Tag Archives: YouTube

Visual Storytelling and Marketing

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photo credit: Erik Johansson

Guest post by Brianne W.

The immediate impact and the efficacy of visual storytelling have been known for long. It is making its presence felt in a more prominent manner now with social networking platforms that rely purely on images, graphics or presentations. These have the potential to bring in traffic to a website, to create a repertoire of inbound links and to help the SEO initiatives taken up by an organization. The difference now is that the effort need not find a place only on the organizations’ websites. More avenues are now available for marketing through visual storytelling. You too can benefit from these platforms by following a methodological approach.

1. Create an effective campaign

Use platforms such as Pinterest, Slide Share, Youtube and Instagram to give shape to your visual storytelling initiatives for marketing. Each of these platforms boasts of millions of users. A video, a slide or a picture can all prove effective in making your campaign go viral over the web. Do not turn the campaign into a list of features. State what it can do for people and show people their benefits for you to gain in the form of higher sales and revenues.

2. Use networking platforms

Even though the visuals based platforms remain your primary ground for activity, post the links to your visual message in the form of videos, slides or pictures on other networking platforms as well where you have gradually built a place of prominence. Capitalize on your goodwill on these platforms to get more inbound links and traffic.

3. Prepare your site for a higher conversion rate

Once the marketing through visual storytelling methodologies prove effective and you get the traffic for your website, the product details and the website as a whole should inspire confidence in people. Build your website in a manner so as to capitalize on the gains that your marketing initiatives bring. Enable ease of navigation. Provide information on the various options available to get more details on products.

4. Document the processes in a visual format

Each business has an aspect that is visually more appealing while at the same time immediately identifiable with the business. Focus on such aspects of your business to give shape to a striking campaign. Give it a professional touch to prepare it for the immense competition you face on the visuals based networking platforms.

5. Connect with people

Make sure that the campaign allows people to connect to it. Depict issues that people face. Let your picture or video bring a smile on people’s faces knowing very well that they are familiar with the content of your campaign. Highlight the features that present a solution.

The visual medium carries a wider reach. It does not rely on the written word more often than not. A picture can be self explanatory. Your audience gets the message in just one glance. If the message is powerful enough, it draws people to explore more. Once this happens, the marketing campaign moves towards conversion. The efficacy of your overall campaign in the visual storytelling domain depends on your creative skills. Let your creativity do the talking for you.

About the author: Brianne is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. Recently an article on beer pong game attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on data recovery software.

 

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Online Visibility: 11 Ways to get More Exposure for Your Blog in 2011

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Bloggers might sometimes get the feeling that they are fighting an uphill battle because theirs is just one of millions of other blogs out there competing for the attention of their prospective audience. But if you develop a solid marketing plan for your blog and take consistent action toward the goals you set daily, weekly and monthly, before you know it, your Alexa rankings will be falling and your Google page rank will begin to rise which means you’ll be attracting more visitors.

Let’s dive right in to 11 tips for getting your blog seen more in 2011:

1. Post consistently

Having a consistent posting schedule gets both your readers and the search engines used to visiting your blog more often.

2. Know the basics of SEO and how to optimize your blog and your posts for the search engines.

If you are running a WordPress blog there are several free plugins that will help you to maximize your blog’s SEO from both a structural and a content perspective. Optimizing your blog helps you get more traffic and better search engine rankings.

3. Comment on other blogs in your topic

Visiting other blogs in your niche or topic, reading the posts and leaving relevant comments is an effective way to increase your visibility with both the blog’s author and your fellow commentators.

4. Guest post on popular blogs in your topic

Guest blogging gigs are a great way to create a win-win with other bloggers in your niche. You help them out by providing content that is suited to their blog and audience, your presence on their blog helps get you exposure with a whole new audience, and the readers get to experience a new perspective.

5. Send out press releases

Whenever you are planning a news-worthy event, send out a press release. Not only might you attract media attention, but you’ll get a ton of high page rank back links to your blog and a nice, if short-lived, flow of traffic to your blog.

6. Host a contest/giveaway

Who doesn’t want something for free? Host a contest or a giveaway where you offer up a valuable product or service in exchange for your readers helping to spread the word about your blog.

7. Join or host a blogging challenge

A blogging challenge can have many benefits including increased exposure for the host and the participants, you get motivated and inspired to blog more to keep up with your fellow challengers and you get a little traffic boost and more comments as other members of the challenge make the rounds to the various blogs.

8. Offer a free product

If you are building your opt-in email subscriber list, offer a free product for visitors to your blog who sign up. Invite subscribers to share your premium with their friends and make sure that it contains a link back to your blog.

9. Be active in social media

Work your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles to send traffic back and forth. Use a Facebook Fan Page to share valuable tips and info with your audience, host events and invite your followers and be a trusted resource that people want to follow.

10. Video marketing

Video marketing is an incredibly powerful way to gain some valuable exposure online. Create a series of videos containing useful how-to tips, recipes, instructions, or advice. Include a link back to your blog in the description box and a compelling call to action in the video. Share your videos on all of the top video sharing sites for lots of traffic and visibility.

11. Article marketing

This tried and true strategy is still effective today, but you’ve got to be committed to creating a high volume of quality articles with links back to your blog. Write articles for some of the top websites in your industry to establish yourself as an expert and draw attention to your blog.

As you focus on increasing your online visibility remember those qualities that make you unique and set you apart. There really is no competition because you are one of a kind. The goal then is to get yourself out there in the marketplace of ideas so that you can shine your brilliance for the world to see. Being modest and shy will not serve you, so if you don’t have the gumption to get out there and share what sets you apart then you may as well fold up your tent and go home.

