Online Brand Management – 5 Benefits of Viral Videos

Viral video is simultaneously the most entertaining and the most infuriating element of online marketing. Let’s clear the air quickly: No one can promise you a viral video success. Ever.
Viral videos succeed because the audience likes them and spreads them on to other people. If the audience doesn’t get it, the video doesn’t go viral, and there is nothing that can guarantee the response you want.
That said, there is every reason to continue developing video content with the aim of going viral. In terms of investment-to-value ratio, viral videos remain some of the most economical efforts a brand can put out for itself. If even one video you produce hits the entertainment nerve and goes viral, you’ve done your brand a world of good. Let us consider the success of one particular viral series to see some of the benefits available from this branding tactic.
Benefit 1 – Funny and Factual
Blendtech is a company with a fairly simple business model: Sell blenders so powerful and reliable that they will destroy just about anything you put in them. The company’s big success story came with the “Will it Blend?” series for its new high-powered blender. The videos are simple – a charming man with an amiable manner puts something unexpected and expensive into the blender and turns it into its constituent elements.
In very brief, powerful videos, Blendtech ended up demonstrating both that destroying expensive electronics in a blender is entertaining and that its blenders were incredibly powerful. People’s immediate reactions were, in order, “He just blended an iPhone!” and “I want one of those blenders.”
So a good video can get the information about your product out there in a compelling, dramatic way that can’t be argued with.
Benefit 2 – Cheap, Cheap, Cheap
Viral video is incredibly cost effective. The costs of many videos are incredibly high, especially for television advertising during prime marketing hours. Just consider the sheer volume of investment that goes into Super Bowl halftime commercial extravaganzas.
On the other hand, the Blendtech commercials apparently were shot on an utterly shoestring budget: perhaps $500 for a reasonable-quality video camera, the wages for a decent cameraman, the blender the company is selling and however much the gadget of the week cost. In the case of the iPhone Blendtech demolished, say $600 depending on where they got it. Either way, the production costs of the video probably didn’t exceed a few thousand dollars, and that’s at the outside.
Benefit 3 – Free Transmission
Once you have the video up and going, and people find it entertaining, you don’t have to devote much effort to keeping it going places. If it hits that funny bone like the Blendtech video did, people will show it off repeatedly to just about everyone they can, because they want to see other people laugh and enjoy it too. Just make sure the video has a dedicated YouTube or video link that people can reference.
Benefit 4 – Specialization
Have you ever looked at most commercials? They’re rather generic, and seem to cast their nets fairly wide. This is particularly true of infomercials, which try to make the whole of humanity into bumbling incompetents unable to pack their drawers, cut their food or clean their homes without the aid of some wundergadget. The result is bland pointlessness. On the other hand, a good viral video allows you to ignore all that and focus your efforts specifically on reaching a certain audience. Take Blendtech – they wanted to go after people who wanted a good, strong blender. They built an advertisement that therefore does nothing BUT promote the strength and efficacy of their blender, and does so in a shocking, eye-catching manner.
Benefit 5 – Entertainment
As we’ve discussed, the most important element in the Blendtech campaign’s success is its entertaining quality. People tuned into the videos because they wanted to see some guy demolish technology that hundreds of others were probably still waiting in the rain for. The commercials were short, exciting, funny and evocative.
Now, there’s an associated effect. Consider the reality of a blender: Is it really that entertaining? Are you actually going to use it to demolish your priciest electronics or devour your leftover garden rake? However, even if Blendtech’s customers aren’t going to do any of these things, they’ll still think of them fondly when they use their blender to crush up some stubborn ice for a daiquiri.
By putting out a good, entertaining video that goes viral, you’re creating the implication that your brand is itself entertaining and creative. Your audience will want to see what comes next, will want to share their favorite moments with friends. Most of all, they’ll want the thing that you’re selling because it was so funny.
So, while once again we must reiterate that nothing in the world can guarantee you viral video success, there is every reason to devote part of your marketing efforts to developing entertaining, informative videos that can capture the imaginations of your target audience. All it takes is one success to get your brand out there in proper fashion.
