As social media continues to mature into a valuable tool for marketers, accessibility of shared platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are permanently changing the marketing landscape.

However, things are moving at a bristling pace and the social media we know today could be vastly different in the near future. In the next three years alone spending on social media marketing will skyrocket in the B2B space from $11 million in 2009 to $54 million by 2014, according to a Forrester Research.

Add new platforms and mobile into the mix and now, more than ever, marketers are struggling with how to best position themselves in a constantly evolving space.

Below are some important stats to consider when figuring out ways to best allocate your clients’ marketing spend.

Strictly social.

• Americans now spend one of every six minutes online using a social network, up from one of every 12 minutes in 2007, according to research firm comScore.
• Spending on social network advertising is approximately $6 billion this year.
• Facebook rules the social networking space, surpassing MySpace as the most popular social network in 2009 and continuing to grow. The site now reaches 73 percent of the U.S. population every month.
• MySpace is still the second-most popular social networking site with 34.9 million users per month. However,  user engagement is down a whopping 85 percent in the past year.

Mobile goes social.

• Mobile advertising is growing fast as more people upgrade to technologically advanced smartphones, and will reach $3.3 billion this year and grow to $20.6 billion by 2015, according to Gartner.
• 65 million Facebook users already update their profile and community from mobile devices, and spend as much time on Facebook as PC users do.
• U.S. mobile ad spending will grow from $790 million in 2010 to $4 billion in 2015, according to media consultant BIA/Kelsey.

Social around the Web.

• According to comScore,  LinkedIn (33.4 million visitors in May 2011), Twitter (27 million) and Tumblr (10.7 million) all reported  their highest-ever traffic in May 2011.
• Consumer subscriptions for premium levels of online services (think storage for personal photo collection) are likely to reach $6 billion by 2016, according to Forrester.
• YouTube users are now uploading about 48 hours of video to the site every minute. That is two full days every 60 seconds.
• There are 150 million blogs on the internet with 1.6 million posts generated daily.
• 60,000 websites are added to the Internet every day.
• Twitter handles 155 million tweets daily, compared with 50 million a day a year ago.
• Flickr has five million images uploaded daily, or 60 pictures a second.

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.

We’ve all heard YouTube’s dazzling numbers: Over 13 million hours of footage was uploaded in 2010; more video is uploaded every 60 days than the three major US television networks produced in the previous 60 years; and YouTube receives the equivalent of 115,000 full-length feature films in uploads every year.

All this is wonderful for fans of funny cat videos, as well as Google shareholders.

However, there are also a few eye-popping stats for the savvy SMB interested in integrating social media platforms into their marketing mix but may be constrained by a tight budget. For example, more than 2 billion video views per week are monetized; the total number of advertisers using YouTube has increased 10-fold; and YouTube mobile gets over 100 million views a day.

Getting an accurate count

So, it should be no surprise YouTube tightened its video view calculating process. Way back in the early days of YouTube (circa 2005), counting views was a more casual affair. The entrepreneurs (Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim) that brought us into a world of 24/7 Funniest Home Videos simply registered how many times a page was loaded.

Under these conditions, any teenager looking to bump up the stats on his Skywalker battle reenactment video, simply could press a browser’s refresh button over and over again to increase view coun

Meet the new boss

However, it didn’t take long for YouTube to get wise to this game and they implemented some changes. As the company moved to monetize videos, the importance of video view counts increased significantly.

Now, the process is done in the manner we have come to expect from a Google-owned company — all algorithms and security systems. There is no more gaming the view count game.

Or at least it is much harder.

Despite the combined technical prowess of YouTube and Google, it is still possible to inflate views artificially. The most common attempts occur through spam bots/malware, but can also happen by the video’s uploader.

YouTube explains why they have employed these measures:

We’ve implemented this type of technology and view count analysis in order to prevent abuse of the system. Video views are at the heart of the YouTube community and we want to ensure that we’re counting only valid views (and not artificial attempts to game the system). Ultimately, consistent view counts benefit everyone in the community, from the viewers to the uploaders.

You may also enjoy a post by our own Alhan Keser about how to be successful on YouTube.

This article was originally posted August 2010 and has since been updated.

(source: ZaCky ॐ)

In terms of branding, Kryptonite Locks has a lot of coolness factors working for them – it’s the choice lock of bike messengers in metropolitan cities (especially here in New York), the premium price tag of $100 a lock, and the name alone is synonymous with indestructibility and strength.

Alhan, our Marketing Director, was sold and ready to get a Kryptonite lock for his custom vintage Peugeot bicycle, but as a search engine marketer, Alhan googled “krytonite locks” for more information, to check out their search presence.

An excerpt from Alhan’s blog:

“When the SERP loaded, I skipped right past the official Kryptonite website – which was the only website I had planned to visit. Instead, I visited the other, much more interesting results:

Wired article about how one can open Kryptonite locks with a Bic pen.

And YouTube videos showing how to open Kryptonite locks.

…Not exactly what I was expecting from the lock brand I had come to trust.

…I am not certain whether or not Kryptonite has resolved this issue, but from the looks of it, I would have to say that that they feel like the issue has been resolved. Regardless of Kryptonite’s superior technology, I refuse purchasing something from a company conceited enough to think that consumers will systematically prioritize brand name over quality.”

Eventually, Alhan didn’t buy a Kryptonite lock and Kryptonite lost a potential customer.  I have searched around and Kryptonite did a very light attempt at fixing the situation. They should have addressed the problem in an environment of transparency.

If you have something that can damage your corporate image on Google, you have to take swift action and correct the situation. It has to be very accessible to everyone (e.g., on your homepage) and you have to respond questions quickly and honestly. Evaluate the complaint and correct the problem, even if it will cost you money in the process (e.g, recalling a product).

Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) is something that all companies have to consider as potential customers use Google for product information and reputation. With the use of social media tools like Twitter, blogs, forums, and online publishers these can make you or break you, but you can use these tools to remedy situations before they spread like wildfire.