Author Archive for Jake Matthews
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Using Video Annotations to Raise Awareness and Website TrafficNov 17 2008 | Video |
One of the easiest ways to raise the visibility of your site with video on YouTube is to use video “annotations”. Annotations are short textual notes that you can post in the video player and publish to your videos. And while annotations don’t yet allow you to link OUT of YouTube, they do allow you type in a URL in text form without linking, which is 1 step in the right direction to tying your great video content back to your site/brand name.
There are currently 3 useful types of annotations:
- notes
- speech bubbles
- spotlights
What do annotations and speech bubbles look like? This video has a brief example of both.
Why are annotations useful?
- Write in your domain name or
- Write in further information about your brand or products.
- Write in addresses, locations, names.
4 Comments » - Posted in Video by Jake Matthews
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Video Optimization and Analytics: A closer look at YouTube Insight |
Have you ever wondered how videos show up in web search engine results? How do videos get hundreds of thousands to millions of views on YouTube? Who’s watching my videos? Well, with a little hard work on optimizing and networking your video content and a helpful tool called YouTube Insight, you can be on your way to working with video and optimizing it for real business results.
YouTube Insight is a handy analytics tool that displays statistics for YouTube Videos. By using Insight you’ll discover statistics such as:
- how many views your video has over specific periods of time,
- the demographic and geographic breakouts of the views and
- how people are finding the video content (web search, YouTube search, embed, etc…)
Though Insight’s data is not always 100% accurate (YouTube states this when you are working with it) and can use some further development in features and functionality, it’s a great start to gaining “insight” to this ever so important media.
16 Comments » - Posted in Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Video by Jake Matthews
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Social Media Marketing is NOT a Direct Response Channel |
Frequently I speak with Chief Marketing Officers (CMO’s), Business Development Specialists, Product and Brand Managers regarding Social Media engagements and they always ask: “How many customers am I going to get directly from my Social Campaigns? What’s going to be my CPA, my ROI and my ROAS? What Immediate sales
will I get?” To this I respectfully respond: “Stop! Don’t look at Social as a direct response marketing channel.” These marketers often react in shock with a quizzical twist because they are used to hearing what they want which is: “Hey, all of our programs are going to get you crazy, mad sales dude, right away - mate.”
15 Comments » - Posted in SEO, Social Media Marketing, Social Networks by Jake Matthews
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Confessions of a Search AddictFeb 14 2008 | Announcements, Search Engines |
I’ll admit it, I am a search addict. I search all day long morning, noon and night; on the move on my mobile, at home and at work.
Each day, 7 days a week, I spend no less than 4 hours conducting well over 150 queries, searching and scanning search engine result pages 2, 3, 4 even 10 pages deep. Organic results, I can’t get enough of them. Descriptions, domains, URLs, Titles; I’m sick and obsessed with them. I search at least 4 different search engines , 6 social media and bookmarking sites, 3 social news sites, 2 blog search engines and 3 comparison shopping sites every day. Web, images, video, books, you name it, I search it.
I search until my eyes hurt and are bloodshot, ’til I have a headache, my fingers hurt, my arms tingle with pins and needles, my elbows are sore and my legs feel numb. Then I search more, almost until I forget to go to the bathroom.
5 Comments » - Posted in Announcements, Search Engines by Jake Matthews
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The 4 P’s of Marketing Online |
When Neil H. Borden came up with the Marketing Mix and Professor E. Jerome McCarthy grouped the Mix into “the 4 Ps” they were probably not considering 21st century marketing and promotion channels on the Internet.
After all, this was in the middle of the 20th century and Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.com search engines and Internet Social Networks did not exist at that point. Still, this enduring and universal marketing concept applies to the web.
I’m always focused on how the 4 P’s of Marketing apply to Internet Marketing. So how do the 4 P’s apply to the Internet?
