As more and more businesses are embracing video as a form of building their brand online, it’s important to keep up to date with the latest developments in search engine optimization.
Although Google published details of how to create a video site map in 2010, very few of our clients seem to be aware of this.
If you’re creating video you want it to be found online, so it’s about time you fixed your video site map if you haven’t done so yet. [Read more...]
Getting staff outside the communications department to participate in your content marketing can really help you show the very heart of your company.
One of the projects I’ve been involved with over the last couple of years is helping Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet’s students get involved in marketing their school.
The students over the last couple of years have, with a bit of guidance from me, got thousands of views on YouTube and helped promote the school to 9th graders looking for an internationally-minded academic senior high school. I’ve been so impressed.
Working with these talented students has been an absolute joy, not only because it’s great seeing young people learn new skills, but also because of the creative energy they have and the insight they have into social media.
Following up on a post from last month, I wanted to give one of the groups a chance to share their voice with readers of this blog, and give a bit of insight to their thinking.
So here’s what Isabell Ahron, Olof Unge, Lovisa Petersson, Vuong Truong and Edward Krook had to say when I asked them some questions: [Read more...]
In this episode of the Online Marketing and Communications podcast I talk to Sharon Cain, MD of British PR agency Quest PR.
Sharon Cain
Together with her team, based both in Harrogate and Leads, Quest PR are helping businesses in the region get to grips with new media.
I asked Sharon about how businesses should go about getting started with video, as well as the benefits of attending a training course.
We also talked about how to warm up for a recording session and what role video and vlogging has to play in integrated PR, online marketing and communications as we go forward in 2011.
[Read more...]
There are adverts for Sweden’s Felix Ketchup all over Stockholm’s subway stations right now. You only have to glance up to spot pictures of pancakes or ice cream covered with the stuff. The slogan reads Ketchup till allt (literally, ketchup on everything!).
Underneath each poster is a (relatively complex) url to a video on YouTube. The idea being that you might use your smartphone to check out the video.
I think it’s more likely that people would just Google “ketchup till allt”, but you get the point.
The video claims it’s a response to a Facebook Page entitled Jag äter ketchup till allt utom pannkaka I eat Ketchup with everything except pancakes
It takes time to for online content marketing to yield results. Despite what those marketing snake oil salesmen might tell you.
In the old days before the internet you could grab an audience’s attention by the throat with a 30 second ad on TV that literally burst onto the screens, propelling them to your store.
Showing commitment
Trouble is that intrinsically valuable content that connects with your target audience, showing your key value proposition, takes time to bubble to the surface of Google’s search engine results. It’s not found easily if you haven’t already built plenty of online equity. That’s why there are so many search engine optimization (SEO) experts out there, peddling their wares of “Get to the Top of Google Search”.
So beware. Agencies that promise an all-bells-and-whistles blog marketing campaign will yield quick results are either world leaders in online marketing and communications or planning to move country the minute your organization has handed over the cash for the work they’ve done.
For example, an online content marketing campaign aimed at generating more traffic to your site is not something to bash out in a week. Sure, unique visitors sent to your site via Google when searching for your keyword phrases have a good chance of converting to sales. Trouble is, the new blog you’ve just started writing as part of your latest marketing campaign, in all likelihood, isn’t going to help you capture the kind of search traffic you need to keep you in business if you’re struggling to take care of payroll. Blogs can take 3 – 6 months of careful business blogging with a WordPress theme optimised for SEO and cleverly worked-out keywords to really start converting visitors – and that’s assuming you’ve invested in great landing pages and call-to-actions across your site. [Read more...]
We were really excited at Jontus Media when we first heard about Google Wave. That video on YouTube blew us away and we imagined Google would be taking online communications to the next level, making it easier to collaborate over the web.
We got our invites really early on and gave it a whirl, trying it first out as a collaborative note-taking space at a Stockholm conference.
But as we tried to get our heads around it, it quickly became apparent that the product itself just wasn’t what we were looking for. After looking at other options we settled on Basecamp, which makes working as a virtual agency a blast, and haven’t looked back.
As you might have heard, Google put the final nail in the Wave coffin announcing that it was killing it earlier this week. I must admit it came as a bit of a surprise given the resources that had been put into building the Wave brand.
It was supposed to radically change the way we communicate online: Email 2.0 for millennials and other interested parties.
But after all the publicity, the hype and the interest generated around the product – people were paying for beta invites on Ebay, for goodness sake!– Google didn’t follow through.
Development seemed to stall despite the release of a few Wave templates; and it didn’t play nicely with Google Docs.
And then Google really shot themselves in the foot by releasing another highly promoted online communications tool: Google Buz.
[Read more...]
