Google AdWords can be an extremely cost effective marketing tool for your business. Set up as a pay-per-click model, you are only charged when a user actually clicks on your link, which means that you will never be caught overpaying for an ad that has few clicks and abysmal conversion. As you can imagine, Google AdWords is an advertising platform that is specific to Google and its related channels, like the Google Display Network. Luckily, since Google is currently ranked as the #1 most popular search engine worldwide, your ad will reach a significant number of your targeted customers.

Here are 10 useful tips to maximize your AdWords budget, and drive new customers to your page:

1.   Check your website. This may seem like a no-brainer, but often business owners get so excited by the prospect of new clients, that they forget to check whether their website is really ready for an influx of hits. Wouldn’t it be awful if you spent your hard-earned dollars on an ad that got clicks, but nobody actually bought anything or tried to find out more, because they simply couldn’t figure out how to navigate your site?

2. Define your goals. Before placing your ad put some thought into what exactly you want. Are you looking to raise awareness? Increase sales? Attract new clients? Put good thought into your goals and objectives as they will drive your choice of keywords.

3. Consider your budget. As with any advertising strategy, it is necessary to set your budget, and use it effectively to reach your goals. Consider your daily and overall budget when setting your bids in order to maximize reach and minimize expenditures.

4. Choose keywords wisely. Keywords are the golden ticket to a successful AdWords ad. Effective keyword choices will determine whether or not your ad appears in appropriate searches, where people will actually want what you are offering. Keywords should be specific, like “marathon running Bahamas” if you are advertising for a trip to the Bahamas marathon, rather than simply “running”, which is too vague to suggest that anyone searching for that keyword would actually care about your trip.

5. Use negative keywords to increase your targeting. Negative keywords allow you to choose words that you are not wanting to be associated with, in order to increase your targeting. So, for example, if you were trying to attract clients to your legal firm that specializes in helping people create their Will, you could put “Will” as one of your keywords (if you wanted to be open-ended), and have “Smith” and “Wheaton” as negative keywords, filtering out people who are searching for something completely different.

6. Try multiple ads and keywords at once. Google AdWords allows you to create distinctions between campaigns and ad groups. Create multiple ads within your campaign, using different keywords, to see which work best.

7. Take advantage of day parting. Day parting allows your ad to run in only the parts of the day that you want. So, you can run your ad in “off hours” to try to encourage business at those times. Or, you could run your ad only when your business is open during the day, so that people who are interested can come in straight away.

8. Choose an appropriate landing page. Have you ever seen an ad for a fabulous shirt that you want, only to click on it and have it take you to a home page that doesn’t display the shirt? If you’re really interested, you may click around blindly trying to find it, but most often you’ll get frustrated and change your mind. Don’t lose sales by linking people to irrelevant pages.

9.  Target specific devices. If your business is a coffee-shop-cum-art-gallery that is most often frequented by hipsters and artists in their 20s and 30s, you can bet that most of them will be walking around with iPhones in their pockets. Consider targeting one of your ads to mobile, and seeing how effective it is when compared to a more generic ad. You may be surprised.

10. Measure measure measure! Always keep track of how your ads are doing, both in terms of click through rates and conversions. Look at the effectiveness of your ads on their own, and when compared to one another, in order to find the best keywords and hooks that work for your business.

Looking for more help with Google AdWords? Call Solution 416 today and we can work with you to place your best ad yet!

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1. Learn from others’ successes (and failures). Before creating a YouTube strategy, take the time to do some research. Examine your competitor’s videos to see what worked, and what didn’t, so that you can focus your efforts for the greatest return.

2.  Carefully consider the length of your video. Keep it as short as possible to keep people interested, but informed. With a regular account you can load videos that are up to 10 minutes long – but only use all 10 minutes if you need to.

3. Make it interesting, right off the bat. Don’t forget that YouTube now ranks videos based on time watched, rather than clicks, so keeping your audience engaged is just as (if not more) important than attracting them in the first place. The first 15 seconds will determine whether people will watch more or click on, so make sure you start strong.

4. Call to action. Content is key to having a great YouTube video, but when focusing on creating an entertaining video it’s so easy to forget a call to action. Don’t forget to inspire your views to do something – whether it be to purchase a product, donate, or simply interact with your brand.

5. Complete the circle. Don’t focus on just one type of video – make sure that your business’ videos cover all stages of the business cycle: awareness, interest, intent, and purchase.

