How Important is Video on Your Website?

Too often the question arises "how much video do I need on my website?" or "should I be putting videos on my social media presence?".  The answer is if you are not focusing on video for a major part of your online presence you are making a mistake.

Video has become one of the most popular viewing mechanisms in a user's online experience.  Google actually saw this coming and bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, processes almost 4 billion searches a month with over 100 hours of video uploaded each minute. 

If we stop and look at what is happening on the browser front we will see some very interesting trends. Internet browsing is rapidly transitioning to the mobile device (phone and tablets), and more and more people using those devices as their entertainment center.  Look at statistics recently presented at a JW Player webinar you will see the following:

So, if you are not using video in your Internet design then you may want to reconsider. You may also want to note how much your web presence is designed for mobile usage.  Combining the two will move your relevance in the digital world closer to the front!

JW Player is the world's most popular HTML5/Flash embeddable media player for websites.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest calls itself a virtual pinboard. The following is a quote from their website:

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

I signed up for Pinterest the other day and spent some time playing around with it. Before I knew it I found myself engulfed in areas that interested me. I began to follow others who had interests that were like mine and re-pinned many of their items. At first I did not think I was interested in finding recipes or new shoe styles, however after spending some time browsing through the magnitude of pictures and information I found what I consider to be an advertiser's dream. There are incredible opportunities for an organization's products to be connected to people who like items like they provide.

Upon this realization, I had to find out how many people are using this service. Utilizing the Nielsen 2012 Social Media Report I found the following quote.

Pinterest had the largest year-over-year increase in audience and time spent of any social network across PC, mobile, and web apps.

In the U.S. Market alone Pinterest surpassed over 46 million unique visitors. This is something that any producer of a product should be intently aware of. So if you have not checked out Pinterest, you may want to spend some time fining your interests.

Top Social Media of 2012

There are so many different ways a person can share their insights with the world that one often wonders which one to use. The yearly Social Media Report from the Nielsens is usually a great avenue to determine where the most activity and users are. Advertisers must also watch this information to make sure they are spending their money in front of the greatest audience. 

The 2012 Social Media Report gives us some insight on the trending of the top Social Media Networks of the year. Facebook has been a hard hitter in the social media realm but this year seems to be a year of change. Still reporting in with over 152 million unique visitors in the PC access demographic, but they are down 4%. However, the way people access Facebook is drastically changing to the mobile device market. There has been an increase of over 85% of visitors in the mobile web and mobile app department accommodating for slightly more unique visitors than those accessing by PC.

Twitter was accessed on cellphones and other mobile devices through the web and Twitter apps by almost 67 million unique users which illustrated around 140% increase over the previous year. The PC market for Twitter topped slightly over 37 million unique visitors and reported an increase of 13%. Other statistics can be found on the Nielson website.

Some people have mentioned that Facebook is on its way out and that may be true from the PC market, however as an advertiser I would not recommend bailing on that service yet. Twitter is still running strong and is something organizations need to pay attention to. Social media networks change very frequently and how we use them to promote our products and services should change along with them.

Keep up the work and reap the benefits!

Looking Back to 2012 with Social Media

I don't know if you are looking for any good reading material, but I found myself scanning through the Nielsen's Social Media Report for 2012 over Christmas and New Year's. Sounds like good reading doesn't it? I would not recommend it to you for the latest top 10 novels on the bookshelf but it is very interesting to see what people are doing with social media.  Lets take a look at a few of the stats found in the report.

First of all, mobile web access (access to Internet sites) is up 82% in 2012. This is an incredible statistic! What does this mean to me? Well, if you are a website owner you need to make sure that your site is mobile friendly. In July 2012 over 95 million people were accessing websites by their cellphones or mobile devices. On top of that, the number of mobile apps increased by 85% to over 101 million apps on the market.

Some people may argue that Internet usage is up overall but that is not the case for the type of devices that people are using. For instance, PC access to the Internet has begun to drop (4%). It is true that people are spending more time on the Internet overall, however they are using their cell phones and mobile devices to do so.

If you think about the time you spend on the Internet, ask yourself how and when do you access your favorite pages. I know in my life, outside of work I access the Internet by mobile device almost 10 to 1 over using a PC. These statistics should make the advertiser realize he or she needs to be aware of how people are accessing their ads. Are they mobile friendly? I hope so, because your organization needs to make sure your products and services are accessible by the largest market. 

