Let’s say you’ve taken that important big step and created your first video.  Now you’re ready to add it to your website, but how?  Sure, you could upload it to YouTube, grab the embed code, and paste it in your site editor, but is that the best option?  Afterall, this is your video.  Not only will YouTube include their logo, but they’ll link to other videos at the end.  Maybe even your competitors’ videos.  And, they could take it down at any time.  You just never know.

I’m not saying to not upload your video to YouTube.  You should do that, too.  Create your own channel, upload your video, link your profile to your site.  All that is great for getting exposure and coming up in search.  But here are some other solutions to display video on your own website.

First, you should consider where you will host your video.  While you could host the video file directly through your website hosting, video files are big, and if you get a lot of hits, it could slow down your site.  The best solution is Amazon S3 hosting.  They provide massive amounts of storage for top companies around the world – yet you only pay pennies to get started.  If your video goes viral, you’ll be charged for the bandwidth you use at really low rates.

Then, you’ll need to choose a video player.  That’s what makes Amazon S3 tricky.  They only host your video – they don’t play it. Some of popular video players I’ve worked with include Flowplayer and JW Player.  Flowplayer is one of the few players that allows use on commercial sites without purchasing a license.  You do still need to show the logo, but it’s relatively unobstrusive.  This is a good solution if you’re just getting started and may not be creating many videos.  If you’re going to be using video a lot, there are a multitude of paid solutions out there.

Here are a few video players to consider:

Licensed JW Player

JW Player currently costs $89 for a lifetime license. They offer lots of customization possibilities, as well as add-ons such as Google Analytics.  Traditionally, you’ve been able to do more with JW Player then most players, however, other services seem to be catching up.  You do need to pay for some of the add-ons, and get your hands wet with the code to use them as well. JW Player has been a long-time leader in the industry and was one of the first to support HTML5, which allows your videos to work on the iPhone or iPad. If you set it up correctly, your site will be able to determine what device a visitor is using and serve up the video so they can view it.

Licensed Flowplayer

FlowPlayer also has a one-time fee per license, which allows you to remove their logo from your video player. They have a ‘Pimp Your Player’ service on their site to customize the look, but you’ll still need to get into the code on your website a bit to embed the player once you create it.  All features are included for the one-time fee of $95.  The feature set may not be quite as extensive as what would be available if you purchased all the JW Player add-ons, but they’ve been making lots of improvements and adding new features regularly.  They also utilize a content delivery network where they will convert and serve your video for you.  This helps your video display in the right format for any device.

EZS3

EZS3 doesn’t look quite as fancy when you visit their site, but it makes everything super simple – anybody can use it. This is a good option if you’ll be using lots of video, but it does include an on-going monthly fee around $20/month, so it can get pricey if you’re not taking advantage of it on a regular basis.

Easy Video Player 2

Easy Video Player 2 is designed especially for marketers who want to have an opt-in box or other call to action show up right in the video box at the end of the video.  It includes software that you need to purchase at $127 to easily customize your player and options, plus the commercial license for $77.

Vid.ly

Vidly is probably the easiest way to bring everything together.  You upload your video in any format, they convert it into the necessary formats, they host it, they provide the player, and you’re done.  Earlier on I believe it was fairly costly, but it seems they’ve adjusted their pricing formulas to be more in line with how Amazon charges – based on video hosting space you use combined with bandwith.  You’ll be charged a monthly fee depending on how much you’re using them, but the fees are fairly reasonable and it might just be worth the simplicity for you.

Putting It All Together

While many video players have free versions, be sure to read the terms of service about using them on a commercial site.  If the site is for your business, it’s commercial, and you aren’t allowed to use most of these without purchasing a license.  If you’re non-profit, a public school, or displaying video on a personal website, your options are wide open.

Before you choose a video player, you may also want to take into consideration what platform your website is built in.  If you’re using WordPress or a CMS such as Joomla or Drupal, take a look at what plugins are available to help you embed your video.  The plugin will take care of the embedding part for you – purchase your video player license then manage everything through the plugin instead of pasting (and editing) code.  If your website platform doesn’t have an easy-to-use plugin, you might want to consider one of the players that requires less work with the embed code, such as EZS3 or Vid.ly.  Otherwise, you may need to have your web developer help out.

