Live Video Streaming Will Be Web Marketing 3.0 For 2011

Live video streaming is a tool that you should be using now in your internet marketing efforts. Streaming video live is growing rapidly and in the Internet Marketing world, is a tool that can be utilized to enhance your credibility, boost your social proof, increase sales, and engage directly with your customers and build relationships. Live video streaming will be the wave of the future in web marketing in 2011, mainly due to emerging technologies such as Facebooks social graph, companies such as Ustream, Justin.tv, YouTube, Livestream, and even online collaboration companies such as GoToWebinar, DimDim, ConnectSolutions and many more.

For Internet Marketers, it will be a very important tool to use so that you can now be more competitive, engage directly with the customer, build your credibility and increase your sales. In the online industry, there are customers with hypersensitive trust issues, due to some unscrupulous marketers. But now, with improved FTC Regulations and advancements in technology such as live video streaming, will not only improve the Internet Marketing industry, but will be a major factor in shaping it.

According to a comScore report, Americans are spending 648% (upward to 1.4 billion minutes) of their time watching live video online; services such as Stickam, LiveVideo, Ustream, Justin.tv and Livestream).  Hulu has increased 75% and YouTube went up 68%.  It goes to show that more viewers are not only seeking out but actively watching live streaming videos.  According to the comScore report:

Live online video sites have not only been successful in building audience, but also in keeping that audience tuned-in. For instance, the average live streamed video view is 7% longer than the average online video view. If you narrow the audience to a specific demographic, though, live video really begins to prove its advertising value to media planners. Live video sites are 72% more likely to deliver the elusive demographic, males age 18-34, than the average online video site. In fact, males age 18-34 comprise almost 30% of the total live video viewing audience in our sample sites. Even without the same brand recognition as other portals and publishers, live video sites are able to retain viewers’ attention and deliver desirable audiences for advertisers.

As an online marketer, today you have your typical marketing methods which utilize a content based landing page to generate leads, or a mini-site that provides some detailed information on your product or service.  A trend this year has been video sales pages, which has pushed out the need for a copywriter and takes on more of the concept of a direct-response pitch to your offerings.  Another trend, which I think is now being a bit overdone, and a bit disingenuous is the use of “live” webinars, or shall I say pre-recorded and repeated Webinars that pretend to be live.

Some really good live webinar software include, WebEx, GoToMeeting. These two web-based softwares are premium and cost a bit.  Free services include DimDim and Join.Me.  In a future post, I’ll get into deeper detail of these and other online webinar platforms you can use in your marketing efforts.  However, webinars are a useful live tool that is used by internet marketers where they can discuss and interact with potential customers in real time by showing an online powerpoint presentation, sharing their screens, have phone conversation and direct chat.  Overzealous marketers tend to do these types of events multiple times per week, as well as sending out replays as part of their email marketing efforts.  The problem ends up being over-saturation whereas, some marketers don’t engage with the potential customers enough, sending out too many replays, not taking enough time to answer all the customers questions in detail, falsifying their event by saying its live when it’s been pre-recorded.  Another issue is that it’s an area where some marketers tend to hide behind their power point slides, and phone conversations, and thereby become a telemarketer rather than a marketer that should be engaging and building relationships with their visitors.

So after the long sales page, we had video sales pages, and then the trend of live webinars.  Now, with live video streaming, marketing efforts will come to the light. In streaming live video, an internet marketer can launch their product or service in real time and potential customers can actually see who they are dealing with, what’s actually happening, whether or not the dreaded “crashing of the website during launch” actually occurs, and get real time data and information directly from the product owner.  Marketers can interact and engage in discussions live during this period in the launch phase.  A recent product launch by  Chris Farrell Mike Filsaime called AffiliateDotCom was an example of a live video streaming launch. They utilize the streaming video service called Ustream, and combined that with a social proof element using the social graph feature provided by Facebook.  That feature allowed only purchasers of their product to be able to provide a Facebook “like” and “comment” which would be featured on the site.  Others who did not purchase, simply would get an error response stating about only purchasers of AffiliateDotCom could make a comment.  This strategy allows for verifiable, and transparent and open social proof of not only sales of the product, but the actual inner workings of an internet marketing product launch.

Note: I personally saw this myself, and at the time there were about 1,500 actual Facebook people who placed a comment, signifying they had purchased the product.  With 1,500 people in the first 6 hours of launch at a $1997 price point, I can attest to at least at $2,995,500 in sales for their product launch on the high end and at least $562,500 in sales on the low end if everyone of the buyers took the payment plan.  Disclosure:  I witnessed this during the beginning of their launch on 8/24/2010, and these figures are based on what was researched, and estimated based off the information provided by AffilaiteDotcom.

So, look out for more live video streaming launches as a marketing tool.  I think this is definitely a way not only to market your products effectively, but when discussing what it really takes to be an Internet Marketer, a person can now really see it and experience themselves in real-time, streamed live right in their own homes.

