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Hi Kevin here again with the first post in a series of 3 or even 4 on Video Marketing.

Video is the new advertising King of marketing. Almost any web promotion these days has video at the core of its promotional advertising.

The old adage that a picture speaks a thousand words has never been more true than it is today. The explosion of internet based Video sites has been due to the increasing streaming speeds available now online. Increased streaming allows faster processing and faster downloading, so people have adopted video with this new capability. It is so popular that Google has now began to list these individual video segments in its listings for a given search term. So if you have a video posted to YouTube (www.youtube.com) or to Google video (www.video.google.com) then there is a chance that it will eventually become more popular by its listing via Google. Natural search traffic is always the best and there is growing evidence that Video is gaining rapidly in popularity for search engine terms.

The most popular video style is the basic webcam based commentary style video that most people can make from the comfort of their webcam in their bedroom. These can be funny, informative or just plain wacky. But they are effective as the conveyor of a message.

People use this type of presentation to build a social identity online with friends and acquaintances across the globe. So they tend to use this to show people their life through a lens. Or to open discussions via forums on a particular topic that is of interest to them or their group of friends.

Marketers use these types of video presentations to present product reviews, site reviews and to present a product for pre-launch to generate interest. This is very powerful stuff and because it’s cheap to produce its use is extensive.

As far as marketing goes video is a solid form of advertisement but it needs to be structured and supported by a goal based strategy. The end result for us as a marketer is to get traffic to our website, nothing more. But the type of video we produce has to be of interest to our audience or the type of customer we are targeting.

So from that perspective we need to provide a solid information rich content filled “how to” style video that has value for our audience. It is this type of information video that people want and the more that you do and the more you put out there then the more traffic you generate.

However one important piece of information that you must remember is that whilst your video should provide a solution to a problem, it should not provide the entire solution. Your product or your website should do that. So make sure that whatever your video is it’s informative but leaves them wanting more. Work on the 90-10 rule. Provide 90% of the solution in the video and leave the last but all important 10% for your website or affiliate product to provide a total solution. Then provide them a link to the solution and dirct them straight to your website or affiliate page.

One other type of video along this same line that you should be making is one that builds relationships with your list in a more personal way. One method of achieving this is a personal page on your blog where you describe your life and virtues to your blog readers in the form of a video diary. Now these need not be very detailed or too personal but they do add to brand loyalty especially when your personal experiences are mirrored by those who are seeking your council, i.e. your customers.

There are lots of places to distribute your video and not just YouTube which you should use but the other smaller video sites and you should target them all over time.

One important point to make here is that although the content of your video is the most important thing, do not over look the quality of the video you produce. Poor quality or amateur video will harm your credibility no matter how great the content. Good professional looking video makes a very good first impression. So try and use good lighting and apply graphics and music or other enhancement that make your video shine above the rest.

That’s all for now but I will be expanding on the use of video in other posts over the coming weeks and months.

Have a great week.

Good morning all,

Please accept my apology for a very lapse post history of late. It has been a very busy period in my life which is now coming to an end and I can now concentrate on my blog and my business. I appreciate the understanding of my readers and friends alike.

Now to todays topic. Viral Marketing and how this can exponentially increase your traffic.

The term ‘viral marketing is relativelly new and was coined by the owners of ‘hotmail’ around 1996. They realised that they could use thier own e-mail service as an advertising source to advertise the e-mail service itself. In other words they could spread the message about their service like a virus. And so the term Viral Marketing was born.

So the concept of Viral marketing has been around now for some time. It takes on many forms from article marketing to e-book distribution programs. Every marketer uses this in one form or another and the reason for this is because it is a very Powerful tool.

Here in a nutshell is how this works; lets say you are the author of an article on web design. In that article you use several hyperlinks to your web design company’s website and other web sites to which you are related either as an affiliate or the owner.

So you write this killer article full of information and you post the article firstly on your own Blog because as an author you should always publish on your own blog first to establish ownership of the material. You then wait a few days for the article content to be syndicated by Technorati and other Blog directories and then you publish the same article but this time on established Article directories like http://www.ezinearticles.com or http://www.goarticles.com for maximum exposure.

Now your work is firmly in the public domain and available for anyone who happens to be browsing for information on web design.

So how does this become Viral then. Well very simply by others downloading your killer article for themselves or for people who they have on their list or in their forum or online marketing group. The basic concept means that the more people who are exposed to the article the more people read and digest its content and pass on that information and more importantly for you as the author your hyperlinks get clicked through by more people. More hits mean more sales and so on.

