YouTube is the second most visited website in the world, right behind Google and Facebook. And maybe you didn’t know this but it is also the number two search engine in the world, behind who else, Google.

I often go to YouTube first if I need to know some specific procedure related to a task. Case in point. I recently changed out faucet cartridges on the sinks in the guest bath. Now I have done this before and it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out but this Delta faucet was different then I had done before and I could not figure out how to do it. To YouTube I went and on the first page I found the exact tutorial that I needed. It wasn’t professionally done, just some DIYer that had the same problem, figured it out and made a short video about it.

With all the bad that is on the Internet, there is so much more good. And this is an example of what people do…they share.

A Short History of YouTube

• YouTube’s domain name was activated on Feb 14, 2005
• First video uploaded was “Me at the zoo” on April 23, 2005 and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. This 19 second video was the first of hundreds of millions.
• 60 hours of video uploaded every minute
• 4 billion page views a day
• 800 million users

Yeah, it’s that popular.

So with everybody trying to fix what last year’s Google Panda update did to their rankings, YouTube has been overlooked as a website traffic generator. YouTube, even though it is owned by Google does not have a very sophisticated search algorithm, it fact it is simplistic, outdated and can be worked.

If you can raise the YouTube ranking of your video(s) by doing what I have listed below then you will drive more traffic to your website.

NOTE: You should also have the target website URL in your video’s description and also in the video. I really shouldn’t have to mention this but thought I better.

Whether it is a website, a blog, social media or a video keywords are critical to success. Here is a tool that you must use if you want success in YouTube.

It is the YouTube keyword tool and it’s free: https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool It will help you focus on what keywords are important in your industry or niche.

YouTube has many different criteria when considering if your video should be returned in a search query but here are what I consider the top four. Do these and you will get results.

• Video’s Title: Use Your Keywords
• Video’s Description: Use Your Keywords
• Tags: Use Your Keywords
• Add Incoming Links from your website or blog

To add incoming links from your website, go to the video you want to use and get the embed code and then paste it into your blog post like I am doing here.

Then make sure you use your keyword phrase as anchor text back to the video. This gives YouTube two things they like, videos embedded in outside websites and links coming back to the video.

Win and win!

And your link back would look something like this.

So if you want the best carpet cleaning in Phoenix see this video.

Give this a try and then after a couple of days do a YouTube search for your keyword phrase and see what comes up.

Part Two: Meta Keywords

What are Meta Keywords?: Unlike title tags, meta keywords are never seen by a website visitor. In the early days of the internet and search engines, meta keywords were quite possibly the most important part of SEO. A Keyword is a word that a search engine user might use to find a relevant web page or pages.

In the above picture I am using "wordpress plugins" as my keywords in a google search for WordPress Plugins.

Meta Keywords are the keywords that website designers place in the code of their website. You can see the meta keywords for your page, or really page on any website, by right clicking on the page and selecting “View Page Source” from the drop down menu.

The meta keyword tag starts with "<meta name="keywords" content=" and then the keywords for the page.

Like I said it used to be REALLY important. That was until website designers started gaming the system. They would put keywords in their meta keyword area that had nothing to do with the content on their page in order to drive traffic to their site. Search Engines eventually caught on to the practice and lessened the value they placed on meta keywords. That being said they are still somewhat important and easy for you to optimize for your page.

Why are Meta Keywords important?: While Meta Keywords aren’t quite as important as they used to be they can still help search engines determine what your website is about.  Without them Search Engines are left on their own to decide which words on your page are the most important.

PRO TIP: Be careful not to use too many keywords in your meta keyword area. Using a huge amount of keywords is called “Keyword Stuffing” and could get your website penalized by search engines such as Google. I don’t mean they will send you a fine but they might rank you lower or delist you from their data base all together. Keep your keywords relevant and below 10 keywords or keywords strings.

Meta Keywords are still an important factor in Optimizing your website for search engines. Take advantage of this easy to use tool.

So far you have learned what meta keywords are and why they are important. If you have NO website creation experience then the rest of this article might bore you. If your meta keywords are incorrect or missing , either hire SixVine to help you or get your webMASTER to fix the issue.

Where are Meta Keywords entered?: As I said above Meta keywords are stored on the hidden code of your webpage header area.

If you are using a program such as Dreamweaver to create your HTML website then you will have to add your meta keywords to your page before you up load it to your server.  If you’ve already created your pages you’ll have to reload all them into your website design program and decide what the keywords should be for each of your pages, add them to the pages and then re-upload them to your server.

