12 Valuable Tips for Video SEO Beginners

If you aren't optimizing your videos to match what people are searching, your videos are likely to get lost and not reach their intended audience. Without reaching their intended audience, they serve no purpose.
YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. Every minute, more than 48 hours of new video content is uploaded. Videos are 50 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google results, according to Nate Elliot at Forrester.
So how do you ensure your videos get results? With video search engine optimization, commonly referred to as video SEO.
To simplify what you need to do, think about your target audience. Consider their language, wants, and needs.
Use the following 12 valuable tips to get your video to reach the first page of Google and YouTube, but most importantly build visibility to a large niche audience that is interested in what you have to offer.

1. Content Quality Check

Ensure your videos are relevant, informative, and rich with content. Don't waste time producing videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service.
Videos demonstrating step-by-step processes or videos expressing opinions about topics can be quite useful. Videos should be fun, memorable, short, and leave the viewer wanting more.
If using a video production company, trust one that understands the importance of these concepts. If you're hesitant of their services, make sure to scan their existing video portfolio in detail for videos that match these qualities.

2. Title

Capture the potential viewer's attention with a catchy title that contains related key phrases that are relevant to your brand or service. Do some keyword research and find the words that your audience will most likely be searching, but remember to keep the title interesting, not just filled with keywords.
Create a title that will catch the eye of a user. Brainstorm some titles that catch your eye when passing a magazine rack. What compels you to pick up a magazine?

3. Tags

Optimize your video with important key phrases or keywords. Don't use complicated words or terminology that may not be common to the average person.
Refer back to your keyword research and think in terms of what your targeted audience might be searching for when looking to find your brand or service. Tag your video with these terms and consider naming the file of the video with these terms in mind.

4. Description

Optimize your video's description with relevant keywords and include a keyword-rich description of your video to allow search engines to index it and rank it higher, and for users to better understand your video before viewing.

5. Links

Use video as a portal to other content on your site. Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and Vimeo, and consider providing links back to related content and other relevant videos on your site.

6. Transcripts

Provide transcripts of your videos. Good old HTML content is still a favorite with search engines.
If you want your video to rank well, you need to give the search engines something to index and rank. Surround your videos with on-page copy that can be indexed by search engines.

7. Length

Keep your video at five minutes or less. The average amount of time a user spends on a YouTube video is around 1 minute 30 seconds. People do not want to sit through a boring video, and most will not do it.
If you have video content that is of long duration, consider breaking it up into smaller pieces and tagging each accordingly, to be more appealing to the viewer. Not only does this make for better viewing pleasure, multiple videos are also better for optimization efforts.
YouTube is now paying close attention to viewership and engagement. It is critical that viewers watch your video for as long as possible.

8. Video Sitemaps

Submit a video sitemap to Google to make sure that the search engine spiders can find your video content and index it accordingly. This is the easiest way for search engines to find your video content.
Take advantage of Google Webmaster Tools for creating a video sitemap. Use important keywords in the anchor text that links to your videos featured on your sitemap.

9. Branding

As video is a great way to generate brand awareness with prospects, take advantage of this opportunity to incorporate your brand and logos into your videos.

10. Embedding Options

Help your video go viral. Allow other users access to the coding that will allow them to embed your video on their website or blog. This can help gain valuable back links and shares that will boost your rankings in search engines.

11. Syndication

Submit your video to RSS feeds and syndicate your videos to drive exposure across various online platforms and to optimize your videos even more.

12. Share, Share, Share!

Get on your social networks, look through your email contacts, write on your blogs, and get the hype going. Share your video with everyone, because if you have content worth sharing, it will continue to be shared to grow an expanding audience, and in turn develop more exposure for your brand or service.

Summary

Video optimization can be a great way for you to expose your brand to users who may otherwise not have been familiar with your brand, product, or services. It is a great way to engage, entertain, and promote that will get you great results on search engines.
Good luck with your video SEO!

3 Amazingly Simple Ways to Use Video for Link Building

While content marketing continues to be exceedingly important, it’s not all about articles or resources, as you may have discovered. As we kick off the new year, the most important thing you can do to help your SEO efforts is to bring about more diversity in your efforts, so definitely plan to include video in your link building arsenal.
According to comScore’s recent study, 182 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 40 billion online videos just in the month of November, up by 3 billion from their October study. In fact, the study showed that 85.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed some form of online video, with the average length being five minutes. Clearly video is popular with audiences, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to engage your target viewing segments.
Often people dismiss video as being time-consuming or too expensive to bother with. That’s really not the case. Clever usage of videos can tremendously boost your link building efforts and make good content more digestible and engaging for your consumers.
Here are three great ways to use video for SEO.