There are numerous means of viral marketing and one of my sites operates in exactly this way. http://www.mastermarketer.org is based on Tim Brocklehursts MVS system. I offer a free E-book which has a One Time Offer attached to it which the person who downloads the free E-book is exposed on completion of his sign up at the site. So the more people who are prepared to sign up for the free E-book are exposed to my offer on the backend and I make money. However what is better still is the exposure I receive from the distribution of my articles and e-books by anyone who downloads it. That is essentially viral marketing at work.

Viral marketing is one of the easiest and fastes ways of getting free traffic to your website. Like all advertising it is dependant on content and authority. So if you publish effectively you are almost guaranteed to make lots of contact with marketing people who will spread your content all over the web and thats free advertising for you and your business.

It just does not get any better than that.

Hello, Kevin here from http://truetrafficsecrets.com” with a little known yet vital component of the SEO mantra that is essential to your marketing success.

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Keyword research and analysis is one of the most fundamental components of online marketing. If you want your website to do well and to rank high in the major search engines, keyword research and analysis is critical to your success.

Without doing the proper keyword research and analysis before designing a new website will not necessarily doom your website to failure, but it can damage its ranking and eliminate the effectiveness of the other aspects of SEO that you have used to optimise your page.

Keyword Research all starts with a keyword or keyword phrase that describes your website or online business. From there, you need to expand on the keywords to get a list of related keywords. The more words the more chances that someone will find your webpage and buy your product.

It is important at this point to fully explore the rational behind the human psychology where words are concerned. People search using words and phrases that are dependant on the urgency of their need. Let’s take an example of a person who is over weight and wanting to lose that excess weight. Initially they may want information about possible weight loss programs that are advertised online. Therefore their initial search term may be very broad such as “weight loss’ which would yields literally hundreds of potential websites all trying to gain the attention of the searcher. This type of search is based on a person’s inquisitiveness and need for information. This search is often referred to as a short tail search. This type of search is generally used to gain information

However when the research is maybe based on a specific immediate NEED people will search based on exact search words that specify a target. Now in the case of our weight loss search the person maybe looking for a diet product and will search for that product by name or brand i.e” slimming world diet pills” for example. Now this is a person looking for a specific product or brand. This type of search is known as a long-tail search, and converts at a greater rate because the searcher is motivated and using specifics to locate the product that fulfills their need.

It is important therefore that your list of keywords you generate are those keywords that directly relate to your product or website that you are advertising for.

So think naturally and think like your competitors and your customers alike. Most keyword research tools will provide you with data for each keyword you choose such as how many people search for that keyword each month, what the keyword would cost for a Pay Per Click campaign and more besides.

The most effective and by far the best FREE keyword research tool is Google’s own.

https://adwords.google.com/Select/KeywordToolExternal

This will display a lot of information for any keyword you could imagine that may describe a website and its content. What’s great about this tool apart from its cost is the ability to analyse your competition and also to gain related keywords that are not necessarily our chosen keyword but are words that relate to our keyword. The term used to describe the related words fall under a collective known as LSI (latent Semantic Indexing). Now LSI is a whole subject in itself so I will not make anymore of that right now. Trust me you want to know more and you shall but to get into LSI now would cloud the wider issue of keyword research.

Once you compiled your list of keywords, it’s time to do your keyword analysis. For this, you need to know who your most direct competitors are and what keyword they are optimising their web pages for. How they become your competitors and how long they have had their webpage up for. All this takes a few well chosen websites that will divulge this information for free.

So to find your competition you use Google and basically enter a search term that you would use to find your own site. Now in the weight loss scenario that’s easy, type in “weight loss” and you will find the following websites and PPC campaigns running for that niche on Google.

When the search page shows it displays the list and brief explanation of the site content. At the top and immediate right of the screen are the PPC campaigns advertisements and below that the organic or Natural websites that are showing because they are optimised for that search string or keyword you used. Now you know who is listed in terms of the organic and PPC campaigns being run by your competition. With this knowledge we now need to know how long any one of these has had a campaign running, the longer it’s been around the more chances the campaign is making money for the marketer behind it.

http://alexa.com

Use this site to find out how long your competition has been around based on your keyword research. Leave out the obvious large corporations that you recognise because they are not your competition unless you are one of them yourself.

Just enter the website address and see what statistics come up for the sites that are your competition. Remember you are trying to find those campaigns that have proven profitable so the longer the site has been around the more likely it’s profitable, especially for a PPC campaign.

As you can see, keyword research and analysis can be tedious and time consuming. But it is essential if you are to be profitable, and with the modern keyword research tools available for FREE its rewarding and targeted analysis which works.