Courtesy of blossomblogs.com

The Talking Head Video Defined

A talking head video is the quickest way to add valuable content to your YouTube feed. It usually costs you nothing but effort to make, and some basic editing skills. ‘Talking head’ videos are called this because they have a fixed screen position that focuses on a person’s head. You then talk on screen and use your dynamic personality to keep people entertained.

Here’s how to make your exciting talking head video for YouTube:

• Wear a uniform or film the video in a room with a presentable background. You can easily create a ‘set’ for yourself with a few well-placed items or a hand-made paper background. Branding your video works well here.

• Use exciting props. Just because the camera position is fixed, doesn’t mean you can’t bring in interesting props and extras to highlight your point. A whiteboard will help you explain something crucial, and household props are great for analogies.

• Add in some images to enhance emotion. Images are great to use in talking head videos as they give your viewer a break from you. Inserting an amusing image into your dialogue to illustrate a point is a technique used often on YouTube.

• Add extra text. Sometimes cutting away to text in point form can really bring a presentation or dialogue to life. Use text for dynamic recaps of important information, or to ensure that the viewer retains what you’ve just told them.

Courtesy of vimeo.com

• Facial expressions matter. You may not be a television presenter, but you are being viewed by random people that don’t know you. That means you must take advantage of your facial expressions and body gestures to make what you say entertaining. Practice your on-screen presence and it will improve.

• Get someone else on screen. If you are struggling to make your videos entertaining, turn your talking head video into a talking heads video, by adding another person into the mix. The back and forth can be very entertaining, and this fresh perspective may be exactly what you need.

• Be original. The best thing you can do for your channel is to find a specific and original way to present information to people. Take some time and watch at least 20 videos by 20 different YouTube talking head stars. You’ll see that they each have something special to contribute, based on style or tone.

Talking head videos may sound easy to do – but they take time, strategy and effort. Remember, it’s your goal to get these videos viewed and shared all over YouTube. That means you have to start thinking like the owner of a television station. What do people want to see, and how can you give it to them on your budget? Good luck!

What was the last brilliant talking head video you watched? Leave the link here for our community to see!

Courtesy of MWPartners.com

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a website that allows creative types to find people that fund their projects. It’s a kind of crowd-sourced funding that has actually led to many successful projects. Everything from films, games, books, design and technology is funded there.

They launched in April 2009, and since then have had massive success – earning over $500 million for their users pledged by 3 million people, for 35,000 creative projects.

What’s The Catch?

There is no catch. This is a very clever idea that has earned the owners of the site a lot of money. They take a small commission on all pledged funds, you see. You, as the creative, get to setup a project and persuade users to finance that project.

You retain all creative rights, and no-one that pledges any money can claim ownership of your creative property. Plus this isn’t a loan site – all money pledged is given to you for free. You never have to pay it back, ever! All that is expected of you, are a few gifts along the way.

If you’re a writer that received significant support from a specific individual for example, you can send them your book once it has been published. Or can call them, or arrange a nice dinner. Whatever you want to do to make them feel involved. It’s led to runaway successes that have proved the concept of crowd-sourced funding does work.

Courtesy of pbs.org

• Over 10% of the films at the Sundance Film Festival are funded by Kickstarter campaigns!

• FUBAR the graphic novel funded by Kickstarter, hit the New York Times Bestsellers list in 2012.

• The movie, Incident in New Baghdad was nominated for an Oscar. The movie was funded by thousands of Kickstarter pledges.

• Dark Sky App, an app that predicts the weather, became hugely popular online and was funded by Kickstarter.

• Cards Against Humanity, the top selling home card game was funded by Kickstarter, and to date has gone viral and sold over 100,000 copies.

• Amanda Palmer debuts on the Billboard Top Ten in the UK, thanks to 24,883 backers on Kickstarter that helped her create her music.

Even though just less than half of all projects manage to reach their financial goals on Kickstarter, it’s certainly a creative way to get your project funded. The truth is that it works so well, even celebrities have been using it to fund their own private projects.

Now that finding financial backers has become possible using social connectivity, there is a whole world of possibility waiting for you and your business. Can’t afford to develop that new app? Start a Kickstarter campaign. Having trouble finding the time to finish that bestseller? Kickstarter could be the break you’ve been waiting for!

What do you think of crowd-sourced funding? Will it take off, or will it cause a flood of B-grade media into the world? Your opinion matters!

