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Tips for Creating Effective Video SEO

Published on March 25, 2013
Tags: SEO

You’ve heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to improve traffic to your business website or blog, but are you aware of video SEO? With YouTube being the second largest search engine on the net (after Google), it is not surprising that companies of all sizes are getting in on the act and not only creating business videos, but optimising them for search as well. Just like with your webpage, you need to ensure that your videos are being found by your target audience – the relevant people who are most likely to buy your products or use your services. Here are a few tips to help get your videos to the top of the listings.

 
1. Make It Engaging, Relevant and Short
 
As with any content you create for your business, ensure that any videos you produce are engaging, relevant to your brand and your customers, informative and short. Videos longer than five minutes generally won’t be watched all the way through, so you have to grab your viewer’s attention early. If your video must be longer, you can break it into small parts, or create ‘bite sized’ videos for each aspect of your business.
 
2. Give It a Good Title
 
A catchy, relevant title is essential in attracting the right kinds of viewers to your video. You can include popular keywords in your title as long as you incorporate them naturally; a keyword-stuffed title will just put people off.
 
3. Make Use of Keywords at Every Opportunity
 
Carry out some research into what your potential customers are searching for – and how they’re using the words – and then incorporate those keywords and phrases into your video description, tags, category listing, captions, and anywhere else you can change the content of the page. Search engines often display text pages along with videos, so make use of any and all text areas. 
 
4. Encourage Links and Indexing
 
Always ensure there’s a link back to your company website from your video page; put your URL in the first line of the video description as it will be easy to click on and will be displayed before the rest of the description is cut off. Provide transcripts of your video as well to encourage higher listings (search engines still like HTML content).
 
5. Include a Call to Action and Encourage Sharing
 
As with other marketing content, ensure you include a call to action in your video or on the video page; giving people a specific next step will increase the chances of them carrying out the desired action. Submit a sitemap to Google to help with indexing, and provide a code that allows people to embed the video on their website. And of course, place the video on your social network profiles and blogs to get it ‘out there’.
 
Videos are becoming an extremely popular way to promote businesses – especially with the rise of social media sites and the ability to quickly and easily share videos online – so if you don’t already use video in your marketing, it may be time to start thinking about doing so.
 

By Chelsey Evans

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Tips on Using Pinterest for Business Marketing

Published on March 25, 2013
Tags: Web Design London

Compared to some other social networking sites, Pinterest is relatively new, but over the past year or so it has gained millions of users and become one of the most popular ways to promote businesses in a fun and interactive way. As you probably know, the site allows people to create virtual pinboards, where they ‘pin’ their favourite images to express themselves and share their interests online. It can be used to help organise events such as weddings, save inspirational images for future ideas, and collate useful-looking businesses and products. 

 
Here are just a few tips on how to get the most out of Pinterest when promoting your business.
 
Optimise Your Pins
 
As with other content marketing, you can apply SEO techniques to your pins and actions on Pinterest. Add categories, keywords and phrases, hashtags, URLs and other relevant text to both your pins and your profile – make it as easy as possible for potential clients to find you amongst all the other businesses listed. Planning the content you place on Pinterest is just as important as, say, planning which articles you’ll put on your blog. Creating unique, interesting, creative new ways of promoting yourself through photographs and images may be challenging, but the more you think outside the box, the more repins you’ll get. Include a call-to-action on your pins to ensure users carry out the desired response – visiting your site, repinning, etc.
 
Make Use of Business Tools and Features
 
Pinterest has recently created business accounts, so make sure you’re signed up properly and are aware of all the tools and features available to you. Use the verification badge to verify your site – this allows users to find your business easily in the search and to identify your brand as being a high quality content source. Make use of the buttons and widgets Pinterest provides: these include the follow button, pin it button, profile widget and board widget, and will help you to gain more traffic to your website and interact with users (or ‘pinners’). With a business account, you’ll be able to keep up with new management tools, and you can download the Pinterest app for mobile to keep in contact with pinners on the go.
 
Research and Review
 
Like with any marketing technique, you need to carry out some research before you start with your Pinterest campaign: take a look at what your competitors are doing (and think of ways to do it better and more creatively than them), and make a note of what your target audience are pinning and repinning. You can track ‘Recent Activity’ to see repins, comments, followers etc, and Google Analytics will be able to tell you more about the traffic you gained from Pinterest. 
 
Pinterest won’t be right for every single business, but if you have products to sell – and interesting, unique photographs of them – it can be an extremely useful marketing device for your company. And with the site recently updating their policies to offer business accounts separate from personal accounts, it’s now easier than ever to get your business up and running on Pinterest.
 

By Chelsey Evans

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Utilising Gamification in 2013

Published on March 18, 2013
Tags: Web Development London

 

Gamification as a marketing strategy is nothing new, but with its increasing popularity with all kinds of businesses – both B2B and B2C – it’s a technique to look out for this year.

What does it mean?

Basically, gamification is the application of game-design thinking in non-gaming contexts. This can be used with many different types of business processes, and can be aimed at getting both employees and customers to participate in typically mundane procedures, such as filling in surveys or reading the content on websites, that they may have wanted to avoid before. It’s all about modifying users’ behaviours, and not only encouraging them to participate in tasks, but making them want to participate in the tasks. Creating addictive games that can link into a business process and give users the ability to experience personal achievement and progression can be effective in targeting individual consumers as well as other businesses.

How does it work?

