Effective Inbound Marketing Tips

Internet video marketing has become huge business in the last few years. As broadband has expanded and smartphones have become just as capable of streaming video as desktops, video has become one of the single best ways to promote yourself online.

Let's look at a few statistics real quick just to see how important it's become.

• 100 million online videos are watched every day.

• 45% of Internet users watch at least one video a month.

• 75% of business executives watch at least one business-related online video a week.

• 59% of execs prefer video to text.

• 80% of online users recall watching video ads on commercial websites.

That's a lot of content being pushed around! If you want to get a piece of that traffic for your business, you need to start making videos of your own.

If you want to get a jumpstart on the process, we've boiled down the Internet video marketing process to three key areas. If you can leverage these to get eyeballs on your videos, you'll be well on the way to being a video marketing success!

Three Top Strategies For Internet Video Marketing

I. Tell a story. Make it short, sweet, and hopefully funny.

OK, yeah, this is two tips in one, but they're related. First of all, one of the most vital things to know about ANY video you produce - from a 30-second consumer ad to a 10-minute investor piece - is that it needs to tell a story.

It needs to have a definite beginning that introduces ideas or problems, a paced flow, and a conclusion that returns to the original issues and addresses them. Using humor to tell your story is virtually always a plus unless you are dealing with very serious business.

It also can't take very long. If you look at this chart of viewing rates, you can see that there is a very steady dropoff in complete viewings as the length of the video increases. 85% of people will watch all of a 30 second clip, but only about half your viewers will still be around after three minutes.

II. Social media is your best friend.

Just like "SEO" and "keywords" go together like bread and butter, so do "online videos" and "social media." Every day, millions of YouTube videos are Liked and Shared. Every auto-shared Tweet with a video inspires an average of six clicks. Effectively, every time you convince someone on social media to share a video, you will be gaining more views from it.

Your Internet video marketing should be set up to make sharing as simple as possible, with one-click buttons to facilitate it. Ensure you've got a super-catchy title and a good synopsis for sites that pull metadata out of your content. However, do not openly ask for shares as that comes off as desperate. Having buttons is invitation enough; they'll share if they like it.

Here's a little trick: If you "like" your own videos on YouTube, they'll be automatically posted to your Facebook account with no further action needed!

III. Vary up your content.

Lastly, in our experience, mixing up your video website content keeps people interested. Cater to the short attention span of Internet users. Mix in bits of live video, infographics, animation, slides, and whatever else might be appropriate if your video is going to be more than a minute or two long. A "multimedia" video is almost certain to attract more attention and shares than one which is three minutes of someone talking into the camera.

Protip: The generic "flashy" transition effects in most video editing software packages look cheap and nasty. Just use straight cuts or fades when editing. It's more professional.

So, hopefully this gets you started down the road of Internet video marketing success! In the meantime, have you ever had one of your Internet marketing videos go viral? If so, what factors made it shine?  

Venturing into the world of website content writing is a little like stepping into an old west town. We're on the edge of explored advertising territory here, and there isn't too much regulation or standardization. Content writing rates can vary wildly from source to source, so if you're looking to make the most of your Internet marketing budget, you need someone to give you the lay of the land.

Even just a few years ago, hiring freelance writers to create content was a fairly expensive proposition. You could often be looking at a hundred dollars or more for a single article. However, because of the inbound marketing boom, content writing rates have crashed in many areas, often as low as a cent or less per word.

However, this comes with a caveat, one which you need to remember in the current content writing market:

You Generally Get What You Pay For With Website Content Writing Rates

While no one seems to be tracking the exact numbers, many beginning freelance writers are now getting their start by charging extremely low rates to try to build business. If you're having work done by someone who's taking less than a cent per word, well, either they're desperate or else they're using tricks to cut corners.

That's not to say, of course, that all new writers are worth avoiding, but there's going to be more chaff to sort through to find the wheat. This is especially true in content writing because many of the people who take these super-low rates often use "spinning" software to automatically rewrite existing articles.

If you're looking for cheap content writing rates, the best way to prevent yourself from being ripped off is to use a service that specializes in such content.

Use a Reputable Broker

There are any number of well-known and fairly reputable brokerage services that act as intermediaries between yourself and the writers. Writers first have to sign up with them - including some writing tests - and then can browse available jobs posted to a open board. Most of these also allow you to directly send jobs to the writers.

This is advantageous for you for multiple reasons:

• The writer has already been vetted by the website and usually has a quality rating assigned to them. This makes it easier to pick a writer that matches your budget.

• These websites handle payment through their own system, which protects both you and the writer.

• They also have resources available to help if you believe you've been sold content which was plagiarized or "spun" from existing content.

• Posting jobs to a job board allows you to try out multiple writers before settling on one.

Some of the best websites in this vein include Odesk, Textbroker, and Zerys. There are, however, dozens out there. If you're interested in going this route, do your research beforehand before you commit. Many of them are totally above-board, but others are "content farms" which don't care much about the quality of their writers or even about plagiarism.

Consider a Larger Investment

For small businesses just looking to get their feet wet in Internet marketing, hiring a freelancer through a broker is probably your best option for keeping your content writing rates down. However, if you have larger needs, don't forget that hiring a full Internet marketing service is also an option.

While certainly more expensive, these services provide far more than writers. They can consult with you on your web marketing strategies, help you discover keywords, and produce a wide range of content besides simple articles. The "you get what you pay for" principle generally applies here as well. You will rarely get content of the same quality from a freelancer.

However you do it, now is the perfect time to invest in some content writing to give you business a boost.

What sources have you used to meet new writers?  

As we like to remind people, the inbound marketing industry is constantlychanging. Trends shift and mutate quickly, and changes in certain areas can cause massive, unexpected ripples in the proverbial pond.

Google Penguin has made that big of a splash. This is a new initiative by Google to change the way their search rankings are calculated, and if you haven't heard of it yet, it's high time you do so. These are the sorts of trends you need to stay on top of if you're going to make it in inbound marketing.

What Is Google Penguin?

Google Penguin is a series of updates that Google made to their search algorithms aimed specifically at enhancing the quality of content found in Internet marketing. These are mostly intended to undercut companies attempting to utilize grey- or black-hat SEO techniques that trick Google's ranking system.

Some of the major types of questionable SEO techniques targeted include:

• Paid links

• Spam blogs (AKA "splogs")

• Content duplication (AKA "Spinning")

• Cloaking

• Keyword stuffing

Google estimates that roughly 3% of searches in English are ultimately affected by these updates.

What Effect Is Google Penguin Having?

Google isn't pulling punches with Penguin. In one high-profile example, Overstock.com got hit hard. The short version is that Overstock had been trading college kids store discounts in exchange for inbound links and saw their search rankings crash overnight after Penguin noticed this. Once they ended the program, their rankings rebounded nearly as quickly.

This is causing a lot of worrying in the inbound marketing industry. Some who defend "black hat" techniques say it's putting them out of business, which it hopefully is. More commonly, people fear accidentally incurring the wrath of the Penguin without knowing how or why.

Penguin Problems?

First of all, it's currently unknown exactly how many people are getting unfairly penalized by Penguin. There is little doubt that it is happening to some extent, but the reports have largely been like that one: totally anecdotal, without any real studies into how many such claims are accurate.