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As YouTube is currently listed as the #3 most visited site on Internet, grabbing just under 20% of global Internet users per day (according to Alexa.com), it should come as no surprise that video has revolutionized the way communication occurs online.  The power of video lies in that it allows video publishers to form powerful relationships with their visitors, as it is possibly the next best thing to direct, in-person communication, arguably even more so than talking over the telephone.  Though such obvious benefit of utilizing video online is easily understood, many often overlook the various distribution models, including perhaps the most effective yet underutilized method for video syndication — video podcasting, also know as vidcasting. 


Easy Video Syndication
In today’s world of rapidly emerging hand held technology, video is easy enough to capture with simple, yet decent quality producing devices such as mobile phones and digital cameras, in addition to more traditional methods, such as camcorders and webcams.  Once created, these informative, persuasive or personal videos can be easily hosted through video sharing sites, such as YouTube, Google Video, Viddler, Veoh, Yahoo Video and Revver to name just a few services that will host and stream video. 

But while all of these sharing sites are a great way to syndicate content, video podcasting has it’s own unique benefits that go beyond what streaming video offers, such as the ability for viewers to watch podcast episodes on their hand held devices such as their iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry or one of the many other video enabled mobile phones, or through their computer via a podcast aggregator, with the ultra popular Apple iTunes as the most prevalent example.  Viewers can subscribe to a video (or audio) podcast, in which case viewers will be automatically notified of subsequent episodes, thus creating a powerful relationship and branding opportunity for publishers.  Video podcasting is allowing anyone with basic video capability the ability to create what essentially equates to free Internet TV shows. 

Boost Your Search Engine Rankings
The search engines aren’t ignoring the fact that video is a hot commodity online.  In fact, videos hosted at sharing sites such as the Google-owned YouTube, tend to get indexed with the search engines with staggering quickness.  It isn’t uncommon to see videos ranking in the top pages of the search engine rankings for relative keyword searches, and this is sometimes seen within hours after the video is uploaded.  Though Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others are working on technology to interpret video content and rank accordingly, it’s important for video publishers to include descriptive, keyword-rich titles and summaries for their videos, as this is how videos are getting picked up by the search engines.  Once again, video podcasts up the ante, as podcasts are being picked up in record time by Google and the other search engines. Podcasts have been seen indexed and shown in Google search results in less than 4 minutes!

Increase traffic and subscribers
High rankings in the search engines and widespread distribution means more visitors for the video podcaster, which leads to more exposure and subscribers.  In turn, podcast publishers can build strong relationships and brand themselves as experts in their given field to a larger number of higher-quality audience than ever before.  Podcast directories such as Podcast Alley, are becoming more popular to increase exposure, making podcasts even easier to find.

For those who mind find this exciting, yet a bit intimidating, take comfort in knowing that there are plenty of free tools and resources that are making video podcasting easier and easier.  A great example is the free WordPress plugin, PodPress, which makes creating a video podcast a snap for bloggers. 

Though video podcasting has been supported in some way, shape or form since version 4.9 of iTunes, video podcasting is still perceived as relatively new, so there is still opportunity to gain first-mover advantage and benefit from everything else that video podcasting offers!

I’ve recently presented information on social media marketing to a few groups of entrepreneurs.  I was very pleased with how well it was received, so I’ve decided to share the fundamental concepts in the video below.

It’s about an hour and twenty minutes, so grab a cold beverage, some snacks, a note pad and enjoy!

There are varying opinions when it comes to niche marketing: Some say pick a unique niche and become the authority, while others will argue that there’s a piece of the pie in the huge, competitive markets, for everybody willing to put the work in.

The huge markets are generally considered to be health, wealth and relationships. Niche markets would be anything that doesn’t fit into one of those.

No matter what you choose, do your research and make sure you have buyers in the market you choose…and that there are enough of them to sustain your business if you go for a small niche.

Here is some helpful additional reading:

Internet Marketing - Quick Start Tips

Choosing your niche is a key element in the success of Internet marketing companies. In fact, you should be very careful in ensuring that & 39; they are both a necessity and a significant number of people who want the product or & 39; …

How Important Is Picking A Niche?

More importantly, are they WILLING to spend it? If there is a lot of free info on the subject, maybe not. So yes, it is important to pick a niche that has a demand and lots of hungry buyers willing to dig into their wallets. …

How to know if the niche market has buyers.

