You just need to fill out a short form, which will ask you a few personal questions. In a matter of minutes, you can be on your way to rating or reviewing the YouTube videos you watch or even uploading your own videos! How fun does that sound? Pretty good most would agree.

Although YouTube is a lot of fun, whether you are only interested in watching videos or if you want to upload your own, YouTube, like all other online websites, have a number of rules and restrictions. It is not only important that you know those rules, but that you abide by them as if you don’t the consequences could get you into big trouble. Here are a few of the rules enforced on YouTube are outlined below.

One of the most common rules surrounds registering for a free YouTube account. Only a minimal amount of personal information is asked of you, like your name, country, zip code, birth date, and gender, but you are advised to be truthful. Should you forget your YouTube login information, you should be able to follow YouTube’s instructions to retrieve your YouTube sign in name, as well as your password. This is a good reason for you to use your true details as it may be vital for you if you come across any difficulties with your account.

Another rule that many YouTube viewers have should be aware of is leaving comments on YouTube video pages or participating in the YouTube forums. Whenever you leave comments for a YouTube video submitter, you are advised to use your best judgment. Of course, you are able to leave negative feedback, if you want, but you are advised to do so in a tasteful matter and make sure its constructive. Avoid foul language and definitely do not threaten any other YouTube members. Doing so, will likely not only get your message revoked, or worst case scenario you could have your YouTube account suspended.

As it was previously mentioned, if you are planning on uploading videos, you are more likely to find a larger number of rules to follow. One of those rules involves the content of your video. You are advised against posting content that is illegal in nature. YouTube encourages you to use caution when making your videos, as you never really know who will be watching them. For instance, now many police departments are starting to use the internet to help them solve crimes. So, not only do you have to worry about online predators viewing your YouTube videos, but you also have to worry about law enforcement doing the same thing. And if you want respect from your viewers, peers and other organizations, it is best to keep things legal.

In connection with your YouTube video content, you also need to make sure that your video content is actually yours. In recent times, there have been many instances where YouTube made it on the news for having a large number of copyright materials on their website. This is illegal. Make sure that videos you post online were actually made by you. Before using music clips, television clips, or movie clips, you need to get permission to do so. If you fail to get permission, you are, essentially, stealing someone’s work, and if they find out, they may take action.

The rules mentioned above are just a few of the many that you may be expected to follow when using YouTube. One consequence to violating the YouTube rules is having your account suspended. If you submit a video that goes against YouTube’s guidelines, your video may be removed. Should you be caught committing a crime, whether it is using drugs, drinking underage, or taping a robbery, you may also be prosecuted for your actions. That is why, for your own safety and wellbeing, you not only need to know all of YouTube’s rules, but you should follow them at all times.

If so, you may be wondering whether it’s worth it.

There are definitely lots of advantages to making a YouTube video, but equally there are a few cons which you should be aware of before you make your decision.

Perhaps, the biggest downside to making your own video and uploading it is that you are essentially sharing the video with the whole world.

So ask yourself if that’s what you really want?

The truth is that all internet users, even those without a YouTube account, are free to view any video on YouTube.

It’s likely that if a viewer finds anything in your video they want other people to see the post, they will send it to their friends to view and so on. Therefore the number of views that your YouTube videos gets could be more than you ever expected or wanted.

As your video can be viewed by anyone, you need to be careful with the amount of information that you disclose. For instance, if you are doing a video blog, you might not want to give your real name or at least not your full name.

It is also important that you don’t mention where you live. You may want to outline the country you live in, but never give the city or town, especially if you disclose your name.

Try and refrain from giving any personal information to any other YouTube member, as you can never really be sure of who they are or what their real intentions are.

As with any other website, YouTube can be a dangerous place, but you should be safe as long as you stay aware.

Nevertheless, although there are a few downsides to uploading your own videos to YouTube, there are also a number of benefits of doing so.

Firstly, it’s the ease of use.

Even if you consider yourself to be unskilled with computers, you should still be able to make, upload, and share your videos on YouTube without too much hassle as long as you have all the right equipment.

Once you have created and edited your video on your computer, you just need to follow YouTube’s step-by-step uploading instructions and your video will be ready for sharing, in just a few minutes.

Another benefit of sharing your videos on YouTube is the range of users.

