What about YouTube and Blogging

 

What about YouTube and Blogging 

With online video, brands and their products come to life. YouTube, which is

second only to Facebook for social media visits, is a boon to visual brands,

including big fashion, entertainment, music, sports, and lifestyle brands.

Popular (and expensive) television campaigns like “Old Spice Guy,” “Unpimp

Your Auto,” and anything from Victoria’s Secret enjoy additional free airtime in

the form of millions of views on YouTube. Brands in niche businesses can make

effective use of YouTube videos, from viral success stories like BlendTec’s “Will

It Blend” series or the Dollar Shave Club.

Tip While all marketers cherish the hope that their YouTube video will “go

viral,” that’s as unlikely as hitting a grand slam. Instead, focus on hitting singles:

create fun, relevant videos that connect with your target audience. Even without

viral popularity, YouTube videos can benefit your brand image, boost search-

engine visibility, and amass a “cookie pool” for Google AdWords advertising.

Humbler but still effective examples include how-to videos from Home Depot,

tutorials from crafting shops, tips from investment newsletters, music videos

from independent bands, or stunts like Wine of the Month Club’s founder

demolishing bottles of substandard wine by using them as bowling pins. While

niche videos don’t attract millions of views, they do find qualified audiences,

reaching the people who are most likely to buy or spread the word.

One remarkable YouTube cultural trend is the haul video. Especially popular

among shopping-obsessed teen girls, these user-generated YouTube videos

feature shoppers displaying and talking about all the cool new outfits, shoes, and

accessories they just purchased at the mall or online. The most popular

practitioners of haul videos enjoy fan bases of thousands of subscribers and can

rack up millions of video views—inspiring comments, video responses, and

other positive word of mouth both for the YouTube personality and the brands he

or she favors.

Haul video star Bethany, who goes by the YouTube handle Macbarbie07, is a

perfect example—a teenage girl whose YouTube channel has attracted nearly a

million subscribers and over 100 million video views. She posts several times a

week on fashion and beauty—showing off her latest buys, displaying her new. 

haircut or makeup, and giving a video tour of her bedroom decor. A typical

Bethany haul video showcases clothing from PacSun, H&M, and Urban

Outfitters, generating feedback like “I love your sense of style, want ALL your

clothes for the new school year :)” and “I went to H&M a couple weeks ago and

got the same pants.”

According to a study by Google and Compete, 2012 marks the first time that

more than half of clothing purchases—57%, to be exact—are transacted online

or influenced by online research and price comparison. Video is playing a

powerful role in this equation.

“We’re seeing massive changes in the use of digital, mobile devices, and video

in driving apparel sales,” said Todd Pollak, Google’s industry director for retail.

“Four out of ten shoppers who watched a product video online later visited the

store online or in person. And 34 percent of clothing shoppers are likely to buy

after watching an online video ad, versus only 16 percent after watching an ad

on TV.”

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Consumers using video to research products and services spend more and buy

more frequently. About 25% of video users bought apparel more than six times

in six months. Some 28% of video researchers spent more than $500 on apparel

in six months—compared to a mere 2% among those who don’t use video to

research their purchases.

Younger shoppers, ages 18 to 34, are more than twice as likely as older shoppers

to rely on video to decide what products to buy.

I’ll go into more detail, but for now the valuable thing to know is that

you can serve remarketing ads to people who have watched your videos. You

drop cookies on your YouTube video viewers, and then later show Google

Display Network ads to them as they navigate the web at large.

YouTube is not the only video network in town—the mobile video app

Socialcam is soaring in usage, for instance—but it is still the biggest.

Advertising synergies with Google and social integration with Google+ can be

expected to increase, making YouTube an important element of most social

media plans.

Blogging

Blogs were the first meaningful wave of social media: cheap, instant publishing

platforms enabled with commenting functionality, to turn one’s readership into a

bona fide online community. Despite its somewhat old-school aura, blogging

remains today a highly relevant and effective way to build your personal brand

and connect to an audience of like-minded prospects, media, or potential

business partners.

Admittedly, in recent years blogs have become overshadowed by the huge rise in

social networks.

15 Business participation on Facebook and Twitter is soaring,

while support for corporate blogs has leveled off. Among Fortune 500

companies, 73% now maintain corporate Twitter accounts and 66% have

Facebook pages, while the share of those companies with corporate blogs has

been essentially flat for four years, at 28%.

However, Google and other search engines love blogs. The mostly text content

of blogs is easily parsed by search engine crawlers. Assuming you update your

blog frequently, with posts every day or two, the search bots will learn to crawl it

frequently and reward the latest posts with high rank. As with news stories, blog

posts can rise quickly to the top of relevant search results, although they often

decline after the initial pop.

Search engine algorithms score the links between sites as if they were “votes”

for the quality and importance of each page. Because blogs are by nature richly

interlinked to and from other content on the web, Google rewards popular blogs

with high page rank.

Given all this, a well-regarded blog can quickly deliver online visibility. Whether

your business specializes in woodworking tools, artisanal cheeses, or day

trading, a blog dedicated to your topic can bring you valuable web traffic,

visitors searching for precisely what you offer.

Interestingly, some of these searchers aren’t just ordinary consumers. They may

also include journalists, conference organizers, and potential business partners—

people with the ability to give you national media publicity, professional

recognition, or valuable new co-ventures.

As a blogger, stay focused on your area of specialty, in which you are (or can

become) a recognized expert. Post regularly—daily if possible. When I worked

at an e-commerce marketing agency, I once performed a test where I increased

my blogging frequency to daily (from once in a blue moon). The results were

immediate:

Crawl frequency increased dramatically

Organic search traffic grew 56%

Without any prompting, my posts began being syndicated on places like

Online Marketing Connect and Who’s Blogging What

My LinkedIn profile garnered 50% more views

Business inquiries and speaking offers increased 

15 Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Ava M. Lescault, MBA, and Justina Andonian, “Social Media Surge by the

2012 Fortune 500: Increased Use of Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and More,” Charlton College of Business

Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. 

For businesspeople wanting a firmer toehold in the blogosphere, I recommend

Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with

Customers, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006).

If you like to write and can commit yourself to a regular publishing schedule, I

recommend you add a blog to your social media arsenal. The rise of Facebook,

Twitter, and other social media does not make blogging obsolete—it simply

gives a blogger more platforms on which to publish and a wider audience to

cultivate. This has made the blogger owner.