Many newbie marketers know that they must pick a niche market to target when they want to launch their internet business. They know the market must has a lot of passionate people that are seriously crazy about the market and anything in …

Ads are dead. Think about it: Few pay much attention to Adwords ads, banner ads induce some type of instant blinder effect where the reader is physically incapable of looking at the ad, pop up ads are more annoying than gnats on a muggy hot summer night, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to put some of my friends emails in my spam folder…so imagine how we feel about email marketing!

Okay, okay…so I’m over exaggerating it a bit. But there is plenty of truth to all of those points. The greater point I’m getting to is that you and your business needs to stop advertising and start getting involved in the conversation!

Social media is growing at a ridiculous pace, literally taking over the Internet. Get involved, show your chops and offer some advice, become a contributing part of the community and people will listen (and buy)!

Here is some helpful info on getting your business on board in the social media landscape:

Social Media Test: Find the Holy Grail - Advertising 2.0 …

For all the social media marketers out there you need watch this video. Why because of all the noice out there in social media this video panel discussion is the most relevevant information for you. …

Still Doing Press Releases The Traditional Way?, Consider Social …

PRWeb kind of pioneered the use of SEO in press releases, complimenting the traditional distribution mechanisms. Countless marketers(including myself) and companies benefited from this service. Today, PRWeb and many other release …

Start A Social Media Campaign

Successful social media marketing (SMM) campaigns will likely be a key catalyst i for a small to medium sized business to grow their business strategy. Without a great deal of expense, and if implemented correctly, it will increase …

How Social Media Can Help Your Small Business

Laura Spencer at Business and Blogging shares the story of Tracey Lee Wallace, a web developer who lost internet access. She accessed Twitter, a microblogging social media tool (using her Blackberry) and vented her frustration leaving a …

Top blog marketing expert, Jack Humphrey, has just released a couple killer apps. Check out the video below… These will save you a ton of time and really get your blog out there.

I’ve been working on a few new projects that have kept me busy, and one in particular, that helped gain some perspective on the nature of the Internet, and what and why we do what we do online.

One of my best friends built an AWESOME site…you can check it out right here - whostough.com — It’s basically a really fun (and funny) social network with the premise of “who would win in a fight?”

Through my brainstorming with my buddy Dave, I realized that he’s built a business that’s so much fun that it feels like we’re monkeying around all the entire time we spend discussing it. I realized that there have to be tons of great sites like this, that are really fun, entertaining or just really cool…but, that no one knows about. What a shame.

I’d imagine this leads to a lot of great sites never being able to sustain, and subsequently, be shut down.

Well, my newest project is geared towards exposing these kind of sites and getting a ton of eyeballs on those sites, showing the site owners some crafty ways to use viral marketing to grow their sites, develop some custom monetization models for these sites, and more.

So stay tuned as I get this project ready for launch in the next few weeks. If you have a cool site you want the world to know about, be sure to come back regularly…you WON’T want to miss out on this!

With Super Tuesday approaching in just hours, I’m going to go a little political.

Much is often said about “an election year,” for all the reasons that immediately come to mind: The Possibility of Change, Reflection on What Has Been, Ideas of Hope and Fear looking into the Future, and much more.

Though Ron Paul has been most effective in using social media to gain a huge following (I commend Rep. Paul on his efforts and his successes), the Presidential hopefuls have boiled down to just two, for all practical purposes, in each party.

I believe that our two parties help to make America great, as we’re given two choices, two voices, two directions and two distinct options…or at least that’s how it’s suppose to be in theory.

In this Election Year, take the political process seriously, as every election year has implications and repercussions for many many years to come. Don’t buy into the “inevitable candidate” - on either side - pick who you think will best represent America as our leader.

And, when you’re at the polls (actually do some reading and research beforehand), as All Politics Are Local. Your choices on local issues will probably affect YOU much more than a national figurehead. (Sometimes people act like the President is The Wizard of Oz…and responsible for everything that happens in this country, good and bad. Truth is that the citizens are much more responsible for most.)

So I’ll leave you with two videos…two candidates…one from each side. Each are the alternative to the inevitable candidate, so perhaps they’re worth looking at unless you like how the DC Machine continues to run itself.