Attracting Advertising Attention via Twitter

I like to call it the Three A's of Twitter. Attracting Advertising Attention! Having a business or organization requires you have some sort of customer base or following. As a part of advertising you need to keep your product or service in front of as many people as possible. Twitter is a great way to do that, however you have to have followers. The more followers you have on Twitter, the greater audience for your message or product.

So how do you acquire followers? One of the ways is to follow other people. Many people, just because you followed them, will follow back. Another way to gain followers is to make sure you are an active tweeter. Along with your tweets, use meaningful #Hashtags. Your hashtags should represent your comments or ideas. Many people follow the trends and your hashtags help the process of being viewed in the trends that people are looking for.

There is another way of getting your tweets viewed by a lot of people. It is called promoting your tweet or promoting your ID; and as you can expect, it costs money. In the Twitter world it is called promoting your tweets or promoting your brand. To find out more information and to start shelling out some cash to have a tweet or two displayed in front of a vast number of people, just click the advertising link at the bottom of your Twitter profile.

Personally, I believe we can be effective for free if you do your homework and diligently work at the process.

Rapidly Determining Online Ad performance

Determining advertising performance is a huge deal. With traditional advertising such as newspaper, billboards, radio, and television, one has to wait for the campaign to run to determine if his or her advertising money was well spent. This is not the case with Internet advertising. Internet advertising offers the ability to see almost immediate results. Lets take a look at the process.

We will use Google AdWords for an example. Google AdWords allows you to create Internet advertisements that will display alongside of search results in a Google.com search. Google Adwords also allows your ads to be displayed on the webpages of people who want to reap advertising returns by allowing Google to post relevant ads on their site. In either case, Google AdWords connects the advertiser with his target demographic by product interest.

Here is how it works. Google AdWords allows the advertiser to create ad campaigns that connects a product to a potential buyer by connecting search and content terms to your ad. You are given the opportunity to create an ad in its entirety including header, content, and link. You choose the word connection, how much you want to spend (bidding), and the times you want your ad to run. Google will then match your ad with search terms and website content to display your ads. Your ads can, and probably will, be placed along side of other relevant ads.

When your ad is clicked, the potential buyer is taken to your site, and you are charged for the click (unless you are paying by impression). Seems simple enough right? Here is where the beauty comes in. Using Internet advertising on places like Google AdWords and Facebook ads, you can immediately see the results. Being able to quickly see what is happening allows you to do some creative strategies. The largest advantage to this is where you can produce more than one ad per campaign and balance the frequency of their appearance. Each ad should be slightly different while still advertising the same thing.

After starting your campaign with two different ads for the same product, you should begin to see which ad is getting the most clicks. After a small amount of time, drop the poor performer and develop another ad to take its place. You will begin competing the two against each other. Every so often continue to drop the poorest performer and replace it with a new ad. This will allow you to develop an ad that performs well and achieves your goals.

This has just been an overview. Think about the possibilities of competing ads to develop the ultimate ad campaign. The Internet allows you to adjust your ad in a matter of hours rather than waiting to see what is happening in one or two months. Besides, the Internet has a much larger audience base than your typical billboard or newspaper run. 

Is Social Media a Viable Option for Advertising?

The advertising purists have recently questioned whether or not social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) is actually a viable option to spend advertising money. I believe it is! Social media makes up much of what I write about on the Realize Media site, and for very good reason. The social media networks are changing the way organizations advertise and do business. If you don't believe me, I want to show you this video. It is a little over a year old, however the message is still there. 



Think about the way you do business, is it time for a change?

Facebook Notes vs. External Blog links on Facebook

People ask all of the time if it is not better to have your thoughts or comments about your interests and organizations placed in the notes section of Facebook rather than having a blog? My answer to that is yes and no. It is a good idea to always use the native format of the social medium you choose, however, there are pitfalls. Facebook in its infant life had the ability to import an external blog or RSS feed directly into notes. Not too long ago Facebook had a message when you logged into your account that says notes will no longer be automatically created from outside sources such as blogs. This had been the ideal way to create Facebook notes from an outside resource.

So, if you had been using that method to import outside information into your notes section, then you had to find a different route. This created a problem for bloggers. Now they have to find a different way of connecting their messages to people on Facebook. Is this a catastrophe?