1. Video Infographics

We all remember the infographics boom that dominated much of late 2010 and the early half of 2011. Infographics became the silver bullet du jour and everybody and their mother were publishing them.
While some well-researched, high quality infographics can still enjoy success, why churn out stuff that almost everyone else is doing? Let’s take something that has worked well to engage people in the past and give it a new avatar to breathe new life into the tactic.
Thus, consider creating a video infographic. A good way to start is to take an existing infographic that has done well in the past and have an animator turn it into a fun short video. Instantly the same content you created gets a new lease on life and reaches out to a fresh new audience.
Take this example of an infographic created on surviving the zombie apocalypse. Created in early 2011, it was an immensely popular link bait, even scoring a link from Wired.com.

Turned into a video and timed for the so-called "end of the world" in December 2012, it became a fresh tactic that once again earned high quality links and a host of social media shares.

Don’t stop with just re-creating old infographics. If you have a list of new ideas that could work well as infographics, create the copy and turn them into videos. These don’t have to be expensive; a good online animator with voiceover talent could create a high quality video for just a few hundred dollars.

2. Videos on Landing Pages

Make your landing pages work harder to convert customers by adding some video to them. A product page, for example, could be greatly enhanced with the addition of a customer review video.
Amazon uses this tactic very cleverly with its video product reviews option. Take this example of a simple kitchen tool Amazon sells, a corn kernel remover. Under the reviews section, the very first review is a video of the product in action; the video instantly showcases for the viewer how easy the tool is to use.

A tactic like this can greatly increase the conversion rate of the product page by not only showcasing the product in action, but also adding the crucial element of persuasion – social proof.
Google does a great job of showcasing their advertising options by explaining how they work and their core benefits through nifty short videos. Here’s a great example for their AdWords for video advertising option.

This short video quickly showcases all the key benefits to advertisers and explains how this method of advertising works. It then encourages the viewer to consume further information to learn more and get started. Simple, powerful and easy, it works extremely effectively to explain to the viewer something complicated in an easy, digestible manner.
Probably one of the better-known examples of product demos done well appears on the "Will it Blend?" website. Go on, admit it; we were all captivated to see Tom blend things like an iPad or DVDs.

Raise your hand if you watched the video for fun but came away impressed by how powerful that blender was and even considered purchasing it. This is a truly powerful example of a video campaign that gets links and also converts.
Video provides the opportunity to really showcase your brand or product in a fun and helpful way that truly resonates with your target audience. Rather than simply reading a dry page of benefits, seeing it in action is a much more powerful motivator for audiences.

3. Video Resources

Chances are high that you have this content already created. You have manuals or articles on the best way to use your product, tips on getting the most from it, or case studies on what your brand has accomplished.
Showing, rather than telling, is the key here, and your sales will be all the better for it. Any product can benefit from simple videos that showcase tips, demos and how-tos.
As the earlier example from Amazon also showcases, the product needn’t be super exciting to justify a video. Take for example a binding company, who say they have created all their videos for under $50 each. While binding is admittedly not the most exciting subject on the planet, their videos section has resonated with their audience and helped not just their SEO but their sales as well.

Brainstorming Tips: How to Come up With Ideas for a Video

Coming up with ideas for videos is the truly fun part. With a little bit of thought, anyone can create a great share-worthy video. Good steps to follow include:

• Look at existing content: You likely already have some immensely popular blog posts or other content that could work extremely well as a video.
• Turn to your customers: Host a video testimonial contest if you have difficulty sourcing videos from customers. The chances of getting something in return are high.
• Look at your FAQs: Each of these could be turned into individual videos or combined into one power-packed video.
• Look at your sales pages: You’ve already done the hard work to create content that converts; why not put all the core benefits and features into a video?
• Do a YouTube search: What are some of the most popular videos that show up on YouTube for your key terms? Those could be great sources of inspiration.
• Look at your competition: How are companies in your area promoting themselves either via commercials or through sales pitches on their websites? This is rich information ready for sharing.
• Turn to social media: Peruse the trending videos on sites such as BuzzFeed, HuffingtonPost, or What's Trending to get an idea of what people are really responding to. While the videos tend to fall more on the humorous side, they may still spark some creative ideas.

