This can be very difficult indeed thanks to scrapers and spammers flooding search results, past customers who might have had a bad experience and want to make it known, and any brands that use similar keywords or names that dominate key Google results.

The truth is, your brand is not automatically protected online. If you fail to properly protect your reputation, including through social media, you run the risk of being viewed as less credible than your competitors. This could keep your company from ever succeeding, or even worse, affect your personal life.

What many people fail to understand though is that many of reputation problems can be prevented even before the brand name is even born! And here’s how!

What to Do *Before* You Pick a Brand Name

Today choosing a good brand name is even more important than ever: Your brand name is what is going to secure you stable search engine positions and it’s also what is going to stick in your visitors’ mind.

Here are a few tools to check once you think you have a few good options in mind:

1. Google Search

The first step is getting a clear picture of how original your brand name is. I always suggest doing a Google search for your brand, whether that is a company name, a product or yourself. Then take a close look at the result.

Use Google Search to see what the Internet shows for your brand name. Try mispellings to check for negative results that are slightly different.

Here are two main questions to answer before you go further:

The answers will show you clearly whether you need to give this brand another test!

2. Urban Dictionary

Internet jargon is unpredictable: you never know which meme resulted in a new negative connotation to a semi-ordinary word or phrase. Therefore it’s a smart idea to refer to the slang glossary to make sure your future brand bears no negative association which will be hard to get rid of.

You may find that the non-threatening brandable domain you picked up has a double meaning that will infer negative connotations.

Tip: Always refer to “Related” phrases in the left-hand column as we as tags under the listing:

3. Social Media Moniker Checks

You need to have full control of your brand, which means if someone has already registered your brand name as a moniker at a major social media site, you might be in trouble:

Note: I am mentioning username check at the end on purpose: If you really love your future name choice and it has passed the first two tests, maybe you will still stick to it even if it has already been grabbed on Twitter (Besides, with hundreds of millions Twitter users across the world, each user holding a unique moniker, it’s getting harder and harder to come up with easily-branded catchy usernames).

The first thing you’ll want to do when you settle on a brand name is register all social media accounts. You may find that an associated Twitter ID or Facebook Page URL is already taken, but that is common in today’s digital environment.

However if your future brand name is massively in use, you probably want to stay away from it.

Tip: use a username or brand name checker that will search social media accounts and other websites to give you every available instance of your name, and direct you to those who might already be using it. I prefer Username Check and Knowem.

Conclusion

When it comes to choosing a brand name, there is probably no perfect choice. I am sure “Google” seemed a stupid name once as well as “Cuil” did. Yet, the first one appeared a hit (and turned out to be hilariously easily branded) while the latter never picked up. It’s hard to predict!

However if you want to future-proof your brand, you should at least pay attention to obvious red flags. It can be tricky, but with a bit of know-how and some effort you can really avoid being trapped by your own choice when it’s too late to change anything!

It’s safe to say the bar has been sufficiently lowered— anybody can start making videos for their website. But just because YouTube is free doesn’t mean it’s the best option for marketing all that great video content you’ve been creating. Even if you upload a video to YouTube and then embed that video on your site you are creating a duplicate that could hurt your chances for ranking and create unnecessary competition in the search engines.

For this reason self-hosting video content can generate much better results than YouTube videos, assuming the goal is to engage new visitors who are searching for keywords within your industry or niche.

The Goal

Self-hosted videos have a few key advantages:

Of course, it depends on your video content’s goals. If the goal is to take the internet by storm with a Dollar Shave Club-style viral video, then YouTube’s place as the second-largest search engine in the world makes it the obvious home for your content.

But being the next Dollar Shave Club is a little like playing Powerball: the payoff is huge but the chances of hitting it big are astronomical.

Now, many smart marketers have definitely leveraged YouTube videos and channels to build incremental traffic and brand recognition, but in terms of growing organic traffic directly to your site, self-hosted video is the way to go.

The Nuts and Bolts

OK, so you’ve decided the goal is get your pages ranking well for targeted keyword terms with the help of video, and you’re on board with the idea of hosting those videos yourself so that YouTube doesn’t steal link and social juice and SERP space. Great!

Things to consider:

Bandwidth. If you host videos on your own server, be prepared. It’s not likely that a self-hosted video will go crazy viral but if it does you don’t want to crash your whole site. Ideally you should host videos on a separate, dedicated server so that in the event you do go viral and start getting thousands of simultaneous hits just your video server goes down and not your whole site.

Alternatively, you can use a third-party hosting solution like Wistia. These companies will handle all your bandwidth needs plus most have a pretty comprehensive analytics and social sharing package.

Embed code. Make sure you do a simple flash or HTML embed! Java or iframe embeds are difficult for Google to crawl and while there is decent evidence that Googlebot can figure out what you’re hiding in there it’s definitely advisable to make things easy.

By the same token, make sure you customize the embed code you give everyone else who wants to post your video to include an iframe with a link back to your site outside the iframe. That way Google will have a hard time crawling duplicate versions and continue to recognize the original on your site as the canonical version. You can also include a canonical tag in the embed code to really make sure the search engines get the picture.

Schema Markup

Mark up your video with microdata so that a thumbnail and description display in the SERPs. Research has shown this can significantly increase your click-through rate even if you’re ranked further down the page as user’s eyes are drawn to the thumbnail image.

Keywords. Pick a couple keywords to target and make sure they are consistent throughout the video and the page: title, URL, H1, video file name, video title, and content. Bonus points for including a transcript of your video on the page!

Content Decisions

So you’re ready to rock out some pages on your site with some self-hosted video… but what should the video be about?

You want to make something that’s inherently linkable and shareable but also represents your brand well. The expectations for minimum production value (how well the video is produced) also go up for customers and your company when a video is hosted on your website as opposed to YouTube, so keep that in mind while brainstorming a topic.

How-to guides and other resourceful information that leverages your industry/niche expertise is almost always the best bet for creating a video that can earn links and shares. Product information videos can also be very successful, although you typically need many such videos to start moving the needle. That’s why it’s a great idea to start with a how-to guide targeting some higher volume keyword terms in order to earn the buy-in to fund a larger number of product-level videos.