Although a large number of internet users visit YouTube for fun or for personal reasons, there are many others who view these videos for business or at least to increase their exposure.

Remember that millions of internet users watch videos on YouTube.

Whilst your YouTube video will be unlikely to get one million views, you could still get quite a few views, which is an exciting experience.

Whatever way you use your videos, you need to keep away from the spam approach.

If you are advertising yourself, try taking a few videos of you displaying your work or use your video to interview customers that have used your product or service.

Simply adding your business information at the end of the video is a great way to get your point across, but without making your YouTube videos seem like blatant advertisements.

As you can see, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages to making your own YouTube videos.

You are free to post any video on YouTube, but just make sure that you are doing so safely, ethically and professionally.

Right, but unless you follow a few fundamentals, your page won’t generate much interest and will undoubtedly become ‘lost in the pile’ with all the other generic boring pages.

A “fan” on Facebook is someone who “likes” your page.

You need to be able to gain such fans and keep them interested and ultimately participating, otherwise what’s the point?

Here are 7 golden rules to follow that will encourage interaction and attract followers for your Facebook pages:-

1. Ask Questions

You should be posting a question each day. It’s clear that asking questions on Facebook always creates a massive response.

We all know that everyone wants to share their opinion, and why not? By doing so, it lets fans feel involved, and learn something valuable.

After all the customer knows best.

2. Share Relevant Videos

Share and link videos and photos to anything related to your company or industry, and transform the appearance of your page with something fun.

It might be a demonstration video on YouTube or maybe just a commercial, but the chances are that your fans will be genuinely interested and will watch what you post.

3. Provide Useful Links

Provide your fans with plenty of links to your website, interesting blogs or articles and encourage people to get involved.

You may even wish to link to your competitors, which shows that you welcome competition within your industry, but also that you have trust in your own product/services and the loyalty of your fans.

4. Update Notes & Events

These Facebook tabs can often be overlooked.

The notes section is the best place to put any addition information that won’t fit into a status post, such as blog posts, quotes, thoughts, positive customer feedback and anything else.

Any up and coming news, product releases or events can be put in the events tab to keep everyone up to date.

5. Use Photos

Photos are a great way to break up the monotony of your page.

You can add pictures of your premises, events, colleges, products and anything else related to your business.

You can even get fans to post their own pictures and display them as customer photos.

6. Make Requests

You want to seek more followers all the time, as this will obviously get you more exposure and business.

Ask your existing followers to use the ’share’ button or the ’suggest to friends’ link to share your page with their friends and so on.

7. Thank your Followers

Last but not least, always make an effort to say thanks to all your followers in your status.

They are the ones who mean the most to you and without them you would have no business. It shows that you appreciate their efforts – and that you are working together with them.

To be able to manage various accounts efficiently and productively, more and more members are using what are known as ‘Twitter clients’.

Twitter clients enable you to control all your accounts in one place and measure your productivity on a wider scale.

The challenge now is that there are so many out Twitter clients out there – it’s hard to know which one will work best for you.

The two most popular Twitter clients are Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.

You can also find other packages on the internet which all do similar jobs.

However for various simple reasons,  ZiiRii recommends Hootsuite.

1. First of all, the most common point that people make about Hootsuite in comparison to Tweetadder is the user friendly interface that is easy to follow.

2. A useful feature of Hootsuite is the tabbed browsing, which allows you to see your different accounts clearly.

This helps you keep track of all your mentions, direct messages, home feeds and pending tweets for each account.

Hootsuite’s only disadvantage in this case is that you are limited to ten columns, whereas with Tweetdeck you can have as many as you like.

3. On Hootsuite you can also drag and drop each tab or column so that the layout is tailored to your preferred order. You do get this with Tweetdeck but you don’t have the drag and drop facility, so it becomes a fiddly task.

4. Every time you visit Hootsuite, it will also notify you of any new activity and keep you up to date with each thread or conversation so you’re always aware of who needs a response.

5. With Hootsuite you get online access to the product.  In comparison, Tweetdeck has to be downloaded and takes up large amounts of desktop space.

This means Hootsuite has an advantage for students and employees who don’t then need to install software on their work systems and can access it on the go, and it even has an Iphone app to make life more compact.