Video Production Tips: How to Get It Done

It’s really not that hard to get a video produced, especially if you start with an animated one.
You will need:

• A video script, which can be edited from existing copy.
• A video animator.
• A voiceover artist.
• Two to three weeks to get it all produced.

You don’t have to use an expensive production company; sites such as Elance or oDesk are rich with talented people from around the globe who can produce videos relatively inexpensively. Alternatively, contact local colleges with film programs and hire an intern for a couple of months. He or she will be grateful for the experience and expanded portfolio and you’ll be grateful for the impact to your SEO efforts.
Make sure to:

• Scan the past work and demo reels of all animators and voiceover talents to ensure you find a style that works well for you.
• Get all rights to the video signed over to you; the last thing you want is multiple copies of the video floating around before you’ve had a chance to launch your campaign.
• Post the video on YouTube after you're done, with an outreach campaign for added boosts. Create rich descriptions that contain your keywords and link back to your site so that people searching for your key terms can discover your video and potentially visit your site.

Summary

Video is a great SEO tool that is still surprisingly underutilized. Get ahead of the competition and give your link-building efforts a much-needed boost in 2013 by reaching the consumer where they already are – consuming videos online.

How to Triple Your YouTube Video Views With Facebook

Do you want more people to watch your YouTube videos?
Are you looking for an easy way to improve the quality of the content you share on Facebook?
All you need is some great content and a cool Facebook technique that I recently discovered.

A Quick Overview

This technique lets you automatically attach your videos to the updates that appear on Facebook after someone likes content on your website.
By leveraging Facebook’s Open Graph and using this technique, I’ve seen phenomenal results!
I shared this tactic with a brand operating in the travel industry and they generated more than one million aggregated views of their product videos on YouTube (and significant website traffic) in a matter of weeks.

By integrating this Open Graph tactic, Marmara, a French travel company, generated 93K likes on its website, which in turn generated 13 million impressions of their videos in the Facebook newsfeed! Not to mention the 16K clicks they got back to their website. All in just 2 weeks and for free.

Using this technique, you can see in the image below that when you like an article on a blog, the story that’s automatically generated on Facebook for your friends to see already has a video embedded into it.

With this feature, each blog article that you write automatically shares a video of your choice.

This is a great way to boost the visibility of your YouTube channel! If you want to see this example live, you can click here.
And this video is ready to be clicked and played in the Facebook newsfeed, ticker or personal timeline of the person who liked your content.
This can be valuable to your business. It’s a very smooth way for you to combine useful and interesting content with a video showcasing your products or services!
Imagine how you can use this tactic to get your product videos shared automatically with useful content throughout the social web.
In this article you’ll learn how to use Facebook’s Open Graph to get more views of your videos on YouTube.
You’re also going to learn how to get everyone who likes your Facebook Page or one of your blog posts to automatically share one of your videos on Facebook.

Understanding the Open Graph

If you have a website or blog, you’ve probably already integrated social sharing buttons, and in particular the Facebook Like button on your site.
For this tactic, simply installing the Like button is only half of it; you must also insert Open Graph meta tags into the source code of your website or blog page to optimize the sharing of your content on Facebook.
These meta tags let you control the manner in which your web page is shared on Facebook when your visitor likes it, comments on it or sends it to friends via the Like, Comment and Send plugins provided by Facebook.
If you’re not familiar with Open Graph meta tags and their importance, I encourage you to watch Facebook’s video on the subject.
I also encourage you to consult the official Open Graph protocol page. There you’ll find out about all of the different meta tags, their uses, their functions and the advantages they give to your content.
Of course, if all that seems a bit too technical, don’t hesitate to hand over the reins to your agency or technical director.
But let’s continue so you can fully understand the role this tactic can play in your social media marketing and what it can mean for your business.
Here’s what you need to know.

#1: Understand the Anatomy of a Facebook Like Story

Once your Open Graph meta tags are integrated into your web page, you can control the way your content is displayed when it is shared using Facebook’s social plugins (Like, Comment, Send).
You need to think about the different sections of the post that automatically appear on Facebook when someone likes content on your website.
For example, here’s what the optimal sharing of a blog article would look like:

Here are the different sections of the update that appear on Facebook after someone likes your article.