The Self-Hosted Secret Weapon: Nailing The Long Tail

Adding rich content like video to your web pages also helps you nail the long tail by raising that page’s organic profile for variations of your primary target keyword. This is certainly helped by all those additional links and social mentions your page is earning after you post video.

But video can also start showing up in universal and video-specific search results for long tail terms simply by virtue of the fact that there is not a lot of competition in the video search results for lots of keywords, therefore raising the likelihood that your video will be picked to show up for even distantly related terms.

Of course, an embedded YouTube video can also show up in universal and video search results. But YouTube is almost certainly more powerful than your site, and therefore the YouTube version will likely get the nod in the SERPs, which means potential visitors to your site must make an extra click to get to your domain. This is where insisting on self-hosting can provide a clear advantage in the SERPs.

Case Study: Christmas Gifts For Men

I work for Cloud 9 Living, an experience gifting company based in Boulder, CO. December is a huge month for us. Christmas keywords are insanely competitive. So last month I developed a video that we self-hosted on an optimized page on the Cloud 9 site.

The day the video went live we ranked #34 for the keyword term “christmas gifts for men.” The page received 26 visits from 13 organic keywords. For the past two weeks that number has steadily increased and yesterday the page received 97 visits from 37 keywords.

Traffic for the past two weeks is up 170% over the previous two weeks. Granted, some of that has to do with increased search volume for Christmas-related keywords after Thanksgiving, but still, the improvement has been noticeable. Organic traffic for this page is up 20% over the same time period last year, and a whole slew of long tail keywords are driving traffic that we didn’t get any visitors from last year.

Best of all, a marked-up thumbnail of the video is bouncing around in the SERPs between #11 and #14 for “christmas gifts for men.” We hope to break into the top ten by December 25th. Keep your fingers crossed!

Could you have achieved these results with a YouTube embed? Certainly. That’s not the point. The point is that there’s not a YouTube video circulating out there competing with my site for the same set of already competitive keywords. That should mean more visits and engagement with Cloud 9 Living’s site over time, not to mention every link we have built so far points to our site and not YouTube.

A few factors definitely contributed to this page’s success: 

Self-hosting video may not be the least expensive route for video SEO but it can certainly be a successful one if correctly implemented. Insisting on keeping your video content unique and only located on your site means you control what shows up in the SERPs for your targeted keywords, and that can add up some very ROI-positive results over time.

A savvy website will keep an updated page of frequently asked questions to cut back on redundant contact submissions, visitor complaints and to help educate visitors about your brand.

This type of information resource is an under used, but very effective investment for most businesses. Every business that requires customer help lines, support personnel or dedicated customer support representatives needs to offer a comprehensive online resource as an alternate for customers that will actively seek answers for themselves. Getting answers instantly by searching on your mobile phone is much more appealing than calling customer support and waiting for 20 minutes.
Many customers will try and solve product problems by searching online before they call customer support. I believe that if businesses invested more in these types of simple information resources regarding products, and encouraged customers to use them, customer support costs could be reduced drastically.

Most information dense websites will have a frequently asked questions page of some sort. Even though it’s a common tool and isn’t a new idea by any standards, very few businesses get the most out of their use. Here are some easily implemented tips to improve the function, form and usage of your frequently asked questions page or other information resource.

Organization is Key

The size of your information database will depend on the size of your audience, the quantity and variety of questions they ask, and the complexity of your topic. Some businesses may be able to answer 90 percent of customer inquiries with a list of 10 questions. Others may need a vast database of hundreds of answers just to handle half of the questions they’ve received more than a dozen times this year.

• Plan the structure of your resource so questions are divided into manageable groups.
• Never go more than three levels deep in a directory structure intended for the public.
• Use the simplest terms and descriptions possible for categories.
• Organize all directory structures in alphabetical order

The designers that worked on Web Cash’s FAQ decided to dedicate the first section to the most common questions overall, and subsequent sections to the different individual needs organized by the role of the person asking.

 
Even if your FAQ or help index contains thousands of articles, I suggest creating a landing page that displays the 10 most researched questions. In most cases a small amount of information will address the majority of customer inquiries. Most users will stop using an information resource if they navigate past more than three screens without finding relevant information. Most users that do not find satisfactory information during their first experience will not return.

Make it Searchable

How do visitors phrase the questions? Consider the language that your average customer would use and format your articles to include those words. Use keywords, tags and descriptions to optimize for internal search.

If your resource is extremely large, like a law library or medical dictionary, you may want to consider integrating a semantic indexing framework such as XML, RDF, OWL, Unicode, Uniform Resource Identifiers, and other schemas to help with indexing.

The Yahoo Style Guide is an information rich resource about which standards are best for writers working for online publications. Yahoo! figured out that writers would use the search function in most cases, so they developed the portal to emphasize search, which usually works in one try if you’re looking for relevant information.

By including several visible search boxes you address the need for immediate gratification that the Internet implies. Users will be more likely to use your resource again if they find relevant information during their initial use. Most people are familiar with Google and other popular search engines, and a similar feature in your FAQ will be instantly recognized by most visitors as a valuable tool.

Navigation and Design

Research shows that users of help sections and extensive FAQs trust the sources more if the layout and design of the user interface is usable and comfortable. The design and layout needs to be responsive and intuitive, as well as simple to navigate.

The Sharist uses breadcrumb navigation to keep users from feeling lost or having to start their search from the beginning when deep in their Q and A section.

These components can increase a user’s experience:

Adoption Is the Hard Part

Creating a comprehensive and useful information resource is easy when the subject is something you work with every day. Who better to explain an oil change than the crew at Penzoil? The real challenge begins when you work at increasing the use of your resource by customers. The FAQ needs to be a customer’s first stop on their search for answers.

Google and Facebook have both taken a backwards, but effective, approach at curtailing the need for a customer support call center. They don’t give out their phone number… or any e-mail address, or contact information at all for that matter. When you search for a way to contact them you’re routed around their FAQ several times, and only after stating that your question wasn’t answered do you get access to a contact form. When you use it, you’re often to the point where the answer to your question is “we do not offer support on this level, or your request is against our policy. Here is a link to the FAQ page that says so”.