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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Confidence Building Tips For Internet Marketers

It doesn’t matter how much talent or acquired ability you have, if you lack confidence you aren’t going to get anywhere. On the other hand, if you have confidence plus desire, even if you lack the raw talent, you can acquire the ability you need to succeed.
This is as true on the Internet as it is anywhere else in life. When you look at who has succeeded with Internet marketing you will find a surprising range of people. They are not all technical whiz kids at all. Yes, some of the Internet marketing greats have a lot of technical talent, but on the other hand there are plenty of work from home mums, retired company employees, youngsters with no formal qualifications who have built successful businesses on the Internet.
They succeeded because they had the desire and determination plus the confidence to risk failure and not worry about what other people thought about their dream to succeed on the Internet.
So what can you do if you want to succeed as an Internet marketer but suffer with your confidence? Let’s look at some confidence building tips for Internet marketers.
Just telling yourself that you need to be more confident will not help. Instead, think about and imagine your ultimate goal as an Internet marketer. You may have no idea how you are going to achieve this goal at the moment. Don’t worry about that at this stage. It is important to see yourself as having already attained the goal that you have set for yourself. Don’t just see it, but feel the feeling of success, the exhilaration of having achieved your goal.
Now you will need to set yourself a series of small goals that you can achieve in a reasonable amount of time. Each small goal should be seen as a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal that you have mapped out in your imagination. State what it is that each mini goal is seeking to achieve and set a time limit in which you aim to achieve it.
When it comes to Internet marketing there are several things that you can try to achieve without challenging your fear of failure.
For example, you could aim to improve your website’s Alexa ranking by a certain amount in the course of the coming month. This kind of goal can be achieved with various online activities, such as posting articles, building back-links, blogging and posting comments on other people’s blogs or on forums and so forth. (See Alexa.com if you do not know what I am talking about!)
When you see that your activities are producing results, it will give your confidence boost and help you to set slightly more challenging goals, while keeping your new positive business building habits as part of your routine.
The next step could be, for example, starting to build a mailing list and aiming to get so many subscribers by a certain date. This would involve learning about auto responders and researching list building tactics and putting them into action, one step at a time.
Gradually, as you see your skills improve, your website ranking improve, and traffic to your website starting to increase, you will want to think about how to convert your traffic into your first sale. Just aiming for one sale if you have not yet begun to sell anything is a good goal to aim for because once you have sold something you will feel more confident in your ability to simply do it again. After all, if you’ve done it before you can do it again. And again and again.
As each of these small steps takes you a little nearer to your ultimate goal of Internet marketing success, they will in turn help to boost your confidence in your ability to succeed. A key confidence building tip is simply that the art of success is discovered in trying to succeed, and a feeling of self-confidence is generated almost as a side-effect of this process.
Finally, another valuable confidence building tip for helping to build confidence is to read the stories and testimonies of other people who have come from unpromising backgrounds and circumstances to achieve great success on the Internet.
There are many examples of successful Internet marketers who are just average people, with no special skills beyond a determination to succeed, often from a starting point of abject failure. Reading their stories will help you to build your own confidence and determination to succeed as a home-based Internet marketer.
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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Are You Sacrificing Your Long Term Internet Marketing Success For Short Term Profits?

One thing about internet marketing is that all the strategies you implement require a level of specialization in order to be successful. Very often, this causes internet marketing start-up businesses to sacrifice consistent, passive long-term profits for short-term gains.
This isn’t a bad strategy when done correctly, but it will most likely mean that you’ll always be looking for the next sale instead leveraging the power that you have gained over time. Here’s a look at some of the potential trade-offs that are often made.
PPC vs. SEO
PPC is a very common short-term tactic which is one of the quickest ways to generate targeted traffic to your web pages. The key to effective PPC campaigns is a mix of bid management, effective ad creation and conversions. While this approach can be extremely successful, it also involves consistent monitoring. The skills involved also require some level of specialization and time.
On the other hand, SEO has consistently proved that it’s the most effective way to ensure that your website has long-term visibility. While more work will be required at the outset to generate traffic, in the medium-long term, less and less time needs to be allocated to SEO. Plus, all of the work builds upon itself, so over time it will provide you with a large number of valuable assets that can be leveraged to promote new websites you may have in the future.