6. Annotate! A great way to add more information and commentary to your videos is to add annotations prior to posting. Annotations are those pop-up conversation blocks that you see sometimes in YouTube videos. Want to learn more about them? Check how we used annotation to tell people what to do in this Social Media video

7. Keep it social. While it can be tempting to simply upload your video, sit back, and watch the clicks roll in, it’s important to remember that YouTube is one of the many social media out there these days. Interact with your clients and consumers. Like their videos and respond to their comments. A little relationship building can go a long way! Don’t forget to connect your YouTube stream to your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for a seamless transition.

8. Ask for feedback. Don’t know if your videos are effective? Need new ideas for upcoming vlogs? Who better to ask than your viewers? If you’re not sure if you are following the right path, ask for feedback in the comments sections. You’ll find out whether what you’re doing is a hit or miss, and get ideas for future posts.

9. Provide varied content. A clever commercial can be a great idea, but is that all you’re going to put on YouTube? Everyone loves a good how-to video, and some client testimonials will lend credibility to your brand. If you find that you’re always posting the same kind of information, switch it up from time to time to keep your page lively.

10. Be accessible. Don’t forget your clients and customers with disabilities. Consider adding subtitles to key videos (including how-to’s) to expand your reach and give greater value to your viewers.

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Before your business invests time and effort into a YouTube account, consider these 10 things you need to know:

1. Instead of telling people what you want them to know, give them the information that they want to know. Client-centred marketing is key to YouTube success.

2. Invest in your equipment. Even the best videos will be passed over if they have poor image quality or poor sound. Your equipment doesn’t have to be expensive – a good-quality SLR camera will do – but it does have to produce watchable videos.

3. Customize your page. Create a well-branded YouTube page for your company by customizing it with your brand colours, images, and logo. Also be sure to add your webpage in every description and on every page so that your clients and potential clients can link back to you.

4. Content is king. Much like your other marketing materials, YouTube videos need to contain high-quality content to keep your clients watching.

5. Videos are ranked by viewing time, not clicks. Make sure that your videos rank higher by providing quality, engaging content. Make sure that your first 15 seconds are amazing – they will determine whether people keep watching or click onward.

6. Use the right tags. Using the right keywords and tags will help direct potential or current clients to your videos. Don’t know which tags to use? Get inspired looking at competitor’s keywords, or use YouTube’s keyword tool. https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

7.  Don’t forget, YouTube is social media. Don’t just upload your videos and sit back watching the views go up. Interact with the community by liking videos that your fans have posted, responding to comments on your videos, and removing foul language/abusive comments immediately.

8. Stay organized. Organize your videos in a way that makes sense to your viewers, so that they can seamlessly transition from one video to the next.

9. Analyze. The best way to know which content works for your viewers is to analyze, analyze, analyze. Which video gets the most hits? Which has the longest viewing time? Which elicits the most “likes”? All of these are clues into what was a hit, and what was a miss.

10. Keep at it. Most videos aren’t viral, so if you post some videos and they’re not getting huge hits, that’s just fine. Stick with it – by creating quality content consistently you’ll help to grow your fan base, and client base.

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So your business has taken the plunge and opened up a YouTube account. YouTube can be an amazing marketing tool, allowing you to not only showcase your product or service, but to attract and retain new customers.

YouTube can have great results for your company as long as you avoid the following pitfalls:

1. Don’t forget to brand your page. A well branded page can increase recognition and retention. Consider a custom background, and always be sure to include your website to link customers back to your business.

2. Don’t leave them hanging. If someone takes the time to leave a comment or question, be sure to get back to them in a timely manner. Even negative feedback can provide a great opportunity for discussion, and for letting people know more about your brand. But be sure to carefully monitor for offensive/abusive comments and remove them immediately to keep your pages family friendly.

3. Pay attention to quality. Don’t hastily shoot a poor quality video just for the sake of being on YouTube. Make sure that your segments have good viewing quality and sound, or your viewers won’t watch.

4. Don’t be ego-centric. You know that your product or service is amazing, and you want to tell people. But to be successful on YouTube, you really need to consider what your viewers want to know. Think about what information your (potential) customers are looking for and start there.

5. Don’t skimp on keywords. Keywords and tags are the best way to attract people to your video. Using appropriate keywords can mean the difference between being seen or being passed over. Need help with your keywords and tags? Visit YouTube’s keyword tool: https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

6. Don’t overlook the power of a good how-to video. This related back to #4, but is really so important. Companies sometimes shy away from how-to videos in favour of snappier content, but for product demonstration they really are second-to-none.

7. Don’t expect it to go viral. I hate to break it to you, but chances of your video going viral are very (very) slim. Instead of trying to make a video that you think will go viral, make one that will be useful and engaging for your viewers.