This works for them because their product is ubiquitous and dealing with their non-existant customer support is the cost of doing business. Many times I’ve searched through dozens of support pages only to reach a dead end with no recourse. This isn’t the supportive and open image that you want for your business.

No One Should Ever Criticize Your Support

You need to leave other options open. The best thing you can do to increase adoption rates is to focus on usability, simplicity, and relevance. This begins with organization, relies on searchability and ease of use, and is optimized through navigation and design.

I suggest keeping statistics about what customers are asking and designing your FAQ to represent real-time needs. Make the first page display the 10 most asked questions at the top, and then include categories below that. Set up a system that tracks all customer inquiries, and if possible update your FAQ every time you answer a question. Your goal here is to never answer the same question twice.

Route all inquiries through online contact forms, but continue to be very proactive in responding, and offer an alternate support contacts for customers that are completely against digital communication. When a customer disregards the FAQ and sends in a question that you’ve already answered, direct them to the relevant page on your FAQ. If their question hasn’t been addressed, write up a complete and effective response, and add another entry into your FAQ. You can make gains easier by re-training repeat callers than by advertising your intentions to a customer base that isn’t asking questions at the moment.

If your FAQ works as well as SIRI and customers can get help instantly through their mobile devices, why would they want to call customer service? Return on Investment doesn’t have to be an increase in sales and profits; it can also be a large decrease in cost, or gains in customer satisfaction and overall product value. No question about it, your business needs a FAQ, and possibly a more robust type of information resource. The only questions left are in the details.

So why would I oppose everyone and their dog being on social? Because too many are doing it for the wrong reasons; in most cases,  just because everyone else is. If your competitor were to jump off a bridge, would you follow?

It takes thought, strategy, time and effort to utilize the powerful tools presented through social media. And more importantly, it takes a human approach. You have to like people. If you aren’t well suited to social media interaction, you don’t know how social media can help you, and you haven’t formulated a strategy to make that happen, it’s time to re-evaluate your business’s digital presence.

Make Social Media Coffee with Friends

No one wants to communicate with someone who doesn’t reciprocate. No one wants to talk to someone who only talks about themselves. And no one wants to support someone who takes, but never gives.

It seems like a simple concept, but how many brands or people can you think of who are guilty of all of the above?

Do you like other people? Do you enjoy yourself when interacting with others? You may have to let go of some beliefs or personality quirks to be a ‘social person’, or you may not be a ‘social person’ at all.

Amy Jo Martin of Digital Royalty explains it well in her book Renegades Write the Rules: How the Digital Royalty Use Social Media to Innovate
, “Those who want to win over and keep an audience today have to dig deep and then adjust to the new way of doing things. There are countless competitors in the marketplace with a similar, if not the exact same, type of service or product offering. Your brand’s intent and personality are the differentiating factors.”

The first step in humanizing your brand begins with a very simple question:

Who is your brand?

You can’t create authentic relationships with your fans and followers if you aren’t authentic yourself. And remember, when you enter the world of social media you need to be prepared for all of your secrets to be exposed; transparency is rule #1. So how do you answer such a broad question? Whether you are just getting started or you are rethinking your current brand strategy, these 7 tips will help you build a dynamic brand your community will want to engage with.

Define Your Objectives.

If you aren’t clear on why you’re using social media, how can you expect to see results? You know what your brand wants to achieve, and those goals are the basis for your communication strategy. If your objective is to be a thought leader in your industry, it will affect your content. If you want to drive sales, it will affect your target market. Every cause carries with it an affect.

Find Your Voice.

Think of your brand as a person. How would he/she sound? You don’t need to be an English teacher to gain credibility online, you need to be real. Regardless of if it’s the experienced CEO or the new intern communicating on your social media channels, your voice needs to stay consistent and easily identifiable. Pick 5 qualities you want your brand to embody, and create guidelines for what kind of punctuation is acceptable. Do you think your brand would use emoticons and exclamation marks? It’s those little details that make a big difference.

Seek Your People.

Your target audience will find you when you position yourself in the right niche. Identify the brands, individuals, partners and allies you want to be associated with that have similar target demographics to yours. Engaging with like-minded brands will extend your reach to a broader audience of potential consumers.

Break The Ice.

Every party has one guest who just stands in the corner and keeps to themselves, don’t let that be you. You need to initiate contact with your potential consumers and with related brands. Introduce yourself! And build your relationships from there. Hootsuite offers an incredible tool in its search stream feature. You can enter keywords related to your brand or industry and monitor conversations happening in real time and find opportunities to connect and engage with your audience.

Be A Friend with Benefits.

Most people, including myself, hate automatic direct messages’. There is nothing sincere about an auto-generated, generic message. You wouldn’t walk up to someone in real life and say, “nice to meet you, do you want to buy my e-book”. Why would you do it online? What are you bringing to the relationship?

Whether it’s supporting them by sharing their content or offering them a tip or trick they may find useful…offer something! Social is not a space where you can take, take, take and expect to succeed. Be generous with your communication and relationships. Gary Vaynerchuk does a great job of reminding Nicki Minaj about value exchange in this video.

Timing isn’t Everything. 

In an ideal world, you would have the ability to monitor your social streams all day everyday and respond within seconds. That is not realistic for most companies. While responding in a timely matter is optimal, you don’t always need to respond right away, especially if it means compromising your credibility.

If you’re asked a question that you don’t know the answer to, take the time to find the correct answer by asking someone in your company. If you receive bad feedback, a defensive response will get you negative attention, while a solution will show you care. Your community appreciates a genuine and well thought out response far more than a 2 second reply time.

Be Multidimensional.

It may be tempting to use social media strictly as a sales tool… but how is that working for you? It’s a dialogue, not a monologue. No offense, but no one wants to hear you talk about yourself all the time. Humanizing your brand means curating and creating multi dimensional content and a community hub for your niche.

Identify your brands’ interests, and what kind of content your audience would appreciate. Whether it’s motivational, educational, or brand related, switch it up. Dedicate certain days of the week to specific kinds of content. Using Facebook Insights or other analytics platforms  to gauge which content is receiving the highest traction and adjust your content calendar accordingly.

Remember, real people use social media. You have an incredible opportunity to create real connections with billions of people. Use social wisely, or don’t use it at all.