Courtesy of babble.com

What’s New in This Redesign?

The real question is – what isn’t new? Entering the new Google+ design was like instantly looking at a much ‘cooler’ site, that’s more in line with YouTube, Pinterest and Facebook than anything Google has done before.

The stark white surrounds are gone, and again we’re seeing these comment ‘windows’ that make up a person’s profile. It’s like Google took the success they had with their iPhone and iPad app designs, and decided to make their desktop design just as good looking. It works.

Here are the newest features of your Google+ page:

• A fresh 2 and 3 column layout makes image viewing more exciting, and Google has added to this by automatically allowing high definition photos and videos to be showcased on your page.
• There are now various ‘app’ functions, which will make the site more fun to use. When you compose a new post the option box springs into action, presenting you with your circle and attachment options.
• All content is indexed on Google+ with relevant hashtags, making Google AHEAD of Facebook in the universal adoption of this symbol for content categorization. I really like it, it opens up your post to a whole new world of interactions with new people. The auto hashtag suggestion tool is also pretty amazing.
• Automatic image improvements are now part of Google’s new range of services on the social network. Things like brightness, color contrast, saturation and the basics are all covered. If you like it, enable auto-adjust in your settings. You can also disable this function if you think Google is over-correcting your photos.
• Move over Vine, here comes Auto Awesome. If you take a series of similar photos, Google+ will automatically make an animated gif out of it. They are really awesome.

Courtesy of theverge.com

Along with these excellent new features, is the cover redesign. Now you have a massive space to upload a large image of yourself or your business for marketing purposes. It’s clearly borrowed from the MySpace redesign, but it still looks great.

You all know that I’m not a massive fan of Google+ as a social network, in my past opinion the site operated more efficiently as a customer management tool or a great promotional platform where you could find and recruit influencers for your blog.

I think that the SEO benefits of Google+ are still important for businesses and brands, and now with these new features Google has become a contender on the image market as well. I’d say continue to use Google+ for business, it’s only going to get better. As for social networking – Facebook and Twitter still do it better. Sorry Google!

There’s no denying that Google+ is a great tool for business. How have you been using it to generate leads and revenue for your business?

Courtesy of copyblogger.com

The Ebook Marketing Saga

Once your ebook is complete, the real hard work begins. You may not realize it yet, but marketing your ebook appropriately will be the real success indicator. Selling ebooks is challenging. No-one knows who you are, or what is inside that book. Imagine trying to sell something to your average reader, when they can buy 5 others ebooks on the subject!

Worst of all, these 5 other ebooks are written by people that have some measure of fame already. Your goal from the beginning is to outline your plan, know your targets and to help your readers see the value in purchasing your ebook instead of someone else’s ebook.

Selling ebooks involves:

• Knowing how much money you plan on earning online
• Knowing how to value or price your ebook for sales
• Knowing which markets to hit
• Knowing which marketing materials best sell books online

Courtesy of blog.winepresspublishing.com

#1: Your Ebook Earning Strategy

Selling ebooks isn’t about collecting sales for the next 10 years, like you would do as an authentic published author. Ebooks have a short shelf life, and they should be treated as products that can sell like crazy for about a year. So, you have one year to make your ebook sell as many copies as possible, before sales will wind down.

This isn’t true for everyone – but it’s mostly true for bloggers. The older your book, the less likely it will sell. Give each ebook three months to reach its sales peak, and push to keep this peak going for as long as possible. When you have a timescale, you can arrange your marketing goals to maximize your sales.

#2: Pricing Your Ebook

Most new ebook authors grossly over-value their ebook – and end up selling far less ebooks than they had planned. Selling ebooks is not about making a fortune on one book, it’s about building up quality sales to make some great money on several books. Here’s what to look out for when deciding the price of your book.

• If it’s too expensive no-one will buy it, and you exclude your middle market
• If it’s too cheap no-one will buy it, as they will think the information is worthless

Assuming you’re offering a quality ebook that is well-written, professionally formatted with an eye-catching cover – you should always begin selling at these pay scales.

• 10 page ebook: $2.99
• 20 page ebook: $4.99
• 30-60 page ebook: $14.99-$19.99
• 100 page ebook: $19-99-$29.99
• 200+ page ebook: $39.99-$69.99

Courtesy of bitethebook.com

On rare occasions if your subject matter is unusual, and the industry often prices your kind of niche much higher than others – do so as well. Always check on comparable ebooks in your niche and see how they are priced. But take note of when they were published. The older the book, the lower the price. Selling ebooks can be easier with the right price scale.