Are you using video on your website?  What system do you use?  If you have another solution that’s worked well, please comment below to share your favorite method to embed video on your website.

You may have guessed from the incredible deals that these are usually loss-leaders for businesses.  The business offers their product or service for a loss to get you in the door. The business often takes even more of a loss than you may think – the product or service will be offered around 50% off the normal price.  In addition to that, the business pays the list operator (Groupon, Living Social, etc.), about half of what they take in, so they’re really looking at getting only 25% of the normal rate.  On the other hand, there’s usually no up-front fee, so you look at it as your marketing budget.  That’s what you pay to get someone in the door.  But the key is to keep them coming back.

On Saturday, our local Groupon deal was for Tricks Gymnastics.  They have dance and gymnastics classes for kids.  While the dance classes are mostly filled with girls and my boys don’t like anything they consider, “girly,” they still love to bounce on trampolines, dive into the foam pit and climb the ropes.  We were actually going to a birthday party there that same afternoon for one of my six year-old’s best friends.  I was ready to buy the deal right away for my son – four weeks of gymnastics classes for only $25! I went over to their website to make sure one of the classes would be a good fit for him. Here’s what I saw:

Look at that!  They had a message right there, on the home page, just for me, a Groupon
customer.  It showed me they cared, they were ready to provide me awesome service, and they knew just what questions I might have.  I was impressed.  I clicked through, read the class descriptions, then went back to purchase my Groupon.  When we went to the birthday party that afternoon, we stayed after to see the class schedule and to decide when we’d start. The staff person was super helpful and even checked the ages of the other boys enrolled to help my older son decide if he’d like to join in.

As great as they’ve been so far, this is still part of the first step – getting us in the
door.  My thought when I purchased one month of classes was that this would be something fun for my son to do over the summer.  We’re not really planning to keep going after that.  Their job is to convince us otherwise.  That’s what will make it worth it for them – a new customer paying their regular monthly rates ($72/month for the classes my son will be taking).

What’s the next step?  How can they convince us to enroll long-term?  For starters, they need to provide an awesome program that my son loves and begs to go back to.  They need to make me feel like he’s getting something valuable out of it.  Maybe they’ll even come up with a follow-up offer, like a lesser discount if we commit to three months.  From what I’ve seen so far, I think they’ve got it all planned out.  I think they went into this with a strategy, and you should too.

Have you ever tried offering a coupon through Groupon, Living Social, or another daily deal site? How did it work out for you? Do you have any creative ideas on how to get the most out of daily deal marketing?

Please comment below and join the conversation!

I’ll give you a link in a minute to see an overview of all the changes, but first I want to point out a couple of things I think will make the biggest difference for business owners.

First, Facebook has FINALLY given us notifications!  That’s right.  Up until now, there was no way to be notified if somebody posted or commented on your Facebook Page.  You actually had to go check it all the time, just to make sure you didn’t leave someone hanging who might have made a comment or asked a question.  People came up with funny round-about solutions, like ‘liking’ their own business posts (as themselves), so they’d be notified.  (You know – the same way you can get email notifications on your friends’ posts you’ve ‘liked’ or commented on…)

Notifications for Facebook Pages have been requested forever (well, since the beginning of FB Pages, I suppose), and now Facebook has finally come through.

The other big change you should really pay attention to is that you can now be your business, on Facebook.  Think about the most common ways you interact with Facebook Pages yourself – you ‘like’ businesses, you post on their pages, you join in on their discussions…  Now your business can do all these things, not just you, personally.  You can’t go out and start asking to be everybody’s friend, but you can ‘like’ other businesses and join their discussions.  This is a great way to help out your business partners, and will get your business noticed as well.  Just like any other social media – offer valuable input, don’t oversell yourself, and people will gravitate to you for your expertise and helpfulness.

For a short video outlining all the new changes, take a look at Social Fresh.  You can login to upgrade your Page any time, so get on it!  If you don’t choose to upgrade right away, all Facebook Pages will be upgraded automatically on March 1st.

Not using Facebook for your business yet?  Read more about Social Media for business, or contact us today to get started!

