Category: Marketing

Explainer videos are one of the best marketing tools used by businesses to increase conversion rate and seek their customers’ attention by creating awareness about their product. Start-up companies desperately look for customer acquisition as they are new to the market and YouTube serves as the world’s leading platform to market your explainer videos. YouTube is a great video-hosting site owned by Google. It gets a prominent listing on Google if you carefully optimize your content. Moreover, you can track various statistics on YouTube like the number of views, rating, number of likes and dislikes, audience demographics, viewer drop-off while watching video, source of traffic and a lot more. Traffic source is extremely helpful for you to discover the resource used to view your video. You can use these insights to optimize your metadata, tags and keywords to appeal more to the respective target audience. Following are the 10 tips for start-up companies to promote their video on YouTube: Rich file name People often forget to change the raw file name in their computer while uploading video on YouTube. This sharply affects their ranking on search engines. YouTube gives a lot of importance to the raw file name used in your video while uploading. Though a rich title has its own role in ranking; a keyword rich raw file name will give more visibility to your video. For instance, it is better to have to file name as YouTube-Marketing-Tips.mov rather than a default file name like vid-20-06-2014.mov Integrate it with social media Videos have the quality of being highly sharable. All YouTube videos can be easily posted on leading social media networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. Moreover, the name YouTube itself adds a lot of credibility to your video. When people read the link associated with your video and find it linked to YouTube, they assume that the content would be authentic. People love to share new, informative and quality video content with their friends. Post your video on all your social media profiles so that your target audience can engage with it on the platform of their choice. Furthermore, social media is an avenue for people where they can express freely and interact with you. They add value to your video by leaving critical feedback. Brand your video It is fairly easy to download a YouTube video. Many marketers with dubious intentions use your video for their benefit. To avoid being in such a situation, it is highly advisable that you brand your video with the logo and name of your company. Preferably use a watermark that claims your ownership over the video. Additionally, it enhances your brand image. People love to associate with the brand when they like the video and it helps in improving your brand recall value. While creating a brand on YouTube, you must focus on the content. It should relate to your brand. The style and look of your videos should be consistent across the channel. Insert call to action links  You must decide what action you want your target audience to take after they finish watching your video. One thing for sure they can do is to like and share your video on YouTube but that does not give you direct benefit. You can rather ask them for subscription to your videos, newsletter, link to visit your website, blog and social media profile for further information. It is a great way to generate powerful leads as people who subscribe to your videos, sign up for newsletters and like your social media page are genuinely interested in your product. Else you can direct them to your e-store for purchase. Use fan videos Small gestures matter the most. People love to see themselves on YouTube. It is an exciting way to win their trust and build brand loyalty. Request your existing customers to send videos to you showing their experience with your product and how they use your product. This way, they’ll get popularity through your video channel and they will feel glad and take pride to be a part of your company. And most importantly, it will inspire others to become your customer. You can post these fan videos to your blog, website and other marketing channels. Tell a story Story-telling is an art and people love to hear interesting stories on a video channel like YouTube. A gripping story will garner a large number of views and your product will get popular than ever. You can follow a PAS approach (problem-agitate-solve) wherein you show a problem generally faced by your target audience. Show how this problem is creating hurdles for their business. Introduce your product and show how it is an answer to their problem. But you must remember, people are not interested to hear about your product features. They rather want to know how your product adds value to their work. Use a case study A case study is a real life story of your customers and their experience while using your product. Interview your existing customers and ask them how they feel about your product. Good or bad, every opinion counts as it looks real and valid. As a start-up company, you need genuine support from your customers to testify your claims. And there is no better place than YouTube to market your brand. Moreover, case studies help you to understand your customers better and resolve their issues in future. Use an attractive thumbnail Thumbnail is a cover image of your video that reflects what your video is about. It is very important to have an attractive thumbnail as it can persuade or dissuade viewers to click on it. Thumbnails are visible in search results so make sure they match with the title of the videos. By default, YouTube gives you three choices for selecting your video thumbnail. Select the thumbnail that best represents your video. If you use Windows Movie Maker to upload the video then you can create a thumbnail image of your choice. Optimize your YouTube