#3: The Ebook Markets To Hit

Selling ebooks is more effective if you pick the right platforms or online places to sell them. Sometimes authors only use Amazon, and they wonder why they don’t even make back their initial investment in the writing. If you spent $1000.00 getting your ebook created, you can realistically expect about $30,000 return over the next few months.

That’s if you’ve sold your ebook for $29.99 and used all publishing options available to you. As a rule, reinvest about half of this into additional advertising and marketing – and you can make up to 10,000 sales, bringing your total to about $300,000. This isn’t what you get to keep – you only get a percentage of this on some platforms.

• Publish your book on Amazon
• Publish on Lulu.com
• Publish on Clickbank.com
• Publish on Ebay.com
• Publish on Payloadz.com
• Create sale pages of your own
• Sell directly from your website
• Sell your ebooks via social media
• Publish on as many book seller sites as you can manage

Don’t forget to do a little marketing where readers live. Hit the online book clubs, the Facebook book clubs, and get as many bloggers as you can to endorse your book.

Selling Ebooks Using Affiliate Marketing

You can offer a program to affiliate marketers, whereby you will give them a high percentage of the sales, if they can sell your book for you. Offer a great program at 30%-40%, and you’ll attract the best affiliate marketers in the world to your book. When they sell it for you, they earn money. This can be more effective than selling off Amazon, if you get it right.

Selling ebooks via affiliate marketers also gives you another benefit – it gets your name out there. Create media kits that your marketers can use, that include nice graphics, content, articles, headlines, sales pitches, information and more. They will then build websites selling your book, and invest in advertising for you.

Courtesy of puzzledsquirrel.com

The Basics of Ebook Production

To sell an ebook it has to look like something worth buying. You will need to spend a little on the following exterior features:

• A brilliant cover
• An incredible blurb that reels in the reader
• An attractive price
• An ANGLE* (more on this below)
• Big names to endorse your book
• An excellent title

*ANGLE: The angle of a book is really what sells it. The more specific you are the better. For example, the title of this post isn’t ‘how to sell ebooks’ because everyone under the sun has used this tired title. It’s ‘how to earn $300,000’ which is very specific. Selling ebooks is about taking an old subject and making it new by offering a fresh perspective on it.

Also make sure that your readers have a choice of formats. Some people like to download PDF files, others prefer to read your ebook on their Kindle device. Always provide all format options to maximize sales. You want to reach the most people possible.

The Rules Regarding Endorsements

The one thing that sells more ebooks online than anything else, is securing the right endorsement. You can write a book on computers, and no-one will care. Write a book on computers that Bill Gates endorses, and suddenly you’re news. You need to find some authorities in your niche to write reviews or endorsements for your book.

#1: Identify who in your niche, you need to contact
#2: Make a list of these people, along with their contact details
#3: Introduce yourself on social media
#4: Ask them if they would mind checking out your ebook for free
#5: If you encounter reluctance, offer some free guest posts for their blogs
#6: Send them a free copy of your ebook
#7: In the email, ask for a brief review a paragraph or two long
#8: Send this to as many authorities as you can
#9: Use this review material as social proof
#10: Publish on all your platforms and sales pages

Selling ebooks is pretty simple if you have about 20 top bloggers or personalities supporting your book. It’s the one mistake that first time ebook sellers make. You have to be relevant and important to sell ebooks – the only way to do this is via affiliation.

Recycling Your Profit For More Profit

You will want to gain momentum in your selling strategies so that each week, the numbers go up considerably. This means using more than half (I’ve seen people use 80% of their profit with great success) to sink back into marketing and selling ebooks on your pages.

Remember you have a time limit, so reinvestment should begin to wind down when sales begin to dip at month 8 or 9. It takes practice and practical experience to know where to invest these profits for maximum impact.

I always find that the classics work best. Selling ebooks using Google advertising is very effective, especially when you’re spending a few thousand dollars on it every month. Here are the areas to invest in.

