Popular Articles on Business 2 Community |
- Why the Cloud Battle is Already Won
- A User’s Guide To The YouTube Keyword Tool
- 5 Innovative Uses of Social Media
- Content Marketing Success Must Be Measured by Conversions Not Engagement
- Forget About SEO and Focus On Youtube (Optimization Tips & More)
| Why the Cloud Battle is Already Won Posted: 23 Jan 2014 02:15 PM PST You don’t need to be a business or technology expert to see that cloud computing is having a profound effect on some of our working practices. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of this culture change: just as businesses needed to evolve by the introduction of the PC or the internet, the cloud represents another decade defining shift of evolution. Perhaps what is most interesting is that we’re seeing business ambitions start to outstrip the technology and services on offer – cloud is still in its nascent phase but we’re already visualising increasingly ambitious ways to apply the services delivered by cloud computing technology. Practices such as remote working, accessing work data from any device and allowing access to real-time data streams are only possible with cloud computing technology. And now, with mobile web usage set to outstrip desktop use in 2014 it’s clear that cloud adoption is more vital for businesses than ever before. While this new era of remote working is ostensibly a benefit for organisations, with employees enjoying greater levels of productivity than previously, this new way of working requires a robust and flexible IT infrastructure that is underpinned with a strong secure, resilient foundation. So what transformations can we expect to see now that cloud technology is becoming an IT essential (rather than a competitive edge)? For a start, the cloud has substantial implications for every organisation’s operational efficiency. The advantages of on-demand services have been talked up to the point of excess, but a reduction in IT maintenance costs, increased automation, rapid scalability, a simplified IT framework and the movement from CapEx to OpEx are all real benefits for any business. Put simply: a business can now run its entire infrastructure more efficiently and for a lower cost. While each organisation is on its own cloud journey the technology is already having a big impact on the role of IT within an organisation. The nature of the cloud means IT departments can shift their focus, taking IT from being an unavoidable cost centre to being an epicentre for value creation. Through the cloud chief information officers (CIOs) can now drive value for the organisation, developing innovative applications delivered within a Software as a Service (SaaS) framework. Whether that’s to support employees or external stakeholders (e.g. customers and partners), that will help open up previously untapped business opportunities. Cloud allows businesses to offer instant access to data and services for both employees and customers alike – something that has become increasingly essential in today’s “always-on” society. With organisations poised to invest significantly over the next three to five years in refreshing their IT infrastructure, there is an opportunity for senior IT decision-makers to set out their stall and demonstrate the tangible benefits IT can deliver to the organisation. Amid this revolutionary change, there are new challenges for the CIO in attempting to govern their organisation’s data flow. The increase in flexible working has transformed the CIO focus from attempting to control individual devices to monitoring how users are accessing the organisation’s data. CIOs can now manage their organisation’s entire infrastructure from a single, centralised location. This means growing a business becomes much simpler as end-users can be added to systems quickly, no matter what their location. With such minimal setup costs businesses can afford to be bolder when expanding into new markets. The case for cloud is starting to now be won, business are no longer asking “why cloud?” but “how do I get there?” It’s a pivotal era for IT and one where the most creative and innovative organisations, rather than their conservative counterparts, are going to thrive and emerge from this period of austerity stronger than ever. Though for all the discussion of new working practices and innovative ways to drive value and revenue across the business, cloud adoption may come down to simple economics. Attempting to bury your head in the sand and writing cloud off as a fad is comparable to a business investing in typewriters rather than mobile devices. Ultimately, cloud has come so far that you can now run entire business processes on a resilient platform that offers unprecedented levels of availability for your enterprise, at a fraction of the previous price.  |
| A User’s Guide To The YouTube Keyword Tool Posted: 23 Jan 2014 09:09 AM PST What is the YouTube Keyword Tool?The YouTube keyword research tool, also known as the YouTube keyword suggestion tool, is a barebones tool used to generate and discover new keywords for YouTube videos. It looks like this: How to Use the YouTube Keyword ToolThe YouTube keyword tool is pretty straightforward – simply choose your language and tailored countries, insert a keyword or phrase, and click "Get keyword ideas." Some of those keyword suggestions (heck, maybe a lot of them) will make no sense whatsoever. But, buried in that strange, bizarre rubble of YouTube culture, you may find some gold nuggets than can really help you out when it comes to content strategy. While these keyword results aren't very long-tail in the literal since of having lots of words, they can certainly be considered long-tail in intent – deep, narrow intent. This means that most of these keywords aren't the big-bucks keyword phrases that everyone is searching for, but that's a good thing, as they will have considerably less competition. You can imagine keyword strategy as something similar to buying tickets for raffle prizes. At a raffle, there are usually a few big prizes that everyone wants to win, and many tickets go into that raffle box as a result. If you put your tickets in the raffle box for the