With the growth of smartphones, tablets and other personal digital equipment users, marketers are devising innovative ways to reach their target audiences. The trends in digital marketing change with technological advancement and consumer behavior. Marketing through explainer video with a street level interaction with target customers for enhanced engagement is going to be the leading way of digital marketing. Marketers will increasingly engage in cross-screen marketing to cater to the audience present on multiple screens like smartphones, tablet, game consoles, wearable technology, laptops and PCs. Brands with retail stores are pushing location-based marketing to target their customers through GPS technology integrated with demographic characteristics. Furthermore, tightly focused content aka content marketing is going to be fine-tuned further to deliver content relevant to the individual customer. There are many websites that are offering the latest development in the world of digital marketing for consumption by entrepreneurs, businesses and marketers. Following are the top 10 reference sites trending in the latest updates in digital marketing: EConsultancy.com It is one of the leading websites that guides you through the nuances of digital marketing and e-commerce. With award-winning market research reports and statistics in market data, best practices, supplier selection and support services like e-learning, case studies and expert guide, E-consultancy has a lot to offer you as a small business entrepreneur or an enterprise. Over 250,000 subscribers of E-consultancy also include giants like Microsoft, BBC, IBM, Dell and Sony. Their best practices guide includes topics like SEO, online retail, email marketing, social media etc.  Besides that, E-consultancy takes pride in its market-tested template files for online brand analysis and request for proposal. Social events and analyst-led roundtable conferences feeding you the emerging digital trends are added benefits offered through its subscription. TechCrunch.com TechCrunch is an amazing platform for news updates from start-ups, mobile, gadgets, enterprise and social media networks. TechCrunch has made its presence felt across the world by organizing worldwide symposiums conducted by eminent speakers from the industry.  TCTV is an exciting video section of this technology driven website with sub-segments like TCTV News, Fly or Die and Foundation. TCTV news includes breaking news from start ups, interviews and product demonstration videos. Fly or Die section reviews latest gadgets and products. On the other hand, Foundation segment includes in-depth interviews of entrepreneurs. Another thrilling section of the website is Crunchbase. Crunchbase is one of the world’s most comprehensive dataset of start-up companies with thousands of contributors giving you the latest information about what’s making the news. Entrepreneur.com As the name says, this website has it all what an entrepreneur seeks for. The most prolific thing about it is that there is detailed classification of content catering to different subjects like leadership, growth and strategy, marketing, technology, social media, finance, entrepreneurs, franchise, starting a business and so on. For instance, in the social media section, you can selectively get the news from a particular social network like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter etc. Similarly, the marketing section contains updates from the advertising world, branding, customer service, market research, online marketing and SEO tactics. This website shares content from eminent contributors to the likes of managers and web designers. Mashable.com This New York headquartered website providing news and information from a variety of subjects has become very popular over the years. Its 34 million unique monthly visitors testify the fact. It covers essential updates from leading social media platforms, technological updates including software, mobile applications, website development and design to latest gadgets and mobiles. Besides that, it covers news from business world including advertising, hiring workers, marketing, small businesses and start-ups. Adding to it is the entertainment and world news section that makes it a versatile site for its visitors. Another good thing about this website is its quick display interface like Google search. As soon as you point your cursor to a section, the latest articles from the section are displayed. Social Media Examiner This website is dedicated to help the businesses to gain insights into social media marketing. It feeds the visitors with comprehensive articles from experts, case studies, interviews and industry research. It is also famous for its podcast show on social media marketing that ranks in the top 10 marketing podcast on iTunes. Apart from that, the website hosts both offline and online conference on social media. Its Social Media Marketing Networking Club on LinkedIn is renowned for the level of interaction its garners. Another distinguishing aspect of social media examiner is its online magazine called My Kids’ Adventure that publishes content guiding the busy parents to plan various adventurous activities for their children. Content Marketing Institute Content marketing institute focuses on the various aspects of content marketing strategies to help small businesses and start-ups. It is great for marketers who are looking for a content strategy. Loaded with multiple examples of content marketing, this website helps you out for getting better results in your campaign. It emphasizes on the use of visual content to attract target consumers. What’s more, it conducts online training sessions, webinars and events and provides consulting services through its expert panel.  Its flagship quarterly print and digital magazine is dedicated to the latest from content marketing world that helps the global content marketers with new publishing skills that can be applied to their own organization. CopyBlogger The CopyBlogger homepage is uploaded with an explainer video that fully explains the potential of this website to help its subscribers. CopyBlogger is the leading website that educates the people for valuable content writing. Though CopyBlogger posts 5-6 articles a week but they are powerful and high in quality. Besides that, it has published 16 high-impact ebooks on content marketing, SEO, email marketing, keyword research, landing pages and a lot more. A 20-part marketing course fully guides you through the process of online content strategy. It also conducts seminars and webinars that help the marketers to improve traffic to their blogs and increase conversion rates. Their online forum is an active place for discussion on real-time issues faced by