By customizing each Open Graph meta tag in your content, you control the way it’s displayed on Facebook when someone likes it!
As you can see, the essential meta tags are the following:

• The title of a shared page (meta property=”og:title” content=”Your title”)
• Its description (meta property=”og:description” content=”Your description”)
• Its URL (meta property =”og:url” content=”Your URL”).
• The image illustrating this page (meta property =”og:image” content=”http://link_of_an_image.jpg”)

Below are the Open Graph meta tags for this article when I display the page’s HTML source code. To access the HTML source code of any web page, just right-click on it and select View Source. You’ll then have access to the HTML code of the page you are viewing.

Here are the Open Graph meta tags needed for this technique.

When the meta tags are entered correctly and a visitor clicks Like on your web page, the content is automatically and properly displayed on Facebook.
You’ll find out how to use this technique below.

#2: How It Works

If a photo is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a thousand photos! This is especially true in the case of a Facebook newsfeed story generated by a Like of a web page.
Let’s compare the two Facebook Like Stories below:

The Facebook post on the top has a photo, and the post on the bottom has a video embedded in it that is ready to play.

Depending on how you use Facebook’s social share buttons and Open Graph meta tag code, the same Like can generate two different posts on Facebook: one with a single 200-pixel–wide picture, or one with the same picture but with an embedded video!
These two posts correspond to the same action: a click of the Like button on a web page for a product—in this example, a vacation resort. But in the first case, the action displays a 200-pixel–wide image. The second displays, within that same image, a Play button for a video. As you can guess, viewers are more inclined to click on that image if it displays a video Play button.
This is the primary difference between these two posts, but it doesn’t stop there.
You see, the simple act of clicking on the Play button immediately shows a video, without having to leave the post. As a savvy marketer, you’ll know how to use this to your advantage to market your business.
This technique makes it very easy for marketers to have a useful product video appear inside the Facebook update about liked content. With the right content mix, this can be a strong marketing strategy.

Click on the Play icon located on the picture and you will automatically watch a video showcasing the product that you liked: a vacation resort.

For a vacation resort, a one-minute video highlighting all of the destination’s attractions has a larger impact than a 200-pixel–wide image.
But a tactic like this is not just for vacation resorts. It can be very useful for a number of products.
In the case of a blog, you can use this tactic to enrich Facebook posts when a person likes one of your articles.
For example, if you have video tutorials introducing the functions of your products or showing them in action, you can use these videos to highlight products related to the content in your blog articles.

How this works.
Here’s an example of how I used this.

1. I wrote an article introducing the different page administrator roles created by Facebook, discussing their advantages and limitations.
2. I created a video tutorial demonstrating how AgoraPulse offers richer admin role management features than the ones offered by Facebook.

Then I set things up to automatically attach and display my video when my article is liked and therefore shared on Facebook.

This is how the update appears in Facebook when someone likes my article published on my website.

It’s easy to increase the value of a blog article by attaching a video. This makes your content much more attractive.
Each time a reader likes this blog article, it automatically shares a video tutorial explaining how to manage Facebook Page admin roles with the aid of a Facebook Page management software tool.
This way, you have the best of both worlds: interesting content + relevant product promotion.
What makes this tactic so effective is that the Like automatically shares the video in Facebook, not only in the newsfeed:

Newsfeed before the click.

But also the ticker:

The ticker view.

And even on the personal timeline of the author:

The profile view.

Do you want to see this in action for yourself? It’s easy. Simply go to this blog article, click Like and then go to your Facebook profile to see the result.

Are you interested in doing this on your website? Here’s how to set it up.

#3: Use a Plugin to Add the Meta Tags

It’s easy to get each click of the Like button on your website to automatically share and display a video on Facebook. You just need to add two additional Open Graph meta tags after the existing tags in the code of your page.
As you’ve seen above, the minimum necessary meta tags are the following:

meta property=”og:title” content=”Your title”
meta property=”og:description” content=”Your description”
meta property =”og:url” content=”Your URL”
meta property =”og:image” content=”http://link_of_an_image.jpg”

Simply add these two meta tags:

meta property=”og:video” content=”http://link_of_your_video” /
meta property=”og:video:type” content=”application/x-shockwave-flash” /

So, how do you do all this? It depends on your situation:

• If your site was created by an independent contractor and you don’t have access to the source code, you need to ask the contractor to integrate the meta tags.
• If you created your site with WordPress, you can customize the Open Graph meta tags of your pages (and of each blog article) yourself using specific plugins.