Why I love WordPress

Again, a WordPress website makes this very easy if you have the right WordPress plugin like “SEO Ultimate”.

In the above three pictures you can see the controls for SEO Ultimate.  The red arrow points to the “Meta Keyword” settings which will open up a page that looks much like the upper right picture.  On that page you can set the keywords for all your pages.  Conversely you can use the “Meta Keywords” box that appears on all of the edit pages for your posts and pages.  WordPress makes these types of tasks super easy, you just have to remember to do it.

Today you’ve learned about Meta Keywords and where they are placed within a website.  I’ll repeat one more time that while Meta Keywords aren’t as important as they used to be, it’s still a valuable on page SEO tool and since it’s easy to do there is no reason not to.

Next week I’ll be talking to you about the wonderful world of Meta Descriptions.  While this is another “meta” area on your page I think you will be surprised at why it’s so important.  So come back next week to find out the answers to these questions:

1. What is a Meta Descripti0n?
2. Why are Meta Descriptions important?
3. Where are Meta Descriptions entered?

We’ll see you next week.

In the first part you learned about the explosive growth of video marketing and the worldwide acceptance of viewing video over the Internet. I even went into some possible equipment purchases you might want to look at. If you have not read Video Marketing for Your Business-Part One then go there now to get caught up.

In Part Two we are going to discuss script, location selection and lighting.

The actual process of producing a project, whether it is Captain America or an employee training video, is the same and broken up into three major segments, pre-production, production and post production. Each one has it’s separate sub-categories and each one relies heavily on what has gone on before.

Scripting – What Do I Say

Writers Block can hit you even when you're writing about something you are very intimate with... your business.

With your videos most likely it begins with an idea, a need or a want. You want to do a welcome video for your website, a client wants a training video so they can use one of your products or you have an idea on how to show that the culture of your company is what sets you apart from the competition.

But now you have hit a stopping point because you don’t know what to say. Let me just say this in the simplest way possible.

You are the expert. If I am on your website looking at your video…you know a lot more then I do. So in your visitors’ eyes YOU are the expert.

Keep your script simple, keep it short and don’t try to cover too much. The finished script should be three minutes or less. If it is a complex subject then break it up in several videos, it will give you more credibility and it will acknowledge that you respect the viewer’s time. Remember that speaker’s adage: “The mind can absorb only what the butt can endure.”

If you are doing a welcome video then pick three things you want your prospects to know about your company. It is best if you select three things that are tangible and you can show on camera.

If you are doing a sales tape then pick three benefits about your product. You can talk about features because people like to know the features but they buy the benefits.

If you want to show the culture of the company have one of your employees talk about why they like working there. If you don’t have any employees then ask one of your customers to give you a short testimonial on camera. In this instance you would be on camera first talking about customer service and then cut to the testimonial and then back to you saying that if you are looking for honest value and service for your money then give you a call.

Now write the script. Keep it conversational with short sentences.

Are there some areas where you need to be on camera like at the beginning and the end? But if you are talking about that widget then show it. Cutting from you on camera to what is called B-roll footage helps the viewer stay engaged. If I am an owner of an auto repair shop and I talk about how my mechanics take extra care of your car, don’t you think it would have more impact if I show a mechanic putting protective pads around the area that he is working on?

You must write the script, not some one else. Why? Because it will be in your own words and it will be easier and more believable when you are saying it. This is critical for another reason which I will get into in Part Three.

Location Selection – Where Do I Shoot My Video

Possible Locations for your video may include your place of business.

Post production runs smoothly if all issues were handled properly in production and production is a snap if all the problems were worked out in pre-production.

Being a cameraman in the motion picture industry for over twenty years I was never deeply involved in pre-production but many times saw the results. If production suddenly ground to a halt the question would eventually be asked “What happened?” to which the crew know-it-all would sound off with “We’ve been hit by the 5Ps again.”

“5Ps” you ask? Yes, that is Piss Poor Pre-Production Planning.

Pre-production is the best and cheapest place to work out different scenarios, options and of course play a lot of what if. Some big films are budgeted at over $1,000,000 a day so if you have a twenty minute delay due to something that wasn’t thought of that could cost you over $50,000. It is a high stakes, high stress business.

So with your videos a delay will not cost you 50 big ones but if you scout a park that you want to shoot at on Wednesday and you show up Saturday with you wife and another helper and there is a fifty club AYSO soccer tournament going on complete with cheering parents, hot dog vendors and bounce houses you now have a delay (along with embarrassment) of getting your project in the can. Think about what could go wrong and then plan accordingly.

