SiteProNews |
- Top Tube Video Downloader Tools
- The Buzz about Buzz
- How to Select a Social Media Monitoring Service
- Google Instant Search for Marketing
- Occam’s Razor Solves Marketing Misinformation
| Top Tube Video Downloader Tools Posted: 17 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT 
First off, the logical solution to this problem would be for YouTube to make the content downloadable. YouTube is in the testing phase of giving video uploaders the option to make their videos downloadable for a price or for free. This will eliminate any outside problems of copyrights or law breaking since no matter how videos are shared after download they will still contain the original users YouTube source. This will most likely become a standard option, instead of just a test, in the not so distant future. For now though, other options are still available for downloading pleasure. One well known option with unknown abilities is RealPlayer. Most RealPlayer versions can be used as a tube video downloader to download YouTube videos directly from the site. When you move over the video screen an option appears to download the video straight to your RealPlayer library. RealPlayer is also capable of burning the files to DVD, but this usually requires a version available through upgrade, meaning it isn’t free. Other software options such as Savevid.com or Keepvid.com will still let you download the videos just not directly from the site. The process is slightly more involved but still not complicated. Simply copy the video URL or web address onto the toolbar and hit download. There are two different quality options, the higher MP4 version or its original FLV type. The FLV or flash format usually isn’t supported by normal video players so a converter will have to be downloaded as well if this option is chosen. You can find one easily by searching the web for an FLV converter. One of the easiest to use is the Tube Video Downloader add-on. It’s compatible with Explorer and Firefox, which are the two most popular browsers. Once installed for free, you simply go to the video you’re interested in and hit save. That’s it! After downloading your favorite videos it’s easy to unlink from your computer by simply downloading the video onto a media storage device or mp3 player with video playback. As discussed, some programs will even enable you to make your own DVD from the content. Beyond browser compatibility and certain attached fees, it’s a cut and dry process anyone can do in a matter of minutes. You can now watch hamsters do a back flips as many times as you want without even connecting to the internet! Veronica Davis is a freelance writer and an internet business columnist. She recommends using the Tube Video Downloader at tubevideodownloader.com to save videos for offline viewing. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Posted: 17 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT 
Buzz functions like many other popular networking sites, but it has a few new perks. Instead of friend-ing someone, like on Facebook, with Google’s new Buzz you follow them. So you want to get as many people following you as possible. Start with friends, family, and people you network with regularly on other social web-sites. Now for the cool part: any website that you have attached to your Buzz account generates posts via Buzz. Websites that you can attach to Buzz include Google Chat Status, Picassa, Flickr, posted via Buzz@gmail, Google reader, and Twitter. Once you have connected any of these websites to Buzz, anything you post on the other website automatically appears as a post on Buzz. Anyone who is following you will be able to see these posts. You get twice as much exposure with half of the effort. You can post information about events, a sale your business is having, or a gig your band is playing. Buzz will get the information out. Buzz also has some other nifty features, similar to other networking sites. You can comment on someone else’s post or a post of your own. You can like a post. You can re-share a post, e-mail a post to anyone (whether they have Buzz as well or not), and finally, and probably the most cool, is one of your contacts is online and has their G-mail account open you can reply to the post by chat, which is conveniently built into G-mail’s website. How Does This Affect Pay Per Click Marketing? Buzz taps into Google’s AdSense program with a more refined algorithm. If someone clicks on an add while on a Buzz screen, then the logic states that their friends might also like similar ads, articles, and websites. This adds a powerhouse punch to pay per click advertising. Much like harnessing the power of Facebook, PPC advertisers now have new avenues opened before them. Unlike fishing on particular keywords, potential customers are assisting in the event. Using this analogy it is like having fish help teach you how to fish. This sort of advertising momentum can take your marketing campaign to the next level. Couple this with analytics tools and your PPC approach will be unstoppable. All PPC Google ads permits companies to set their advertising budget down to an exact dollar amount. In fact, the minimum required daily budget to advertise with Google through PPC Ads is one dollar. As always, the advertiser only pays when an ad is clicked, and Buzz doesn’t change that, it only helps to harness the power of social media for the purpose of ad refinement and dissemination. Frank Breinling is a recognized expert in Affiliate Marketing. Here you can grab a FREE chapter about bestcommissionsystem.com, his newest Project about Networking Strategies you can find here, bestnetworkstrategies.com. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| How to Select a Social Media Monitoring Service Posted: 17 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT 
