Merge Your Google+ Profile and Your YouTube Channel

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Google+ and YouTube recently announced that you can merge your business YouTube channel and your Google+ page.

Once the pages are merged:

  • Your YouTube videos will be viewable right from your Google+ page, on a separate YouTube tab
  • You will have access to hosting live ‘On Air’ hangouts
  • You can upload videos from YouTube and autoshare them on Google+ to specific circles
  • Multiple people can now manage your YouTube channel, without having to share a password.

The merge is currently in Beta but we decided to give it a try.

Below is a video showing you how easy it is to merge your YouTube channel and your Google+ page. With Google owning so many tools we all use for business, it is not far off to expect them all to be linked at some time.


If you can’t see the video, please watch it over on YouTube here.

Instructions on how to merge your channel and your G+ page

First to set you up for success, you need to make sure the Google account that your YouTube account is assigned to is already a page manager of your Google+ page. If it isn’t, you can set that in the Managers section of your Settings.

After that, just follow these 5 simple steps and you will have merged your two profiles:

  1. Make sure you are logged into your Google Plus page and your YouTube channel
  2. In the upper-right hand corner, go to Settings
  3. Under your Account Information, click on Advanced
  4. Choose to Connect with a Google+ page (beta)
  5. Confirm your request

After that has been done, you can go to your Google+ page and see the new YouTube tab added to your profile.

If you want more information on merging your Google+ page and your YouTube channel, they actually set up a Google+ community on the topic for feedback and issues. Since this feature is still in beta, I am sure feedback is being taken into account as they decide what to do next.

A Morning with Google: The Scoop

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Scoop of Ice CreamIt’s not often that you get to see a real Google big wig in the flesh – much less, here in Portland, Maine. Earlier this month we had the pleasure of meeting and gaining a few pearls of wisdom (and hints of what’s to come) from Steve Arthur, Google’s Head of Industry: Retail at the Ad Club of Maine’s Google This! event. He had some interesting things to say so I thought I’d recap the main takeaways and a few things that may be on the horizon.

It’s Not Just About the Hard Sell

Gone are the days of the hard sell. People research everything now. And the evolution of online search, shopping apps and other technology has empowered consumers in a way that makes standing out from the crowd essential. Drawing people in and grabbing them with stories and experiences is becoming more and more important than ever. Arthur cited Fab.com, ModCloth.com and others as sites that are doing this well.

What Happens on the Internet Influences In-store Decisions

It’s no secret at all that consumers have become increasingly connected thanks to mobile devices and the roles they play in people’s daily lives. This means that we as marketers have the opportunity to reach our customers in more ways than ever before, throughout their daily routine, making the internet even more influential to offline sales, not just online sales. It’s important that retailers (and business owners alike) think of their site as a path to purchase, not just an online storefront.

Thinking beyond the basic conversion and looking at the bigger picture is essential. We need to remember to consider multiple customer interaction points as conversions and assign these conversions with different values. It’s not as simple as “they came, they browsed, they purchased” anymore. Arthur cited King Arthur Flour as a brand that is doing this well by integrating multiple onsite interaction points: video views, chatter, recipe page views, bakers hotline requests…the list goes on and on.

Attribution and Mobile Don’t Always Mix

Increased mobile adoption is great, but we could do without the attribution challenges it brings. Think about it: If you access a website from your work computer, mobile phone, tablet and your home desktop computer, you’ve got four sets of cookies floating around for one person. Arthur mentioned that they are hoping that Chrome log-ins can help them to create models that will eventually enable them to better understand user behavior and return on investment. It will be interesting to see how Google attempts to improve upon this.

Oh Yeah, And Self Driving Cars? Sooner Than You Think.

Less internet marketing-related, but a fun tidbit. Self-driving car technology could be here sooner than we imagine. Wonder how they’ll integrate that into their advertising platform… 

Photo credit: TheCulinaryGeek

Are Brands Stalking You? 3 Popular (and Effective) Remarketing Techniques

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remarketing-squirrel

Ever look at a product online, decide not to buy it and then feel like it is haunting you all around the internet? You may not be losing your mind. You may be the focus of a smart remarketing campaign.

Remarketing/retargeting is a service offered by a variety of online display ad networks that lets you market to people who have visited your site in the past. The idea being, that you can attract lost prospects and lure them back to convert on your site (purchase something, download something, contact you, fill out their profile etc.). Many of the top ecommerce sites use it – some eerily well.

Here are three popular (and effective) remarketing techniques you may have seen:

  1. Basic remarketing with branding – This is the most simple remarketing strategy. Once a visitor leaves your site without completing the desired action you want from them, you can have ads appear on other sites as they travel around the internet. This will hopefully keep your company fresh in their mind so that they come back and complete their purchase or desired action.
  2. Personalized retargeting – This takes the basic example from above but includes images of the products you were looking at or searching for. As you travel around the web, you may see the shoes you looked for on Zappos, the t-shirt you put in your cart at CafePress or the jewelry you were eying on Overstock.
  3. Remarketing with increased coupon offers – Abandon your purchase on a big ticket item? You may notice a coupon for 10% off your purchase someplace else in the next week. Still don’t go back and buy it? That coupon offer may jump to 20% or have an additional offer. Remarketing can incentivize people to go back and finish their order.

A little freaked out?

Sure these are great options for businesses, but as a consumer, you may be a little freaked out. Opting out of ads like these can be tricky. This article shows you three ways you can opt out of retargeting cross-hairs by:

  1. Regularly clearing your cookies
  2. Trying to block behavior targeting
  3. Blocking ads altogether

Facebook-about-this-adFacebook is also a user of ad remarketing. To learn more about why you are seeing an ad on Facebook you can hit the X by the ad and click on About This Ad. If retargeting is used, you will have an option to edit your advertising preferences. Facebook also recently stated that they will be using AdChoices for the businesses that opt to add it to their ads.

Think about your concerns as a consumer and make sure you are being considerate to your customers too. ClickZ recommends always offering an opt out option, managing how frequently you use retargeting and giving converted customers a break.

Retargeting makes a lot of sense for businesses – when done right. If you are going to pay to have ads show up online, why not show them to people who have already expressed an interest in your brand and products?

The privacy debate will continue on. For now, keep yourself informed about how much of your information is being kept track of online. If you want to get even more freaked out about online privacy, check out this What They Know series that Wall Street Journal has put together.

Flickr photo credit: mybulldog

What You Need to Know About Facebook Graph Search

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Screenshot of Facebook's new Graph Search

Screenshot of Facebook’s new Graph Search

This week Facebook announced their new search tool, Graph Search, with a lot of pomp and circumstance. The social media giant is launching a new way to search for things that you want to know more about and tying it to our connections.

Using the Facebook search bar, you can look for all kinds of information and it will use public Facebook user information to deliver your results. The new search functionality pulls something that Google is unable to – account holder information. Since people share so much on Facebook, there is loads of information to help searchers find what they are looking for. This could mean trouble for Google, LinkedIn and review sites like Yelp.

Instead of writing about a topic that has been so wildly covered on the news and in blogs, I made a list of good articles we found explaining Facebook’s Graph Search and what it means for users and businesses:

How this all plays out should be interesting! If you want to know even more about Graph Search, you can go right to the horse’s mouth and check out Facebook’s Guide to Graph Search.