• Invest in Google ads
• Invest in Facebook and Youtube ads
• Get more keyword content created for you
• Pay top bloggers to create review posts for you
• Get even more materials to your affiliate marketers
• Create videos to promote your subject and ebook
• Invest in your blog

I once knew an ebook seller that had 50 copies of his ebook published in print, to boost his online sales. He would host a small event at a local book store, and take lots and lots of photos. The photos would act as the credibility he needed to convince online sceptics that he was the real deal. Press releases would go out, and his sales would skyrocket.

Ever thought about using blog commenting for selling ebooks? Find out how with this post I wrote! (Click!)

Courtesy of Huffingtonpost.com

Press Releases and Media Attention

How do you get media attention for something like an ebook? Easy! You have press releases created that relate to your ebook. Selling ebooks is not about creating press releases that SELL your ebook, the press release is just exposure. You’ll want to create a release that is about something related to your ebook that is relevant to news outlets.

Provide a professional quote for someone, and they will need to mention you and your book in their press release. Sites like HARO allow you to connect with media people for free. All you have to do is sign up, and wait to be cited as an expert source.

In the meantime, you can circulate press releases of your own. These are very important if you want to look like an official authority in your niche. The media can make or break ebooks! Working with them makes it a lot easier.

Tweaking Your Ebook Sales

Selling ebooks is also about reviewing what has worked the best and where you are getting the most money. If you are selling like hotcakes on Amazon, then sink money into exposure there, or into creating an audio or video product for your book, that you can sell alongside your original product. There are always ways to maximize sales.

Most ebook authors spend a lot of income reviewing their platforms and building up their social media sales funnel and website sales. That way, when you sell ebook #2, you will have much larger audiences to reach. Start an email list, and don’t stop driving traffic to it. Your email list can be a superb bestseller.

Other than this – the little moving parts of selling ebooks are up to you to figure out. Everyone is different. You might end up selling 1000 books your first week, and not make another sale for 3 months. It’s all about experience, and learning to leverage the platforms and marketing tools available to you. Remember selling ebooks is about – people – platforms – profit!

Are you looking to sell your ebook for the first time? Tell us all about your experience or ask me a question! I’m here to help!

Courtesy of empowernetwork.com

Why Have These Viral Videos Blown Up?

#1: Viral Videos like these both focus on silly dances that took the world by storm. These are dances that people can do in their homes, in clubs and with friends. They are repeatable!

#2: Both of these virals are location-specific. Gangnam Style focuses on South Korea, and The Harlem Shake focuses on Harlem, New York. They have a cultural heritage in other words that the global internet population deem ‘cool.’

#3: Both viral videos are refreshingly offbeat, almost bizarre. They don’t conform to any norms, and as a result – are surprising to watch. The element of surprise in a video is becoming more and more valuable in virals.

#4: Gangnam Style and The Harlem Shake are both incredibly entertaining – which makes them highly watchable and sharable. You can watch both viral videos more than once, which means viewing it with friends is even more fun than watching it alone.

#5: There is one strong central character in each of these virals. In Gangnam Style, Psy, the Korean horse-rider is the main character who leads the dance. In The Harlem Shake, there is always someone with a motorcycle helmet on, or their face obscured by a mask that begins the dance. People identify with the quirkiness of these characters.

#6: There are few things more human than dancing. Viral videos that are deeply humanized tend to do better on Youtube, because people strongly relate to them.

#7: Gangnam Style and The Harlem Shake both contain scenes with lots of people, which seems to promote trend setting in viral videos. If all of these people are doing it, I want to do it! This is seen at the end of Gangnam Style when they all dance together, and in the latter part of the Harlem Shake, when everyone joins in the craziness.

Courtesy of salon.com

#8: Both viral videos are highly marketable. Because of the strong dance moves and firm characters in each, these are brands that can be packaged, marketed and sold. It also makes them easily recognizable, or memorable.

#9: Be original, or at least be a really good copy. Truth is that while Gangnam Style made a ton of cash from Youtube, so did many spoofs of it. The Harlem Shake was one of those viral videos that everyone joined in on. If you can do a good one, you are guaranteed millions of views because of the trend.

#10: Both videos are absolutely hilarious! Gangnam Style and all of the Harlem Shake videos are funny, and humor is the fastest spreading virus online! If you want your video to be watched make it funny.

#11: A little known fact about Gangnam Style is that it was launched on a platform that already had 2.5 million subscribers. They used this network to accelerate the viral speed of the video – and it worked. The Harlem Shake has similarly been launched on many top subscriber Youtube feeds.