The idea is to attract and engage customers by using interaction and participation in their online marketing strategies. Loyalty programs can be improved by introducing gamification principles, such as providing rewards to customers who interact more with the brand. It can also be used to gain new customers, when they might have been reluctant to part with their cash before.  Adobe Photoshop is a particularly successful case that exemplifies the advantages of using gamification:

Adobe asked for help from Bunchball (a gamification platform provider) when they were trying to increase sales of Photoshop, and as a result, ‘LevelUp’ was created. The idea is to teach users how to use CS5 and CS6, but in a fun and competitive way. The more skills the user perfects, the more missions they complete and the more badges they win, giving them a sense of achievement that online tutorials or reading a manual wouldn’t have provided.

What will the customer get out of it?

Each business that wants to use the idea of gamification has to decide on what will most encourage their customers. This, of course, depends on the type of business, but generally, it will be one of the following:

Money – such as special offers or cashback

Points – which they can add up as they go along

Non-monetary rewards – such as early access to products

Status – give them voting power or a badge for each ‘level’ they pass

Sociability – give users the chance to share their achievements on social networking sites such as Facebook

This last point is important, as many people on Facebook already take part in the variety of games available and use them as interactive tools with their online friends. A point system for social action is one of the biggest motivators in the area of gamification, and as Facebook users are already used to liking and sharing, it isn’t a big leap to interacting meaningfully with your business using similar methods.

If you take the time to plan how both your business and your customers will best benefit from gamification, it can turn into a successful marketing strategy which will keep your clients engaged and happy to learn more about your products or services.

 

By Chelsey Evans

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The Importance Of Customer Loyalty And How It Can Help Your Business

Published on March 18, 2013
Tags: Web Design London

The focus of many businesses always seems to be on getting new customers: how can we attract new clients? What will make them want to use our services or buy our products? What incentives can we give them to come to us instead of our competitors? While getting new business is obviously extremely important – and always will be – the amount of resources spent on this area of marketing can be out of proportion with the returns. What will really help your business is identifying your most loyal customers and keeping them happy, instead of spending all your time on tracking down new clients.

What can you do to focus on your current customers? And what are the benefits of this?
 
1. Reward Their Loyalty
 
Your current clients already know your company and have proven their loyalty by sticking with you when there’s so much competition in your market space, so why not reward them for standing by you? You could offer them early access to your new product or give them a discount on one of your services. It shouldn’t just be new customers who get all the incentives to sign up with you. Pay attention to your existing client base first and ensure that your loyal customers will be there for your company’s future; businesses often make more profits from current customers than they do by going after new ones, and the cost of marketing for this is a lot lower too.
 
2. Building Your Brand
 
Word of mouth has always been important, and in today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever before. Not only can customers tell their friends about their experience with a certain brand, but they can also like your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter, and share any of your blog posts they like with the click of a button. Thousands can be spent on social media marketing to boost your brand to new customers, but encouraging existing clients to effectively be free sales people for your company will cost very little and can see a huge ROI.
 
3. Getting Reliable Feedback
 
Getting feedback from your existing customers will not only help you with improving your products and services, but it will also let your clients know that you haven’t forgotten about them and that you care about what they have to say. Quick surveys and emails asking questions are all very well, but if you have a chance to personally talk to even just a few, you’re likely to get a lot more out of it. Loyal customers are more likely to tell you what they actually think, as they already like your brand and probably want to help out as much as they can. Utilise their answers and improve your business where needed.
 
There are so many more advantages to focusing on customer loyalty, but in today’s fast-paced world of business, existing clients can all too often be forgotten. Do them and your business a favour by rewarding them for their long-term support.
 

By Chelsey Evans

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Multilingual Website - Things To Consider

Published on March 18, 2013
Tags: Internet Communication

Thanks to the internet, smartphones, tablets and other technological advancements and devices, the world seems to be getting smaller by the day.  People in Asia can just as quickly get in touch with you as people in the UK. Even if you’re a small business, this means that you have to take other countries – and therefore, other languages – into consideration when creating a website. Making your site accessible to a wide range of countries can help build your brand and increase profits considerably – if you do it right. Many things can get lost in translation, and the language barrier is just as present online as anywhere else.

So, aside from the actual coding and building of the site (which professional web development companies can help you with), what are the main things to consider when creating a multilingual website? Here are just a few pointers.
 
1. Be Aware Of Cultural And Language Differences
 
If you want to attract customers from all over the world, you’re going to have to offer your website in a variety of different languages, but make sure you take cultural differences into consideration. For example, using one version of Spanish to appeal to both Spanish and Latin American people is showing a lack of knowledge concerning the intricacies of the two languages – they’re not the same, and a Spaniard could be insulted by Latin American Spanish and vice versa. It’s the same with China – with such a big and important market, you should know the differences between the languages spoken in various different parts, as mixing them up could cost you business.
 
2. Take SEO Differences Into Account
 
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an invaluable tool for marketing your business online, but care needs to be taken when you’re reaching out to a world market. You can get programs that will translate your content into several different languages (although you’ll need to make sure that it is done properly and won’t insult foreign businesses with a seemingly poor grasp of their native tongue), but you can’t assume that popular keywords will be translated correctly. Instead, use Google Trends to match the English word against popular translations. 
 
3. Do Research Into Social Media
 
While it’s true that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are used the world over – and used to promote businesses and market products, as well – you shouldn’t assume that all of your potential customers will be signed up to them. For example, the governments of some Asian countries block websites such as Facebook, so trying to reach out to, say, potential Chinese customers using popular social media probably won’t be money well spent. Instead, spend a little time doing research into the country’s own similar social websites, or adjust your marketing budget to accommodate the differences in internet usage in different countries.
 
Creating a multilingual website or international brand can be a difficult and time-consuming process, but if you do it right, it could be the best move your business ever makes.
 

By Chelsey Evans

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