8. Don’t forget to say thank you. We all have customer appreciation days, or donor appreciation letters. Why not transform that love into a video?

9. Don’t forget about the law. Using music in your video? Don’t forget to buy the rights to use it. You don’t want to make an amazing video only to have it taken down due to copyright infringement, do you?

10. Don’t give up! Don’t be discouraged if your news get off to a slow start. It’s better to have a solid viewing base than one viral hit, and the best way to build that base is by consistently making and uploading videos. Keep trying.

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1. Reachli

If your company is using Pinterest, you want to look into Reachli as your new analytics tool. Reachli allows you to preschedule pins and observe data on audience feedback and engagement. A nice, clean design allows you to easily navigate the product, to quickly benefit from the analytical insights and prescheduling capabilities of the tool. As with other effective analytics tools, by using Reachli, you can begin to understand the way your audience is interacting with your Pinterest content, and consequently adjust, plan and strategize accordingly. Reachli also allows for advertising for a low cost.

2. Gaggle AMP

GaggleAMP is a great tool to use if you’re looking to encourage B2B marketing, harnessing the social media presence and support of internal brand advocates. GaggleAMP allows social media managers to encourage their team members to spread the brand message through social media.

The tool also allows managers to line up specifically the messages that there are looking to spread, the platform, and how frequently they’d like to spread that message.  How do you do it? Sign up to Gaggle AMP, create a “Gaggle” group, and ask team members to join the Gaggle, which allows members to view content and share it with heir social media networks. A gamification aspect with a point system makes this a fun tool to use, and members are rewarded when they are good sharers.

3. Instagram

Instagram can easily be argued to be one of the most popular social media channels today. Not only does Instagram allow for sharing beautiful content, the community is wide-raching and strong.  Content on Instagram has been shared, with credits given, by huge brands, giving artists and photographers a new recognition.

4.  Quaozio

Have you ever wanted to share a compelling quote or a blurb as an image on Pinterest or other social media platforms? With the popularity of infographics, it’s easy to see that online readers prefer easy to process, striking visual content. Quozio allow you to do just that, by creating quotation images that can be easily shared on image-heavy sites such as Pinterest. You can easily pin your newly created image directly to Pinterest from the Quozio interface.

5.  Facebook Pages Manager Apps

This tool specifically allows for the management of multiple pages, a useful product for social media managers who are managing multiple accounts.  The tool allows you to post and engage with fans on multiple pages, create Facebook Offers directly from the app, and promote programs and services at your own convenience.  You can also promote specific posts by buying Promoted Posts easily from your mobile phone.

6. PostAcumen

How do you create incredibly engaging content on Facebok? You figure out how well your content performs, how well it performs compared to your competition, and you plan forward equipped with strategies based on your gained knowledge. PostAcumen is a new tool that allows users to create extensive competitive analysis on Facebook posts, including analysis of how fans engage with content, and how yor results measure up next to your competition.

7. Tweetbot

Tweetbot is similar to other Twitter apps, except that it gives you the special feature of filtering out tweets. When you’re looking to make the most of your time on Twitter, this becomes especially useful. The app lets you rein in specifically on content that matters the most to you or to your business.

8.AgoraPlus

AgoraPlus offers specific advantages for small businesses. It’s budget-friendly, as one of the more affordable tools out there. AgoraPlus is especially useful for managing Facebook accounts, providing special features such as contest and promotion applications,  advanced statistics, automated moderation, workflow management, fan rankings, and content recommendation.  Since these features are usually only available in expensive online solutions, AgoraPlus’s feature-heavy offering at an affordable price, makes them invaluable for smaller businesses.

9. LinkedIn’s Skills and Expertise Page

When you’re navigating one of your most important professional profiles online, you want to be able to find out quickly who your key influencers are, targeted companies, relationship-building groups, etc. LinkedIn’s Skills and Expertise Page allows you to search for essential keywords to add to your profile, such as relevant related skills (the tool will bring up related skills keywords that are most popular and that are most highly used on the site).

Most importantly, LinkedIn will show you who the key influencers in your networks are, and how they are connected to you.  The Skills and Expertise page also highlights companies, jobs and groups that LinkedIn recognizes as relevant to your skills and experience.  As a result LinkedIn is an incredibly useful, time-saving tool that helps you strategize and prepare for building stronger connections through online networking.

10. Pocket

Pocket was formerly known as Read It Later, and it is essentially a centralized mobile content creation and sharing platform.  It allows you to save and tag content from any device to your Pocket account. The browser extensions capabilities allows you to save content from Google Reader and Twitter. It integrates with over 300 web and mobile apps, so that you can use Pocket to collect the best content for your needs and share it whenever and through whatever device that you wish.