The trade-off between PPC and SEO is twofold. The first is time. Putting emphasis on one almost requires focusing less on the other when there is only a limited amount of time and resources. While PPC marketing can generate short-term profits, you’ll need to monitor and tweak your strategy consistently. Plus, if you decide you no longer want to pay for anymore PPC ads, you’ll no longer get any traffic.
On the other hand, if you stop doing SEO tactics, you’ll still be able to generate traffic based upon your past efforts. In most cases, people can set-up small websites, and once efficient enough, can be left to generate passive income without any additional work. Thanks to effective SEO, these websites can continue to generate profits for years after they are left alone.
Possible Solutions
There are ways that you can include both PPC and SEO into your short and long-term marketing strategies. Regarding PPC, make sure that your landing page is focused on generating opt-ins to your newsletter list rather than trying to directly sell a product. This will allow you to use PPC to feed your long-term traffic and marketing strategies.
Also, if you’re currently only using PPC, then take 25% of your net profits and use them to start building your SEO efforts. Then, you’ll still be able to generate short-term profits from PPC but will also be able to invest time and money into creating and executing a long-term SEO strategy.
You can now see that it can be tempting to put off generating long-term passive income for short-term profits. However, if you plan accordingly and make sure to focus on the end-goal, then you can easily maintain both short-term profits from PPC ads and your dedication to SEO tactics. By doing this, you’ll cut down the amount of work that needs to be done in the long-run, without giving up on generating a profit in the short-term. This is the key to Internet marketing success.
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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Google Instant Means The End Of SEO

Initially, Google’s new Instant Search system could mean a major change in how web surfers look for information online. Instead of typing a search query into Google and then hitting return, and waiting for a list of results, Googlers now see a dynamic list of results as they type. Google considers this a positive step forward in the development of searching. Google claims this new style of response will save between two and five seconds per search query. That potentially means 11 hours are saved every second. but does anyone other than Google really care?
The internet marketing community, however, will never be very enthusiastic about Google Instant. SEO consultants, who try to get sites listed at the top of Google’s organic search rankings, and SEMs, who battle for their clients’ sites to be placed near the top of Google’s Adwords Sponsored Listings, have been blogging and tweeting as if Armageddon is here.
The SEO community is paranoid at the very best of times, and perhaps with good cause as: a small change in the Google algorithm can determine the future of many websites. In this instance, however, the reaction is not necessary, essentially the results are the same, the sole change is you can see potential results of each word as you type it in, so if you are typing in ‘Italian restaurant’ you will observe everything Italian prior to getting to the restaurant results and then you will have to include your location unless you are very flexible about your travel arrangements, so in fact long tail key phrases are far from dead.
And this time round the latest Google scare is ‘much a do about nothing’ or will it be? There isn’t any denying that Google’s original innovation in search transformed how the Internet worked and made the business of finding stuff considerably quicker and easier. It also created an enormous market – one Google still dominates – that allowed companies to market us things depending on whatever we had entered in that box and all was well, for a while.
But something happened. Social networking, social media, whatever you want to refer to it as… suddenly, content was coming right at us, without us even looking for it. We couldn’t escape it. Several hyperactive egotists in each community began curating content and spewing it out to their friends. People were sharing photos, stories and links so we found that we were spending less and less time foraging around for things and increasingly more time sitting back and allowing it to wash over us.
Fast forward to 2010, and we’re being assaulted by more stuff than we could possibly consume. Facebook, Twitter, and email are shoveling pictures and video down our throats more and more quickly. Feedback loops enabled by sharing and retweeting functions imply that each of us has now changed into an over-sharer as well as an over-consumer. If you are not confused and over loaded with information, you soon will be.
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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Google Instant Search for Marketing

Google recently introduced their “Instant Search” feature which starts to populate search results the instant you start typing into the search box. At the same time, Google suggests alternate search terms as you type to help narrow your search without forcing you to enter entire search phrases.
The main idea behind this new feature is to save users a few seconds on each search and cut down on misspellings for search terms, business names or product names. Users may not notice much difference in their overall experience, however, for small businesses and online entrepreneurs, this new search method carries a few interesting ramifications.