Google Search Gets Warp Speed With Google Instant

Google now has over 1 billion users on its sites every week.  Today, at the San Francisco MOMA event, Google unveiled a fundamental transformation in their premier search engine.  Google Instant is the next generation of search features, giving Google users a real-time, psychic search experience.  Not everyone will have this feature, and you can download it here. 

Google Instant is an upgrade from Google Suggest, whereas, now when you start typing, Google “Instantly” kicks in search queries, and automatically displays likely results you may be searching for.  Additionally, you don’t even have to finish typing the rest of your search keyword or phrase.  You can use a live demo of Google Instant here.

Features:  Google Instant Goes Into Hyperdrive

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

So, how exactly can Google predict what you are instantly searching for?  Well, Google brought this to scale through optimizing the most likely searches.  The search engine also checks users search queries on another server & then caches the results.  The average search query has 20 characters, and now every time a user types in an character, the goal is to show you more search results.  Now instead of just 10 results per page, you can get 20 or more results per page on your search.

One issue I already see is as users get used to searching with one letter and two letter combinations, like “w” or “the”, and suddenly get the search results they want, then what type of effect will this have on SEO optimization, keyword research and phrases.  If Google collects data on keywords that include simply letters of the alphabet, and then people stop filling out full search terms, then how can you actually tell what is actually being searched upon?  Now, obviously, 100% of the users won’t just put in 1 letter of the alphabet & suddenly get their exact search term, but I have tried this & it has happened.  Simply type in “W” and you get over 20 sites for the Weather!  But, if this is the case, what becomes more relevant, the search “term” or the actual click through of the site after the search has taken place.  Will this allow sites who optimize letter by letter rank higher?

What do you think of Google Instant search so far?

Top 10 Ways To Sucessfully Promote Your Website For Free

As an Internet Marketer, you should always be cognizant of what methods you are using to promote your website.  Website promotion should be a ritual that is done on a consistent and methodical basis.  To have a successful promotion strategy, you should keep a set of standard operating procedures, or simply a basic plan of what promotion methods you will do, when you will do them and how often you will do them.  Then to ensure success, you simply need to adhere to the goals you set and promote your website.

Here are 10 free methods you can use today to promote your website.  You may choose to do some, and it’s better to do them all so that you can enhance the awareness of your site.  Promoting your website is a must if you want to become a successful Internet Marketer, and must be done on a consistent basis.  You cannot rely on just setting up a site, and hoping that someone will search on a keyword you have chosen.  Remember, keywords are competitive on a daily basis, so you not only have to ensure your sites marketability, but also compete against others vying for the words you want to be searched about.

1. Write Articles and Submit Them:  Not only you should be writing for your blog, you should also be writing articles for article submission and syndication websites.  These are like free giveaways, and the positive outlook for yourself, is that your article will be attributed to you, whereby, it will have your signature and site reference on there.
2. Building Community Through Forums: Build relationships by signing up to related forums in your specific niche.  Be an avid contributor by not only offering your own expertise, but ask questions on things you may not know about or require assistance on.  There is always someone will to provide their two cents.
3. Email Newsletters:  Ensure you always place a link to your product or site in your signature of your emails newsletters.  People not only need to know who is writing them, but also, where that information is coming from.  This is a method of building trust amongst your readers and followers, in addition to building direct traffic.
4. Blog Commenting:  Select a variety of blogs that you like to read, and ensure you provide quality comments.  You can also link back to your blog.  This combination will not only get you respected in the community, but also provide you valuable backlinks.
5. Guest Blog Posts: Find and select a variety of blogs you like to read and contribute to them by being a guest poster.  Many blogs are starting to do this more now, not only to increase quality & unique content on their blogs, keep them up to date, but it will allow them to increase revenue and share in that revenue, as well as get their sites ranked faster.  So, there is mutual benefit in guest posting on blogs.
6. Free Giveaways:  Create a high quality ebook, report, video or even piece of software. Create a section on your site where it can be downloaded and accessed.  Give this product away for free and let them know that they can give it away for free.
7. Create and Distribute an Email Newsletter:  Start a newsletter, it can even be a physical one as well.   You can give it out for free, or even sell it.  But if you have good ideas, and have something important to distribute in this format, then this is another avenue which will attract readers and promote your site.
8. Directory submissions:  Boost your rankings by submitting your sites to various directories.
9. Post & Ping:  After publishing your blog post, use pinging directories to get your sites indexed fast.
10. Create Social Avenues: Create a Facebook page, create a YouTube account, and other social media accounts that all link to your product, site or service.  Ensure you provide quality content on them, and promote them the same way you do your site.

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How To Improve Your Social Bookmarking Strategy

Many people have asked me what is the point of social bookmarking. For some bloggers, social bookmarking can be the lifeblood of their business. There are a variety of bookmarking services and tools, it all depends on how you incorporate them into your business model, or traffic strategy. Overall, it is very important that you implement a social bookmarking strategy as not only it is good for SEO, generating traffic, but also building relationships with your users and visitors.

Social Bookmarking is a extremely useful method to generate traffic to your website. You enhance your social presence as social bookmarking is not just an onsite strategy, but also an offsite strategy. Social bookmarking can be used as an offsite strategy as a means of funneling potential customers and visitors to your site, whereas, you are utilizing the viral features that other users can bookmark the bookmarks you left behind. Not only are others bookmarking but also sharing that bookmark with their friends.