In earlier articles, Determining Your Media Monitoring Needs, Print News Monitoring vs. Online News Monitoring, and Broadcast Monitoring for TV and Radio News, I describe the various approaches to news monitoring. Definition: Social Media Monitoring The social web is a fast-growing and fast-changing “platform” for consumers to discuss companies and products. Social media monitoring is the process of listening to online consumer reviews and conversations about your company, its brands and services. The overarching goal of social media monitoring is to learn from listening – better understand consumer concerns about your organization, and then employ that knowledge to enhance your products and services. Social Media Monitoring Services Your social media listening strategy should encompass all forms of word of mouth media and consumer discussion including but not limited to blogs, “complaint” sites, message boards, forums, Usenet news groups, and video sharing sites such as YouTube. You should also monitor Social media monitoring services monitor all forms of social media – but not all services monitor all media. The services use specialized software to aggregate social media postings from multiple sources, index all the content on a near-continuous basis, query the index using the client’s key words and identify consumer posts of interest, and then deliver the relevant posts to the client. Since it’s impossible to predict where or when important market intelligence will “pop up” on the Web; or where it will be repeated or “go viral”, it’s best to monitor the widest possible range of social media. Market Intelligence vs. Worthless Chatter Social media overflows with inane chatter. If the Chipotle restaurant chain monitors social media, the overwhelming majority of mentions will be about “going to” the restaurant or “meeting (name)” at the restaurant – not very useful for market intelligence purposes. Well-constructed search queries help minimize extraneous chatter. As an example, McDonald’s could focus social media monitoring on specific product names (brands) instead of the corporate name. Or it could use an “and not” operator in the Boolean query on common phrases like “going to” or “meet”. That type of clip avoidance strategy will likely delete a bit of worthwhile conversation, but will certainly minimize useless chatter to be reviewed. In using social media monitoring as a customer service tool, it’s important to review all mentions of company and brand names to identify and act on complaints (and compliments). What should you be listening for? As a starting point, monitor for your corporate name, your brands, the services you offer, and the names of key executives. Initially, just start looking for complaints, compliments and questions about your company. Look for any serious issues that need to be corrected. Look for patterns or trends that are emerging – positive or negative. Initially, measurement of social media is not necessary, especially for small and mid-size companies. Later, you may want to expand your listening to encompass competitors and industry-specific issues – and also do some formal measurement of social media conversation. Who in the organization should coordinate the listening? The answer to “who should listen?will emerge from the reasons your organization wants to monitor social media. Is it to find service complaints and rectify them? Then “customer service” should listen and react – often called “engagement” in social media circles. Is the reason to identify issues with product performance? Then marketing or product development should be listening. Is it to monitor corporate reputation? Then the public relations department should be listening. In large corporations, multiple departments should be involved in the listening process. How to listen? Using free social media search engines can provide quite a good cross-section of word-of-mouth commentary by consumers on the Web. For blogs, try Technorati, Google Blogs and Ice Rocket. Searching multiple services causes a problem of duplicate content that you’ll need to filter out – something that commercial media monitoring services do automatically. For message boards and forums (which may be even more important to monitor than blogs), try BoardReader which covers about 50,000 different online consumer discussion sites. The best way to start monitoring Facebook and Linked-In is to simply sign up as a member and enter search queries into each service’s search engine. The downside of free search services is the time required to conduct the searches. It may not be the most productive use of in-house staff. Staff time is better used for analyzing, not searching. If there are a limited number of new posts each day, it may be acceptable to monitor less frequently. But at least occasional monitoring of social media is crucial to gain a better understanding of consumer issues and to protect your corporate reputation. Bottom Line: free social media search engines may well meet your needs if you have just a few search terms, typically receive only a few new postings each day, are willing to invest the time to conduct searches on a regular schedule using multiple free services, and have no need for advanced services to measure the quantity, reach, and tone of the social media postings. Using free media monitoring tools, though not perfect, may be “good enough”. “Free”, however, is not truly free. The staff time investment must have an adequate return. Commercial Social Media Monitoring Services The paid subscription services for social media monitoring provide more comprehensive coverage, save staff time, and provide many bells & whistles including online clip archives to manage the social media posts, and automated quantitative and qualitative measurement of the posts. Prominent social media monitoring services include Radian6, Alterian M2, Trackur, and Scout Labs. Presently, more than 50 companies compete in the social media monitoring and measurement space. There is a “wiki” of social media monitoring solutions at wiki.kenburbary.com that continually updates the growing number of social media monitoring services. The Yahoo! Directory also contains a comprehensive list of social media monitoring services. Many of the well-established news monitoring services provide integrated social media monitoring. CyberAlert, for instance, in addition to its online news monitoring service, provides comprehensive daily coverage of 50+ million blogs; 100,000+ message boards, forums, complaint sites, and Usenet news groups; 200+ video sharing sites like YouTube; and all Twitter postings for the previous 24 hours. Social media monitoring services vary considerably in their mission and in their deliverables. In screening the companies, it’s vital to match their market niche with your need. Doing your homework in advance to