6. From a business point of view, you want to be measuring the productivity of your Twitter campaign.

Hootsuite’s analytics page can give you an insight into what are your most successful tweets, what parts of the world are most interested in you and where your tweets are ending up, so you really can measure your success!

7. One of the best features of Hootsuite is Scheduled tweets. This allows you to manage your future tweets at any specific time of the day, a great feature for times when you know you are going to be busy.

8. Hootsuite also features a “shorten link” box which will help you save room to get the most relevant information into your tweets.

This is useful as there is a limit of 140 characters when tweeting and it means you don’t have to visit another site to shorten the link when composing your tweet.

9. Finally, Hootsuite allows you to post to multiple accounts in one command.  By entering your Tweet just once you then simply select which accounts you want it to appear in.  This saves a massive amount of time as you don’t need to cut and paste multiple times.

To sum up, ZiiRii believes Hootsuite is the best Twitter client on the market as it is widely accessible and so user friendly.

With our help and guidance, we can assist you to get the most out of your social media campaign and we can optimise the Twitter tools available to you and your business.

If you want to be at the top of your game with your twitter page you need to analyse what you’re doing. As with anything the way to find the most successful methods on Twitter is trial and error. If you want to be leaders in your field then analysing your tweets is the best way to reach your audience in the most effective way. Here are a few simple steps to really boost engagement with your tweets.

If like most people on Twitter you use a scheduling service like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to share content with your followers, you probably use the bit.ly device to shorten your links. Did you know that if you simply add a + sign at the end of your link, once you have posted it you can click on it and get statistics on how many clicks the link has received and which regions people are most interested in it. . You can also use the ‘+’ method to find out how successful your competitors tweets are Simple right!

The next way to work on this simple analytics method is to work out which way is the best way to market your business. Try taking an old link and posting it with a new headline, by doing this you can find out what triggers an interest in your market the best and you can hone in on the best approach for your audience.

The next defining aspect of your tweeting habits should be consideration of times zones. To find out what time is best for you to reach the maximum number of followers you can quite simply test out a tweet at multiple times of the day to see what times the most people respond to it. You can start out by scheduling the same tweets every 4 to 6 hours and once you know what time is the best for to bracket your tweets then you can narrow it down to every 20 minutes.

When you pull these simple steps together you can use it to hone in to what approach what works best make your tweets as efficient as possible. Get you most powerful tweets in where it counts. Once you doing this on a regular basis you can start to see that the main influencers in your market are re-tweeting you and this will begin to leverage you and separate the professional from the amateurs. Get the most out of your tweets and boost the broadcasting power of your twitter campaign by analysing and fine tuning your tweets.

Image courtesy of  Stas Kulesh

At a time where there has been a downfall in the number of people buying property, real estate agents have now started to jump onto the social media bandwagon and are starting to realize that is can b e a great platform for them to exhibit and give up to date information on properties.

Real estate agents are now using social media to connect with prospective clients and create a presence on a scale that can’t be matched with any other forms of media. Real estate agents are now also using Location based apps such as Foursquare to enhance a local as well as modern and convenient presence over the internet. Buyers are also using social media to access information in real time about property and build a better relationships and understanding of the real estate process.

One of the newest and most successful developments that is becoming more and more popular and proving to be a vital tool in sharing information regarding property is WelcomeMat. WelcomeMat allows you to share listings, tours and showings of any properties, and uses filmmaking to reach clients. It also offers information on videographer staff and allows you to easily to connect any links with Facebook and other social media accounts.

Ultimately this means that potential buyers are able to get a great view of properties before they have even visited them and it is re-establishing faith in the real estate industry.

More applications are being developed to allow estate agents to transfer and update information such as previous sales, tax rolls and foreclosures in real time when they take a photo of a property on their Smartphone’s.

With things progressing all the time the real estate world is set to change and more businesses are starting to embrace social media and realize its potential. Big Real Estate Corporations are sure to get even bigger. These changes will force people to adjust to the new ways of doing business but for buyers it could also make the whole buying process a lot simpler and accessible and may even start to rebuild an interest in people feeling they can approach the property ladder.

Image courtesy of Tim Green aka atoach

Is your organisation just crying out for a Social media campaign? If you can see the great potential that Social Media could have within your organisation then it may be the case that you want to encourage a change in your workplace or approach a member of senior management to tell them about of the benefits of social media .The only problem is it can often be a struggle to convince managers who are stuck in their ways and are so used the traditional ways things have always worked.