all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii, chances are your odds of winning won't be so good. However, if you instead disperse your tickets into less popular or exciting raffle prizes – a free haircut and blow-dry at Slinky Salon, a tea kettle from Teavana – you'll find that with less competition, your odds of winning go up dramatically. Image by Alyson Hurt Less competition means more opportunity, and somewhere around the intersection of the two is that area which is ripe for creating content. This is especially true when applied to video content, as video content has less competition AND is more likely to appear in search results. With that recipe, you've got a great shot at grabbing a top spot in the SERPs. Video content is immensely valuable, and in 2014 you're likely to see the stock in video skyrocket. Data obtained from the YouTube Keyword Tool can be used to generate new content topics or brainstorm new keywords to add to existing content. How to Optimize Your Videos with YouTube KeywordsOnce you've decided which keywords you want associated with your YouTube video content, you'll want to add your related keywords to the video:
For more information about crafting top-notch YouTube videos, check out our guide for creating and optimizing YouTube videos. YouTube Keyword Tool: Not Enough Data & Other IssuesWhile the YouTube keyword tool can be handy for brainstorming new keyword ideas (albeit some are VERY far out), many have noted that the overwhelming majority of keywords generated by the tool show "not enough data" for the monthly search volume. While some may be tempted to steer away from these keywords with low search volume, it is these keywords that have a ton of potential and opportunity as they will have less competition. You also may find that some of your keyword searches will return some very bizarre results – you certainly won't want to use every keyword suggestion offered. However, even the wackier keywords may help inspire some not-so-obvious keyword topics and angles that you didn't think of before. Taking Full Advantage of the YouTube Keyword Tool SearchThere are a few additional steps you can take to get even more out of the data that the YouTube Keyword Tool provides. Julie Joyce of Search Engine Land suggests taking favorable words from the YouTube Keyword Tool and then inserting them with "exact match" into YouTube's search tool (and/or Google to be extra thorough). The goal is to find a keyword query that generates:
If you like the looks of the keyword query, you might even consider creating additional content to supplement the video – perhaps a how-to blog post elaborating on what's discussed in the video with crisp photos, a buying guide, an infographic, etc. Remember that the majority of users are not going to YouTube to purchase something – they are searching for information, help, and entertainment. Catering to these needs will help your video content succeed. You can also use the YouTube keyword tool to optimize your existing YouTube videos – adding in high-traffic keywords that relate to your video can help give existing videos a search boost. Whether you're creating new content with a specific keyword in mind, or hoping to optimize existing content, the YouTube Keyword Tool can be a powerful aid when used correctly.  |
| 5 Innovative Uses of Social Media Posted: 22 Jan 2014 06:43 PM PST It's no overstatement to say that social media is impacting the way our world works in fascinating ways. For all intents and purposes, the onset of web 2.0 has led to a kind of international cultural revolution. Preceded by and integrated into western globalization, social media has created a bridge between all cultures, and allowed people to communicate in ways previously unimaginable. The fundamental principle of social media is the sharing of information. Anything, no matter how small or how large, can now be condensed into a picture, or a video, or a tweet, and spread like wildfire, having an impact on the lives of thousands. It's easy to dismiss social media as loads of obnoxious people giving you live updates of their breakfast, but whilst YouTube may have far too many thousands of hours of terrible vlog footage, there are some that are using the power of social media in amazing new ways. News Well, firstly and maybe most obviously, there's news media. It seems strange to think today that when Lincoln was assassinated, it took twelve days for Reuters to break that news to Europe. By comparison, it took nine minutes for The Boston Globe's initial tweet about the bombing earlier this year to spread to news organisations worldwide. According to the Washing D.C. based Pew Research Center, 30% of all Americans receive their news through Facebook, and whilst it doesn't take a cultural theorist to tell you that news has changed since the onset of the social media revolution, it's not simply the speed and way we consume news that has changed. Social media has allowed journalists access to thousands of opinions on any given topic. It's now easy, not only to find sources for stories, but ideas for news as well, which has changed the profession of journalism from the handing down news to the masses to something altogether more collaborative. Criminal investigations Most of the stories we hear from the world of social media are to do with disclosures of guilt: somebody does something illegal, tells the world about it, and then are shocked when there are consequences. However, more than simply being a venus fly trap for irrationally honest socialites, social media can allow people to come together to fight crime. Social media was employed as part of the successful police manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that took place after the Boston bombings. However, this was not a sole social media strategy, but rather just shows how social media is now an accepted addition to television and radio media. Also, whilst this is quite a dramatic example of the way social media can be used to find individual criminals, the Brazilian authorities are using it in a more widespread way. Using social media to study crime on a large scale is becoming a reality there, in one of the most crime ridden countries in the world.