WP Events Calendar

This is a simple-to-use events calendar that has its own interface on your dashboard to manage events, which is a feature I like.  It shows the actual calendar view in the admin, which doesn’t really seem necessary to me, but some people may like.  It offers both visibility for a particular post, which seems to be fairly common, as well as access permissions for the plugin itself, which you don’t always see.  It offers some basic display options, although the user will need to be comfortable with php dates to adjust the date settings.  The major drawback is that there is no option for recurring events or days of the week.  An event starts and stops, and that’s it.  That’s a feature I’m looking for right now, so this plugin isn’t going to work for my current clients’ needs.

Pros

• Independent ‘Events Calendar’ menu in Admin area
• Plugin permissions option
• Simple options that aren’t too overwhelming for newer WordPress users
• External link option
• Widget calendar or list view available

Cons

• No recurring events or days of the week
• Date options by php dates
• Limited options

CGM Events Calendar

This is a great plugin, except for one little problem.  We can’t use it for a class that spans a certain amount of time, but only happens once a week.  For example, a teleclass that will happen every Tuesday from 10 to 12 for four weeks.  This plugin offers recurring events with a start and stop date, but it looks like the same class is offered four times, rather than it being only one event that is a series over that timespan.  We did need to install the ‘Executable PHP Widget’ as well to get the event list to display in the sidebar.  Another drawback is that it didn’t have an option for a mini calendar view in the sidebar, and using php for the widgets isn’t too user-friendly for new users.

UPDATE:  I’ve played around with this plugin a bit more, and I think we can get it to work for our need of additional meetings within the same ‘event’ (such as for a class).  I scheduled the event on the first day with a starting and ending time, then added additional dates through the, “include dates,” option.  I had tried to, “exclude dates,” before, but it didn’t seem to work.  The, “include dates,” however, seems to address the problem.

Pros

• Independent ‘Events’ Interface
• Good input options, including excluded dates, included dates, categories & recurring events
• Nice out of the box styling (although colors will require css changes if they don’t match your site)
• Completely customizable ‘event list’ widget (by html w/plugin tags)

Cons

• No way to add one event that only happens certain days of the week over a period of time
• No calendar view widget
• You may need ‘Executable PHP Widget’ plugin, depending on your theme

Events Manager Extended

This is another great plugin with its own ‘Events’ interface and LOTS of options.  It adds a whole registration component, which can be really useful.  The problem is, it still won’t do that single event that repeats the same day for a few weeks. You can add recurring events, and you can extend events over a period of time, but it still doesn’t work for classes.

Pros

• Independent ‘Events’ Interface
• Registration/RSVP Options
• Confirmation Email Customization
• Google Maps Integration
• Calendar or List Widget Options

Cons

• No Weekly Class Option as a Single Event
• No User Option to Toggle Calendar Display by Category, Print View, etc. (may be able to add this, but I didn’t research it that far)

Event Registration

This plugin comes with a wide range of features with its most unique being online payment integration.  You can set it up with PayPal, Google Checkout, Monster Payments, Authorize.net, or a custom payment gateway.  You can list events, take registration and payment, create categories, and add custom questions to your registration forms.  It comes with a nice sidebar widget that displays a calendar along with a list of events scheduled for the selected day.  Again, I am running into the issue that an event can be recurring or span over time, but cannot be listed on a certain day of the week over a period of several weeks, and still be the same ‘event’ (or class).

Pros

• Independent Events Management Interface
• Payment Integration for Event Registration
• Supports Coupon Codes
• Nice Multi-Featured Sidebar Widget
• Can Upload Events with Spreadsheet
• Includes User Guide

Cons

• No Weekly Class Option as a Single Event
• Slight CSS Issues in Admin Hide Page Headings
• No List-Only Widget Out of the Box (available w/ shortcodes)

Event Espresso Lite

This plugin seems very much like Event Registration above, except with a much cleaner user interface and a pro upgrade option for additional features.  It comes with PayPal integration out of the box, and can add other payment gateways with the Pro version ($59.95).  Some other features that you won’t get until you upgrade include the Calendar feature itself, as well as recurring events (separate add-on for $39.95).  One annoying aspect was that I needed to set up four configured Pages on the site before it would even let me try to add an event to test the features.  I see how this helps get people to set things up correctly, but since I’m just trying to test the event features, it was extra work that I will probably go back and delete.