Not one to remain stagnant or predictable, Twitter again rolled out new changes to its design last month. It makes the profile look much more Facebook-like but it keeps all the goodness that Twitter is famous for. What are the changes? There are two major changes to the Twitter design. It asks you for a cover photo, which is basically your background shot. It should be around 1500 x 500 pixels. The profile picture too has moved to the left side of the screen and it needs to be around 400 x 400 pixels for optimum results. The third option is to pin a tweet of yours that you really like so that it appears at the top. It could be anything that you like or anything that has been written by you. You can pin that tweet to the top so that everyone sees it. Whoever visits your profile will now see the pinned tweet at the top, along with your extra-large background image and a new profile image (if you wish to change it). The re-design makes Twitter look very Facebookish but that is where the similarities end. Twitter is now more personalized and you can sort your photos and videos the way you want to. Another big change that has come to Twitter is you can choose to view people’s tweets in two ways: just their tweets or the tweets that they have sent to others and their replies. A lot of people are using Twitter now Though minor changes, these can create a lot of buzz around Twitter. In the last one month, we have seen more Facebook users using Twitter now than ever. It has got something to do with the design probably. Twitter looks more user-friendly now and it is more approachable to people who are used to Facebook-like interfaces. The fact that in the last one month a lot of people have changed to the new Twitter design says a lot about how cool the new design really is. While it might look like Twitter is imitating Facebook, it clearly is not. It has just taken the good qualities of Facebook and made it its own. This will ensure that those who are not comfortable using Twitter will begin to use it the way they want to. Twitter is no more the difficult social networking site it used to be. Two impressive changes that we vouch for What we really like about the new design are the best tweets that can be pinned and also the large background image. Twitter was always ephemeral and never held anything for a long time. This made it difficult for marketing professionals to keep a message constant. They had to repeatedly tweet the same thing much to the annoyance of their followers. Now, an important tweet can be chosen and pinned to the top of the profile so that your followers always see that. This ensures that you do not add to the noise that already exists and will, instead, come across as someone who is interested in communicating the right kind of messages. Secondly, the background image is super-impressive too. With almost 1500 pixels to showcase, you can use it for a number of marketing purposes. Whether you want to use the background image to market your logo or as an infographic that showcases all the good work you have done, the new background image certainly is a great way to make sure that people take notice of what you are trying to communicate. Start using Twitter now All said and done, it is important to learn how to use Twitter properly. It is the second-most important social networking site today and is also used by some of the most influential people. The new changes to the profile also gives indication that Twitter will begin to focus more on advertising, which is what we all are most interested in. If you want to remain in touch with those influential people, you had better start using Twitter right now. It is an easy platform that is not difficult to learn. It is also fun and entertaining to use Twitter once you get the hang of it; and of course, it is a very powerful marketing tool.

If you have run a Google Scholar search, you would know what a great tool it is to those who look for scholarly document. No matter which topic you are looking for, all the published papers and abstracts of those papers (when entire papers are not available for viewing) is brought in the search results. What is Google Scholar and what does it do? Google Scholar has helped people to write blogs, to conduct literature reviews and to write review articles themselves, using material available online. Google Scholar has grown to become on the largest databases of academic material, whether they are journals, papers or even books. This has made it to be one of the most important and formidable technical databases where one could look for information that is peer-reviewed. What are its advantages and disadvantages? While Google Scholar certainly has a number of advantages, it still lacks the kind of professionalism that PubMed and other databases have. Google Scholar is also not given the kind of attention it deserves by Google, for obvious reasons. There isn’t much money to make from Google Scholar. From regular Google search results, it makes a lot of money. In order to gauge the advantages and disadvantages, Péter Jacsó at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, Hawaii, USA conducted a general review of the recent history of the Google Scholar search engine. He started to dig data right from its inception in November 2004. He feels that there are massive omissions in the content that is displayed in the search results and that future changes are required to make Google Scholar more amenable to being a research database. The study, methodology and results Titled “Google Scholar: the pros and the cons”, Péter Jacsó’s paper clearly presents the status of Google Scholar. He goes on to say that Google Scholar has received a lot of attention and praise but Google has not lived up to the expectations. Though it is free to search and look for information on Google Search, it does not bring all the results that a scholar might be looking for. Moreover, in spite of trying to push scholarly articles to Google Scholar, Google has not made the efforts to index them; and we are talking about papers published