It’s very important to build your presence presence. Many people get the wrong idea – you don’t have to live on a computer and be tethered to your profiles through a mobile device. It’s about doing the right things while you’re online and making the things you do count.

So the question then becomes, how can I figure this out?

You have a couple of options. You can hire a social media firm to manage your accounts, you can keep working through trial and error, take a course, or do some good old fashioned reading. When I say old fashioned, I mean it. Most of the blogs on the subject are overly redundant and more than just a few are wholly inaccurate. Of course, Social Media Sun is a great resource, but I recommend a more comprehensive and organized resource for someone just starting. Let online material supplement a solid foundation, but build that foundation by reading the “classics”.

Since there are literally thousands of books about social media on the shelf, here is a list of the my top 15 to get you started.

2. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue: 2012 Edition

By Shama Kabani

 

If you don’t know Shama Kabani, then you should. She is not only the author of this book, but also the CEO of The Marketing Zen, which is a Internet marketing firm. Her book is great for beginners who want to know the lay of the land in social media and gain an understanding of which sites are appropriate for their purposes and how to use them.

3. Social Media for Business: 101 Ways to Grow Your Business Without Wasting Your Time

By Susan Sweeny and Randall Craig

 

Social media can be a time waster for businesses that do not know how to use it effectively. This book is geared toward businesses that want to get into social media without wasting their time, money,  or effort. It provides practical strategies and advice to get started and create an effective strategy that will increase their exposure and bottom line.

4. Social Media Is Bullshit By BJ Mendelson

 

This particular book has been the center of many controversies, but it does have some good points. The point of this book is not so much to help you create a social media strategy, but rather to understand the true limitations of social media. It explains that social media can be good for a few things and if what you’re doing is not one of them, then you should probably direct your efforts elsewhere.

5. The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success (Wiley Desktop Editions) By Lon Safko

 

 

If you are a total beginner at social media, then this would also be a great book to check out. It is very lengthy and comprehensive because it will actually give you step by step instructions about what to do. Even more some of the more experienced social media marketers have this book for reference purpose.

6. Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech) By Olivier Blanchard

 

 

A must read for businesses using social media. If you are planning on using social media to earn more money, get clients, or build your brand then you have to be able gauge your progress in some way. This book explains exactly how to measure your ROI and what you can do if things are not adding up.

7. Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator By Ryan Holiday

 

Whenever you say social media, you should put an emphasis on the word media. One of the secrets to becoming successful in social media is understanding that the same principles of working in the media are also at work. Reading this book will make you more skeptical about some the things you read online, but it will help you understand how to promote yourself via social media and understand how and why things go viral.

8. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us By Seth Godin

 

Seth Godin is legendary in marketing period, but especially when it comes to social media. His book is a must read to learn how to build a following on any social media website whether it is Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. It is all about establishing yourself as the leader of a tribe and manage them across any platform.

9. Music 3.0: A Survival Guide for Making Music in the Internet Age, Revised and Updated (Music Pro Guides) By Bobby Owsinski

 

This book is really geared toward the music industry and the shift to digital content, but it has some great tips about how to build an effective social  media strategy. It can help musicians and non musicians alike. There are a lot of techniques about connecting with people, building a fan base, and bundling products and services in world that wants to get everything for free online.

10. Content is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web and Mobile By Jon Wuebben

 

Creating valuable content is just as important as any other aspect of your social media strategy. Some people get stuck trying to figure out what to write about on a regular basis and this book can help. It offers practical ideas about to make interesting content to keep your followers happy and fulfilled.

11. Your World is Exploding: How Social Media is Changing Everything – and How you Need to Change with it. By Christopher G. Dessi

 

A book about how to look at the big picture of social media. Yes, it does touch on some key strategies, but it is mostly about knowing how to navigate this new realm and and use it your advantage. The information in this book is applicable for both individuals and businesses.

12. 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More! By Andrew Macarthy

 

A quick read full of some of the best tips and tricks to gain traction online. The good thing about this book is that it covers the entire spectrum, so you can learn some useful techniques for sites outside of the more popular ones.

13. Engagement from Scratch!: How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same! By Danny Iny

 

Danny Iny may be the Freddy Kreuger of blogging, but he also knows his stuff when it comes to social media too. This book is a actually a compilation of essays from other popular bloggers, marketers, and social media experts. Much of their advice does apply to social media and the best thing about it is that all of the writers are speaking from personal experience building their own brands online.

14. UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging By Scott Stratten

 

Everything you know about marketing is wrong, so you need to read this book. The biggest misconception that people have about social media is that they think that plugging products every 5 minutes on Twitter is effective. Quite frankly, it does not work like that and if anything it will cause you to lose a lot of followers.

15. Social BOOM!: How to Master Business Social Media to Brand Yourself, Sell Yourself, Sell Your Product, Dominate Your Industry Market, Save Your Butt, … and Grind Your Competition into the Dirt By Jeffrey Gitomer

 

Jeffrey Gitomer is another well known marketing expert and his book is unlike the others in the sense that he explains everything you would want to know about Internet marketing, social media, and how they connect. There is a fair amount of information about social media, but the strength of this book is that it will provide a comprehensive plan to include blogging and other types of strategies to build your brand online.

Of course, there are lot of other great books about social media on the market, but these are just a few to start you off. What is your favorite social media or marketing book? Let us know in the comment section below.

If you’re a small business owner or are heading up marketing efforts for a smaller business, chances are you wear many hats on a daily basis. You’re probably juggling tasks in management, finance, marketing and technology. So, it’s important to streamline as much as possible. Since video production is typically an uncharted territory for small businesses, we’ve gathered some resources to help you out. Checkout these tools and eliminate some of the pitfalls other small businesses face when creating their own online videos.

Developing Concepts

One of the toughest parts of video production is developing the concept. In order to have an effective video, you have to understand your audience and determine the best way to reach them. Here are some sites that help you define the objectives for video.

Brainstorming and planning is an integral part of video production that most first timers do not put enough effort in to. Professional production studios do not improvise, and you do not have to either.