Pros

• Very Clean, User-Friendly Interface
• Payment Integration for Event Registration
• Includes Events List Widget
• Very Feature-Rich, Especially with Pro Version
• Support Available

Cons

• No Calendar in Free Version
• Fewer Features than Event Registration in Free Version

Event Calendar / Scheduler

This one works a little differently because events are added to the calendar from the front end, right on the calendar, much like you would with Google Calendar.  It says it can do a multi-day event, but this does require getting into the code and adding custom settings to enable the feature.  One thing I don’t like as much about this system is that, from what I can tell, a unique page is not created for each event.  I prefer each event to link to its own page both to allow room for detailed description and/or sales text to get people to sign up, and for SEO benefits.

Pros

• Unique Front-End Interface with One-Click Event Creation
• Drag-and-Drop Features to Move Events
• Somewhat Buggy – some events created did not show up, but showed no error message either; further investigation would be needed to resolve

Cons

• Advanced Features Require Web Developer to Modify Code
• No Individual Pages Created – Drawback for Sales or SEO

The Events Calendar

I had avoided this plugin for awhile because events are entered as Posts, but it was time to give it a try.  There are a lot of nice features, and I like the out-of-the-box styling, except that it’s oversized to fit on the site I’m working on and would need to be adjusted through the css.  There’s a question on your Post page that asks if you’re entering an event, so the scheduling options only come up when you answer, “yes.”  The scheduler is simple with options for all day or start and end times.  For multi-day events, even if they’re consecutive, the start and end times don’t really work.  This is common in some of the others as well, but the start time goes on the start date, and end time on the end date, as if it was continuous all the way through.

Pros

• Clean User-Friendly Events Input
• Toggles Between Calendar or Events View
• Google Maps Integration
• Includes Venue and Price
• Option for Eventbrite Integration

Cons

• No Recurring or Multi-Day Events
• No Independent Events Interface – Add Through Posts

Booking Calendar

This may be a great plugin, but it’s a bit too ‘salesy’ and distracting to me.  There are a lot of options listed, but once you try to use them, it says you need to buy the Premium version.  Not to mention the repeated references to the Hotel version which would be confusing to my clients.  It may function for events as well, but all the other stuff gets in the way so much that my reaction is to not even bother.

Event Calendar 3

This plugin looked promising at first.  The screenshot shows a sidebar calendar with a list down below, and it can handle multi-day events.  I’d passed it over earlier due to the Post interface, as well as the long period of time since it’s been updated.  So, now as I work with it, it has some options to keep the ‘Events’ posts separate from the ‘blog’ posts, and we can at least keep them off the recent blog posts list.  The scheduling interface is really simple, with nothing more than a date and start/end time.  The BIG difference here is I can add another date, with its own start and end times, and another, while still in the same ‘Event’.  The drawback is in how this information is displayed, listing each date with its corresponding time, almost as part of the first paragraph of the description.  Also, the calendar widget is based on the calendar that lists posts, and defaults to displaying the date the event was added, rather than the date it will take place.  There is a ‘show schedule’ option, and I could probably edit the display templates in the code, but the fact that this plugin seems to be no longer supported is pushing me to move on.

RS Multi-Day Event

This is another one that uses the blog Post input format.  That works OK, but it’s showing up on the calendar based on the ‘published on’ date rather than the event date.  It displays this date on the side when looking at the event page as well (the theme I’m currently working with displays the Post date, which I suppose most do).  The event dates are displayed in the widget as a range, and I was able to easily customize this to the format I wanted.  There’s also a generic field that I adapted to use for the day the event will repeat on.

Slow-loading & distorted images.

I’ve heard this from quite a few people before. I just happened upon a site with incredibly slow-loading pictures, and it prompted me to share with you today how to fix it. While there can be many factors contributing to the speed at which your site loads, I’m going to address one of the most common culprits: image size and resolution.