11. Scoop.It

This product allows you to collect and curate great content online with a simple click and share function. “Scooping” content online means that you’re creating a post that is added to a “topic” category, which others can also follow. This means that you can also follow the topics of others, whose interests align with yours. Whenever you scoop content, Scoop.It suggests relevant content  that you may be interested in, exposing you to yet more interesting content online. You can even integrate your topics to your HootSuite account. Consequentially, Scoop.It is a great tool to use to nurture relationships online by building a community around shared interests and topics.

12. Lithium

Lithium is yet another great tool for building and strengthening online communities, especially if you’re dealing with a customer-based online community. The tool allows admins to view customer inquiries and FAQs easily, privately moderate, and easily collect solutions created by both customers and the team. The insights contribute to creating better content consistently. Useful features of Lithium include co-creation of content with guest-bloggers, building a knowledge-based community, a reward system based on frequent contribution, and an easy to customize and easy to navigate functionality.

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On a network such as LinkedIn for instance, you can post an article, and have others outside of your network read it and share it, expanding your overall reach. Facebook and Twitter allow you to link to other blog posts and video platforms such as YouTube.

On Facebook, users can also subscribe and receive updates on posted content, without having to add that person to their own network. This feature allows for quick and easy following of posts by key influencers, journalists, and industry leaders.

With the option of viewing posts that are public, viewers can keep up with important and relevant conversations happening on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and now, LinkedIn.

Where does this leave content creators? New possibilities for reach and engagement are presented. At the same time, with more exposure than ever before, public posters will want to make sure that they create content that is  easy to share, relevant, and above all, suitable to a public forum.

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Creating social media profiles is the first step to taking part of the conversations online. Building relationships takes time and investment, both online and offline. How can you make sure that you make the most out of social media, and engage with the right people? Below are ten steps to help you put the best foot forward on social platforms.

1. Start a group

Taking the initiative and starting a group around shared interest, goals, and values on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, or a list on Twitter,  helps others see you as a leader and initiator, and more importantly, as someone who truly cares about a topic. The best way to engage on social media sites is often starting the conversation, and enabling others to join.

2. Join a group

There are also a myriad of existing groups out there that cater to your specific field or interests. Request to be added to groups where you think you can gain and contribute knowledge and contacts, and take part of the conversation in a respectful manner.

3. Contribute

Building online relationships is a lot like building  relationships offline. You have to give and receive. Are you taking time to offer thoughtful insights and comments? Are you carefully considering your audience when responding and sharing content? Are you staying on topic? Are you providing opportunities for others to grow, expand, and learn? These are all important to keep in mind when building online networks.

4. Be positive

People are more likely to engage with someone who is kind and who projects a positive attitude. If you want others to take the initiative to respond to you, make sure that you’re projecting a vibe that is open, positive, thoughtful, and reciprocal.

5. Practice great online etiquette

Practicing online etiquette will go a long way. For one thing, you’ll be well on your way to build a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy. This is key if you want to build relationships based on trust (which can be especially difficult in online settings) or even get referrals from your contacts. Take the time to provide thoughtful, tailored responses on a timely manner to your online community members.

6. Embrace your network

Your network will ideally be full of diverse individuals whose insights and backgrounds can open you up to new possibilities and worlds. Embrace the diversity of your network, and make an effort to expand your network by adding or following online friends’ friends, where appropriate. Ask for introductions, comment thoughtfully on posts and tweets, and appreciate the power of community.

7. Extend a hand

We all have our own area of expertise, and we can use our knowledge to help others. Online networking and social platforms can be a great place for you to make referrals for others, respond to questions with your own

8. Attend events

Social media sites can be great spaces where conversations get started, but you want to engage in the real world with your contacts to really make the most out of your social engagement. Attending industry and networking events is a great way to do that. From meet-up groups to events advertised though social networks, there are many opportunities to get out there and  engage with your community in the real world.

9. Introduce a new person

This is pretty self-explanatory. Introduce someone who will fit in well within the group, and who you think will have something to contribute. This will help grow your network in a meaningful way, and will help you further build  a network of support.

10.  Don’t self-promote.

This might seem counterintuitive, because it might seem to some that social media should be used as a way of extending your brand, but in fact, social media should be used to create and curate conversation around topics.

The trust that you build with your networks and relationships will help solidify your brand and contribute to brand advocacy from your networks. None of this will be accomplished by being pushy.