Shooting and Editing Video

Well, video of course involves footage (unless you’re doing 100% animation). So, you’ll need to figure out the best way to shoot and get the content you need. Then, you’ll need to put this together using your favorite editing tool. Here are some key resources you can reference: 

Finding Assets to Use in Your Video

After you have a concept, shoot and have started to edit, you’ll need some other ingredients such as music or images. However, background music and stock imagery can get expensive. Here are some sites that offer cost-effective alternatives. 

Hire Someone

If you’ve read all of this stuff and have decided that video is just too much to handle, then you’ll need to hire someone. One of the more popular ways small businesses develop video content on a budget is through crowdsourcing. Here are some of the more common sites offering crowdsourced video content: 

It’s always important to find ways to differentiate your small business. Video provides a great way to engage your audience and take that extra step in content marketing. Whether you decide to do some of this video production work yourself or hire someone, hopefully some of these tools will help streamline the process.

This is why your guest blogging strategy must be more precise than ever before if you want to see results. While it may seem intimidating at first, there is a system of steps you can take to ensure you get the most from your efforts, deliver great content, get published on the right sites for you and build an all-around excellent guest blogging marketing campaign.

If you’re willing to invest the time and effort to do it correctly, you will reap the benefits for some time to come. The exact details and processes of a guest blogging marketing campaign will vary, based on the industry and the website you are trying to market. There is no cookie-cutter process.

Initial Guidelines for Guest Blogging

First, know what blogs/websites you are going to target. You should look for sites that have a similar target audience as yours. Your content will be relevant, the readers will enjoy it and they are much more likely to click through the link to your website when you stay in the same niche. So, if your site sells dog clothing and accessories, you want to try to get your guest posts on other sites about dogs, pets and pet care. The readers are most likely already dog owners and have a higher chance of being interested in what you offer on your site.

Do some research and compile a list of websites and blogs in your niche, but be selective and adhere to any criteria you set before searching. You want to do some background research: look into their rankings, readership and how they perform in search engine results. The most popular websites with the most stringent guest blogging guidelines are usually the best. The standard for measuring the potential link building value of a guest post is Google’s Post Rank. It is a good idea to vary your link profile however. Remember, it’s much easier to generate links on PR 3 sites organically, so try and target websites with a higher ranking if possible.

Finding Sites to Publish Your Guest Posts

Getting links from the really good sites can be difficult. It’s worth the effort to try if you have outstanding content to approach them with but even if you cannot land the cream of the crop sites at the start, you can still find quality, beneficial sites to post on. The more high quality posts you get published, the higher your chances of getting on your top choice blogs.

So first, you must begin the research phase. This is always the most time-consuming step in the process for me, although now that I have been doing this for a very long time, I have a database of blogs for many common niches. As you begin your research, make a list of websites and rank them for easy sorting. Look at it like a Rolodex for guest posting opportunities.

If you are just getting started, you need to look for blogs and websites in your industry as well as news sites and online magazines that publish content from guest contributors. You can do this manually by visiting the sites and then searching to see if they have a page about guest posts/contributions. Another way of short cutting the process is to Google your niche with key phrases such as “Submit articles” and “Submission guidelines”. Here are some examples:

Google: [Target Keyword] “submit article”

Google: [Target Keyword] “submission guidelines”

Google: [Target Keyword] “write for us”

I use Excel spreadsheets to track the sites, their stats and the link to their page of guidelines (if they have one). I also include contact name and email and any other notes about the site that I may need to know in the future.

Guest Blogging Services

Most guest blogging services are set up to help multi-author blogs attract guest bloggers to their site.  Each service has different guidelines for both guests and the blogs that can bid on posts. Blogger Link Up is free for both guests and blog owners, and they work hard to keep users that violate their terms from accessing their lists. My Blog Guest is another popular option, however they charge bloggers to submit posts and have a severe problem with low quality posts. Post Joint is a newer service that is still in Beta, but looks promising; the quality is slightly better at Post Joint and the staff is very receptive to users.

Some additional options for Guest Blogger Outreach are:

The staff at Post Joint are quick to respond, and receptive to criticism. Other guest blogging services outsource their support, but the people that own Post Joint are the ones that answer your questions.

Prospect Evaluation

Once you’ve found some potential sites to pitch to, then you need to evaluate them to see if they are actually worth the trouble. Ask yourself “Will it benefit me/my brand to be published on this site?”

Some guidelines to look for to tell you if it’s worth it include:

One of the most important things to check is the quality of other guests. Since so many SEO firms are diluting the web with low-quality link building guest posts, Google has begun to target websites that accept posts for SEO purposes. When several shady websites have backlinks from the same bunch of multi-author blogs, those blogs become identified as link farms. It’s important for blogs to be selective when choosing guests, and it’s just as important for guests to be selective when choosing blogs. Social Media Sun has cut back on the number of guest posts we accept to keep the value high for the high quality guests we do allow to post.

When a site passes all the checks for being worth your time, you’re ready to start pitching ideas.

Pitching the Site Owner/Editor

When pitching articles or ideas to a site owner or editor, I think back to the old school days of snail mail queries to magazine editors. While you don’t necessarily need the same formality (depending on the website), the process is much the same. You want to be professional and polite but you also want to get to the point as quickly as possible and let them know right away what you want. They get tons of emails daily and if you want them to do more than toss yours in the trash pile, you need to compile it carefully.

Before you pitch an idea, familiarize yourself with the past content, the tone and voice of the site and the most popular posts. This will help you determine if you can contribute something that will be an asset to the site, and that you’re not pitching an idea they just recently published.

First, introduce yourself and explain what you want. Always find out the name of the person you are contacting when sending an email. Don’t say “Dear sirs” or “To whom it may concern” or you sound like a spammer.

Tell them right away what site you are representing and give them the link. State the goal and purpose of your email clearly and concisely from the start. Display a genuine interest in the site and make a couple of comments about it, if appropriate. For example, you might comment on a recent post or study they did that interested you.

Then you want to give them a few great article ideas for their site. If you research their site properly first, you should be able to pitch 3-4 great ideas. Avoid general titles like “5 Tips to ___” and “10 Ways to ___” unless they are truly unique and you can tell this from the title alone. You want the blog owner to read the titles with your pitch and get excited about having that content on their site so here is where you really need to shine.

