by Margie Clayman.

When Twitter first came out, one of the first things people were saying about it was that it was going to change how people did business. It was going to personalize client-customer relationships. It was going to humanize brands. Remember all that stuff?

Here’s the funny thing about Twitter and how it has evolved. A lot of the people who joined up so that they could do business somehow forgot along the way that they were using Twitter for business. They started to move over into the land of “How many followers can I get” and “What’s my Klout score?” Unless you are social media consultant (and even then you’re on shaky ground), these numbers do not necessarily prove that you are great at your actual paying job. If you are a plumber, people aren’t gonna really care that your company has 5,000 followers. They want to know if you can get their sinks to stop making that drip sound.

Read the rest of this article from Business 2 Community.

by Rebecca Appleton.

The saying ‘content is king’ has never been truer than it is right now. With Google on a push to refine their ranking systems and understand more clearly than ever before what makes a good website, presenting the right kind of content, in the right way can make all the difference to search engine rankings and conversion rates. Amidst the revisions to the Panda algorithm and the traditional understanding of content as being primarily about the written word, video marketing is something of a lost art.

When web publishers and search engine optimizers talk about optimizing content and improving search engine rankings, invariably the focus is on website copy, articles and news releases. We talk about writing content that engages, spend hours mulling over interesting blog post ideas, draft in experts to pen news releases and link bait articles, all in the name of the holy grail – page one rankings. The reality is that somewhere amongst this dedication to increasing online brand presence, video marketing should be given a second and even third thought. Studies have shown that video ads convert extremely well and some researchers even claim internet video provokes more of a reaction than TV ads do.

Read the rest of this article from Search Marketing Standard.

by Pete Zafra.

A blog has become a necessity for every Internet Marketer out there. If you’re running a blog to build your business and have a steady flow of leads and cash, there is still a lot to learn…a lot of strategies that are needed to be done consistently on a daily basis in order to have an effective blog with a good amount of traffic.

Read the rest of this article from PeteZafra.com

by Clyde Smith.

Though making real money with music on YouTube still requires millions of views, ideally from aggregating a catalog of music, the marketing benefits can be substantial as we’re all well aware. Here are 8 tips for maximizing your music marketing on YouTube taken from a dash of David Choi, a dose of the Social Media Examiner and a dollop of YouTube’s Creator Playbook.

Read the rest of this article from Hypepot.

by Chad Wiebesick.

Have you heard about Universal Search? It’s Google’s term to describe their search results. Nowadays Google ranks more than just websites. Powerpoint presentations, Adobe pdf’s, photographs, news stories, blogs, videos, and other online content are now shown in search results – making it Universal. If your business puts video online, make sure it’s optimized for search engine.

Create a Company YouTube Page

The best thing you can do for your videos is to put them on YouTube. YouTube videos in particular show well in Google because Google owns the company. While there are many video sharing sites, YouTube is by far the most popular, even for B2B. B2B companies like Kinaxis and Corning are doing a great job creating videos and promoting them online.

In fact, Corning’s video has gone viral with over 15 million views. Kinaxis has won awards for their videos, breathing new life into a staid industrial company.  To really make your YouTube page stand out, go into the account settings and customize the page to match your company’s brand.

Read the rest of this article from Business2Community.

by Chad Wiebesick.

Do you ever wonder why your B2B website isn’t getting more traffic? It could be that your website isn’t properly optimized for search engines.

Google indexes not only websites, but also images, videos, local listings, news stories, blog posts, and more. Google calls their search results “Universal Search” and blends listings from all types of content it gathers from crawling the World Wide Web. You need to optimize your entire online presence, not just your website.

The fundamentals for optimizing a B2B site are essentially the same as a B2C site, though there are differences. Information needs are different for B2B buyers, so the type of content and how it’s optimized will be different for B2B.

Optimizing all your online content will bring more visitors to your website and ultimately generate more leads. With that said, here are 22 SEO tips to optimize your online B2B presence…

Read the rest of this article from Business 2 Community.

by Jeremy Scott.

Like a lot of people, I saw the new Samsung GALAXY Note video ad over the weekend–the one that shows off all the bells and whistles of the upcoming buzzed-about device. I was struck by how different this ad is from some contemporary smartphone and gadget ads, from Apple’s iPhone commercials to Verizon’s Droid spots.

And that’s when I realized the diversity in gadget marketing online is proof that brands can achieve online video marketingsuccess through a variety of styles, forms, and tones.

by Jedha Dening.

Although having a business blog is one of the best emarketing strategies available, business blogging can sometimes be a tough pursuit. Let’s face it…it’s an effort to constantly come up with ideas on topics, tips and how to keep it interesting.

And keeping your blog interesting is definitely a high priority because you want to keep your customers and readers excited, engaged and ultimately coming back for more.

Read the rest of this article from Joan Naviou.

by Jordan Kasteler.

Search Engine Land’s Jordan Kasteler wrote on Tuesday that making content easy to share over the web is critical to it becoming viral.

Whether it’s an article written as part of a content marketing campaign or a video, Kasteler believes removing as many steps as possible required to share a link will improve the chances of it becoming viral.

Even for those that don’t necessarily reach enough people to receive the viral distinction, sharing widgets that allow for easy posting to social media websites and content aggregators are generally a good idea.

Beyond social media widgets, making the piece easy to email with a button will help maximize its visibility.

Read the rest of this article from Brafton.

by Matt.

We’ve been doing quite a few posts about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) lately. SEO isn’t hard the same way calculus is hard, but it can be very time consuming and is constantly changing.

You can ignore it all together, but know you probably won’t get a lot of traffic from Google. You can pay someone to do it for you. Most of the providers you find cheap aren’t very good and the good ones are rarely cheap. The going rate for a firm to look at your site and make recommendations is often $750 to $1000+. That’s for a one time recommendation! To have them monitor and make ongoing recommendations or to actually implement to recommended changes would likely make you faint.

Read the rest of this article from Guerrilla Word Fare.