If you have a vision and a mission to accomplish, then it is your responsibility to share the message that you have been given with a world that is waiting to hear what you have to say. Make 2011 your year to break through. Those who succeed are those who never give up working towards their goals.

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Content Creation Workshop: How Many Ways Can You Re-Purpose Your Blog Content for More Traffic, Links and Sales?

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Bloggers know that it takes a lot of time, energy and maybe even a little bit of blood, sweat and tears to crank out quality content. They also know that it’s the quality, relevance and stickiness of their content that attracts traffic and gets visitors to subscribe and hang around to find out what else you’ve got to say.

In this post we’re going to take a look at some creative ways you can make the most of your blog content by transforming it into different formats. One thing to keep in mind is that people come to your blog with a variety of preferences and learning styles. If your blog is predominately text based, those who prefer other mediums such as audio or video may not be as attracted to your content or as eager to consume it as they might be if it were presented in a format that they prefer.

Another benefit to having your content in a variety of formats is to provide your visitors with several different ways to consume your content. With audio, they can download your content and listen to it on the go at their own convenience. If visitors don’t want to take the time to read your blog post or article, translating the content into a video allows visitors who are more visual learners to consume your content in a way that appeals to them.
So let’s dive right in and start transforming your blog post into the various different formats and publish them.

Create an Article
A blog post can be converted to an article quite easily. You might want to change the headline so that it contains your keywords, maybe edit the language a bit if it’s written in an informal or personal tone. If it’s shorter than 400 words you’ll want to extend it to between 450-600 words, as this is the more appropriate word count for the article directories.

Include a resource box, which contains both an anchor text link and the full URL to your blog. The purpose of the resource box is to entice the reader to click on it and visit your blog, so make it appealing and inviting.
Publish your article in several of the top article directories. As your collection of published articles grows your traffic will pick up and it will boost your page rank with all of those high quality back links.

Here are the top 12 article directories with their Alexa rank and Google page rank:

1. ezinearticles.com 124              6

2. articlesbase.com 342             6
3. suite101.com 658             7
4. buzzle.com 713            6
5. helium.com 1,328           6
6. articlesnatch.com 1,632          5
7. goarticles.com 1,667          4
8. articlealley.com 2,184           5
9. articledashboard.com 2,919           5
10. selfgrowth.com/articles.html 3,411           5
11. ideamarketers.com 3,704          5
12. bukisa.com 4,243          5

Source: http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php
Create an Audio
Let’s begin with a blog post or article. The first thing we’re going to do is transform your written text into an audio file. All you need to do is download a piece of free software called, Audacity, and then using a microphone plugged into your computer read your article while speaking into the mic and record it. If you do a quick search you can find free, online tutorials on how to edit your audio. If you want to add a bit of professionalism you can include a piece of bumper music for the intro and out-tro that fades in and out. Record a short bit of audio at the end to direct listeners to your blog.
If you decide to create a series of audios, you might want to consider turning them into a podcast. You can then list your podcast in iTunes and the dozens of other podcast directories online where you’ll get lots of exposure from a new audience.
If you want to begin by just recording an audio, you can then reverse the process and have the audio transcribed and then you can re-purpose the text version.
I just found a fabulous resource called, speechpad, which is a web app that allows you to record an audio file over the phone and have it transcribed for you. You can also upload an audio and they will transcribe it using a combination of software and an actual human edit. http://www.speechpad.com

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Here are some links to the top podcast directories:
http://jasonvanorden.com/list-of-podcast-directories
http://www.masternewmedia.org/podcast_directory/

Create an eBook
If you’ve got a collection of posts on a particular topic, you can compile them, do a bit of re-writing to insert some transitions and any other additional information that will make the copy flow better and be more useful to your readers. You can use the resulting ebook to build your email subscriber list, or package it and offer it for sale.
If you do plan to sell the ebook, you might consider getting a professional looking, graphic ebook cover made. Having a good-looking cover for your ebook will make it more appealing to your customers.

Add images and music to create a video
The next way that we are going to re-purpose the original blog post is by creating a video. If you’ve got presentation software such as power point, you can take the main points and create slides. Add images that relate to the topic and use the audio that you recorded previously to play in the background. Adding a short musical intro and outtro puts a nice finishing touch on these videos.

Make sure that you use your primary keywords in the title of the video, and the description. The first text in the description box should be the full URL to your website. Direct viewers to click on the link and give them an idea of what they will find there that will be of interest to them.

Windows movie maker video tutorials:
http://bit.ly/ceKBU7

Create slides to transform it into a webinar
Depending on the nature of the content you can even take your blog post’s contents and convert them to a webinar. If it is a ‘how to’ type article, or generally informative, you can use the webinar to educate and inform your visitors about your topic. Use the webinar as an opportunity to build your list, increase your exposure and to be seen as an expert in your industry.

There are lots of informative videos on sites such as youtube.com that can show you step-by-step how to create and record a dynamic webinar that will impress your attendees and boost your profile considerably.
In this blog post I’ve shared several ways that you can get a bit more mileage out of your blog posts while getting increased exposure and targeted traffic back to your blog. But what if you really don’t have time to create your own original content?

As a freelance web copywriter, I create compelling content for a variety of clients every day. Let me transform some of your content that is languishing on your site into fresh content in a variety of formats or I can create something new. Contact me today about my writing services.

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