However, don’t get stuck on your ideas alone. Let them know that you’re open to other ideas or assignments, should they have different needs in mind. Be polite, thank them for considering your offer and invite them to reach out to you at any time, even if they don’t need your content right now. You want to make that connection and leave them with a positive impression of you in mind.

Finally, remember that your subject line is very important or you might end up in the trash bin before they even open the email. So choose a subject line that says very specifically what you want. Avoid generic lines like “Accepting guest bloggers?” or “I want to guest blog” because these are commonly used by spammers who mass-mail sites trying to get their content published for backlinks.

Tracking Your Pitches

Each time you send a new pitch, be sure to record who you sent it to, the date and the topic ideas you pitched. Again, I use spreadsheets for this data. If I don’t hear back in a week, I send a follow-up email. If I still don’t hear back within a week after that, I pitch the same ideas to a different site and just make a note in my spreadsheet that I did not get a response.

If the pitch is accepted, I send over the full article as quickly as possible so as to give a  good impression and once it is published,  I plug the live link into my tracking spreadsheet and I also share the post across all of my networks. If your guest post gets a lot of traffic and comments, you are more likely to be invited back to do another post.

The Writing Begins

Once you have found your site and pitched your idea, it’s time for the writing phase. When I am working a guest blog marketing campaign, I don’t wait for an answer to begin writing. In the odd chance that the idea I pitched is denied or the site is just not currently in need of anymore content, I can always pitch the idea to the next site on my list and it speeds up the process if the article is already written. Even if it needs some edits and tweaking to fit the new publication, the main ideas will already be in place.

While the writing process is different for everyone, I begin with a free-writing phase. I don’t look at any other articles or notes and I just type from my head without worrying about spelling or grammar or other editing. Just put down as many thoughts and ideas as you can about your topic as if you were chatting with a friend. Then, put it away for awhile and rest your mind.

When you come back to edit and clean it up, make sure you find sources to back up your facts. It’s good to have one or two non-self-serving links in your guest post as well so using these to support your ideas is good.

Make use of subheadings and bullets or lists to organize the information and make it easier to read. Cut out any ideas that are too general and well-known. Make sure your ideas are fresh and unique. If it doesn’t bring up a new point or idea, cut it out.

Make sure you compare your post with the guidelines for the site you are writing for. Don’t make exceptions. If they say no longer than 1,000 words, don’t send them a 1,200-word post. You might see it as “making an exception” but they will see it as ignoring their guidelines.

If you doubt your ability to proofread for yourself, have someone else do it or even hire an editor to go over your guest posts before sending them out. Spelling and grammar errors can get your post declined and even cost you the ability to ever post on that site again.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits of guest blogging:

Are you making use of guest blogging for your site today? Do you have any questions about your own guest blogging marketing campaign?

These instances are centered around face-to-face meetings. Online entrepreneurs rarely consider how much demographic information plays into their marketing campaigns and analytics. Knowing the background of visitors and customers is an important aspect of all types of inbound marketing. Here we will focus on age because online demographics are often inappropriately targeted because of age, there are several technology stereotypes related to age, and age is the most likely user definition that is used by e-mail marketers and specifically targeted in the Equality Act.

Email marketing in particular thrives on information. You will define your subscribers under a number of categories, one of the most basic of which will be age. It has been mentioned before that age is a blunt tool, but one that could hurt you.

The parts of the Equality Act (EA) 2010 provisions which prohibit age discrimination, in provision of goods and services, came into force 1 October 2012. It is not quite as simple as it first appears.

What is the Equality Act?

Without going into too much detail, the Equality Act is an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that attempts to consolidate the acts and laws that make up Great Britain’s anti-discrimination law. The new act prohibits direct or indirect discrimination against a person because of age by withholding a service or in respect of the terms on which a service is provided, the termination of the service or subjecting that person to any other detriment;

Harassing a person because of age who requires the service or uses the service; and

Victimizing a person because of age by withholding the service or in respect of the terms on which a service is provided, the termination of the service or subjecting that person to any other detriment.

The Equality Act has reduced the number of claims made in regard to sex discrimination, but the number of cases brought before the employment tribunal regarding age discrimination hasn’t declined as much.

‘Indirect age discrimination’ is not clarified. It has been suggested that you should consider that certain groups, such as pensioners for instance, might have a preponderance of the unemployed as they have retired so a special interest rate reduction restricted to those in employment might breach the rules.

Exceptions to the Equality Act 

With regards to the cut off age limit of 18 years, you cannot offer this group concessions which you do not similarly make available to those of 18 and above.

The Equality Act 2010 (Age Exceptions) Order 2012, should be before parliament soon. This provides for other statutory exemptions, including:

These exemptions would apply where age is a key element of the service sold and this is appropriately advertised. One example given is where it would not apply in Sport. If, for instance, a sporting event was advertised as open to all but age restrictions applied when an attendee attempted to take part, then the exemption would not apply.

What About Services That Are Targeted Directly at Specific Age Groups?

Of particular interest for email marketing is the Home Office guidance for small business which states that if a business provides age-based services, it can still “advertise, market and sell products and services to younger or older people as niche marketing, providing…[it doesn't] refuse the service to anyone outside…[the] target group”.

There is a defense in the case of goods and services when you can show your actions were a ‘proportionate means’ of achieving a ‘legitimate aim’. One of the examples given to clarify this is to enable particular social groups to socialize together, to enjoy activities together or to enjoy peace and quiet.

For further information visit the Home Office page concerning Age Discrimination and the Equality Act.

If you feel the EA might cause you problems, check out the Law Gazette’s recommendation page regarding age discrimination when offering goods and services.

Great Britain is leading the way when it comes to enacting laws with the Internet in mind. With online interactions becoming more ubiquitous by the day, do these laws overreach their intent and violate individual privacy?

Every project is going to have a different level of potential. The success of a website depends largely on the size of the audience, amount of competition, the resources available (both monetary and resources that stem from the resourcefulness of the staff) and other external factors (I once had a friend have their roller derby website explode in popularity after a nationally televised roller derby league launched).  All things considered, Social Media Sun has done fairly well.