If your website was created with WordPress, you can use a plugin called Like-Button-Plugin-For-WordPress, which allows the customization of Open Graph data. However, I’ve seen two other plugins that provide the same result: Open Graph Protocol in Posts and Pages and Social Graph Protocol.
Each of these three plugins lets you easily add the meta tags you need to share your videos with each Like on the pages of your site or blog.

Specific WordPress plugins will allow you to personalize the Open Graph meta tags for each page or blog article.

The only field you really need to fill in is the video link. Facebook will take care of the size and video type.

#4: Where to Host Your Videos and How to Share YouTube Videos

To display a video on the web, it has to be hosted somewhere on the web. You’ll be in one of these two situations: either you host the video file on your own servers, or you use a self-service video hosting service such as YouTube.
1. If you host the video on your own servers, you must host the file in the .SWF format. Be careful not to host the file in .FLV or any other traditional video format, as the video player that works with Facebook will not read it.
Then you simply need to set the Open Graph meta tag value as the URL of the .SWF file that you previously put online.

Insert the link to your self-hosted .SWF video file here if you use the Like Button plugin for WordPress, for example.

2. If you prefer to use YouTube to host your videos, you’ll need to follow these steps:

• In a web browser, navigate to the YouTube page with your video.
• In the URL, identify the YouTube ID of your video. This is the series of letters and numbers found between the “=” and the “&” symbols of the URL. In the following case, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlQasgOjaxU&feature=plcp, the ID of the video is “dlQasgOjaxU“.
• Insert this ID into the following URL: http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/[yourID]
  Once you have your new URL format, insert it in your browser to test it out. If the URL is right, the video should be displayed full screen (and fit your entire browser window).

• Add this URL to your Open Graph meta tags and you’re all set!
  Insert the link to your YouTube-hosted video here if you use the Social Graph Protocol Plugin, for example.

#5: Track the Statistics of Your YouTube Videos

If you’ve opted for hosting your videos on YouTube (something I strongly recommend), you’ll also have a clear advantage with access to your YouTube statistics.
You’ll be able to see the number of views your video has on Facebook!
The good news is that YouTube offers an impressive amount of statistical data on your videos, including details about the sources for views when videos are embedded on third-party sites like Facebook. This is great to evaluate the effectiveness of one source versus another.
The bad news is that the source statistics of a view are complicated to find on YouTube. To make it easy for you to find, here’s a short screencast:
And there you have it! I hope you’re inspired to use this technique to come up with creative campaigns and make the most of the potential visibility offered by Facebook!

Viral Videos: How to Create and Promote Videos People Love

Do you struggle to create and promote videos?
Are you wondering how to make videos that go viral?
To learn about the creative process of coming up with video ideas and making them happen, I interview Mark Malkoff for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.
It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.
The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).
In this episode, I interview Mark Malkoff, a comedian and filmmaker.
Mark shares his love and passion for creating videos and several amazing stories behind his viral videos.
You’ll learn about his process for creating video and how to get traction.
Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.
Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

Video Creation and Promotion

Mark has created several viral videos and has been featured on many television shows. You’ll hear about the stories behind these videos and what he accomplished to get this media attention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwYxuV2dVzw

Mark shares how he grew up in love with comedy, the path he took before he started making videos and how he started making viral videos. Mark describes himself as a comedian at heart and the biggest comedy nerd. He feels that his love for comedy shines through in his work.
The stories behind Mark’s videos
You’ll hear the story behind Mark’s first very successful video: the 171 Starbucks mentioned above. This is when he visited and consumed purchases at all 171 Starbucks locations in Manhattan in less than 24 hours.
Just after this 171 Starbucks story, Mark approached IKEA with a project of living and working in an IKEA store for a week. And after 2 months of being persistent, they agreed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9q0sB_Xp6A

Mark’s IKEA story brought the most publicity in the USA in the history of IKEA as a company. And IKEA ended up winning the PR Week of the Year Award for the campaign. But to Mark, it was all about the video content and his videos on this project got 1.8 million views.
Listen to the show to discover the secrets behind his success.
The goals behind Mark’s videos
You’ll learn how Mark’s goal is simply to do things that make him laugh and challenge him. Sometimes brands are involved and sometimes they aren’t.
Mark tells the story of when he got carried across New York City by 155 individuals, 9.4 miles in 11-degree weather.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi4ClspNrNs

The aim of this video was to prove to the world that New Yorkers are nice. The video was a success.
Sometimes brands come to him and other times he has to knock on their doors.