narrow down your vendor list is absolutely essential. Assessing Social Media Monitoring Services Questions to ask in assessing social media monitoring services: What is the core goal of your service? Who are your key customers? What internal department is the primary client contact point for your service? What’s your service best at doing? Exactly what social media do you cover? How do you aggregate content? May I add social media of special interest to our company to those your company already monitors? Do you cover “complaint” sites? Which ones? Do you monitor Twitter? Do you cover and exactly what content do you harvest from Facebook, MySpace, and Linked-In? Is your search engine capable of performing Boolean queries? What Boolean operators does your search engine use? Is it capable of using regular expressions? How many keywords may I use in my queries? Does your service include a searchable archive of social media posts? What are its features? Ask for a demo of the archive. How do you differ from (another service you are evaluating)? Who is your best competitor? Why is your service superior to theirs? What enhancements do you plan to your service in the next 60 days? Six months? One year? Many of the services offer a comprehensive demo or, even better, a “test drive” of the service. That’s unquestionably the best way to sort through the features and benefits of the various vendors. Summary: Social Media Monitoring As a new and rapidly evolving media, online consumer discussion and social communities form the “wild west” of monitoring. No solution is perfect. But some social media monitoring is essential for most every company. The temptation is to leap into social media at full speed. But, William J. (Bill) Comcowich is President & CEO of CyberAlert, Inc., a worldwide media monitoring company for both news and social media. CyberAlert monitors 50,000+ online news sources in 75+ languages in 189 countries. It also monitors TV news and most all social media. CyberAlert offers a 14-day no-risk free media monitoring trial of all its services at secure.cyberalert.com/ftorder_sya.html. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Google Instant Search for Marketing Posted: 17 Sep 2010 12:00 AM PDT 
The main idea behind this new feature is to save users a few seconds on each search and cut down on misspellings for search terms, business names or product names. Users may not notice much difference in their overall experience, however, for small businesses and online entrepreneurs, this new search method carries a few interesting ramifications. Since Google clearly ranks as the “900 lb. Gorilla” of the online marketing world, acting as de facto gateway to the Web for millions, any change to their system makes businesses nervous. Many have expressed concern that this latest change will force users of Google’s AdWords program, the search giant’s lucrative pay-per-click marketing arm, to pay for more expensive keywords. They reason that since the most popular search terms appear in the search box first, and that most people will opt to accept Google suggestions, those most popular searches will carry the highest click prices. In other words, businesses that depend on Google to show their ads fear that Google will force them to pay more money by recommending more expensive keyword searches. I disagree. The suggested search term feature actually appeared on Google quite a while ago, and all that’s really changed is Google starts to display the actual search results AS you type. With the old 2-step process, Google made suggestions as you typed and then you clicked the search button to see the search results. Instant Search just creates a FAST way to see the results for different search variations without forcing you to click the button each time to see those results. This process makes it simple to see the results, change your mind, and not wait for the results each time you change the phrase. My experience shows that most people always start with a broad search and then narrow it by including more descriptive terms (often called “long-tail” keywords) to better find what they want. This new process won’t change that. In fact, it will give people more chances to refine their searches on-the-fly by providing Google more details of what they want. Instead of posing a threat, I believe this new Instant Search feature creates an opportunity for any business to perform high-speed market research to look for possible opportunities and trouble spots. The following four steps will help any small business use Google’s new feature for instant results. 1. Go to Google and search for your business as if you were a consumer. 2. Make a note of the keyword suggestions Google offers as you type. 3. See if those suggestions give you any ideas for your own marketing (since they should represent the most popular phrases). 4. Note which competitors show up and where you appear in relation to them. These 4 simple steps make a great barometer for taking a read on your local market, fast. Who appears consistently? Who shows up hit-and-miss or every once in a while? Who shows up in Google Maps? If your competitors show up and you don’t, you’ve got some work to do! Bottom line: as a small business, use Google’s new Instant Search to quickly get the big picture when it comes to your business, industry, and local competition. “Small Business Marketing Weekly” helps small business owners understand HOW to use the web to make more sales, increase revenue, and get more customers. Visit SmallBusinessMarketingWeekly.com for more articles today! Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Occam’s Razor Solves Marketing Misinformation Posted: 16 Sep 2010 10:00 PM PDT 