by eminent journals from eminent universities. This paucity needs to be addressed by Google in order to fill the gaps. Peter feels that highly relevant information has been left out and that has caused a lot of disappointment among those who believed this would be a great tool. Still, it is one of the better tools to discover papers and articles that you probably couldn’t find anywhere else. Google Scholar is, indeed, one of the best methods to conduct a quick literature review. Google needs to pay more attention to Google Scholar Whether you are looking at writing an academic blog or you are fascinated by scientific literature, having access to peer-reviewed scientific papers is very important. In order to ensure that you get what you need, you need to use Google Scholar and other databases. However, according to this researcher, Google Scholar is far from perfect. It is unfortunate that Google has not paid attention to this much valuable resource, which could be beneficial to businesses as well. Whether you are making a presentation or writing a report, having access to published papers is very important. What Google Scholar does is, it gives you a number of research articles and also lets you subscribe to them so that you continue to receive updates on your favorite topic. All this published data can be converted into infographics, blogs and even presentations. We sincerely hope that Google pays more attention to Google Scholar and fix all the kinks within the search engine. This is a formidable tool that will help everyone, right from school students to business owners. Certainly, a little more interest in Google Scholar from the corporate world will put a little pressure on Google to make the necessary changes to the algorithm. You can read Péter Jacsó’s paper here. Reference Péter Jacsó, 2005. Google Scholar: the pros and the cons, Online Information Review, 29(2), 208-14.

As businesses constantly strive to make their web content more accessible, they increasingly find themselves seeking the help of SEO professionals. However, the SEO arena has changed in recent years and what used to be the norm a few years ago has no place at work today. One of the newest trends in the realm of SEO is web mining. This rapidly growing research area consists of web usage mining, web structure mining and web content mining. Web usage mining refers to the analysis of user access patterns on usage logs. The structure of hyperlinks, which is crucial to SEO is studied under web structure mining. Finally, web content mining helps SEO professionals to analyze information and trends using web page content. What is web content mining and why do we need to understand it? Though web content mining is related to data and text mining, it is fundamentally different from the two. Web data is either semi-structured or not structured at all. Data mining analyses structured data, whereas, text mining analyses unstructured data. Web content mining, on the other hand, analyses the semi-structured quality of the web. By using creative applications to mine semi-structured data on the web, SEO professionals can easily understand where they need to focus, which keywords they must target and why certain pages are not receiving enough traffic, in spite of having great content. What are the different kinds of web content mining? Web content mining can be differentiated under two broad categories: Database View and Information Retrieval View. Database View helps analysts to arrive at better information management. It also helps them with querying on the web by trying to analyze the structure of the website and transforming it entirely into a database itself. On the other hand, Information Retrieval View analyses both unstructured and semi-structured data. Studies reveal that most searches consist of a bag of words or a key phrase. These key phrases help people at arriving on pages that are distinctly textual in nature. For semi-structured data, HTML structures inside the documents are used. Some of the most important techniques in web content mining are: Data/information extraction: The first step towards understanding SEO is to understand the nature of the web itself. As web is made of information, web content mining involves understanding this huge database of information. Firstly, one needs to understand structured data, which includes products and search results. Machine learning and automatic extraction techniques are used to tackle information extraction. Schema matching and information matching: The next technique is to understand how data is represented. Though Internet has a lot of information, it is displayed differently on each of the websites. Consistency of content is not possible as different people write different things on the same topic. In this technique, semantic matching of similar data is done in order to categorize websites that offer similar content. Opinion extraction: Thanks to social media, extracting opinions and beliefs has never been so easy. This process also includes analyzing content from blogs, editorials and other content that offer varied opinions. Knowledge synthesis: This process includes generating concept hierarchies so that we can get a coherent picture about what is important and what is less important. If manually done, it takes a very long time and it might not even be possible to engage in ontology with all the information that is available on the internet. Restructuring SEO strategies: Last but not the least, web content mining needs to lead to responsible restructuring of SEO strategies. It includes re-structuring of key phrases and keywords that needs to be targeted. It is important for SEO professionals to know that web content mining can yield very important information. It tells them what topics need to be given attention to and how clients can build their web copy to make sure that they are reaching the right target audience. Modern software makes it much easier to engage in web content mining than it used to be, a few years ago. If SEO consultants spend a little time trying to understand the various web content mining software programs available today, it will not only help them to gain knowledge but will also help in growing their businesses.