If you want to film at an exterior public location think about background activity, ambient noise, people stopping to see what is going on, etc. I have been with seasoned actors where the crew milling around behind the camera can be distracting enough to put them off. With non-professionals you want a quiet location free from distractions.

Filming at an interior location can solve a lot of those exterior issues. It is usually quieter but you can still have distractions like a phone ringing or someone coming to your home or office. Really, only the super controlled environment of a sound stage will be perfect, but we don’t need that just good pre-production planning. Interior filming usually means lights and that is next.

One more thing about locations, it is a visual component of your story and should fit your subject matter. For example if you are a house painter you shouldn’t film your story in an office but out on a job site. Look at this video we did for RLF Painting and think about how it would look if Bob was behind a desk.

Lighting Solutions – Why Do I Look Like a Raccoon?

A $40 work light from Amazon can give your production a lot of versatility.

Whether interior or exterior you will need to be aware of lighting. If you are outside don’t film in direct sunlight if you can help it. Sunlight causes deep shadows and will not be attractive for your on camera talent, especially women.

Open shade is the best, if that is not an option then put your talent in back light. Shoot some test footage and see what you think.

A 4×4 piece of white hard foam insulation board can serve as a reflector to bounce a little fill light on to the talent’s face. You can also try using one of those fold up windshield sun screens.

Automatic exposure on the newer digital cameras do a pretty good job at setting the exposure but not if you have a window in your shot with bright sunlight coming in. The camera will always expose for the brightest object in the scene and your talent will be in silhouette. Look at your scene and make sure it the light intensity is balanced. If you must have that window in your shot then you have either add more light on your talent (they wont like that) or reduce the intensity of light coming through the window using gels or scrims.

“Lighting by Home Depot” is not something you will ever see in movie credits but I guarantee there are thousands of videos that are shot every year using those big yellow work lights that contractors use. Usually they are about 500 watts and cost around $40. They still produce a harsh light so to soften it clip a piece of wax paper in front of it or use a piece of an old white bed sheet. I don’t think Entertainment Tonight will be showing up at your location to do a spot for national TV so keep those production dollars in your pocket.

Next Week

OK, so next time in the Part Three of this series we will actually get into production, you will learn how to create, what I call a Red Neck Teleprompter, get into the post production phase with editing, music and effects and then distribution.

Ciao Baby.

I am sure you know what the acronym SEO stands for by now, Search Engine Optimization. The problem arises from the fact that SEO has become a catch all term for all things search engine related. SEO is not the same thing as where your website falls on a Search Engine Results Page (known as SERP). SEO is one of many strategies for improving your websites rank on a Search Engine Results Page, and while it’s probably the best strategy it’s not the only way to increase your rank position on these results pages.

That being said, over the next five weeks I will be taking you through what I consider to be the easiest, yet most important website optimization steps you can do to get your website noticed by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Website Optimizations for Search Engines

(in no particular order but in my opinion the most important ones)

Part One: Title Tags

What is a title tag?:  It’s not the title on your page if that is what you are thinking. It can’t even be seen on the page itself. A title tag is a bit of HTML code on your website that tells search engines what the page they are on is about. Humans can see a title tag by simply looking at the top of their browser.

You will notice in the picture above that the title tag for our home page doesn’t have the word HOME or even the name of our company. People who are on our website already know the name of our company and they already know that they are on the home page. There is no reason what-so-ever to have those items in the title tag. What should be in the title tag is what the page is about. In this case it’s our home page so we chose to use the title tag of “Web Design Phoenix AZ | Video Production | Social Media Branding | Social Media Management” because that is what we do and this is our main page. If it’s was just a page about Web Design then that is what I would put as the title tag, as well as variations of that keyword such as “Website Design” and “Website Hosting”.

PRO TIP: If you are offering services or products in only your area, include the name of that area in your title tag. In this case I chose to put “Web Design Phoenix AZ” because although we offer web design services all across the country, it would be pretty hard to rank on page one of Google for such a competitive market.

Why is it important?:  Like I said earlier, a title tag tells search engines what the page is about. If your title tag is “Home” then google is going to think your page is about “Home”. If your title tag is “Page 2″ google is going to think your page is about “Page 2″. Conversely if your business is painting houses in Arizona and the title tag of your home page is “Commercial Painting | Residential House Painting | Arizona” search engines will see that and say “AH HA! This page is about a house painter in Arizona. Now when someone types ‘Arizona House Painting’ into my search area I will know to add this page to my SERP to serve up to them.”