#12: If you have access to famous people – use them. One recognizable face is enough to get viral videos in the media, which is what Gangnam Style did. They had a famous Korean entertainer, a comedian and a kid from Korea’s Got Talent in it. Use this fame to get more views early on.

#13: Both videos had serious momentum in the media. Blog after blog, magazine after magazine – even news stations covered the Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake phenomenon. Get as much media attention as you can! Have an interesting back story!

#14: YG Entertainment masterminded the Gangnam Style video sensation, that made it one of the only viral videos to ever exceed a billion views on Youtube. This proves that with enough planning and marketing know-how – it’s possible to create a viral video.

#15: The Harlem Shake proves that production value isn’t everything –as long as you have entertainment value. Part of the appeal was watching different people do the Harlem Shake in different ways – in offices, schools, fire trucks and outdoors. It was truly global!

#16: Facebook and Twitter fueled the Youtube fire for both of these viral videos. Gangnam Style was tweeted by Britney Spears, which sent over a million tweets with that search term bouncing up and down Twitter. Get your fans and friends to Tweet and Facebook about your videos!

Courtesy of visual.ly

=> Infographic Source

#17: Both viral videos inspire CURIOSITY. If you hear about people doing a funny dance, you want to see it. There is a question there that people need answered. The more people that see it, the more curious you get. And that’s how a billion people find and watch a video.

#18: These viral videos are both positive, edgy and they make you smile. You’ll notice that not very many negative videos go viral. People want to improve their days, not ruin them!

#19: The music in both videos loops, and is very contagious. These viral videos have notes that stick in your head, so you might play the video again just to solve that problem. In a way, they create a kind of – repetitive song that you WANT to hear again.

#20: The Harlem Shake follows a set structure, with music that makes all videos the same length – just a minute or so. This means that people can watch these viral videos quickly, share them quickly and enjoy them again and again.

How would you make your videos viral?

Courtesy of venturebeat.com

The New Youtube: Does It Drive You Nuts?

A while back Youtube was released with a fancy new charcoal and beige look that everyone loved, loved, loved. It seems incredible to me now that the Google design team hasn’t stuck with this natural color progression. Youtube has adopted the ugly, all white face of the Google+ network, and fans aren’t happy.

Granted, the new flash player is pretty awesome – and the dashboard has been cleaned up quite a lot. This is most evident in the new Youtube direction – they’re focusing more on subscriptions than anything else. It’s awesome if you love to subscribe to feeds, but if you don’t it can be a little limiting.

I’ve noticed while surfing around the new Youtube that all of my searches are linked with what I’ve searched in the past (a Google change no doubt). It’s nice in that I get to see people and feeds I like, but horrible when I want to discover new things. I used to use the right hand bar to watch random videos, and I can’t really do that anymore.

One of the main things that drove me NUTS about the new Youtube is that you can’t search by date anymore, by newest to oldest. Some videos are lost to me forever. You can still search year, month, week, day and hour – but it’s not the same.

What it means to researchers is that only contemporary searches will come up with the latest news. Older news will be buried. This is not great if you’re looking for older research. In a world of online content and increasing need for video evidence, this was bad move by the new Youtube.

The older social networks get, the bigger problem this will become. They’re great for recent issues and impossible on archived content. Someone will need to change this eventually. For now, we all just have to deal with that absence.

Courtesy of technobuffalo.com

New Functionality For The New Youtube

As a mobile app layout, it’s actually really nice – for smartphone users all over the globe. Honestly on desktop view, the old one was better. It’s like Google has sacrificed aesthetics for functionality instead of balancing out the two.

Subscribe to channels so that you can have a television-like experience – which I think is where Google is going with these new changes. They want to eventually be the leader in online TV for desktop and mobile users in the world.

This makes me concerned for a few reasons. With the drastic steps Youtube is taking to monetize, with new ad systems – will they be charging to subscribe to certain feeds soon? Is this the inevitable future of online video? I certainly hope not.

The Benefits For Video Marketers

The good news is that Google is very business-orientated, so this is nothing but good news for the new Youtube and its many marketers. Youtube uses split testing to change features, to improve user experience and core analytics for video uploaders. This in turn increases subscribers, video views, ad conversions and clicks, and more.

Youtube is definitely becoming more business-friendly. The shiny new user icons personalize the commenting experience, which is long overdue on such a ‘troll’ site.