Over the past few years my instruction to college groups is to find the best route to update your Facebook notes without suffering a Social Media catastrophe. What happens to all of your work that you created exclusively on a social site when a new one comes along? It dies with the old site. Remember what happened to MySpace? (sorry, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories)

If you create your important thoughts on a blog or website then you don't have to worry about the new fad that comes along. Just link the old info to the new site. The Facebook notes import function used to be a decent way to do that. So, what do we do now?

There are third party Facebook apps that accomplish the same thing. Just spend some time to research and test. The easiest way (and best way) is just share a link to your new post on your favorite social media sites. This drives people to your site or blog and offers plenty of opportunity for others to see your previous work. Always keep in mind your "web presence" is the ideal place for your comments and the social media sites are just avenues to drive people to your site.

Keep connecting!

Realizing Facebook for Advertising

We just spent some time talking about using Twitter to advertise and connect with a target audience. If you did not see it, you can read it here. Facebook offers the same opportunity to connect to an audience, however some options are limited due to user profile setup options. Facebook also has a few other tools that you can and should use to connect to your desired group.

First, there is the "pay per click" or "pay per impression" way of reaching your target demographic. This is a very unique way of advertising a product or service. You can design your advertising campaign to reach a very narrow audience defined by gender, occupation, location, and various other defining factors. If you have ever used Google advertisement you will find this works in a similar way but with a social media flavor. This type of advertising works outside your scope of friends and includes anyone who has an account of Facebook. In another post I expressed some trouble using Facebook for paid advertising that is not found using the same methods of other companies. You can read about it here.

Another way to advertise on Facebook is the Group Page. You can setup a Group Page and allow others to become member of the group. You can share ideas, product information, and anything else you want others in the group to know. Facebook Group Pages are also an excellent feedback resource of your audience as they can post against the group. Some organizations use this for offering product support. Group Pages are a more closely connected group of people and may not suit your goals.

Facebook also offers what is called the Fan Page. It is here that others can become "fans" of your product or organization. It is easy to use this method to create branding and advertise your products or services. As you post against your page, theoretically others should be able to see your posts. This option is more loosely defined and people usually connect to a Fan Page because they like your organization or products.

With Fan and Group Pages organizations are seeing great opportunities to share their messages. There is an element of concern. Many businesses and organizations are seeing a decline in how their posts are reaching their audiences. Facebook in its ever changing design scheme is attempting only show relevant information to their customer base. Through this process there has been concern over the diminishing effect of posting through Groups, Fan Pages, and even your Individual Page.

The concern is still very new, however it is something you need to keep an eye on. You don't want to spend a lot of effort trying to increase your traffic only to find that Facebook is not showing everything to those connected to your pages.

Have fun but monitor your results!

Realizing Twitter

Twitter has been a fascinating mode of social media. Developed in 2006 as a companion to text messaging, it has evolved to what is called micro-blogging. Limited to 140 characters this mode of media is being used to help police do their job as well as politicians gain an advantage in the political race. The largest use by far is social networking. With a user base approaching 500 million any organization would be foolish to ignore this as a means of reaching a target audience.

Twitter is being used by various organizations to promote products and services.
Imagine having a new product on the market and designing an advertising campaign that will allow others to help you spread the word. That would be almost as good as having people buy a tee-shirt with your logo printed on the front. Believe it or not, that is happening every day through the services of Twitter.

Companies create a text style of message, no more than one or two sentences, and post it on the Twitter network. Anyone following or searching for you or your products can see your latest report and can share it with others. You can send your message virtually as many times a day as you want.

Companies who have seen success utilizing this method of communication do more than just post a message about their product. They also share pictures of their products, videos of their products in action, and encourage people who use their products to do the same. It makes the consumer feel as if they are part of the "club" so to speak.

Very few modes of communication allow organizations to monitor the feedback of others. Twitter is an exception to this rule. By using a hash tag, a word preceded by the # sign, you can create a topic or group of messages concerning that subject identified by that word. For instance, if I wanted to categorize everything I mentioned against the subject of Realize Media, then I would create the hash tag #realizemedia.

Everything I said would be followed by the hash tag. People replying or knowing the Realize Media product would reply using the hash tag or add the hash tag to their tweet.

Twitter makes it easy to monitor hash tags. Therefore, anyone using that hash tag I could see what they said. Does this mean that Twitter is not a private form of social networking? Not necessarily. Your personal information can be set to private, however, any message you post publicly will be viewable by all. By following words or hash tags one can glean valuable information concerning problems or trends.
So if you are really excited about your product or service and want to tell everyone you know, sign up on Twitter and share your passion!

#realizemedia