No longer strictly the domain of film geeks and funny video aficionados, the network, which boasts more than 2 billion video views monetized per week, can also provide a low-cost to no-cost way to create a social marketing channel for your business.

If you aren’t effectively leveraging the network, you’re missing the viral video boat. However, as with most things in life, success isn’t often attained with a  haphazard, slapdash effort. Being successful on YouTube takes planning.

These 10 easy steps are a good place to start.

1. Know what “success” means.

What are you trying to achieve?

• Video views – Do you just want a lot of people to see your video?
• Conversions – Do you need people to click to another website and take an action?
• Deeper engagement with your brand – Do you need to use video give your potential customers more interaction with your brand?

2. Research keywords.

To be discovered on the second largest search engine, you will need to know what people are looking for. Use YouTube’s Keyword Tool to find popular searches within your space.

3. Know your competition.

Search on YouTube to find other videos that rank well for the keywords that you would like to rank for. See what it is that you are up against and seek out strategies to out-do them.This phase should also help you in your keyword research. Find opportunities: are there some high traffic keywords that seem like they may be easier to rank for than others?

4. Create a kick-ass video.

You don’t just create viral content because you want to. Viral content – unless it happens by chance – must be well though-out and gripping! No one is going to pass on a video to their friend(s) if they don’t really care for it themselves. Here are a couple of ideas.

5. Fill-out your video details.

Put important keywords at the front of your video titles, include them in your description, and tags. Do not over-do it, just put keywords that are relevant and are based on your keyword research. Allow your videos to be embedded. Otherwise, viewers will only be able to see your videos on YouTube.

6. Use the “Featured Videos” section.

If you are certain that your video will be a major hit, then use YouTube’s paid “Featured Videos” service to get your video seen by many people in a short amount of time. Once the video takes off, your organic traffic will usually out-do your paid traffic.

7. Insert links in your videos.

Use annotations to insert links to other videos to maximize every viewer. Do not over-do this either. Make sure that annotations do not impede the viewing experience.

8. Interact with high value users.

Find users on YouTube who are active and add value through their participation in the social network. Get your video in front of them – without spamming so that they can do part of the work for you. Your video will also benefit with more traffic  thanks to increased comments. YouTube will be soon be implementing new features to increase the amount of social interaction on the website (for example by making it easier to find your friends).

9. Use social media.

With built-up and relevant social media accounts, get your video seen by more people. By “relevant” I mean that your friends and your user history should be somehow related to the topic of your video for it to get more qualified traffic. My favorite sites for video sharing are Digg, Twitter, and StumbleUpon.

10. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Go back and start over. Look at what you can improve about your video(s) and continue to keep your video channel page fresh with more videos!

To learn how YouTube counts video views check out this previous blog post.

From Foursquare on the iPhone to an online game of Farmville, not to mention the frequent fliers popularized in the Academy Award nominated film, Up in the Air, playing “everyday games” has become nothing short of a pop culture obsession. Driving unprecedented consumer engagement to smart brands like Chase and the US Army, loyalty programs and marketing games are marketing’s best bet for the future of advertising.

From Foursquare on the iPhone to an online game of Farmville, not to mention the frequent fliers popularized in the Academy Award nominated film, Up in the Air, playing “everyday games” has become nothing short of a pop culture obsession. Driving unprecedented consumer engagement to smart brands like Chase and the US Army, loyalty programs and marketing games are marketing’s best bet for the future of advertising.

Just like Foursquare found the right game-based model for their application, Gabe Zicherman’s book can help you find the right game-based marketing model for your business.

Buy Game-Based Marketing on Amazon.com

If you have an email address, you’ve seen plenty of examples of email marketing. A clothing store might tell you about some new styles, a car dealership might let you know about a special financing deal, a local restaurant might let you know about new menu items.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which allows anyone to send messages directly to a pre-determined list of users. These messages can be anything from simple, plain text to rich, graphic-laden pages (similar to normal websites). Email marketing messages are delivered right to the recipient’s inbox, just like normal email.

Email marketing differs from other online marketing in that it is inexpensive, easy to send, highly measureable, and goes straight to a target’s inbox. It’s another tool in your online marketing toolbox.

Now, let’s take a look at what makes email marketing so useful.

The Advantages of Email Marketing

1. Low Cost

Email-based marketing costs can be as low as $0.005 per email. This compares favorably to other online marketing methods like pay-per-click or cost-per-impression advertising. Compared to the expense of traditional mail marketing, the savings are even greater (think about all the printing and postage costs!).