Don’t get too excited about the comments however – if you’re one of those people that like to read your old comments. Good luck finding them on page, signed out, without a sort by comments thread.

Still, Google has made some good additions to the new Youtube. I just can’t figure out how their ‘what to watch’ page will work. If you subscribe to lots of feeds, it becomes a total nightmarish mess. It’s like Google is telling us what we can and can’t watch. It’s that ‘NO don’t click on those videos, you like THESE ones.’ Not all algorithm prediction is good.

The best new feature is the awesome side-long video line up that you see when you play videos now. These playlists keep people on the site longer, and encourage you to watch more videos, which is good for business.

Courtesy of blogs.independent.co.uk

The New Youtube According To Google

Google mentioned in their 30 minute video on why they made these design changes to the new Youtube, that it’s because people ‘don’t know’ about channels. This means one thing – people don’t want to use Youtube as a social network.

If they don’t use the new Youtube as a social network, Google can’t collect information from their accounts that they can use to sell them products via advertising and video suggestions. So, the new Youtube is now obsessed with subscriptions.

I’m concerned about Youtube becoming a ‘stronger’ social network, because I think it will weaken why people love to use Youtube instead of other video sites. Sure commenting is fun, but do you really care which friends have seen the same videos as you? Nope.

If Google keeps pushing for channel subscribers and people don’t comply, it could mean the end of Youtube’s rise. The new Youtube will be replaced with another site that doesn’t force people to be tracked and advertised to. Only time will tell how this goes.

Do you think Google will ruin Youtube by making it more of a social network, and less of a video viewing and sharing site?

Courtesy of mybloggertricks.com

Social Websites That Help To Boost Your SEO

• Social media sites that are content heavy are great for SEO
• Social sites that are image heavy and highly viral are great for inspiring traffic
• Social media marketing platforms with fast interaction are great for SEO

Let’s take a look at these 5 hidden social media sites that will help you drive enormous traffic numbers to your websites.

#1: The Power of Pinterest

Pinterest, the break-out social media success of 2012 is THE social marketing platform for creating and driving traffic now. Pinterest beats Twitter, StumbleUpon, Google, Bing and Yahoo in referral traffic stats. It’s the fourth largest platform for traffic referrals in the world.

How To Use Pinterest?

If traffic is your goal, make social media sites like Pinterest a priority. Include it as one of your top 3, along with Facebook and Twitter. It really has incredible viral potential, and has the ability to drive thousands of people to your websites merely using images and comments as an attraction model. It’s affordable, simple and you’ll see results immediately.

Courtesy of marketingpilgrim.com

#2: The Fury of Facebook

It’s true – Facebook produces 75% of all referral traffic on social media sites. The reason why it’s here at number 2, is that Pinterest users are a lot more likely to buy, share and interact once they get to your websites – making them more valuable than Facebook users.

How To Use Facebook?

Social media sites like Facebook need to be your top priority for driving traffic to your websites. Use social media management to effectively diversify your update strategy, and create lots of engaging content there. Videos, media, podcasts, slideshows, text and images – Facebook wants it all.

#3: The Rise of LinkedIn

LinkedIn has just undergone a makeover, and has recently seen a 1000% jump in referral traffic to Facebook. Twitter decided to part ways with the business social media marketing giant, which had an impact on both sites. The main impact being that people were now moving from LinkedIn to Facebook, to your websites.

How To Use LinkedIn?

Social media sites like LinkedIn should be used for business purposes, but they need to be optimized as well. All of your group or business posts need to be SEO’d, not to mention your profile. If you can create a nice LinkedIn traffic boost, your Facebook referral traffic will automatically increase, as will your website traffic.

Courtesy of entrepreneur.com

#4: The Booming Blog

Social websites like your blog have the power to generate tons of excellent traffic, simply by focusing on a comprehensive SEO strategy. When you rise in the ranks, people will visit your blog more often, and your social sites will funnel extra visitors there as well. Your blog can then do what your website can’t – gain clients as fans.

How To Use Your Blog?

The only way to use social media sites properly in this instance, is to have a daily content strategy. Your optimized blog posts and accompanying social media updates should send your blog running up the ranking ladder. After 3 months you should be on page 1. But you must post on these social media pages each day.

#5: Growling Google+ or Terrific Twitter?