The first P in Marketing: Product
9 Comments » - Posted in Business, SEO by Jake Matthews
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Leveraging the Web for Off-line Media Buys |
I get angry when I see companies buy pricey media such as print, television, radio or outdoor and they don’t take advantage to tie that media buy to the web in an effective way. What do I mean by this?
Take for example a large billboard on the side of the highway that has a message about a specific offer from a company, and the only web address displayed is the company’s main domain name eg, www.company.com I feel that this is a wasted advertising opportunity to have just your main domain name listed. Much in the same way Danielle pointed out when off-line link-bait is often not leveraged properly on-line, targeted messages, spaces, interactivity and landing pages should be created and matched on-line for off-line media buys.
I believe that every advertising buy should have a targeted message behind it and accordingly specific media creatives and goals to go along with it.
3 Comments » - Posted in Analytics, Business, Web Development by Jake Matthews
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Going Local in StumbleUponJan 23 2008 | Business, Social Networks |
I am becoming a big fan of the organic approach to StumbleUpon (SU) and the ways you can connect with members finding like minded users in demographic and interest areas.
The StumbleUpon social tool was built for discovering webpages that are recommended by your network of friends. The site allows for networking and the toolbar allows for finding and discovering new great content on the web. This is a powerful combination of Internet function and social web.
After using SU for a long while it seems that the tool will be able to grow in its use as a localized marketing tool. And though outwardly commercial sites tend not to get a great amount of traffic (rather fail miserably) – it’s all in the approach.
23 Comments » - Posted in Business, Social Networks by Jake Matthews
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Using Epinions.com as an Internet Marketing ToolJan 09 2008 | SEO, Social Networks |
Epinions.com is great site for Internet and Brand Marketers to work in. The site is a user and member driven product/service review website. It is owned by Shopping.com which is in turn owned by…..Ebay.
How and why is the site useful for marketers? Aside from helping consumers looking for information about products, it can also help SEO’s, webmasters (who dabble in marketing) and brand managers by allowing them to monitor their products and develop traffic/awareness.
Epinions is all about writing reviews and interacting with knowledgeable people to get information about products. The basic uses from the consumer side are:
- Reading product reviews for information about the quality of a product or service.
- Finding information about products and services in advance of your purchase to help you with your decision on brand, price, and features; shopping comparison.
- Connecting with retailers who have good prices on these products.
7 Comments » - Posted in SEO, Social Networks by Jake Matthews
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Why Social Marketing is Critical to the Internet Marketing MixJan 02 2008 | Social Networks |
Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Optimization (SMO) is an important - perhaps even critical - Internet marketing strategy. Time and time again marketers are unsure of how to approach marketing in the social networks or even if they should at all. Almost daily I’m asked by Marketing Managers and CMOs about how to get into the networks and what the benefits are. I’m amazed that they are not sure if they should do this. At some point, one must seriously investigate and take the plunge. The benefits of marketing in this arena are far too numerous to sit on the sidelines. So today I just wanted to go through a few of the up front benefits we see all the time.
15 Comments » - Posted in Social Networks by Jake Matthews
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2008 Presidential Search Marketing Face-Off: Round #3Oct 25 2007 | SEO |
A continuation in our series on how the major presidential candidates are doing in their search marketing efforts. Here are the previous two rounds: Round 1 and Round 2.
The 2008 Presidential debate circuit, along with announcements of record breaking fundraising in 3Q, builds further intrigue in the 2008 race to the Whitehouse. Fred Thompson has entered stage-right with much fanfare yet very little energy added to the Republican side. John Edwards lags in polls, but could lurch forward in
Still, Clinton, Obama, Romney and Giuliani are clear front runners and one thing is for sure – when you do name searches on Google, you can access a lot of information about these candidates. It’s my belief that name searches are going to be greater vote and election outcome influencers than are issue based queries. The name query is where the most intent lies. No doubt Google queries surrounding the candidate’s names are going to be a crucial influencer in forming opinion and votes for this race.