2. Measurable Results

Using innovative tracking systems, email marketing allows you to know exactly how many people receive your message, how many open it, and how many actually click on the links and calls to action contained within your message. Armed with this knowledge, you can make adjustments and improvements to subsequent emails.

3. Precision Targeting

Send emails exactly where you want them to go. You can easily create segmented lists and direct different messages to designated customer groups. You can collect email addresses from a number of sources, including your existing customer database. Adding a “mailing list” box to your website is a great way to build a list of users who are interesting in to hearing from you.

4. Interactive

Email newsletters don’t limit you to simple, static content. You can include video, music, polls and more. These tools provide multiple ways to engage your customers.

5. Strong Calls to Action

Clicking on a link or button is very easy, which means that recipients have to take very little effort to follow through on a call to action. Compare this with traditional newsletters where recipients have to dial a phone number or type a website address into their computer.

6. Highly Personalized

Use your database to easily greet recipients by name. Make them feel that they aren’t receiving a generic mass email.

7. Time and Venue Shifting

Recipients can read your message on their own time and on the device of their choosing, whether that means in a traditional email inbox or on an iPhone. This freedom increases open rates and engagement rates.

8. Opt-In & Unsubscribe Options

Because email lists are easy to opt-in and opt-out of, you don’t have to worry about customers receiving unsolicited and unwanted advertising.

9. Instant Response

Most recipients will read your message within minutes or hours. You can know the success of your campaign the same day you send it instead of weeks down the line.

10. Simple

No need to coordinate design, printing, and mailing as is necessary with physical mail-shots. And unlike other forms of online marketing, you don’t have vague targets and results. Email marketing is straightforward: send a message to a targeted list of recipients. Write the message and press send.

11. Easy To Get Started

Getting started with your mailing list is simple. You probably even have a huge database of email addresses already. Think about all the email addresses you have in your current email system, Rolodex, Blackberry, or other device. And surely you have at least a handful of company news, special offers, or other piece of information you want to share with your contacts.

Blue Fountain Media successfully employs Email Marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients. To find out how we can help you get your own program started, request a quote or call 212-260-1978.

An analysis of 1,531 web-marketing clients showed a huge difference between those who blog and those who do not. Here is the key info:

• 55% More Visitors for Companies That Blog (a measurement of the number of people that visit any page of a company’s site)
• 97% More Inbound Links (other sites linking to any page of a company’s site)
• 434% More Indexed Pages (how many of a company’s pages can be found on Google/Yahoo!/Bing)

While the survey size wasn’t huge (around 1,531 small- and medium-sized businesses), the numbers are pretty telling. Additionally, the study’s definition of a “company that blogs” was anyone with more than one post written on their blog. Had they defined a company that blogs as one with regular blog postings, then the results would have more than likely pointed to an even bigger traffic increase for companies that blog.

See the full HubSpot post here.

Business Learning Center: How To Write a Blog That Drives Traffic to Your Website and Revenue to Your Business. Read the full article for FREE.

Here’s how Web 2.0 Expo defined “The Power of Less”:

The theme for this year’s Web 2.0 Expo New York is the Power of Less. The Power of Less doesn’t just mean making do with fewer staff and a smaller budget. It means that constraints drive creativity, whether in business models, design paradigms, or platforms. It means the power of the small screen, the thin client, the streamlined interface. It might mean the power of small teams, or even going solo.

In the official Web 2.0 Expo Blog, Blue Fountain Media Founder and Creative Director Gabriel Shaoolian participated in an extended Q & A.

What follows is just one question from the interview:

Web 2.0 Expo: You say that you use a different process than most to get “to the heart of a client’s business strategies.” How is this different than companies who you consider more wasteful with resources?

Gabriel: All of our projects at Blue Fountain Media are “team” based. When you have an account manager, a designer, a developer and a marketer at the table at the very first client meeting, you are far more likely to emerge with a comprehensive and integrated plan of attack. This not only streamlines the entire requirements process, it allows us to proceed quickly and efficiently with the delivery of the project.

At many companies, the account manager is the only person to meet with the client. This creates terrible inefficiencies:

• The account manager has to take the time to get the team up to speed
• He’s failed to take advantage of the expertise of his team at the planning stage
• There are always communications issues when messages are passed along and not received first hand.

For the full interview, click here.

There are so many platforms, so many choices and so many misconceptions.

Companies that are smart and disciplined in all other areas of their business sometimes act irrationally due to their lack of expertise in this area.

Common mistakes include:

• Ignoring social media marketing because it is so foreign to them. Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites. On a daily basis, individuals are talking about your brand, so companies better listen.