Kodak is a great example of a brand that Mark has worked with.

Listen to the show to find out why Ford Motor Company was one of the best brands Mark has worked with. 
The process of creating a viral video
Mark shares his process to come up with ideas for the videos he makes. You’ll learn how he goes from the ideas to creating a video project. And you’ll probably be surprised by the amount of research and training involved behind the scenes for Mark’s videos.
Mark shares his experience of having hours of video and trying to tell the story in a short video for YouTube.
Listen to the show to find out how he tests his videos.
The story in the video
Mark explains how it’s his own curiosity that resonates with his audience.
The story behind the Apple Store Challenge was to see what he could get away with in the Apple store. The video got over 1 million views on YouTube. Parts of the challenge included taking a goat into the store, ordering a pizza to be delivered there, dressing up as Darth Vader to get his iPhone repaired and a date night for him and his wife.

Mark has his pizza delivered to the Apple store.

Listen to the show to hear why Mark decided to do a video where he raced a New York City bus on a child’s Big Wheel.
How to get traction and be seen
Mark shares how things have changed in getting traction for videos and how it comes down to momentum.
He will spend a week working on a media plan before the video is due to be released. He targets whom the video should go to; for example, The Huffington Post, CNN and Fox News. He finds that personally emailing individual journalists with a great headline helps grab attention.
Many sites are looking for content. BuzzFeed is a popular comedy site. All you need is a few sites to embed your video and it starts to spread. Mark says it’s not just journalists but individuals who have spread his videos through Twitter, Facebook and by email.
Listen to the show to hear what happened when he sent a video to a person he knew at CNN.
Common pitfalls
Mark sees some people approaching videos like a lottery. They put their videos up on YouTube and then sit back waiting for them to go viral. But you need to be proactive. It’s not all about luck.
You have to put in significant effort to spread your video around. Mark explains that you need to try to keep your video to 3 minutes or shorter in length.
Follow these steps to create your video:

1. Stand out
2. Be original. Don’t copy others.
3. Use your resources.
4. Have a brainstorming session with friends and family.
5. Put videos up once you have had advice from others.
6. Really think about who your audience is.
7. Do your research and then try to get to those people.

Listen to the show to hear why the first 20-30 seconds of your video are super-important.
Mark’s tip
Mark’s top tip is to race people to your idea and do it before them. He discovered in the past that people beat him to the idea.
Some of his video ideas have been expensive and brands have had to come on board and spend money.
Listen to the show to hear Mark’s story of living on a plane for a month.

Shout Out

If you find the holiday season a chaotic time, I recommend a podcast called Beyond the To Do List by Erik Fisher.
Erik interviews people from different walks of life and talks to them about how they organize their day and life. You’re sure to pick up some awesome tips on how to get through this holiday season.

Beyond the To Do List is a great place to pick up some tips.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know if you picked up any awesome tips.

Other Show Mentions

Social Media Marketing World is Social Media Examiner’s latest mega-conference—taking place at the waterfront San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina in San Diego, California on April 7-9, 2013.
As you’d expect, Social Media Examiner recruited the biggest and best names in the world of social media marketing for this conference. Only the best for you! Be sure to check it out.

HOW TO CRUSH YOUR COMPETITORS ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN 30 DAYS

1. PERFORMING A SOCIAL MEDIA COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

To know how much muscle you’ll need to put behind your social media marketing, you need to gauge how you stack upagainst your competitors. Time to perform a social media competitive analysis! First, grab your list of competitors -- ha, like you even have to write them down. Then visit the following social media sites to determine if your competitors have a presence:

Facebook
Twitter
There may be other social media sites that are important to you -- Google+, Quora, or YouTube, for example. If so, youshould certainly perform an audit on those sites, too. But we’re going to focus on the sites that marketers are utilizingthe most, and have the most questions around in this ebook.
For each social network, you’ll want to note a few key pieces of intel:
Number of fans/followers
Frequency of posting
What kind of content is published (videos, images, blog posts, data, jokes, polls)
How much content is their’s, versus how much is sourced
Fan engagement

You should also browse their homepage and other main pages of their website (particularly their blog!) for social media follow and share buttons to determine how seriously they take social media marketing. Revisit these metrics on a monthly basis to see whether they are making progress, stagnating, or falling behind. Remember, social media requires upkeep, and not every brand is cut out to be a social media marketer for the long haul.

