the relationship with you and vice versa! You should also tell your story. Not just the talking points of your business, but let people know about the real you, even showing vulnerability at times. If your customers and prospects are opening up about their lives and being honest, you should be too! This doesn’t mean you have to share everything about your personal life or be controversial, but if you have an opinion or a funny story to tell, share it!

Don’t Be Too Salesy

One of the most common mistakes you see small business owners make in social media marketing is constantly pushing for sales and talking about nothing but business. This is a great way to alienate customers and prospects and have them lose interest in following you online through various social media. You can post links to promotions or deals, but this should be done naturally in conjunction with building relationships and adding value. It is always better to have more than just the deal for why they want to buy, share their info and try out a new service for example. If you have established yourself online as someone receptive and interested in your customers and fans, your business posts will be much more well-received than they would be if that was all you were posting.

Be Helpful!

Being helpful, without having expectations in return (the “paying it forward” mentality), is one of the best ways to build lasting relationships in social media. People don’t often forget when a person or company is helpful and helps them solve their problem. It is like a breath of fresh air these days! Listen to your customers and prospects. This will give you valuable information about them and their needs. And ask plenty of questions! Don’t assume you know everything about their problems just from a few tidbits; ask for clarification to help address the issue in the best way possible. Follow these social media etiquette tips, and you should be well on your way to building lasting relationships with your current future customers or clients.

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

The Importance Of Video And Your Brand

With smart phones and tablets continuing to rise in popularity, consumers are getting more and more used to accessing the internet wherever they go; and one of their favorite mediums to explore is video. In this Social Media University tip, we’ll go over the importance of video to your brand, and how you should be taking advantage of it.

Video popularity continues to surge

Recent studies have shown videos online are receiving over 100 million views a day! That works out to about 43.5 billion video views across the country each month! Everyone knows that Google is the most popular search engine in the world. But did you know the YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world? That’s right; second only to Google, many consumers today head to YouTube when they have an inquiry. Taking these numbers into account, it is pretty clear that video is essential to growing your brand! Many people enjoy watching videos to reading text, and we can’t stress enough the importance of broadcasting you and your business’s brand across multiple mediums.

So many different types of videos!

You don’t have to be a video expert to create videos for YouTube! All you need is a camera or screen editing software to make a video right off your own computer’s screen. We do this all the time narrating video that is captured off a powerpoint presentation. There are also plenty of free and easy to use video editing programs at your disposal! For PCs, use the video editing from Microsoft Live Movie Maker. On a Mac, use iMovie. Curious about what type of videos you should create for your company? The possibilities are endless! Product demos, how-to, success stories, tips, fun facts, and more. The sky is the limit to be interesting and adding value at the same time!

Videos Are Search Engine Friendly

Did you know that it has been proven that multi-media content is more than 50 times better at coming up on the top page of Google’s search results than a text based article? Not only is video a widely popular medium that can help expand your brand and reputation as a solo entreprenuer, but it is also an important tool and unique way to get your message across! All you need is a the desire to start using video more often and you are on your way!

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

Facebook Is Where Your Target Niche Is At!

Creating a social media presence that covers multiple social media sites and communities is important. But when you break down the numbers, Facebook is currently the undisputed king. In this Social Media University tip, we’ll look at some of the numbers backing Facebook as the top place to find and prospect people within your niche, and what you can do to take advantage!

The dominance of Facebook, by the numbers

It is fairly common knowledge that Facebook is the largest social media site on the web with a remarkable 845 million monthly active users. While that number in and of itself is amazing, it isn’t just the amount of people that use Facebook that is impressive; it is also how much of their time they spend on Facebook. Facebook earns 14.6% of internet users’ time. That is a pretty staggering number; over one of every seven hours that people spend online, they spend on Facebook. Comparatively, all other social networks combined command just 2% of total time used online. The average Facebook user spends a little over seven hours a month on Facebook (seven hours and three minutes to be precise). Tumblr (two hours, 31 minutes) and Pintrest (one hour, 20 minutes) rank second and third, and Twitter comes in at fourth with just 25 minutes a month. What does this tell you? That not only are more people on Facebook than any other social media site by a wide margin; they are also using it far more frequently, too. Whatever your niche is, by the numbers, they are spending an awful lot of time on Facebook!

How you can take advantage!