• Assuming social media is a cheap and fast “miracle pill.” Entrepreneurs want everything (brand awareness, recall, more word of mouth, more business) and they want it fast. Digital market takes patience and timing. You can’t join an online social network and derive any value from it unless you take the time to meet the right people, connect, share, build, and grow.

• Assuming that any kid who grew up with the Internet is capable of devising, executing and maintaining a social media campaign. It’s not about technology or if you grew up in the digital age (even though you may have an upper-hand) but about effective strategy. There is no one size fits all, and ultimately it’s not about “What are we doing in XXX social media network?” but about why should you be in that social media network. It’s about choosing YouTube over Facebook or focusing on a blog instead of Twitter. It’s about adding value to your consumer and where they “reside” digitally.

The fact of the matter is, social media marketing works and it can work very effectively if done strategically. Virtually every major corporation is devoting significant resources to creating and monitoring social media campaigns for opportunities and what individuals say about their brand.

Smaller businesses and start-up businesses are also jumping on the wagon.

Social media campaigns improve your standing on search engines like Google, they enhance your brand, they sell your products, they drive traffic to your website and they can help you gain new customers and serve current customers.

A good social media campaign will cost you time, money and effort. It can take months, even a year for a campaign to pay off… but the payoffs are usually worth the wait.

Forrester Research did some research and have come up with figures that indicate that not only is it working for companies, but there will be explosive growth in the use of social media marketing in the next five years:

What Forrester is saying is that businesses are expected to spend 3.1 billion in social media marketing in 2014 and another $3.16 billion on search engine marketing.

Before embarking on a social media marketing plan, it is important to ask a number of key questions. Some of the questions you’ll be able to answer for yourself, others you’ll need the guidance of social media experts.

1. Is social media marketing right for my business?

1. Is my target audience using social media? If so, where?

2. Will I get a better ROI (return on investment) from social media and internet marketing, rather than traditional advertising and other marketing platforms?

2. What are your social media marketing goals?

1. Businesses often make the mistake of diving into their social media campaigns without sufficient thought or planning. Make a list of what you want to accomplish:

1. More sales leads
2. More direct sales (for e-commerce sites)
3. Greater brand awareness
4. Brand engagement

3. Which social media platforms are best suited for achieving my business’ goals?

1. Blogs

1. Can I create valuable insightful content to potential and current customers about my business/services/products/industry that can delivered in blog format?

2. News and Content

1. Once I’ve created compelling content, how can I distribute it to the world?

An easy way to distribute your ideas is through social news sites where the content speaks for itself. Users are given the opportunity to vote on news stories, links, and content:

1. Digg.com
2. Reddit.com
3. Stumbleupon.com
4. Propeller.com
5. Delicious.com

3. Review sites

1. Am I so confident in my products and services that I want to promote them to sites that publish independently written user reviews?

1. Yelp.com
2. Epinions.com

4. Networking sites

1. The great social communities of the web present remarkable opportunities to market, promote and even create direct sales for your company.

1. Linkedin.com
2. Twitter.com
3. Facebook.com

4. Do you fully understand the “social” aspects of social marketing?

1. There is a reason they call it social media marketing. When you enter this world, you are entering a very real community. Unlike advertising, which is a one-way-street method (push marketing) of delivering your message, social media demands that you enter into a conversation with your current and potential clients and customers (push and pull marketing).

Your success in social media will depend on your ability to make valuable engaging contributions, beyond simply promoting your brand, to a community which may be challenging, questioning or even hostile towards your brand.
1. Do you have the time, resources and confidence to enter into such a conversation?

5. Time and personnel commitment

1. The company must commit to training an individual or team who will have personal responsibility for maintaining social media channels. It can’t be considered an add-on. Take the time devoted to social media as seriously as the time devoted to any other kind of project. In other words, do it well or don’t do it at all.

6. Cross-Pollination

1. Are your social media effort integrated and designed to support each channel’s efforts? What will you use to drive people to your Twitter account? Your Blog? Your Facebook fan page?

7. Budgeting for the long haul

1. Social media campaign results rarely happen overnight. Have you thought about your budget going forward? Will this work be handled in-house or will you outsource this to a company with social media experience and expertise?

8. Metrics

1. How will you measure the success of your overall social media campaign and the individual elements? What are the key milestones you are looking for?

9. Triage

1. Marketing budgets are finite. The money invested in social media campaigns must come from somewhere. Where are the sacrifices to be made?

Unless you are a social media expert, you will not immediately have the answers to all of these questions. You need to find to find experts who will discuss your current business, your business goals, and your current marketing and advertising efforts. Until a company understands all of these aspects of your business, they will be in no position to map out a social media marketing campaign that’s exactly right for you and your business.