If you are not properly using title tags on all of your pages you are missing a great opportunity to tell search engines what each of your pages are about.

So far you have learned what title tags are and why they are important. If you have NO website creation experience then the rest of this article might bore you. If your title tags are incorrect, either hire SixVine to help you or get your webMASTER to fix the issue.

Where are title tags entered?:  This depends on how you created your website’s page. In HTML code the title tag is placed in the header area of the page between the “title tags”. Those tags look like this:

In this image you can see

So if your website is a straight up, bare bones, HTML website it could have been created several different ways.  There are many programs that help users create HTML websites but most of them, such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver, automatically take the file name of the page you are creating and make it the title tag.  So if you are working on an HTML page and named it “page 3″ then, unless you change the title tag manually, you will end up with a title tag of “page3″.  This is why many websites out there have some very strange title tags.

(Irony: This website ranks on page 2 when you search for “page3″ on Google.)

In the above picture you’ll notice that title tags are also used as the title of your page on Search Engines. This person obviously left his title tag to be determined by the program he used to create his HTML page and there for Google thinks his page is about “page3″.

In order to change this you will have to reload each HTML page of your website into the program you used to create it in the first place and make the necessary changes.  With there being so many different programs out there that create HTML pages I can not tell you how to change the title tag with your particular program.  If you don’t know how I would suggest you Google the name of the program and “change title tag in HTML page”.  That should find you all the answers you need.

Why I love WordPress

If your website is powered by WordPress then your job is a lot easier. There are several plugin that handle many aspects of SEO and most of those have an area where you can enter the the title tag of the page you are creating right there in the editor.

In the image above you will see the SEO Settings area for a plugin called “SEO Ultimate“, one of my favorite plugins for WordPress. The arrow points to the area where you can enter the Title Tag of the post or page you are creating. WordPress makes this kind of thing a snap. And that is why all the websites I’ve designed for our clients have been on the WordPress platform.

So today you’ve learned quite a few things about Title Tags. I hope I made this post as informative and as entertaining as possible.  If you didn’t understand some of the techno speak I totally understand.  This article was meant to draw your attention to the importance of title tags and point those who know a little bit about web design in the right direction. If you don’t have the time to do it yourself then I would suggest either you hire SixVine Media to handle your web design or contact your current webmaster and/or web designer and ask them to make sure your title tags are set and proper.

Next week I’ll be talking about Meta Keywords so come on back to find out:

1. What is a Meta Keyword?
2. Why are Meta Keywords Important?
3. Where are Meta Keywords Entered?

So tune in next week, same SixVine Time, same SixVine Channel.

OK…and now for the local news.

Oh, the local news is the same?

Yup.

But that is good, especially when it comes to using video to market your business.

You are a lucky one.

Do you realize what an advantage you have over Nike, Coca Cola or Starbucks? You not only have the same tools but it costs you both the same. But what you have that they don’t is that you are the spokesperson, you are the face of the company. I have never seen a video by those companies above on a web video that featured the company CEO.

You can now play with the big boys and while you might not have the big boys tools you have what you need to showcase your products and services using video. Look at the video marketing techniques that the big guys are using and scale in back to something doable.

Now here is where I could do a data dump about how many videos are watched on the web every day and how there are over 200,000 videos uploaded to You Tube every day and how visitors will spend six minutes longer on a website that has video over on that doesn’t. But I am not here for that.

You Are Approved for Video Marketing

I am here to let you know that you have been officially approved to create your own short video marketing pieces and upload them to You Tube and then link to your website. It is not as difficult as you think or as expensive. If you are the least bit inventive it could even be free…except for your time that is.

With over 25 years in the motion picture and television industry I have been on dozens of major motion pictures with huge budgets. Starting my own production company, Mad Dog Entertainment we produced programing for cable TV and traveled the world doing it. Now with SixVine Media in Phoenix Arizona we are still producing quality product but the tools are cheaper.

When companies would hire us to produce their corporate projects the average budget would be between $1,500 and $3,000 a finished minute. We had our own editing equipment but sometimes would need to go outside to a Hollywood edit house where it would cost us $500-700 an hour to edit a project. My BetacamSP camera cost over $40,000 but could not shoot in HD and the video that you get from today’s iPhone would put my Betacam to shame.

Now it’s your turn.