You can do just as well with your blog or website. Your goals shouldn’t necessarily be tied to numbers like page views and Facebook likes, but instead steady growth. As long as everything is improving, you’re still doing something right. When growth slows down, or comes to an abrupt stop, it’s easy to lose your motivation.

How Did I make it Successful?

2012 wasn’t the best time to start a blog focused on social media or inbound marketing. The Internet is already saturated with blogs on these topics and the overall audience for this niche has been decreasing steadily since last summer. I’ve always maintained a small personal webmaster blog however, and developing the site was something I was interested in.

Our audience and reputation grew quickly at first because I found answers to common problems that other fresh blogs couldn’t. Social Media Sun was given a Page Rank of 4 in less than 2 months because one of the first things I did was launch an application that built our backlinks at a tremendous pace. I had some help from a few friends that were already well known in online marketing circles and I maximized three sources of social media actions that few people adequately combine. As everything progressed and we continued posting new content, it proved to be a viable strategy that promised growth.

There are Compromises

One of the things that I knew was important for any website entering a crowded blogosphere was quality. Quality in the writing, quality in the design, and quality when it came to the people involved. I spent two weeks adjusting the design and customizing our theme until I thought it impressed me. With all of the graphics and CSS involved, I had to sacrifice load time to accommodate design features.

I also made the initial mistake of accepting guest posts from contributors that wanted little more than a backlink. As long as their posts were above average and they conformed to our identity verification processes, I would usually accept their posts.

A Perfect Storm

Now, eight months after we launched the site several of these decisions have come back to haunt me. The application that had the added benefit of generating backlinks, the compromise when it came to load speed, and the links we’ve given to guests that are engaged in getting most of their backlinks through guest posting websites like My Blog Guest have combined to stop our progress in search engine referral growth. Combined with a recent drop in referral traffic from social channels, even with decent social sharing numbers, the growth strategy that once worked so well doesn’t seem as promising anymore.

While our traffic was taking a hit, our commenting system developed some problems that hurt engagement and cost me several hours last week that would have usually been dedicated to working on other aspects of the website. I didn’t put all our eggs in one basket, but all our baskets were hit at one time.

If I would have quit every time we suffered a drop in traffic, I would have quit several times this year. The longer your graph is and the more time it represents, the more valid it is when determining your success. These weekly fluctuations could be due to demographic Internet use, weather, and any number of external forces.

If I could sum up everything I know about promoting websites on the Internet into a short statement, it would be to find out what works, do it as long as you’re seeing results, and experiment with other strategies if it ever quits working for you. There will be bumps in the road and things are always hardest when you’ve been weakened by stress. The important thing is to reflect on your assets and strategy, clean house, and come back harder than before.

You Never Know Unless You Try

Building a blog correctly from scratch is much easier than re-formatting an existing blog to mitigate problems. I still feel like we’re doing well because there are lots of compliments from people on social networks, we have a close knit community around the site and most metrics still indicate that we’re above average. I don’t think we’re meeting our full potential though. The on-site comments have waned recently and I haven’t had the time to create the type of content that I want to produce.

Over the coming weeks I’m going to institute a new strategy that combines tactics that are still paying dividends with new styles of writing, new subjects, new guests, new features and focused goals that both the staff and readers will be aware of. If I can’t breathe life back into this website, I probably shouldn’t be teaching you how to breathe life into yours.

At the end of the day, promoting things on the Internet and optimizing websites for business is what I’m good at. I welcome the opportunity to address questions with my own website and hope I can use any success I have in pointing the gun back at the target as a lesson for our readers. Some of my strategies will surprise you; sometimes you need to concentrate on other things to get answers to the problem at hand.

I hope that you all stay tuned to see what is in store for SMS and take these words to heart; make a plan and follow it as long as it’s working. Experiment all the while, and find a way around if your current road is blocked. Turning around is easier than you think because you’ve really just started your journey – moving forward however will afford you the chance to cover hundreds of miles and end at a destination other than the beginning.

I’m not the biggest fan of influence metrics myself, but when you consider the direction that marketing is moving, you can’t deny the value of a tool that can estimate the level of an individual’s influence. Forget about social media for a minute; Klout, Kred and other influence metrics are solutions to information overload.

It’s All About Making the Right Choices, and Informed Decision Making

We live in a complicated world where information is pushed on us loudly from every direction. There is no way that we could possibly listen to it all, and it’s easy to be overwhelmed. To cope with this mass of noise we’ve adopted a decision making approach based on generalizations. It turns out that when all things are equal, these generalizations actually work. With a limited amount of information, time and investment, most people can use subtle cues to make a correct decision.

We do this everyday. When you visit a news website you are presented with a long list of headlines and pictures. Based on what you’re looking for, the structure of the headline, the featured image, and prior experience is often enough information to decide whether you should spend your time reading that article, or move on to another.

In Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: Science and Practice” he says that a group of professionals known as ‘compliance experts’ can effectively exploit these generalizations and turn them into weapons of influence, causing others to make decisions in their favor. These compliance professionals consist of salesmen, pollsters, political activists, and (gasp) marketers!

Guy Kawasaki is just one thought leader that recommend’s Cialdini’s book on persuasion and influence as the standard in modern marketing.

Weapons of Mass Influence

When a marketer is effective, it’s hard to tell that they’re exerting any influence at all. The best marketers make you feel like you’re in the driver’s seat, and that you’re the beneficiary of any quid pro quo that takes place.

The most common ‘weapons of influence’ are:

Reciprocation: People generally feel obliged to return the favor when you do something nice for them. This is especially true when they perceive your actions as a higher value. An example is when an influencer re-tweets their target, who has a lot smaller following. The target perceives a high value, and will be more likely to be influenced by the influencer’s future campaigns.

Commitment and Consistency: People thrive on consistency. They’re also more likely to make additional commitments when they feel invested. When e-mail scammers convince their targets to send them a small amount of money, it’s usually even easier to get them to send a larger amount because they feel like they’re already invested in the scam. An initial 200$ scam can quickly evolve into a $1,200 scam because the fear of losing the initial 200$ overrides the target’s better judgement.