If you want to influence a manager to consider how Social Media can help to build on your organisation here are a few steps you can take to persuade them to give it a try.

The first thing you can do before you decide to approach any member of senior management is to get the support of other board members or colleagues who influence the managers. Those people who help to make the decisions with managers can be your allies so explain to them what you can gain through social media and the positive change it can generate.

Another great strengthen your team is to encourage younger members of your organisation to get involved, manager will always see younger people as more in tune with technology so gaining the support of them will also help to give a fresh and exciting feel to your idea.

Once you have the support you need to showcase your idea you need to start thinking about how you can convince your manager to get involved. The best way to get a quick reaction is to show how other competing peer organisations are using Social Media with their advertising campaign. This will provoke a reaction that you can work on, assure you manager that Social Media is the way forward and that you don’t want to be left behind.

The next thing you can do to back up your whole approach is to any content or low key form of advertising for your campaign using your own social media account and start to grow your own following online. You can use the progress you have made online as a case study to present and it can work as evidence and set an example of the sort of success you can achieve.

You should keep in mind that as with anything all of these things will take time and people are often set in their ways so try to take this into consideration. Be patient and make sure you have enough research to present, remember preparation is key.

Social media really can do great thing for your organisation. With these few points you can hopefully strengthen your approach and it will give you the confidence to be able to approach your managers with zeal.

Image courtesy of  Eirik Newth

Do you regularly find yourself on YouTube watching fun, exciting, and vividly entertaining videos?

If so, do you currently rate the YouTube videos that you watch or leave comments for the video submitter?

There are however good reasons why should do so and also various benefits for you too.

Perhaps the greatest reason as to why you should rate a YouTube video or even leave your comments is that it gives the YouTube member in question something to feel good about.

There are some YouTube members who put a lot of thought, time, and hard work into making each and every one of their videos.

So why not show them some love?

You could think of it as doing your good deed for the day. From a company point of view this approach can give the video makers a great sense of recognition which is more likely to be reciprocated when you post your own videos.

Another reason why you should rate or comment on all YouTube videos that you watch, is because it lets other YouTube members know what you like.

When it comes to making a YouTube video, there are many YouTube members who spend hours searching for videos that are highly rated or ones that are constantly being talked about. They clearly want to make a video that they know will be looked at or talked about, as it increases their exposure.

Therefore, rating YouTube videos can actually benefit you. The more you rate your favorite YouTube videos or discuss them, the more likely you are to find similar type of videos appear in the future, giving you a never ending source of entertainment.

To rate YouTube videos or to discuss them, you must be a member of the YouTube community.

To become a member simply requires you to register for a YouTube account – this is free and easy to do so.

All you need to do is enter in a little bit of personal information about yourself, like your name, location, birth date, and gender and create login information for yourself.

Once you do so you can start rating YouTube videos or discuss them with other YouTube members.

For a business, YouTube is another great Social Media tool which allows you to connect with viewers who could be potential customers.

YouTube’s main appeal is clearly that it’s visual, therefore fun. So you can create empathy with real people, and as you rate and comment on other people’s videos, they will come to recognise you as a trusted organisation.

Image courtesy of  dennis

When most people go online, they might check their Facebook account, watch a few videos and maybe even have a look at some new websites.

This poses the question, how much time are we really spending on social media websites?

More importantly, how much of that time is actually well spent?

Studies show that in the U.S. 75% of households are using social networking sites and 55% of users have at least one or more social networking profile.

This is a staggering amount of people and it shows that social media is definitely making an impact on the internet and how people are spending their time online.

Users in the U.S. spend 22% of their online time on social networking sites.

Clearly, social media and social networking websites is where people are, so as a business you should be using this to your advantage and targeting these websites.

You need to find out what form of social media works best for you, whether it be Twitter, Facebook or YouTube or maybe it’s even all three of them.

The key question is this:-

What’s the best social media to capture your audience and what can represent you and your services in the most appropriate way?

ZiiRii can help you find the best social media platform to market your company and show you what strategy will most effectively captivate your audience.

Over time you can then build strong relationships with prospective customers and create a voice for your company.