Since Google clearly ranks as the “900 lb. Gorilla” of the online marketing world, acting as de facto gateway to the Web for millions, any change to their system makes businesses nervous. Many have expressed concern that this latest change will force users of Google’s AdWords program, the search giant’s lucrative pay-per-click marketing arm, to pay for more expensive keywords.
They reason that since the most popular search terms appear in the search box first, and that most people will opt to accept Google suggestions, those most popular searches will carry the highest click prices. In other words, businesses that depend on Google to show their ads fear that Google will force them to pay more money by recommending more expensive keyword searches.
I disagree.
The suggested search term feature actually appeared on Google quite a while ago, and all that’s really changed is Google starts to display the actual search results AS you type. With the old 2-step process, Google made suggestions as you typed and then you clicked the search button to see the search results.
Instant Search just creates a FAST way to see the results for different search variations without forcing you to click the button each time to see those results. This process makes it simple to see the results, change your mind, and not wait for the results each time you change the phrase.
My experience shows that most people always start with a broad search and then narrow it by including more descriptive terms (often called “long-tail” keywords) to better find what they want. This new process won’t change that.
In fact, it will give people more chances to refine their searches on-the-fly by providing Google more details of what they want. Instead of posing a threat, I believe this new Instant Search feature creates an opportunity for any business to perform high-speed market research to look for possible opportunities and trouble spots.
The following four steps will help any small business use Google’s new feature for instant results.
1. Go to Google and search for your business as if you were a consumer.
2. Make a note of the keyword suggestions Google offers as you type.
3. See if those suggestions give you any ideas for your own marketing (since they should represent the most popular phrases).
4. Note which competitors show up and where you appear in relation to them.
These 4 simple steps make a great barometer for taking a read on your local market, fast.
Who appears consistently?
Who shows up hit-and-miss or every once in a while?
Who shows up in Google Maps?
If your competitors show up and you don’t, you’ve got some work to do!
Bottom line: as a small business, use Google’s new Instant Search to quickly get the big picture when it comes to your business, industry, and local competition.
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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The Buzz about Buzz

If you haven’t treated yourself to a lovely shiny new g-mail account, then you are missing out. Not only does it have endless memory, quick processing of large attachments, and a lovely search function of deleted e-mail; it also has a super cool new function called Buzz.
Buzz functions like many other popular networking sites, but it has a few new perks. Instead of friend-ing someone, like on Facebook, with Google’s new Buzz you follow them. So you want to get as many people following you as possible. Start with friends, family, and people you network with regularly on other social web-sites. Now for the cool part: any website that you have attached to your Buzz account generates posts via Buzz. Websites that you can attach to Buzz include Google Chat Status, Picassa, Flickr, posted via Buzz@gmail, Google reader, and Twitter.
Once you have connected any of these websites to Buzz, anything you post on the other website automatically appears as a post on Buzz. Anyone who is following you will be able to see these posts. You get twice as much exposure with half of the effort. You can post information about events, a sale your business is having, or a gig your band is playing. Buzz will get the information out.
Buzz also has some other nifty features, similar to other networking sites. You can comment on someone else’s post or a post of your own. You can like a post. You can re-share a post, e-mail a post to anyone (whether they have Buzz as well or not), and finally, and probably the most cool, is one of your contacts is online and has their G-mail account open you can reply to the post by chat, which is conveniently built into G-mail’s website.
How Does This Affect Pay Per Click Marketing?
Buzz taps into Google’s AdSense program with a more refined algorithm. If someone clicks on an add while on a Buzz screen, then the logic states that their friends might also like similar ads, articles, and websites. This adds a powerhouse punch to pay per click advertising. Much like harnessing the power of Facebook, PPC advertisers now have new avenues opened before them. Unlike fishing on particular keywords, potential customers are assisting in the event. Using this analogy it is like having fish help teach you how to fish.
This sort of advertising momentum can take your marketing campaign to the next level. Couple this with analytics tools and your PPC approach will be unstoppable. All PPC Google ads permits companies to set their advertising budget down to an exact dollar amount. In fact, the minimum required daily budget to advertise with Google through PPC Ads is one dollar. As always, the advertiser only pays when an ad is clicked, and Buzz doesn’t change that, it only helps to harness the power of social media for the purpose of ad refinement and dissemination.
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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