Lights…Camera…Action!

I am sure by now that you already have video camera of some kind or a smart phone. You will need a mic because if there is one thing that people have said loud and clear is that if the audio isn’t loud and clear then they are waving bye-bye. If you are three feet from the camera the audio will probably be good but if you are ten feet away it will sound like you are in a barrel. Get an external mic. A quality lavaliere mic can run you several hundred dollars but you don’t need that high end.

Here is a good mic, it is not expensive and I own four of them. Why four? Because there are tiny wires inside a thin cable and if it gets rolled over by an office chair, it most likely will be useless. So when people are paying me to produce I better have backup gear.

Use your video camera if it has an external mic input otherwise use your smart phone and get an adapter cable for it. You can get the adapter at some electronics stores or just click here for the adapter.  It is a bit pricey for a cable but what do you expect from Apple?  You also can use the web cam built into your laptop, but still use an external mic, you will be much happier with the audio.

You also need a camera support device of some kind and your Uncle Bill doesn’t qualify. Do not hand hold the camera. You are not a professional and shaky-cam is #2 in the most hated list of video techniques. You might look for a bookshelf or something that you can put the camera on. You can easily spend $2,500 on a professional grade fluid head tripod but all you really need is this type of tripod. It will get the job done and no one will ever know how much you spent on it.

So that’s it for this episode, boys and girls.

Next time we will go through:

• Ideas for your script (what to say)

• Location

• Lighting.

In future posts I will talk about:

• The actual production

• Editing

• Music and effects

• Distribution.

This process is the same as a $150 million blockbuster but it will cost a lot less, be done in a shorter period of time, be more fun and will be out there promoting your business on the internet 24/7

Ciao Baby!

Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements. In contrast, non-organic search results may include pay per click advertising.

So Organic results are free?  Well yes, in the sense that you can’t pay a search engine like Google to improve your position in their organic search result. You can pay SEO companies to improve your website so that search engines will like you better. That is really what SEO is about.

In my opinion there are three types of SEO:

1. On page SEO
2. Off page SEO
3. Off site SEO

On Page SEO

On page Search Engine Optimization involves making sure your keywords are in all the proper places on the specific page you are working on. Whether that page is your home page, a sub page of your website, or a blog post, putting the right keywords in the proper places is the essence of on page SEO. Next week I will be starting a five part series on “Website Optimization for Search Engines” and will be discussing On Page SEO in depth. So make sure you check back for those articles.

Off Page SEO

Off page Search Engine Optimization involves pointing to the page in question from other pages on your site with the proper keywords being used as anchor text. Anchor text is the word or phrase you would click on to open the link.

The wrong way to create a link:
“Go HERE to read more information on our web design services.”

The right way to create a link:
“Our web design services page has more information on this subject.”

You will notice that both examples entice the visitor to click the link, but in the “right way” example the anchor text is “web design services”. This tells search engines what the link is about. By using the word “HERE” you are telling the search engine that the link is about “HERE”, but if you use your keyword as the anchor you tell the search engine that your link is about that keyword. This is the best practice when creating links, weather it is on your own site or other sites.

In this image you see a close up of an example of the "PRO TIP" I give you below.

PRO TIP: If you hover over the link in the “right way” example you will also see that I am taking advantage of the Title option when creating links. This reinforces the keywords with the search engine and also allows you to add additional keywords that might not have fit nicely into your sentence. In this case I wanted to add that we are in Phoenix AZ, or at least we would like to rank for “web design services Phoenix AZ”.

Off Site SEO

Off site Search Engine Optimization is, in my opinion, a misnomer. It it involves linking to your page from other websites. This, in my opinion, is not “Optimization”, it’s linking. Linking strategies to to increase your pages rank in search engines have been around for a while and they have just kind of gotten lumped in with SEO. So, while I might not like that people think of linking as SEO, it is what it is. So that being said, there are two types of Off Site SEO: Organic and Non-Organic.

Organic Off Site SEO is when visitors like the content of your website so much they link to it from their website, forums they frequent, or social media sites such as Facebook. There are tons of places that visitors can link to your content from and if you have good content they will do it, but they might not do it the way you would like. You see, most people don’t know the “right way” to link as I showed you in the section above. They have a tendency to do it the “wrong way” or use anchor text that are not the keywords that would help your ranking the most.

