Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I tell most new clients (especially my B2C and technology clients) that they need a YouTube strategy to stay relevant in search. This afternoon I got a nice MediaPost article by Eric Gruber: Marketing on YouTube: How to Promote Your YouTube Videos With Article Marketing (subscription may be required).

Some highlights that go beyond simply marketing with YouTube:

“Step 1: Create an article that grabs readers’ interest. Once you have uploaded your videos to YouTube, you must heavily promote your videos if you want to sell more books, products and services online. One of the most effective ways to broadcast your message is by writing articles related to your videos and submitting them to the top article directories, Web sites and ezines that accept articles.

Step 2: Turn readers into prospects with a strong call for action and an offer they can’t refuse. At the end of your article, you can promote yourself and attract visitors to your YouTube video page with a bio box. This is where most article marketers make the fatal mistake of failing to encapsulate the essence of what makes you and your offering unique. For example, they may write something like:

Blah Blah, is a keynote speaker, seminar leader and author. She has spoken in 26 countries on four continents. She is president of Yada Dada, Las Vegas. Check out her YouTube video at___________

Technically there is nothing wrong — except it is BORING…

JJ: okay, I have to change my “About” page…

Step 3: Submit your articles to the top article directories to build links and improve your search engine optimization. Just like your Web site, to increase your YouTube Video page’s search ranking on Google, you must increase the number of inbound links to the page. The higher you climb in search results the more unique visitors you will get.

Step 4: Submit your articles to the top, targeted Web sites and ezines that accept article submissions in your niche. For best results and to climb higher in search engine rankings you can’t just have any link. You must have links on high-trafficked Web sites with high Google Page Rankings and high Alexa Traffic Rankings. Plus, by placing your articles on highly-competitive, targeted Web sites like About.com, instead of just second-tier article directories that will publish anyone’s articles, you will win trust in the hearts and minds of your targeted audience before they even see your YouTube video….”

Here’s a hint: do the same things with your web site or blog, or white papers, and you’ll see rich benefits right away.

There’s a conversation going on over on Idealware I found quite accidentally, but found it worth sharing. Say you’re considering buying a new technology product and are trying to figure out who’s using it already, in order to ask real users what they think of the product?
The company who built the product has clients listed on their web site, and have likely given you some references. But the lists are never exhaustive, nor are they likely to put you in touch with clients who’ve ever had trouble with the product.

When you’re trying to get a realistic view of the product, it’s always good to have some dissenters to interview. That way you’ll get a glimpse into the service side of the business - which is essential to successful implementations.

Rachel started the conversation:

Rachel asks: Our org is looking into GiftTool as a solution for several of our needs. However, our senior management has requested recommendations from actual users of the product. Other than contacting them directly, do you know of any way we could get some further insight into what it’s like to use the product?

So - here’s the cool answer Laura at Idealware posted:

“….I actually do have a trick. If you’re looking at tools that are used to collect information online, or especially payment processors like GiftTool, you can often find a lot of organizations that are using it simply by Googling the name and paging in to the more obscure results. A lot of organizations will mention what tool they’re using in a privacy policy or as an explanation to their site visitors. For instance, I see a number of organizations using GiftTool on page four of the Google results for “GiftTool.” You can then click through to the site, find contact information, and send off an email. I’ve actually done this a number of times, and, surprisingly, gotten return emails from at least half the people I contacted this way.”

Even better, Robert Weiner recommended this tip for finding even more relevancy:

“Many search engines accept the “site:” qualifier. The search “gifttool site:.org” will only return responses from .org sites. That makes it easier to find donation pages that use the tool.”

Arketi just released a study of how journalists use the web. I wasn’t surprised by their topline findings at all. But when I downloaded the free report here, I was surprise by some of the details.

Topline findings:

90% of journalists say they turn to industry sources for story ideas, an equal number get story ideas from news releases and a nearly equal number say they tap into public relations contacts.

• 79% of journalists report finding story ideas on newswires
• 74% say from Web sites
• 72% say from other media outlets
• 54% look for story ideas in the blogosphere

Here’s where it got interesting for me:

Only half of journalists surveyed utilized RSS for their research. I’m assuming they’d rather wander about in search engines than utilize smart tools (free RSS readers abound, I use Attensa for Outlook) to keep an eye out for ideas and information for them.

With all the clutter and “noise” online, I would think that those who do research for a living (as any marketer should - at least part of the time) would utilize every smart tool available to increase relevancy, productivity and time to market all at once.

Scott over at Attensa, in a post called “Enterprise RSS: Why Not Just Use Google Reader?” put it very succinctly, as he usually does:

“[RSS] can help identify (and hopefully reduce) occupational spam and be a driver for improving the quality of… communications.”

Frankly, if more editors and marketers would even just use Google reader, they’d be taking the first step toward true productivity. And if news organizations would help their poor editors out by adopting true enterprise RSS tools for their editors, the entire organization would be taking generational leaps forward - productivity drives business these days.

Who, tonight, is living in Southern California and paying no attention to the Santa Ana winds? Like wind moves fire; information moves people, prices and processes. And if you’re not paying attention and watching the information on and around your company flow, you’re being completely negligent and irresponsible.