Social Proof: Social Proof can take several forms. People will often trust you more if it’s clear that others trust you as well. An influencer with 100,000 followers and dozens of testimonials on their website will convince people of their integrity when a more qualified professional that doesn’t have the social proof can’t. Influencers have also been known to fake interviews, Infomercials have recently taken on the format of a talk show, complete with staged interviews and carefully chosen statistics.

Charisma: People are more likely to do business with people they like. Influencers can sway their opinion with humor or flattery. They are also partial to people they can relate to. Blue collar workers identify with other blue collar workers, and are more likely to vote for politicians that share a common background in employment. Physical attractiveness and perceived superiority can create a halo effect where influencers are deemed more qualified to make certain decisions than the target, despite the fact that effective influencers ALWAYS consider their own interests.

Authority: Authority is one of the strongest motivators for average people. In Stanley Milgram’s 1974 book “Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View” he recounted experiments that he conducted during his time as a professor of psychology at Yale University. The now infamous Milgram Experiment showed that an average person could be easily coerced into inflicting a great deal of pain on another subject if they were in the presence of an authority figure that insisted they continue. These experiments began in 1961 at the time Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann’s trial for war crimes was about to begin. The results suggested that it was possible that thousands of Nazi subordinates were “just following orders”, and that it was in our nature to do so.

Scarcity: About a year ago I went to a local electronics store to shop for computers. I was seriously considering the purchase of a Hewlett Packard Ultrabook, but decided to wait on product updates. The owner insisted that he only had the one, and that he likely wouldn’t get another order in for weeks. He almost talked me into buying it.

Three days later my cousin came home with the same laptop. It was very nice, but I decided that I was glad I didn’t purchase it because the lack of a DVD drive. My cousin told me how it was the last Ultrabook in the area, and that no one else would have one until the new models came out. I went with him to the store to buy a wireless mouse, and upon entering we interrupted the store owner going through the same Ultrabook sales pitch with another customer. I got the salesman off to the side and asked about his ‘scarcity method’ of sales, and threatened to expose it if he didn’t tell me how many Ultrabooks they actually had. It turns out that they had at least a dozen, and were overstocked because area students wanted DVD drives more than they had projected.

The idea that something is rare, or the fear of missing out is a major influencer when it comes to purchasing power. Influencers often portray their product as a scarce commodity that has a limited supply and high demand, even if that isn’t true.

Step By Step Influence

Influencing another party is not always the correct approach. Given the circumstances, we may need to enter into a negotiation, or simply select an appropriate solution together.

Influencing someone isn’t always necessary or effective. Assess the situation and use the cues available to determine the best course of action.

Example: If I am trying to sell you web hosting, your response to my initial offer will determine how I approach the sale. If you agree that you need hosting and that you’d like to purchase it from me, we simply need to select the correct hosting plan together. If You insist that you do not need web hosting or that your current host is superior, I still have the opportunity to attract your business by negotiating a lower price or a high value offering. If you do not have web hosting, and are unsure of the benefits, that’s when influence becomes a correct response.

What is Real?

These ‘weapons of influence’ were identified by Robert Cialdini in 2003, several years before Facebook opened branded pages for business. Today, they’re eerily representative of the social media marketing movement. People stress relationships and value, but major influence usually finds its way back to one of these six methods.

When a public figure seems too good to be true, they probably aren’t. Anyone that would be considered effective at online business is self aware, and are certainly aware of the effectiveness of these weapons.

Before you write effective influencers off as manipulative and dishonest though, consider your own plight. If you have your own business, you will find yourself using influence at one time or another. These are natural techniques and tactics whether you’re fully aware of them or not. Wouldn’t you rather learn business from the person that has mastered influence?

Never Enough Information

If you had every piece of accurate information available, there would be no need for any of this analysis, procedure, or secret weapons. The problem is that your knowledge is incomplete at best, may not be reliable, and involves a lot of intuition.

During any attempt at influence you will need to place values on every variable. You don’t have an unlimited time to research everything, so any tool that can quickly offer a viable metric should be a welcome addition to a marketer’s tool kit.

No matter what their shortcomings are or how much you dislike being a metric yourself, both Klout and Kred are viable metrics when you’re tasked with identifying influential individuals out of a large group that are active online and comfortable with their role as an influencer.

Laws of Diminishing Returns

Without Klout or Kred you could still identify influencers. Finding the most influential bloggers or personalities on social media isn’t hard because they’re usually pretty visible. The process gets much harder when you’re tasked with finding 25 top influencers in a specific niche category that will be willing to participate in an online marketing campaign for a nominal fee. Klout and Kred could both create a list of 25 influencers for your campaign in just a few minutes, and the results would be comparable to a quick selection made by an employee with minimal experience on the given topic.

This table illustrates how simply generating a list of influencers with an Influencer Identification app can provide results that are adequate for most uses, while extended research will often yield results that mirror the list thatthe application generated to a high degree, or consist of influencers that aren’t necessarily better choices than the program’s selections.

You could identify a better group manually, but it would take exponentially more time and resources to complete. These influence metrics exhibit an extreme case of diminishing returns in all the cases of group influencer identification that I’m aware of. Why spend a week researching and compiling a list of 40 automotive influencers when Klout can create a similar list that performs just as well in the given scenario in less than one minute?

Of course the greatest results from group influencer identification come when the researcher uses a combination of influencer identification tools and their own research. Start out by compiling a Klout list of 50 names that will be whittled down to a final list of 25 after spending a couple hours investigating your preliminary findings. This would take very little time compared to research that was wholly manual and will often yield a better list. At the very least it takes advantage of a computer’s analytical capabilities to complete the hardest part of influencer identification in an extremely short amount of time.

Smoke Em’ if You Got Em’

By allowing your personal bias to rule out the use of tools that are very effective at what they do, you’re only hurting yourself. An average mid-sized company encounters hundreds of instances every day where an estimate of a person’s online influence would be beneficial. All this means is “how many eyeballs will likely be exposed to sentiment that this individual posts online”. Researching every single person’s social media presence isn’t practical, but we humans have adapted to make accurate predictions based on limited information. Klout and Kred are just another source of information that you have full context on, and a thorough explanation of what they mean.

Do you have a prejudice against influence measurement tools because of what they represent? Have you used the measurements in any practical ways to improve the results of your own marketing campaigns?