The reason you may not notice so much on your own site is that your browser caches (or remembers) these files. After you’ve visited your own website and loaded the files once, they pop right back up the next time. However, when new visitors arrive, they may not bother to stick around through the first download.

Adding an image to your website is not the same as posting it on Facebook or Flicker. While these sites may re-size images for you, you’re supposed to do it yourself before you display an image on your web page. There is no need to publish high resolution photos on the internet, unless the purpose is for somebody to download and print them. The limiting factor that determines the quality of image we view on our computer screen is the computer screen itself!

The standard recommended resolution for web graphics is 72 dpi. With continued improvements in monitor quality, some people can see a clearer image up to 85 dpi or so. Beyond that, you’re really just wasting the computer’s effort loading a larger document (the file size is larger at higher dpi, not the display size). Since I do e-commerce, and the photos are key to showing off my products, I like to use 80 dpi. Sometimes I’ll go down to 76 dpi, and sometimes up to 85 dpi. Even that jump from 80 dpi to 85 dpi can impact your page load times.

In addition to resolution, you want your images to be set to the same display size you want to see on your web page. If you take an image that’s 1200 x 1200 pixels and insert it into a space that’s 180 x 180 on your site, the web browser is forced to re-size the picture on the fly each time your page is loaded. While browsers can do this, your page load times will suffer, and the image quality is often compromised as well.

I see these same mistakes time and time again as I browse the web. Often, small business owners are trying to build websites themselves or have their son, daughter, or neighbor do it for them. If you’re paying for professional web development, your webmaster should know this stuff. If yours doesn’t, imagine what else he or she doesn’t know.

If you’re local, yes! You should use Yelp if you target local customers, and it’s REALLY helpful if you have a local physical location. What is Yelp? A place for customers to write reviews of local businesses, and a place for potential customers to find a business based on its reviews. Yelp has become incredibly popular, especially in certain industries. You may already have reviews on Yelp and not even know about it. Have you checked? Visit http://www.yelp.com and search for your business. If you’re on there and haven’t claimed your page, you should create an account and verify that you’re the owner.

The idea of online reviews makes some business owners nervous. If you’re doing a good job serving your customers, reviews are one of the best marketing tools you can use, and you don’t even need to pay for them! The key is to get lots of reviews (and, of course, to provide good service in the first place). If you only have two reviews and one’s good and the other’s bad, people will probably hesitate to do business with you. If you’ve got a bunch of reviews and there are maybe just a couple of so-so one’s mixed in, they tend to be discounted. Yelp has even added a new feature that lets you respond to poor reviews.

So, how do you get more reviews? My natural suggestion would be to contact your customers and invite them to write a review, or possibly give them something at the close of a transaction asking for their review. The folks at Yelp did not agree with me. It turns out that if a reviewer is not a regular Yelp user, their review will drop off the page fairly quickly. Yelp says they do this to avoid the influence of potentially fake reviews. I guess they figure if someone comes to Yelp just to write a review about your business and doesn’t come back, they may be someone you know who just raved about you as a favor.

Yelp wants you to go out and get existing Yelp users to come to your business so they can review it. Yelp gives these reviews more weight and leaves them on your page longer. How do you get Yelpers to come to your business when you don’t have many reviews yet? Why, advertise on Yelp, of course! So, is Yelp’s policy really about protecting visitors from fake reviews, or is it a ploy to get more advertisers? When I looked into this for my online boutique, I didn’t have any reviews yet. (Since I didn’t have a physical local location, my primary target market was not local.) I thought, why would I advertise to bring visitors to a Yelp page with no reviews? What conversion would I get from that?

What’s the answer? If you have a local business, I think you’ll benefit from a little of both – marketing to Yelp users and asking your customers to visit Yelp and post a review. Who knows? If your customers are new to Yelp, they may fall in love with it and become frequent users. Maybe some of them already are. Also, if you receive reviews on a regular basis, old reviews that drop off the page will be replaced by new ones. If you aren’t ready to dive into Yelp’s advertising program, there are other ways to increase your exposure. First, you should claim your business and fill in all the details in your profile. You can also post a special offer on your page (this doesn’t cost anything), and it will show up under your business listing in the search results. Change your offer frequently to attract attention and bring new customers, or test two offers to see which one gives you the best results.