If you had a chance to see the strange Tom Cruise / Scientologist Indoctrination video that was up all over the ‘net recently, that means you’ve probably been bored, because it wasn’t much of anything. However, the mothership ordered sites to remove the video with threats of lawsuits, apparently because the Cruise piece is part of their marketing collateral for when prospective new Scientologists visit Scientology churches. A much longer video plays to introduce Scientology to the prospect, but the Cruise piece is part of it…and they want to keep it confidential. (Or at least that’s what I’m told )

Luckily for those who missed it, Gawker.com is the sole site that has refused to pull the video down (linked above), citing “fair use” as an exception to copyright, as reported by Fox News.

I tend to believe that the Scientologists need to learn a bit about the marketing theory of “moving the free line,” as this leaked video is probably giving a more widespread mainstream exposure to this group than, dare I say, one of good ol’ L. Ron’s books.

As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, perhaps Gawker.com is in cahoots w/ LRH’s people, as their refusal to take the video down keeps this story newsworthy both through mainstream media, as well as smaller places on the net like this simple blog.

Perhaps the good people at the church of Scientology would like to learn how to harness the power of social media marketing, so they can further harness the power of more human minds ! (I keed, I keed… In all seriousness, I know very little about Scientology other than the fact that Tom Cruise is a nut.)

On a heavier note, I once mentioned Mark Joyner’s Simpleology program to a group of colleagues. One, who happens to be a devoutly religious person, said with a bit of fear in his voice, “That’s not like Scientology, is it?”

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As Web 2.0 fundamentally redefines how we use the Internet, the authority and voice has been given back to YOU, the user, who has the ability to create content instantaneously, vote articles and video good or bad, give your feedback to blog posts (such as this very post), share news stories with your friends and through networks.

While that sounds all fine and dandy…which it is…traditional marketing and advertising approaches have become much more challenging, as users have grown accustomed to simply tuning out any ad on their screen (many use technology that actually does that for them…ads don’t even show up on their screen). This is cause for concern if you’ve been using PPC campaigns, email marketing, banner ads, or any of the other types of traditional Internet Marketing tactics.

It does not mean that Internet Marketing is a lost cause, quite to the contrary actually.

But the rules of engagement have changed. No longer can you blatantly hit someone over the head with an ad…asking your battered prospect to take some action in their impaired state. I’d venture to say that it becomes more intellectual, in a sense.

What getting an audience and gaining attention requires nowadays is a bit different. Web surfers are looking for value and efficiency. With the sensory overload that is the Internet today, users want the precise information they’re looking for, from a trustworthy source, and they aren’t going to go on a witch hunt to get it…they want it quickly, as time is everyone’s most valuable resource.

Sound difficult? It may, as this is a paradigm shift that all Internet marketers are dealing with.

If you’re looking to learn from the best on this topic, my recommendation for a comprehensive and extremely affordable training is Jack Humphrey’s Social PowerLinking Program. I just wrote a review of the program at MarketingProductReview.com, in case you’d like some more details on the program.

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A major flaw in the Old Network Marketing model is that the biz opp piece of it always seemed to be pitched with greed, masked by reviews and “objective” research. The truth is that it’s hard to put trust into someone who knows nothing about you, when you know they’re going to benefit financially if you throw some money their way.

This is why prospecting is difficult, unless you learn consultative selling methods, where you’re focused on the prospect (not making a sale) and trying to find a solution to problem that your prospect is having. This requires asking questions, getting to know your prospect, find out what is important to him or her.

In a nutshell, it’s giving a little bit of guidance and learning about that person. It’s giving something of value, whether that be your time or a recommendation or a free software program, etc., and learning about what you can do for this person.It’s about developing relationships, before anything else.

Greed will kill this process, if you let it. It will kill your business if you can’t control it. Focus instead on giving to your prospects…serving them. And then on learning, not only about your prospects and how you can best serve them, but on marketing, on sales, on relationship and rapport.

Personal growth will have a direct correlation to your businesses growth.And lastly, to keep it in the theme of my NetWeb Marketing musings, develop an online presence, and grow your Web 2.0 marketing to attract the kind of people that you can best serve…that will learn the most from you…that are willing to take what you have to offer.

The Law of Attraction is a beautiful thing, and it’s always at work, whether you like it or not. I’d say it’s best to get on it’s good side! 

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