The implications of this seemingly simple insight into decision-making are quite significant for marketing executives: features are out; emotional and psychological benefits are in. Ah, but what emotional benefit, there’s the rub. I will assume that if you are reading this you are interested in improving your business and that you are open to new ways of doing things, and that starts with new ways of thinking about things. Finding Your Emotional Benefit Finding your emotional benefit is really not that hard if you know where to look. The extended version of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is the place to start. Every product or service needs to fit into at least one level of the psychological hierarchy from basic survival, to ‘be all you can be’ self-actualization. Every successful brand has its place on the hierarchy. The Web was recently all abuzz with the success of the Old Spice commercials featuring Isaiah Mustafa. Many analysts chalked its success up to the social networking aspect of the campaign but as much as that may have helped initially, it also over-exposed it, shortening its effective run. There were lots of things the Old Spice campaign got right. It was kind of a perfect-creative-marketing-storm, but the one thing that actually drove its success was the emotional value proposition – Old Spice will make you more attractive to women, and sex is one The Key Component to Marketing is Establishing Want How do you improve your business, how do you increase your sales, how do you sell more stuff? And how do you simplify the process so you narrow your focus down to a manageable marketing communication concept – a brand. Following our pal Ockham’s advice, the answer is simple, concentrate on why people should buy from you. What customers want is the key component in today’s materialistic consumer environment, especially in a marketplace that breeds competitive brand alternatives like rabbits breed bunnies. Why people should buy from you is not the same as why they should buy your product or service. If you are a monopoly then the answer is easy, people have two choices, to buy from you or not at all. But most companies aren’t so lucky. Most companies have competition either selling the exact same products and services or substitute products and services. What customers’ think they need is only one criteria of the decision-making process; in fact, want invariably plays a large role in establishing what people think they need. For most products and services, need plays only a superficial role in what people actually buy. What your audience wants is really the decision-clincher, a fact that should be at the center of all your marketing. How To Sell Anybody Anything on the Web According to management consultant David Fields of Ascendant Consulting there are six basic sales criteria. Know: A potential client must know you exist if you want to make a sale, that’s pretty obvious. This aspect of the sales process has led to an obsession with search engine optimization and social networking. What needs to be remembered is that knowing of your existence, as important as it is, is only one of the six sales criteria. Like: Your intended audience may know who you are, and what you do, but that doesn’t mean they care, or that you have any chance of getting an order: for example, you may be able to name a half-a-dozen different kinds of apples but when you go to the supermarket, you don’t buy just any apple, you buy the one you like best. If you don’t like a company you will find somebody else to buy from. Just because you’re good at what you do or sell the best product on the market doesn’t mean a thing if people don’t like your company. How often have you sworn-off a company because the person on the telephone was uncooperative. That company may have thousands of employees and a customer service manual three inches thick, but if the minimum wage call center person is a jerk, you’ll find yourself someone else. Need: Every client has needs but in the final analysis those needs are a highly over-rated motivating factor when it comes to buying a specific product or service from a specific supplier. You may need an accountant but you have many options from which to hire. You may need drywall to complete a project but you can buy it from a dozen different local building supply dealers. There are very few products or services for which you can’t find an alternative or that can’t be purchased from multiple vendors. Want: Of all the sales criteria listed the most important one is want – what you want ultimately overrides all other considerations, even trust and affordability. I once had a teacher who road the bus to work every day for twenty years until he saved enough money to buy a Mercedes – granted he was crazy but you get my point. You may need a mobile phone but you want an iPhone; you may need a new suit but you want a Boss suit; you want your audience to want your company. Trust: People are leery of companies they don’t trust. Trust is an important factor in building a long-term business relationship. Companies that engage in unethical practices or who cross the ethical marketing line may get one order, but they will never build a long-term business relationship or customer loyalty. Afford: And then there is money, there is always an issue when it comes to what things cost but surprisingly it’s not even close to the deciding factor in many purchases. Often companies think that cutting prices is the surefire method of attracting more business, but depending on the company, brand, category, and target audience, cutting prices may have the opposite effect. Every company has budgets, and no one would suggest that companies buy things they can’t afford, but sometimes it is better to wait until you can afford the optimum solution instead of making-do, and ending up with a second rate or mediocre result. A Final Thought As complicated as Web marketing has become with the myriad of digital advertising options available, the only real way you can move forward is to break things down to a series of simple decisions based on the fundamental aspects of human nature. People need to feel connected and they need to feel good about your company. We all inherently know this but for some reason find it more comforting to put our faith in technological solutions that you may, or may not really understand, and that often make no real-world practical sense. People are people and they are all motivated by the same natural hard-wired instincts. Your job is to find the one motivating factor that will get your audience to salivate over your brand, and present it in a way that will make your company the one company everyone wants to do business with. Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com, and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedial.com or telephone (905) 764-1246. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
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