The only way I can think of optimizing this would be to provide them the HTML code for the best link possible. At the end of all of our posts you will see a text line saying “When linking this post please use the provided code below:” and then an area with the link code in it. This link code comes preformated with the title of the article as the anchor text. So when people use that code it will look like this: Organic Search Results – What is it? Pretty sweet right?  If you’re thinking that this would be a lot of extra work to do for each of your website’s articles you couldn’t be more wrong, IF your website is powered by WordPress and you have a plugin that handles “Linkbox Insertion”. There are several such WordPress plugins out there. The one we use is part of SEO Ultimate and works like a charm.

Non-Organic Off Site SEO is when you pay a company to go out to websites and create hundreds or thousands of links to your site. This practice is known as “purchasing links”, it also goes by other names. While SixVine doesn’t offer this service, many companies are getting pretty good results with this method. It is frowned upon by search engines such as Google and if done wrong can actually hurt your ranking rather than help it. If your website had no links to it one week and then a week later has hundreds, Google WILL notice and you could get dinged for it or even delisted. However, it is perfectly safe and natural to do some lite linking yourself. For example: If you participate in conversations on forums put a link to your main website in your forum signature if it is allowed. If the discussion pertains to a subject you’ve written an article about on your website then link to that article while taking part in the discussion, remembering to use your keywords as your anchor text.

So there you have it. We started off talking about “Organic Search Results” and then you got me all side tracked and talking about “On Page SEO”, “Off Page SEO”, and even had me ramble on about “Off Site SEO”. I hope you’re happy.

Actually I hope you learned something because I think it’s pretty important information for you to have and understand… and even more important information for you to USE to grow your businesses online viability. Make sure you check in next Monday for the first article in my “Website Optimization For Search Engines”. Hope to see you then.

Huh?

Sometimes things go wrong for all the right reasons! What I mean is that sometimes things just fall apart when you thought you were done and you have no idea how you will get it all back together in the required time but somehow you get it done and when you do it is better then you thought.

Have you ever been working on a document so fast and furious that you don’t hit save periodically? Then the jerk down the hall thought it would be no problem to run three space heaters and then warm his coffee in the microwave. In less time then it takes for a circuit to arc your little masterpiece has gone to the great beyond. After spewing out a few well chosen ten letter words you finish circling your office and get back to it. I think you know where I am going here. Your departed masterpiece is dead and buried but your new work of art is stronger, shorter, more focused and most important saved in your hard drive for posterity.

Some time ago SixVine Media had been invited by the Peoria Chamber of Commerce and the City of Peoria to put on a short seminar to teach business owners how to set up and use a Facebook business page.

We love to teach and both Jeremy and I were excited about this opportunity. Weeks prior to our seminar we blueprinted our talk, created the power point slides, developed talking points and had several rehearsals. This was to be a hands on seminar where the class would bring their laptops to the class and at the end of it have a business page up and running. Or close to it anyways.

Several months earlier Facebook had rolled out the “Timeline” for the personal profiles and it was met, as usual, with an outcry from the community that I thought would never stop, but it did. There are still some sour grapes around but for the most part I think it was a great improvement.

Now is when you go back and re-read the opening line to this post.

Exactly seven days prior to our seminar, I turned my computer on in the morning and there it was… on my business page. A banner headline from Facebook that basically told me I had till the end of March to get my new Timeline business page the way I wanted it or they were going to automatically convert it. I knew Timelines were coming to pages but I didn’t think it would be this soon.

I am doomed! My class…what about my class??? I…Am…Doomed.

OK I wasn’t doomed but I was ticked. How could they do this to me, don’t they know that the class materials were all set? I couldn’t delay the class we were full with a waiting list. Only thing to do was to soldier up and get it done.

So for the next five days I picked through everything, every little piece of material that Facebook had to offer regarding the new Timeline and thankfully they had a lot. This was so new that the normal social media giants were all scrambling to get up to speed also so I felt I was in good company.

We redesigned the slides and even found some examples of new Timelines done by some corporate giants that we could deconstruct and see if there was anything we could glean from them. The outline was becoming more free flowing and easy going then what we had.

On the day of the class I felt that I should go out and empty the contents of my stomach before starting but that is pretty much par for the course.

After I was introduced by Scott Soldat the president of the chamber it was just a blur. Jeremy was the roving assistant professor and handled the usual problems like connectivity and lost content. With out him we would have really bogged down and not reached the goal line.

I always try to assess my teaching speed by the look on the faces of the attendees. If I see that unmistakable glaze start to form then I know I have to back off a little and plow the same ground a little bit more, maybe from a different direction.