There are many different sites that can be used for your social media marketing strategy. It’s always good to incorporate social sites that are the most popular in addition to mid-tier sites. After this, you want to focus on the sites that are bringing you the best volume in regards to traffic, ranking or user engagement. The following are some strategies you may consider:

1. Bookmarking Framework: Create a social bookmarking strategic framework by joining between 5 to 10 of the top bookmarking sites. Your role would be to ensure that your blog posts/pages are bookmarked at least 5 days per week. Not only you should bookmark, but you should interact and engage on the actual bookmarking site you signed up with. This means, touch base with other users, comment on their bookmarks, and give credit to where credit is do. For example, some bookmarking sites allow you to rank or promote up a members bookmark. If the content is good, show the love.
Try not to be so self-serving, meaning focusing on yourself. If you are bookmarking others, you will often get noticed. Thereby, others will start bookmarking you. You will then gain a valuable reputation, not only for the content you produce, but also showing that you are a valuable member of that particular sites community. In the end, the goal is to stay diligent, and utilize the sites to the best of your ability.

2. One Bookmark Deserves Another: As you navigate your way through the social bookmarking process, you will find that new sites will begin bookmarking your content or site. Your move would be to immediately become a member of that social bookmarking club. You are not only getting these one-way backlinks, but also you will again enhance and build your social media reputation. You will want to find sites that will automate your feeds and share your content quickly, such as Friendfeed, or Ping.fm. This will boost your visibility in the search engines.

3. Traffic Reports: Stay up to date with analyzing your web site traffic, and compare your stats not only on your main site but also the bookmarking sites you have joined. Many bookmarking sites today have built in traffic reporting tools and features. Additionally, if you are a WordPress user like myself, there are plugins such as: MajesticSEO, Google Analytics, and Refferes, all plugins that will track backlinks, as well as direct links of where the juice is coming from.

4. Diversify Your Bookmarks: You should not just focus on bookmarking your blog posts. An effective measure is to diversify and bookmark other links that may not be fully “content based” such as your landing pages, a download page, or even a page with a single or multiple videos. Also, you can bookmark pages that are yours and relevant to you such as your Ezine Articles, a press releases, YouTube videos, your HubPages, your MySpace page. You basically want to build a hub of bookmarked links that surround your main site.

Also remember to utilize the features that are provided to you with all the services. Many use a single-sign on id feature that allows you to log in with the same login information as a main one. Utilize this feature to speed up your social bookmarking strategy. In addition, use tags, categories, profiles and the avatar features. This will improve your trust and allow more people to see that you are not just a bot, or just an unmasked person.

Another method you should use is to participate where your coaches, mentors or even competition is participating. It’s best to analyze first what they are doing and how often they are doing it. Next, you may want to reach out to them by utilizing some of the techniques above, and last, implement your own strategy. To improve your social bookmarking results, it’s best that you create a framework, become a helpful member of the bookmarking community, analyze your traffic, build and diversify.

ShareThis & Enhance Your Social Media Reach

ShareThis is a widget that allows people to share their social media.  One of the issues many widgets and plugins have is that it can be difficult to measure the results of your social media marketing.  Everyone relies on post marketing results after they bombard Facebook, Twitter and even Digg, and not really realizing what is happening in real time, or if the campaign and methods used were effective.

ShareThis has jumped in to tackle this problem, and these advancements are definitely going to challenge their competitors; AddToAny, AddThis, and Social Twist, in the sharing & social influence development market.  ShareThis has introduced an analytics component to measure sharing effectiveness, as well a will analyze and monitor Social Reach.  Social Reach will measure the outbound sharing as well as measure to see if the user person who received the share actually clicks on the link.

What is also great, is that bloggers and new media publishers will get to see performance metrics, whereas, users of the widget will get to see advanced statistics on the type of audience that is sharing their links & compare your blog vs. others in that same category.  You will get a good understanding of how you are doing compared to your competition in regards to reaching your visitors, users, and members.

ShareThis is the largest market for sharing and influence across the web, reaching over 400 million users on 850,000 sites.  Now, users will be able to measure against these 400 million users using another analysis tool which is called the Social Equation Infographic.

Based on this analysis, it’s been found that only 8% of people are clicking on Twitter links, whereas, Email (31%) & Facebook (36%) are relative.  For internet marketers, this shows you that Email marketing is much more trusted than being bombarded by Twitter links.  I think this may change, whereas, many marketers rushed to get as many “Followers” as possible on Twitter, without either vetting them or developing a deeper relationship with them.  You don’t need 20,000 followers if they simply aren’t buying what you are selling.

Publishers will be able to receive a dashboard of analytics showcasing their Social Reach in addition to an Audience Index that will compare their site to others in the same category.  There is also a Beta feature which will provide real-time data so that web publishers can actually see what the trends are that are being shared on your site.  I think this is most effective where now you can see what’s most effective today, and create more content for the people that are seeking it.