Blue Fountain Media counsels clients on a daily basis on how to use social media marketing to achieve their business goals. We offer a wide variety of services including consulting, online campaign architecture and ongoing social media campaign maintenance plans.

If you are interested in learning more, please give us a call at 212.260.1978 so we get can you on the road to social media success.

1. Keep your enemies closer, but keep your friends close too.

When you start an SEO campaign, the focus is usually on competitor research: what are your competitors optimizing for, where are they getting links, and how can you do a better job at it than them? But through Google Analytics you can also see what sites you are already getting traffic from. Well, a lot of the time, the users that come in through those referring sites ended up there because of a previous search query. Why is the referrer ranking, and what can you do to get your site on that SERP too?

2.  Exploring site search

A lot of websites have a search bar that allow you to search through the content of the site. This is a nice safety feature, but once a user is on your site, you have control over their experience, so they shouldn’t have to: important information should be accessible through site navigation. Luckily, you can track popular internal search terms with Google Analytics. If a lot of users are searching for the same pieces of content, it’s probably a good idea to investigate how easy it is to navigate to them.

3. Using advanced segments in Google Analytics data

There is a lot of data in Google Analytics, but the default reports are not always easy to sort through. Sometimes you want to look at a the performance of a whole group of keywords, without the distraction of extraneous data; or you want to look at the sources, conversion rates and actions of only the “highly-engaged users” who visit more than three pages. Advanced Segments allow you to view custom sets of data in a single report.

Here are 2 photos of the event, taken from my iPhone:

SEMPO President Sara Holoubek and myself on the boat cruise around Manhattan. We are most likely laughing at something said by Bruce Clay Inc.‘s funny man, Chris Hart.

Blue Fountain Media’s Zack Sinkler, Michael Sarill, and Ishmael Vasquez. (BTW, from right to left. I know it doesn’t make sense.)

UPDATE: See WebMetricsGuru’s post as well for more info.

1. Location is Key

Panhandling is the ultimate world-is-flat business. Anywhere with foot traffic and styrofoam cups can be the headquarters of a thriving begging enterprise — but by locating his business between a pet food store and a huge Barnes & Noble outlet, our hobo is able to immediately show passersby that, even though he may waste their money, he’ll be wasting money they were probably going to spend on gourmet cat chow and limited, signed, extra-eye-glazing editions of Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest.

Similarly, at Blue Fountain Media we try to get our message in front of a receptive audience. Our social media marketing targets communities that are already open to a customer’s product, but could benefit from learning more. Our SEO is designed to get high-quality links from related sites.

2. Write Compelling Copy

If you stopped for a double-take when you read that sign, you’re not the only one. At Blue Fountain Media, we’ve discussed the sign several times; more than we can say for basically any other similar appeal. I walk past dozens of giant, flashy banners on the way to work — this simple, textual ad was the one that got my attention.

3. There’s Room for Originality — and for Knockoffs

You’ve probably seen a similar sign before. You might have seen a nearly identical sign online. But if it works, it’s more important to do it right than to do it first.

At Blue Fountain Media, we’re constantly learning from what our competitors do. Whether it’s through direct competitor research (looking at who links to our competitors, and getting them to link to our clients as well) or general research into industry practices, we work hard to keep abreast of new trends.

4. Rigorously Test Your Ads

This isn’t the first draft, or even the fifth draft, of this sign. Prior versions (not pictured, sadly), included straight appeals for money, a plain request for beer money, a request for beer money or drug money, and, finally, the beer and music appeal. And we doubt that this is the last one (and not just because cardboard signs wear out fast).

We’re always finding new appeals, too. At Blue Fountain Media, we adapt to changing consumer tastes, adapting search engines, the rise and fall of social networks, and revolutionary changes in the mobile Internet. Call us to find out what Blue Fountain can do for you!

Just in case you want to help the guy out, spare change and decent guitars can be delivered to Broadway and East 17th Street, approximately.

In this example, Google includes a plus-box below a Newegg.com ad, with product images and information pulled from microformatted tables on their product pages:


Much like the Google Checkout badge and the maps plus box, this isn’t something you can just turn on via AdWords; it’s a result of having your ad campaigns set up correctly, and Google crawling your website and determining that they’ll be providing users with a better experience by displaying additional content from your website (either letting users know that you support Google Checkout, or giving a preview of products related to your search).

This is yet another example of the importance of a holistic approach to online marketing; advertising should integrate not only searchability and online reputation, but site architecture as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of how Google uses information like microformats in the SERPS, check out their recent entry on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.)