The class went very smooth and since then I have had several of the attendees contact me and say how we motivated them to take a more active presence on Facebook. These are small business owners and the true backbone of our economy. They are all experts in what they do and if I can help them grow their business by sharing a little bit of what we do, what we know and what we have learned by trial and error then that puts a smile on my face.

I really don’t think that we would have had the kind of success we did without the “catastrophe” happening only seven days before the grand opening. I know I most likely would not have delved into the business pages Timeline with the gusto that I did without everything going wrong.

See, it turned out well.

So let me know in the comments section how your disaster turned into victory.

Aha!!! I thought, I feel a blog post coming on.

Now we all know the six steps in a customer life cycle and these are:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Trial
4. Purchase
5. Loyalty
6. New Offering

…then repeat of course. Mucho has been written on these so I need not go into them but the last two are the ones that I feel are critical. You spend a lot more money on getting a new customer then you do keeping an old one but the real money is in the old customer. The one who already knows, likes and has trusted you enough to not only buy from you but is a source of those golden referrals.

So I sat down and thought how I am going to show my customers that they are so special to me and that I thank God for them daily? As I said we are B2B but maybe you B2C folks can adapt these to your use or better, come up with more ideas that we can use here.

1. Use the Power of Social Media to Praise Them

Praise them and their products or services but watch out that you don’t become phoney. Don’t talk about how easy it is to use their line combines if you live in a condo in Scottsdale. But pick one product that you have personal experience with and do a 100 character testimonial on Twitter and with a link to their product. Do something different on Face Book and then Linked In. Please don’t use an affiliate link to a product. That’s just insulting and will not benefit your client. Remember this is a thank you…not another revenue stream. Just don’t do a text post on Face Book but use an eye catching picture or graphic so that someone scrolling down will be intrigued.

If they are a service company then the same holds true but you can talk about how what they do has helped others. One of our clients Steve Henry is a best selling business book author and radio show host, The Steve Henry Show, loves to help the small business person grow his business. He is always doing free marketing seminars, where he provides lunch and gives away copies of his book. Last year in December he also had a drawing and gave away two $250 gift cards, you think that helped someone with Christmas. Best of all there is no back of the room sales, no marketing newsletter to sign up for, no CD coaching package, this guy knows how to give back.

Adding up my social media contacts I would say I have about 1400-1500, not much these days but it’s growing. If only 30% clicked “like” on my post then that would go on their page and if 30% of their friends clicked “like” well you can see how quickly this grows. So be creative, you are on social media a lot more then you should be anyway so tell others about your client. Just don’t tell your client what you have done, it kinda takes the shine off of it.

2. Tell Your List

This is a simple one too. In your newsletter or blog make mention of some special attribute that they have. Maybe they related to you that they just had to deal with an awful customer but the way then handled it made you smile and the way that they saved the deal could benefit all of us. There is no greater power then a third party testimonial. On that alone Angie’s List and review sites like Yelp have exploded with new subscribers. I don’t want to hear how great a company is from a spokesperson of that company. But if a friend or even a stranger with no agenda has something to say then I will listen. I don’t know about you but when someone that I respect in marketing gives a nod to a competitor then I am immediately over on that site signing up for their blog and newsletter.

3. Make a Thank You Video.

Make a video? Really? Yup. I would be you are sitting in front of something right now that has everything you need. A webcam with audio and free editing software. This could get really fun especially if you have some employees who might write a skit to thank a client. Just think how much mileage you would get out of that? Your client gets a link to your YouTube video and if it’s funny or very creative how many others do you think he will send it off too. He might even show it to his Rotary Club or Chamber of Commerce group. I can just hear him now, bragging to his business buddies “How many videos did your vendors do for you???” hahaha With the video editing software that came with your computer to can put titles at the front and credits at the end, lay in some music maybe even so pictures or other video. If you have fun with it, it will show and you will have a client for life.

If you are so inclined put in some keywords that relate to your client’s business and that will help too. What I want you to take away from this is to do it, don’t let this moment pass. Let me know your thoughts and what ideas you have to thank you clients. We all need a smile, a pat on the back and someone to say thank you. And I thank you for reading this. Till next time.

It's really all about relationships.

While we do have some clients out of state most of our web design, social media management and video production clients are local. So for us the importance of local link building is critical. When you start to drill down into the subject of local link building and how to do it, there are some obvious results.

Join: Check out the local Chambers of Commerce in the area. They usually will let you attend a few meetings for freebefore putting the squeeze on you to join. Just don’t join because they ask you, really take a look at the quality of the membership, number attending and the general vibe you get from the leadership.