Now you know where you stand, which means you know how far you have to go. And when you revisit these metrics every month, it’ll feel good to watch your number creep up faster and faster, until one day ... you overtake your competitors completely!

2. FIND & CREATE KILLER SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT (QUICKLY )

Now that you’re revved up to crush your competition, you have to get really, really active on social media to grow your reach. And being active on social media means you need one thing: tons of content. No, content isn’t just a tweet or a Facebook post, either; to make your social media activities actually impact your business’ bottom line, you need to create lead generation content that lives on your website.

No, you need lots of content, and you need it fast. It’s time to make lemonade out of lemons, people,
which means we don’t start from scratch. Let’s dig content out of the deepest, darkest recesses of your website, and spin it into social media-ready content in a flash! Let’s get started with how you can whip up some blog posts quickly to feed your social media presence:

Reach out to guest bloggers -- they’ll create your content for you!
Curate content -- round up the best blog posts, data points, info graphics, etc. on various subject matters. Jot down the answer to a common question -- people love a good FAQ.
Publish excerpts from existing content, like ebooks and white papers.
Conduct a quick interview -- either on video or via email -- and let your subject matter expertise blow your audience away for you.

If you’re already an avid blogger, you should also have an arsenal of blog posts at your disposal that you can republish. Only republish your evergreen content -- the content that withstands the test of time. Perform a quick audit of every old blog post that you plan to promote via social media to ensure they all have relevant, up-to-date calls-to-action. Remember, if your social media traffic doesn’t convert into a lead, it isn’t helping your business’ bottom line.

Speaking of lead generation, you’re going to want to publish offer content to social media to get more bang for your buck. Here’s some quick offer content you can churn out in a flash to feel your social presence:

Create a blog bundle -- a kit of sorts that compiles blog posts about one particular subject.
Do a data compilation of all the critical data points someone in your industry might need to know.
Repurpose your presentations -- Power Points can easily be converted into downloadable PDFs!
Relaunch an old offer; just be sure to update anything that’s out of date.
Record an interview or debate -- all you need is a video camera and 15 minutes of two people’s time!
Create templates and checklists -- these require very little writing, too!
Reach out to partners to create co-branded content that eases the content creation burden.

Finally, you’ll need some visual content to keep your social media presence going strong -- particularly on Facebook and Pinterest. Social media fans and followers adore visual content, which means your engagement will soar when you publish it. And more engagement means wider reach -- just what you need to crush your competitors! Take time to curate and create visual content; here are some quick ways:

Create memes -- you can do it quickly on memegenerator.com
Publish infographics -- your own, or others
Publish a chart or graph with data your fans and followers would care about.
Insert an interesting data point into a visual -- simply overlay the data in big, bold text over a relevant image.
Find cartoons about your industry -- people love a laugh.
Take behind-the-scenes pictures of your employees, customers, and office happenings.
Share videos, like case studies, interviews, and quick tips and how-to content.
Now that you have more content than you know what to do with, it’s time to use it to drive some serious social media results.

3. WHAT CONTENT TO POST WHERE

If you’re going to slay your competitors on social media, you need to figure out what kind of content works best for eachsocial network so no efforts are wasted.

Twitter

The best content to publish on Twitter is, obviously, short and sweet. Whatever piece of content you’re linking to in the tweet, find the most compelling part of the story to include in your tweet copy. Pulling a shocking data point from your blog post, for example, is more likely to entice followers to retweet your content and click the link in your tweet than the title of your blog post.

Pinterest

Unsurprisingly, you’ll want to post all that visual content you spent time creating on Pinterest. Pinterest users value quality images, so everything you post should look beautiful to get the most repins and followers. And of course, the descriptions should include a link back to your website to turn that traffic into leads. Try to create boards that are both directly and indirectly related to your brand -- HubSpot, for example, has boards with marketing infographics, and boards that are just
images of fun orange things.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn users have a longer attention span that people on other social networks -- they’re there to do something impactful for their businesses or careers. You should feel comfortable crafting more text-heave status updates, posting more long form lead generation content, and speaking in a more promotional tone about your products and services.