To learn more, here’s a good article to read: http://mashable.com/2010/03/20/yelp-for-business/

There are three different types of pages on FB – the Profile, the Fan Page, and the Group. According to FB rules, Profiles are only for people, not businesses, organizations or other entities. I see this rule broken often, sometimes by people who do so unknowingly. Businesses that do this may be perceived as amateur, and run the risk of getting kicked off Facebook.

For your business, I would definitely create a Fan Page. This is like your business’s homepage on FB, and you would be the administrator through your personal Profile. Businesses are able to assign multiple admins if they want to. Your Page will have a wall and whichever other features you select. People can become fans of your business, and your posts will show up in their streams. If they like or comment on something, then the post will be repeated out to their friends.

One big benefit to your customers of becoming a ‘fan’ of your business rather than a ‘friend’ is that they can become your fans without opening their personal accounts to you. In your case, you may be friends with many of your fans as well, but many businesses don’t have quite as personal a relationship with their customers as you do. I might think twice about becoming a ‘friend’ of a business if it meant they could see all my personal posts.

One major drawback of a fan page is that they don’t have notifications. This means that if someone comments or posts on your business’s wall, you won’t receive an email letting you know. Same thing if someone new becomes a fan or ‘likes’ a post. There are two ways to deal with this that I know of. One is to ‘like’ or comment on your own posts so you will then get notified through your personal Profile. The normal way that I suppose FB expects is for you to just visit your page all the time to check.

You can create a Group in addition to your fan page. You may name it after your business, or you may name it for a related theme that people are likely to engage in discussion for, such as cooking with kids. Again, the problem is that you don’t get notifications from groups. The groups haven’t been very useful to me so far because you don’t get notifications, and wall posts don’t even show up in members’ streams. From what I’ve seen, the only way people engage is if they visit the group on their own to see what’s up, or if you send them a private message to come join an immediate conversation. Also, it seems you can only comment on the last entry, more like it’s single a forum discussion, rather than comment on any post.

Groups and Pages each have their benefits. In a group, you can send a private message to members, which you can’t do on a Fan Page. You can also choose to have groups open, private (membership on approval), or secret (not seen by anyone unless they are invited). Someone needs to be logged into FB to see a Group page, even an open one, while a FB Fan Page is visible without being logged in and gets indexed by search engines. On a Fan Page, you can invite all members to an event, although I believe you need to click on each one individually for some reason. Although I’ve read you can’t invite group members to events, that must have changed because groups do have events now.

Here’s an article with an on-going discussion of Pages vs. Groups. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-group-vs-facebook-fan-page-whats-better/7761/. The original article is over a year old, but the discussion is current.

If you’re not sure how to create a Fan Page, you can go to mine at http://www.facebook.com/satinwebsolutions and look for the link at the bottom of the left column that says, “Create a Page for My Business.”

Let me know how it goes!

Short answer: You may want to register it so nobody else gets your name, but I wouldn’t recommend actually using it (except to have it point to your .com domain name).

The part of your domain name after the dot is called the top level domain name. Back when .biz came out, it was promised to be the next great thing for business. In reality, how many .biz sites do you go to? They’re typically used by someone who’s set on a name but can’t get the .com because it’s already taken. Hey, I was guilty of this. The first website I built was for my mom’s store, which had already been called The Last Straw for over 20 years. We couldn’t bear to use any other name, and .biz was up and coming at the time… (BTW, that store has been closed for years now and has no relationship to the current www.thelaststraw.biz.)

Web users have been well-trained to automatically enter .com when typing the name of a website. Our actions demonstrate the added value of these coveted domains. If you try to start using a .CO top level domain, most people will think you just left the ‘m’ off! People aren’t used to it. It’s not really any easier, or any more recognizable. Even in the global community, which is what Go Daddy’s using as a selling point, .com is incredibly well established and respected.

Even the search engines recognize .com and tend to give it a little more clout than those .biz or .net names. Ironically, the most benefit you may get from registering your domain name with .CO is to collect the would-be visitors who accidentally leave the ‘m’ off themselves! If you register it and point it to your site, they’ll end up at the right place even with this little typo.