You’ve probably heard a lot about social media sites like Google+ being great as an SEO tool to boost your traffic ratios – right? Well, here’s some news for you – don’t bother. People have reported a steady decline in referral traffic from Google+ since its inception. You are better off using Twitter as a social site to generate traffic. Why? Because sharing there is fast and Google likes that.

How To Use Twitter?

I would recommend at least 4-8 tweets per day that have been pre-written and optimized with keywords and appropriate hashtags. These don’t include the ‘response’ tweets you should be sending to inspire conversation in your network.

These social media sites will get you that extra traffic you need each day. All you have to do is maintain a solid, performance –based social strategy and the traffic will happen. What are you waiting for? Go and work on your social SEO immediately!

Sign up for our new webinar on LinkedIn here!

Otherwise, how do you increase traffic to your websites using social media?

Courtesy of latimes.com

What’s The New Myspace Comeback?

Myspace has had a love-hate relationship with its users, and with the people that have desperately tried to revamp it. We all know how horrible Myspace became a few years ago – there was barely space for interaction after all of those ads.

Today, almost exactly one month before 2013, Myspace’s owners Justin Timberlake and Specific Media have made it clear that this Myspace comeback is not to be overlooked. It’s so good, it may be the end of the world prediction that the Mayans made!

Why Does SMMU Believe Myspace Domination is Imminent?

I’ve been thinking about this long and hard – and I have some great reasons for you.

• After a few simple images, and some basic marketing for the Myspace comeback, it’s already experiencing year-over-year growth, whereas Facebook is declining.
• There are already around 28 million users for the platform, so viral usage is going to explode out of Myspace when the new site is launched and promoted.
• Myspace for music works. It’s a genius idea that they should have capitalized on a long time ago. Plus the Myspace comeback is set to have secret aspirations to be an advanced music player – that will destroy Spotify and Pandora. Can this happen? The design is good enough for us to believe that their coders are equally as brilliant.


Courtesy of dailymail.co.uk

• The original social network has taken the next logical step from Pinterest. Thought things couldn’t get any better? Wait until the Myspace comeback blows the easy functionality of other sites out of the water. We expect great, great things.
• Myspace will launch as a complete, image/video/music based sharing site that will crush Twitter. Why? Because Twitter is trying to become something more like what the Myspace comeback has now evolved into. The instagrammy, hipster, pinterest-like coolness of the platform will not go unnoticed.
• The Myspace comeback is being created to connect media lovers with media creators – for example, bands with their fans. If they can create a larger catalog of music than Pandora or Spotify (and they can) then they have a fantastic shot of surpassing them.


Courtesy of blog.invisiblechildren.com

• Rumor has it that Myspace plans to launch a $10 million dollar advertising campaign to attract new social users to the site. With $10 million dollars and a lot of influence in the media biz, they’re sure to hit on some viral successes.
• Finally, the unbelievable design of the new Myspace comeback makes me want to sign on, and I truly hated the Myspace of a few years ago.

At the end of the day, Myspace is delivering something NEW. They have a new business plan, a new design and unlimited growth potential. I’d conservatively say that Myspace will be back in the top 5 soon enough. They have some way to go, but everyone loves an underdog. So far, they’re winning!

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What do you think of the new Myspace? Will it sink or swim?

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But how do you create these elusive viral videos for your brand? Let’s take a look at some top secret tips from expert marketers.

#1: All Virals Have an X Factor

All viral videos have that something ‘special’ that makes them super sharable. Whether it’s a brief moment of entertainment, or a 3 minute video of sheer brilliance – you’ll always find that these videos make people say, ‘you have to see this.’

#2: All Virals Are Pushed by Influencers

How do ten million people see these viral videos within a day? Easy – they are first spotted by internet influencers, who then share them with their community of thousands. Make sure that your viral is seen by the right people, to increase your viral potential.

#3: Keep Them Short and Simple

The truth is that most viral videos are no more than 1 minute long. People love videos that don’t impose on their time, so the shorter the better. If you can do something incredible, hilarious, cute, weird or shocking in 30 seconds, you’ll be a hit.

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See the Skateboarding Dog viral here.

#4: Your Outstanding Thumbnail

You need to spend a good amount of time picking out the best and most alluring thumbnail image for your viral videos. It’s the first thing people see, and it’s the reason they’ll click on your video. A bad, hasty image can ruin a highly viral video.

#5: Viral Videos Are Personal Showcases

When someone shares a viral vid, they’re saying that they approve or like your video. It makes up part of their online social profile – all their friends are going to see it. Make your viral cool enough to say something awesome about the person sharing it.