Find groups and pages within your niche. They are a great place to start prospecting. While direct competitors may not like your engagement on their pages, most niche sites will welcome you if you are knowledgeable on the topic and are adding to the community. Instead of coming in trying to sell, establish yourself within communities around your niche and engage in conversations with fellow enthusiasts. If they enjoy your conversations, chances are they’ll consider giving your business a chance! We have an entire webinar, “The All In One Prospecting Webinar” on the University that will show you how to find your niche market with all the top social media networks. One of the best strategies is to find prospects virtually anywhere, and then move the conversation onto Facebook because of the great one-on-one messaging tools, lists for following groups of friends and viral opportunities in the newsfeeds. Hundreds of millions of people are using Facebook every day, including your potential customers. With a little time and effort, you should be able to tap into this giant treasure cove!

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link!

The Importance Of Your Brand

One common mistake that small business owners tend to make is trying to cater to everyone in social media instead of establishing their own personal brand. We cannot over-emphasize the importance of branding in social media to help you make a lasting impression. This article from your Social Media University is one of the most important to read and then take action!

Carving Out Your Niche

Trying to cater to everyone in business as a social media strategy simply doesn’t work. Not only do you stretch yourself too thin, but you also make it difficult for customers to identify what you and your business are really about. Furthermore, the more areas you try to cover, the more competition you are dealing with in all of those areas.

A truly successful small business is often the one that establishes its brand within its niche market. In focusing your time and energy around building your identity around a very specific market, you will leave no doubt in your customers’ and prospects’ minds what your area of expertise is.

Better Communication

Focusing on your brand not only narrows down the competition and provides clarity about your business, but it also gives you the chance to build up credibility within your niche with great content and communication.

As a small business owner, you have a breadth of knowledge and passion about your business; let the world know it! Through blog posts, videos, and social media interactions, demonstrate your depth of experience and knowledge to become an established and credible expert in your chosen business niche.

Using the available social media platforms to prospect and engage in conversations with people in your niche market will not only mean you are leveraging your brand to the fullest with those that it matters to most…but your conversion rates will increase!

SEO Benefits, Too!

Need more encouragement to hone in on your niche and carve out your personal brand? Not only will doing so help you in the ways listed above, but it will also help your search engine optimization, too!

Over 18 billion people a month find their way to websites around the web through search engines like Google, and building up where your page ranks on search terms relevant to your small business (known as keywords) is critical to being found on them. Using these keywords often on your blogs and other social media interactions will help your website make its way up the search results. You and your business don’t have to be everything to everyone. Focus in on your niche with confidence and you’ll be on your way to making your brand the most powerful business tool you own!

To find the full range of training click on this Social Media University link now or for more directly on Branding Strategies!

SEO, Your YouTube Videos And Blog

The WordPress blogging software (most popular by far) provides small business owners a fantastic and easy to manage their blogs without needing to know “computer languages” like HTML. While code can be intimidating without instruction, in this Social Media University tip we will give you some easy to follow instructions on how to embed your YouTube videos into your WordPress posts or pages for the greatest search engine optimization (SEO) results!

Finding the Embed Code on YouTube

Once a video is uploaded to YouTube and is accessible to the public, the following buttons can be seen below the play button; “Like” (Thumbs Up), “Dislike” (Thumbs Down), “Add To” (Drop Down Menu), “Share”, and “Flag”. If you click on the “Share” button, you are given a shortened link to the video (for easy access to copy and paste), an “Embed” button, an “Email” button, and links to various social media sites. Click on the “Embed” button. Now, you are given an embedding code, along with easy options that are explained in more detail on the site. You can select what size you’d like your video to be on your blog and YouTube will automatically adjust the embedding code per your specifications. Once you’ve made your size selection your embedding code is ready! It will look something like this:

iFRAME EMBED CODE EXAMPLE: width=”640″ height=”480″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/ViNg1fZTsv4″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

Pasting Your Embedding Code into Your Post

Now, in a different window (or the same one if you’ve copied and pasted your embed code to another safe place; not a bad habit to get into), go into the WordPress page or post that you want to embed your selected video into. In the top right hand corner of the text box of your post/page, there are tabs for “Visual” and “HTML”. You are likely used to working in Visual. Click on the “HTML” tab. Some things may look different in HTML form, such as italic and bold fonts and weird looking code…but don’t be intimidated by the code. Scroll down to the part of your post that you want your video to be in, and copy and paste the embed code in right there. That’s it!

If you want your video at the top of the post, simply enter everything down a space or two so you have room to post the embed code above your content. Now switch back to Visual. Your video box will appear in your post as a yellow flash box. When you hit “update post”, your video will be visible online! With these step-by-step instructions, you should be on your way to posting videos into you blog in no time!

And don’t forget to watch the video above for SEO tips that you won’t want to miss!

To find the full range of training click on the this Social Media University link now!