Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

As we approach the end of the year, it is a good time to be making big lists of things we want to get checked off for the coming year. As many of you know, video and video marketing have been very popular this year. Making, editing and hosting videos for your business has never been easier.

The elves over at YouTube have been very busy in the last few months. So as you make your 2012 list, spend some time with two of YouTube’s newest upgrades – Analytics and New Channel Designs.

YouTube Analytics

As with most social networks, YouTube has always had an Analytics program. They called it Insights and you could view them at the bottom of almost every video. Now YouTube has beefed up their analytics. If you have a YouTube account (and videos on it) you can log into your account and check out the new analytics.

If you are familiar with Google Analytics, you will definitely see some striking resemblance (YouTube is owned by Google in case you didn’t know). In the new Analytics you get a snapshot of how all of your videos are doing on the Dashboard. You can see which of your videos are most popular. From there you can dive deeper in to the data by looking more into Views, demographics, playback locations, traffic sources, how long people watch your video, video interactions and more.

For more information on YouTube Analytics and a fancy infographic you can check out the YouTube blog.

New Channel Designs

Now that we have some solid numbers to look at… we can take that information and with the new look of YouTube Channels – we can make a perfectly branded channel design that appeals to our customers!

YouTube had customized channels before but there wasn’t much you could change in the form of layout. Now with the new channels, when you edit your layout, you can choose from 4 template layouts. Hopefully you will find a better layout to display your videos the way you want them to.

There you have it. Those are the biggest changes to YouTube that you should take advantage of for your business.

If you want more from this post, feel free to watch this currently trending holiday video… of the HMS Ocean crew excited to be able to come home for the holidays. Even Mariah Carey thought it was the best video ever.

Enjoy more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

So there I was playing Farmville/Gagaville while tweeting and not doing any work and I saw this tweet from Matt Cutts.

Well hey… that sounds interesting. So I Skyped my search nerds, Alex and Monica, and we followed along for the hour and a half information fire hose from Google’s famous employee.

So pretty much Matt just started a YouTube live video chat with everyone who wanted to join. In it he was his charming self and took questions via the live chat and the Twitter hashtag #askmatt.

YouTube Live Streaming

Here is a screen shot of the YouTube live chat with Matt Cutts:

This platform in itself was news… YouTube is apparently testing out and rolling out this live streaming. This could be great for live events, for webinars and e-learning. Matt didn’t have any real information on this but now we know it is coming down the pipeline.

People could ask questions live right on the right hand side. Some of the questions were great and his answers, in my opinion, were super helpful. Monica was really excited when he actually answered her question live.

Google Correlate

One of my favorite parts was the discussion about Google Correlate, which is now in Labs. What is does is takes other people’s searches around a topic and makes some educated guesses on other searches other people are looking for around that topic. This is experimental and based on patterns, no Google cannot read minds but it can sure help you take note of trends.

It also shows you where these searches are taking place geographically.

Apparently this whole idea started with the flu and all the different searches people enter in and around flu symptoms and the flu. There is a whole comic explaining how this got started.

For an test I added ‘hr software’ to Google Correlate and I got some good information on some other keywords like: employee management, employee performance, employee development, employee assessment, partner software, training management software etc.

This is not only kinda cool (and I love the map feature) but this is great for making some good decisions about keywords you are targeting, where to have your ads display, perhaps a tool for discovering new keywords.

I wish I was a faster typer and that there wasn’t a major bee incident during this broadcast so I could have gotten more of Matt’s great questions and answers. There was of course a lot of questions about spam and the Panda update. For me, the new YouTube live streaming and Google Correlate were two of the high points on this random hour and a half chat.

Did you tune in? What were some of your favorite takeaways?

I am not sure if this chat was recorded or will be archived but if it is I will be sure to update this post with the info.

5/25/2011 – Search Engine Land has a great recap of the Matt Cutts stream today: Google’s Matt Cutts Riffs On J.C. Penney, Panda Update & Other SEO Topics In Live Webchat

Video is a great way to add more content to your website. This doesn’t mean you need to spend lots of money on professional videos. You can incorporate other videos that you see around the internet and add your reaction to them.

YouTube is the largest video site in the world. There is already so much content there. If you haven’t done it before, watch the video below to learn how to take videos from YouTube and add the player directly on to a page of your website or your blog. These instructions are specifically for YouTube but other sites like Vimeo have embed options as well, so these instructions should help with other video players as well.

If you can’t see the video, click here

How to Add a YouTube Video to Your Website

1. Find a video you want to add to your website
2. Click on the Embed button
3. Personalize the video to the correct size and specifications you need
4. Copy the HTML code
5. Go over to the HTML side of your blog or website
6. Paste the copied embed code
7. Publish
8. Voila – you have embedded a video to your website

This is an entry in our HALLoween Blog series. Each week leading up to Halloween 2010 we will treat you with internet marketing topics that have a fun and spooky flare.

Each year on October first I start brainstorming my costume for Halloween. Sometimes I have a general idea of what I want to dress up as, and sometimes, like this year, I am not sure. In previous years, I’ve had to decide if I wanted a store-bought costume or if I wanted to make my costume. If I make it, will I need to start from scratch or do I have some items that I can put together to make my costume?

This year I thought of my previous costumes and which items could I use again to make a new, different costume. This is a great way to think about the content that you are putting out on the web. Just like your costume, you don’t need to something brand new each time, you can reuse previous content to make new content. Here are some great ways to use the content you already have to create new content than can be distributed on your website and online.

photo credit: burke_white

1. Blog – Some blogs are short and some blogs are more detailed. Turn your longer blogs into whitepapers or webinars. Both give you the opportunity to elaborate on your original idea. Plus, the more content you have on a particular topic the more you likely you will be viewed as an authority on that topic.
2. Webinar – On the flip side, you can break your webinars and whitepapers into blog posts. After you’ve created a webinar go back and take a look at your slides. Your webinar slides usually aren’t text heavy; they contain limited text to get your point across. Use one or two slides as an outline to write a new blog post for your website.
3. Whitepaper – Whitepapers are written to help people with a particular problem or to educate readers on a certain subject. They are comprehensive and cover the point thoroughly. Use a whitepaper you have written to create a webinar or break up the whitepaper into sections to create a blog series based on that subject.
4. Video – People consume content differently; some like to read whitepapers while other would rather watch a video tutorial. Take a quick video of yourself giving a brief explanation of a blog post. Then, distribute that content on YouTube and your other social networks with a link back to the blog entry. Not only are you creating a diverse blend of content, you will also be spreading your content beyond your website.
5. Testimonials – Use your testimonials to create case studies that you can put on your site to explain in further detail the challenge that your product or service helped solve. You can describe the solution and the results in more detail than a testimonial as well as demonstrate the satisfaction of your customers.

You don’t have to buy a new costume each Halloween; sometimes the best costumes come from items you already have (you just have to be a little creative). The same goes for the content you’re distributing. It takes a lot of time and energy to create new content, but by reusing what you already have, you can create new, diverse types of content. The content that you distribute will continue to educate others as well as help build the image of your company as an authority in that particular industry.
Read the rest of the HALLoween blog series

• Treat #1 – 3 Ways to Prepare Your Website for Trick-or-Treaters
• Treat #2 – Don’t Let Your Site Navigation Be a Nightmare
• Treat #3 – Beware of Trick Emails About SEO Services