Blowing bubbles into the wind…

The FUD around “Web 2.0″ is running higher than ever. Witness this article on the impending business bubble in the International Herald Tribune. And, speaking of bubbles, I’m starting to hear the Web 2.0 ROI argument bubbling up more and more.

Score! When the pundits and finance guys start discussing communications trends, I figure something is really taking off.

So let’s talk ROI. For companies who sell to consumers, we have Deloitte reporting that consumers are researching product reviews by their peers online like never before:

“To build their knowledge arsenals, consumers are turning to online reviews in large numbers – and those reviews are having a considerable impact on purchase decisions. According to a recent survey by Deloitte’s Consumer Products group, almost two-thirds (62 percent) of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet.

Of these, more than eight in 10 (82 percent) say their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, either influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had originally been thinking about purchasing or confirming the original purchase intention.

Interestingly, while the percentages were slightly higher for the younger generations, all age groups are reading and acting on online reviews at significant rates. In addition, the reach of consumer reviews isn’t limited to the online world; seven in 10 (69 percent) consumers who read reviews share them with friends, family or colleagues, thus amplifying their impact.”

\my emphasis throughout - jlj

Harnessing the power of information…

How do you know how your product is being reviewed by your consumers? Have you set up persistent searches on your product and company names yet? You’re doing your company a disservice if you haven’t - with those kinds of influencers and that kind of power of persuasion online.

Free RSS tools are available to watch for your product mentions, and any enterprise IT organization worth keeping should be looking into enterprise RSS solutions - like those from Attensa - to feed search results into their communications departments.

How is the wind blowing for Enterprise 2.0?

Forrester offers a more clinical study of Web 2.0 technology ROI in the enterprise, having recently interviewed 275 IT decision makers:

“Forrester surveyed 275 IT pros on their firms’ Web 2.0 implementations and found that Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, was the highest value technology, with nearly one in four reporting “substantial value.” RSS was most frequently used for corporate communications or content aggregation, while one in three respondents said it was used for external marketing.”

It seems the IT departments are so busy, they’re reluctant to look at any Web 2.0 project without a strong business case.

“We’ve got so many things we are asked to deliver for the organization right now … if you can’t put together a good business case that has some cost benefit justification, it’s difficult to get those types of efforts launched.”

I’ve written about the power of collaboration technologies before, and I wonder how many of these busy executives will feel when - like people in southern California watching the Santa Ana winds - they powerlessly witness something so very much out of their control sweep through their carefully crafted structures.

Firewalls only stand so long - nature is a truly awesome force.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend in the PR business. She’s run a very successful practice for many years. She’s the quintessential PR pro - the type who can call an editor at the New York Times with an “idea for a story” and get a favorable response.

I’ve spent some time over the past couple of years helping her negotiate the world of blogs and online industry influencers. Yesterday I shared excitement about the results of the SEMPR efforts I’ve had for clients, working with my SEM partners at Anvil Media.

I’ve blogged about SEMPR before, but today wanted to blog about it again, because every PR pro in the world should be moving in that direction:

An SEMPR Primer

Search Engine Marketing and Public Relations are logically linked by technology and human behavior, yet few companies are combining their knowledge of each to generate big results in today’s rapidly evolving communications landscape.

The People Effect

New media influencers are proliferating online – there are expert bloggers in every niche market and Technorati (a leading blog search engine) tracks more then 107.2 million blogs today. That’s up from 78 million in April of 2007.

In addition to sharing stories and opinions, people are sharing all sorts of media - known as user generated content (UGC) - in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIN; and in content portals like Flickr (photo sharing) YouTube (video sharing) and iTunes (audio sharing).

And every single piece of media that is uploaded online is categorized, or “tagged” by the author. Technorati currently tracks more than 250 million tags (September, 2007). There’s even a tag sharing site called del.icio.us.

Steven Johnson, author of Emergence, envisioned the results of this phenomenon in 2002:

“Emergence is what happens when the whole is smarter than the sum of its parts…And yet somehow out of all this interaction some higher-level structure or intelligence appears, usually without any master planner calling the shots. These kinds of systems tend to evolve from the ground up.”

The Technology Effect

Enabling this huge public publishing push is cheap, easy to use publishing technology. Blog software is free and extremely easy to use. Computers have built-in video cameras, and phones have built-in cameras and video. Anyone can be an online, multimedia publisher today.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) [define in plain English] is the ultimate consumption technology. RSS allows publishers to feed their content simply and easily from their web sites to their readers. When readers subscribe to their RSS feeds, they’re automatically delivered to email inboxes, to phones and PDAs - anytime information is updated. Information comes to you as it happens…

Or you can set up persistent searches for categories (tags or phrases) you’re interested in, and anytime someone tags their content with your search phrase, you’ll have it delivered right to you immediately.

RSS is built into blog software, to social networking applications and into web sites. All you have to do is turn it on, and you’ll notice RSS icons are cropping up everywhere online.

Take the first step toward SEMPR success: Download a free RSS reader, and download a free (for 1-5 users) RSS server platform from Attensa.

With your RSS platform and readers, you’ll be automatically set to dazzle your clients with immediate response to news and information - in the traditional media, the blogosphere and social media context - without having to spend a ton of energy to do so.

I’d love to chat about this more with anyone who has questions - my friend CJ and are are set for getting her up to speed on SEMPR and the power of a great RSS platform October 9…