Facebook

Facebook should lead heavily towards visual content, but should always be accompanied by explanatory text to give the visuals context. Visual content has higher engagement on Facebook, and the more engagement your content has, the more positively Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm will favor your posts -- thus expanding your reach! You can also be much more personal with the content you post to Facebook, since it’s where people go to chat with friends ...not coworkers.

4. Quick Wins

To overtake your competitors on social media, you’ll need some tricks up your sleeve that let you squeeze every last ounce of ROI out of your efforts. And to do that, you need to approach your social media marketing with data-backed tips that we’ve uncovered as a result of a lot of social media stalking. Here are the sneaky little tricks that most people don’t know about, but will make your social media efforts far more fruitful (and with no extra effort required!)

Quick Wins on Pinterest

Descriptions about 200 characters long are repinned the most.
Find content spins around words like “quotes,” “products,” “DIY,” “inspiration,” “books,” and “ideas.” These words are the most frequently pinned on Pinterest. Content that is liked gets repinned more often than content with lots of comments -- so replicate your content that gets liked!
Make your images tall! Taller images get more repins.

5. BE MORE EFFICIENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA UPKEEP

You need to be able to execute all of these social media activities fast, which means you should leverage the power of technology to make you ultra-efficient. You should utilize the following to make social media marketing just a blip on your marketing radar:

Social Media Calendar
Social Media Scheduling Tool
Social Media Monitoring Tool

First, set aside one day a week -- let’s say Friday afternoon -- to craft all of your social media content for the next 7 days. You should take that content arsenal of yours, and select a mix of the blog posts, lead generation offers, and visual content you’d like to post on each social network. Then craft a tweet or update to go along with each piece of content, and denote what day and time that piece of social media content will be posted. This is your social media calendar!

Once you have your weekly calendar created, it’s time to automate the publishing process as much as possible. Use a third-party application to input the content you’ve laid out in your calendar, and schedule the updates to publish automatically.

Finally, set up a monitoring system that lets you go about your daily marketing activities with little interruption from social media. Set up keywords for which you’d like to be pinged -- mentions of your product, for example, so you can jump on a sales opportunity. Otherwise, check in on each network every couple hours to engage with fans and followers, and address any problems that arise.

6. LEVERAGE OTHER MARKETING CHANNELS TO BOOST SOCIAL MEDIA

To squeeze even more juice out of your social media marketing, you need to leverage the power of other marketing channels.

Integrating Social Media and Email

Use your email marketing to increase your social media following by adding social media follow/subscription buttons (e.g. ‘Follow Us on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+!’) so you can touch potential customers through social channels. You should also add social media sharing buttons (i.e. ‘Share on Facebook!’ ‘Tweet This!’ ‘Share on LinkedIn’) to every email you send so recipients are encouraged to share your email content with their personal networks.

Integrating Social Media and Blogging

Make sure every blog post you publish includes social media sharing buttons so readers can easily share your content with their social networks. In addition, feature social media follow buttons on your blog so readers can easily follow your social media accounts. You should also monitor which blog content performs best so those posts get the social media face time they deserve.

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Video Marketing

VIDEO MARKETING | Setup time: 1 hour (excluding video creation)

Video marketing is simply publishing your message online through videos. Videos could be just about anything—you talking, a product demo, a promotional campaign, or anything that highlights your company or product/service.

These videos don’t have to be professionally made—even inexpensive cameras will work. The key is to create buzz around your video. If it is clever, funny, interesting, relevant, or unique in any way, it will get traffic. Get creative … and have fun!

Once you create your video, post it to YouTube. Be sure to include a robust description of your video including keywords. Link the video back to your website too. Then you can promote the video on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc. Encourage others to share it too.

A few simple videos can dramatically increase your exposure on the Internet and help drive more traffic to your website.

Note:

Youtube is not the only free video platform available. There is Dailymotion, Metacafe, Vimeo, and others you can use as well. The more popular ones are by far Youtube and Dailymotion.
Here you can watch me explain in greater detail what to expect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjrfPalqluU&feature=youtu.be