Also meetup.com is a good place to sort out the many networking groups in the area. These local organizations and groups will usually link to your website from theirs and this will assist the search engines in qualifying you as a trusted local resource.

Post: Use the resources that you most likely use every day and that is social media. I use what I call the ‘Trinity: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and within these communities there are search functions which will help you connect with like minded folks who if asked nicely might agree to linking to your site.

Let me say something here are reciprocal linking: BE CAREFUL. Google has caught on to link trading and if your URL ends up on a link farm then you could be banded from ever showing up on a results page. The only thing to do then is the Nuclear Option.

Ask: If you live in a metro area I am sure there are thousands of great local sites and blogs that you can tap into. Many times all you have to do is ask. Remember that if you link back to them or mention their website in one of your posts then this helps them too. Search engines like local links and this will further establish that local relevance that they search for. Visit these sites, read their blog posts (this is critical – don’t fake it) and make intelligent comments with links back to your site.

If their site seems to have a decent following then offer to write guest post for them. Bloggers do go dry and it is nice to have an informative guest post to go to when their deadline is at hand. To find more sites then you need just Google the name of your city or zip code with the word blog.

Submit: Get your site listed in directories by searching for your city and the word directory and if that is too many then narrow the focus by using zip code or geographical quadrant. Every site that you visit you should leave a comment and a link back to your site. Review sites like Yelp are amazingly helpful and there are many others too.

My last comment is that many gurus have said that “Content is King” but I disagree. Content that is garbage will produce rotten results. Great content rules but relationships are King. You build those relationships by writing and posting authentic content that will attract attention and that people will want to link to, repost and retweet. You do that at the search engines will be parked at your door.

Now if you think this is some usable information why not share it with others or put a link to it on your Face Book or Twitter page.

Love to hear your thoughts on this so leave a comment below.

Can you guess what the keyword is in this post?

Over the next few posts I am going to give you some simple tips on ways to optimize your website. Of course there is really no substitute for a professional who not only knows search optimization techniques but actually invests his/her time staying up with the changes in the SEO protocols.

Many times small business owners approach web site design and web management as a DIY type project. Some times this works OK but most of the time it lacks the underlying structure which gives the website the meat that the search engines really like to feed on. Keywords are an important part of that structure and demand special attention. The ability to select the right keywords requires a solid understanding of your target market and what information they are looking for.

Because the search engine algorithms are more carefully guarded then the formula for Coke SEO pros have always used a trial and error method for gaining rank. They would try something and if the ranking went up then they figured they were onto something and would use it for other clients.

We did that too. We would suggest to our clients that when they were creating content that they have a list of keywords in front of them and create paragraphs of content around those keywords.

It worked…for a while.

This is called “keyword stuffing”.

But search engines caught on and so did the site visitors who quickly realized that what they were reading was not meant for them but for a bot.

Keyword stuffing is dumping every possible keyword or phrase into the content or meta tags of the web page. Here is an example of a bad meta description. This is for our client’s film to DVD transfer site and would read as follows: “8mm, video, VHS, transfer, DVD, 16mm, film .” This example has only keywords and no sentence structure.

A good meta description would read something like: “Get the very best in video or film to DVD transfers including 8mm, 16mm and all video formats. Take a look at our services and place your order today!” As you can see this is not stuffed with keywords and has a call to action.

When a search engine bot crawls your site, it is gathering information about the site or page from the title tags, content and keywords. At the same time it is indexing this information to return selected pages on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It compares the words and “ranks” the site depending on how the information matches up.

Keyword stuffing no longer works because the search engine’s algorithm quickly determines if the keywords you stuffed into your content are used an inordinate amount of times. If your site contains a huge amount (according to them) of a single keyword, your site will actually drop in the rankings rather than rise. Not what you want to see.

If I knew what the threshold amount was for keywords being used then this post would have been a lot shorter. I would have said: Use one keyword per 183 characters of text and your ranking will rise an average of three slots per 48 hours. HAHAHA right.

Bottom line is don’t succumb to the temptation to cram your content full of keywords in an attempt to raise your rankings. The result will be detrimental to what you want to accomplish.

Leave the stuffing for Thanksgiving and just write good, solid content that humans and search engines will love. Or you could call us to handle the content creation and the SEO work.

On the next post I will talk about the do’s and don’ts of link building. Hit the subscribe button so that you will not miss it.