Ultimately, you want to create conversations that highlight your skills or your brand, so that your contacts can see for themselves why you/your brand are indeed worthy of promotion. Expect your content to be shared if you approach social networking from a community perspective, instead of simply selling a pitch. Simple as that.

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Removing the false likes and forcing pages to lose likes is only one step in the battle and it is something that will possibly be continuing for a while until the actions that cause these false numbers are prevented.

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To meta tag or not to meta tag: that is the question. Meta tags are essentially html tags hidden within the code of a website. It would be safe to say that almost every website on the internet (published before the summer of 2009) has some sort of meta tag imbedded in its code, invisible to the everyday user. Meta tags give additional information about a site to assist search engines in determining the main idea of what the site is all about. But these meta tags have fallen into misuse. Many websites load their pages with meta tags designed to improve their ranking on search engines many of which may not relevant to the subject or material on that specific site. Google has officially come out and said that the on site SEO tactic of using meta tags will no longer be considered relevant to search engine optimization. Bing (Microsoft’s search engine partner) however disagrees and continues to utilize meta tags as a SEO tool. At the time of writing this article, the jury at Yahoo was still out and would neither confirm nor deny whether it uses, or will continue to use meta tags or not.

The Rise And Fall of Meta Tags

Meta tags came to rise in approximately 1995 and in 1996 several search engine organizations created a standard for the use of meta tags. They were initially intended to be used constructively as a tool to help search engines categorize the endless number of websites on the internet. Unfortunately for readers and search engines, anyone with a high school education these days can easily design a website, and publish it to the internet adding meta tags willy-nilly using popular catch phrases, names or words that are totally irrelevant to the site. Their reasoning behind their efforts is that they are trying to optimize their ranking on search engines thus spoofing users into visiting their site. Yes, Virginia, there are frauds and unscrupulous people – even on the internet!

On Site SEO

Although Google has not ruled out the use of all meta tags, their spiders will essentially be reading page content to determine where your website appears on the search engine results page, if it even appears at all. On site SEO may need slightly more refocus during this period of change but it may be wise to direct your current focus on other aspects such as writing more interesting and relevant articles for your website (if you haven’t been doing that already). This will be a benefit to search engine users, SEO consulting firms and to those who write copy for websites. Google will also benefit from this by claiming superior accuracy in their search results as opposed to the competition.

Bing Backs Meta Tags

Bing, on the other hand, maintains that a well-architected website that has a <head> tag, <body> tag and document type description containing quality information that is relative to the site content, makes a difference between being highly ranked or completely missing from the search engine results pages.

The folks at Bing admit that the meta tag’s keyword attribute is not the be-all-and-end-all for SEO that it once was however. Bing recommends that you take advantage of the opportunities it presents by using it as it was intended. They also suggest that the following tag options are also still relevant:

1. Meta-content language tag;

2. Meta-content type tag;

3. Meta robots tag; and

4. Links tag.

So, in your plan for SEO, you will have to decide if Bing is more important to you than Google (or vice versa). What will the effect of not using meta tags have on the success or failure of your website? Or will the argument for or against meta tags become as irrelevant as the VHS vs. Beta controversy back in the day? Have a chat with a SEO consulting company if you’re not sure what to do next.

The post Why Meta Tags Are No Longer Relevant To Google but not Bing appeared first on solution416.com.

Rather than relying on the creators to offer 3D, viewers can take matters into their own hands. Viewers access the 3D options in the video’s ‘Quality’ settings, and with a simple click, can enjoy the content in 3D – well, at least a form of 3D. This 3D option is not traditional 3D – YouTube’s system does not use two simultaneously captured videos. Instead, this 3D takes its form from a software hack that utilizes various techniques in order to convert regular 2D content to 3D. While not of the same quality as true 3D, it is certainly advanced enough to work.

These various techniques are far from simplistic – to run this project requires a daunting amount of work, including cloud computing scalability, making the feature a highly-impressive one indeed. On its blog, YouTube fleshes out some of the technology employed to make this a viable feature. ‘Various techniques’ of the technology include using a combination of video characteristics – colour, motion, spatial layout – to create estimations of depth. These depth estimations are then improved upon by machine learning processes – processes activated as YouTube receives more and more 3D videos.

So what sparked such a massive project? Behind all this work is the hope that 3D will become the next video trend in casual video viewing. While one can certainly see the benefits and enhanced experience of watching certain videos with this 3D option, we all know the many videos on YouTube where 3D might seem a tad unnecessary, if not absolutely absurd. However, who knows exactly what the future will bring? Perhaps soon enough, we won’t even give it a second though, and watch all videos, no matter the content, in 3D.

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