#6: Say Something About Your Brand

Your Youtube viral videos need to say something about your business or brand. They don’t have to say it outright, but they should contribute in some important way to your brand image. This should make you ask the question – how do you want people to feel about your brand?

#7: Be Emotional

Brands and brand advertising is usually so dry and emotionless. You’ll find in many viral videos that nearly all of them are emotional or trigger an emotion in some way. For the famous ‘Charlie bit me’ viral, the theme ‘cute kids’ was the trigger.

Courtesy of pocket-lint.com

#8: Be Different

Don’t try to be the same as other brands in your niche – be different! Your viral videos need to have an edge, be quirky or just be something people haven’t seen before. If you can give your audience this, you’ll get a ton of brand exposure.

#9: Leave The Advertising Out of the Advert

Viral videos are advert-free. The advertising is built in – when people see who created the video. Not loading your vid with tons of terrible pop ups and ad screens will score you big viral points.

#10: Hit The Streets

For a brand, few things are as awesome as interacting with people in the street, or in real world situations. When lots of people are in a video, people will watch it just to see what happens. You can use this curiosity to create viral videos.

Are you ready to create a viral video for your brand? Get to it!

Do you have a tip for us on viral videos that we don’t know about? Share!

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How Do You See Youtube’s New Design Changes?

Many frequent Youtubers have noticed a lot of glitches and issues on the site as of late. There was an incident a few weeks ago when Youtube even crashed for a while, causing global pandemonium. Now, Youtube’s new design is being tested and chatted about in the secret tech spaces on the internet.

If your computer stores Youtube cookies, you’re still seeing the old Youtube. But if you clear these cookies, you might get the new interface. If you use Chrome, get to the developers console by pressing Ctrl+Shift+J, while on a fresh Youtube tab.

Paste in the following code: document.cookie=”VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=jZNC3DCddAk; path=/; domain=.youtube.com”;window.location.reload();

Then press enter, and there you go – Youtube’s new design. It looks like this:

Courtesy of readwrite.com

What SMMU Thinks of Youtube’s New Design Tinkering

At a glance you can see that Google has removed the awesome beige and charcoal homepage interface, and has instead replaced it with their horrible all white interface, the very same so many people disliked on Google+.

I’ve got to tell you, Youtube’s new design is not looking great. The functionality and navigation has improved though. Here’s how:

• You can switch between a ‘now playing’ and ‘recommended’ screen

The recommended videos are based on videos that you’ve watched before, whether you were logged in or not. This creeps me out a little, but it actually takes me further into Youtube’s new design than I’d go on a normal day, because of the suggestions.

• Longer scroll down homepage, showing many categories

You’ll have access to your favorite categories, like News & Politics, Entertainment, ABC News and Movies. A great feature is how many people have already watched these suggested category videos at a glance in Youtube’s new design.

• Larger video showcases, doing away with the ‘thumbnail’ sized videos

When they last updated Youtube’s new design – a big issue was the tiny video windows that fans hated. There was a lot of backlash about them. Luckily, Google has made the video ‘thumbnails’ a lot larger, which is easier on the eye. A great update!

• Video titles are now displayed at the bottom of Youtube videos

The least favorite change to Youtube’s new design has to be that titles are now below the actual videos. It’s a strange change, and we’ll have to wait and see if this contributes to even more view and financial losses to Youtube ad businesses.

• Improved sharing and commenting capabilities

Youtube’s new design also includes a way to add a timestamp when you share videos, and a one click option to record video responses.

And (should I say finally?) the commenting section appears more like the Disqus commenting system, which is really nice for social connectivity and reducing spam. People can add in their personal image thumbnails to go with their comments.

Courtesy of readwrite.com

• There are new playlist features that are less intrusive

Youtube has removed the bottom playlist bar and instead popped it on the right of the video, so that we can actually see it now, while watching the video. This will be great for virality, and it pushes the irritating ad to below the streaming playlist.

Our verdict on Youtube’s new design? Unsurprisingly, the functionality is a lot better, and it’s sure to make viewing multiple videos easier. As for the all-encompassing white design – I just don’t see it being popular. It wasn’t on Google+, and it’s only going to infuriate Youtube fans. But nothing is set in stone – they are still working on it!

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What do you think of the secret Youtube re-design?