Charities In extreme situations, people push technology to meet their needs. The response to Typhoon Haiyan was particularly interesting. It is the strongest typhoon in modern history, and with the effects being varied and ruralized, relief efforts have been fraught with difficulty. A global network of volunteers has entered the fray in an attempt to. The organisation, MicroMappers, helped create a real time map of where people were asking for help, and where destruction was greatest. In addition to helping those on the ground identify those who are in most need, social media has led to some innovative fundraising and spreading of messages. Dr Evangeline Cua, a 38-year-old surgeon in the midst of the disaster, posted a plea onto social media, which led to £30,000 worth of donations in 24 hours. Environmental efforts This is not the only way that social media is being used inventively for good causes. Off the Northwestern coast of lies what could be the world's biggest petroleum and natural gas fields. It is also "the last great marine wilderness of earth" according to Dave Johnston, a marine biologist at Duke University. The area of Australia is popular with snubfin and humpback dolphins, but the traditional environmental analysis process is overwhelmed. Citizen scientists sharing their experiences through Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube updates will help create an up-to-date snapshot of the wildlife in the area, democratizing the data and making the fight back against the oil companies more tangible. Political activism In the same vein, political activism allows people to unite in ideological struggles (real or invented). The #Kony2012 campaign was a great example of the benefits, and downfalls, or social media as a tool for bringing people together under one political objective. An organisation called Invisible Children released a video on March 5, 2012. In October of the same year, the video went viral, gaining 100 million views on YouTube. The idea behind the video was to make Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord in charge of the Lord's Resistance Army, famous, thereby pushing American foreign policy to up their hunt for a man responsible for vicious crimes against humanity. However, the campaign began to implode when director Jason Russel's psychological instability became the story. The original aim was also a failure: whilst it impassioned people, it was ultimately an unattainable aim. So whilst every day new innovations are discovered, we are still in teething stages of this digital revolution…and who knows what's next?  |
| Content Marketing Success Must Be Measured by Conversions Not Engagement Posted: 22 Jan 2014 09:00 AM PST A brand is a business and businesses exist to make money. Whilst content marketing is a wonderful way to enhance the brand's relationship with customers and prospects, a brand cannot stay in business through measuring engagement alone. If content marketing does not demonstrably 'move the needle', why do it at all? For this reason, there is no doubt that the best way to measure content success is by number of sales conversions. That doesn't mean it is the easiest way, however. For sure, those who trumpet content as a means of brand engagement (which it most surely is) have the benefit of a litany of simple metrics such as linkbacks, shares, likes, impressions, retweets etc, to aid them. Those with a more commercial imperative will no doubt find it harder to attribute which piece(s) of content led to a conversion and which content left the mythical 'bottom line' untroubled. That said, it can be done. Whether it is by simply looking at an aggregate level at how many content-driven inbounds on an ecommerce microsite go on to purchase or by using emerging technologies that utilise content analytics and track customer interactions with content to make better product-to-content recommendations, brands can begin to see the effects of specific pieces of content attributed to a conversion. A great (client) example of how content marketing can be linked to sales is Econsultancy – a digital marketing publisher. Econsultancy has a free blog on digital marketing topics and uses idio to recommends a variety of paid reports at the bottom of each post. As a result of better targeting its product (paid reports) to its content (blog), in six months. Econsultancy was able to improve the conversion rate of paid reports by 299%, improving revenue from paid reports by 414% and experienced a 714% rise in transaction volume. As content marketing becomes more personalized, the ability to calculate the improvement of lifetime customer value, reducing customer acquisition costs and – perhaps more importantly – the monetary value of each customer engaging with each item of content, will become much more realisable. Much has been said about the phenomenon of brands increasingly publishing engaging, entertaining and helpful content to circumnavigate the diminishing returns of interruptive marketing. This move has often been described as "brands becoming publishers". But this glamorous new world of brands recasting themselves as publishers cannot just be conceptual and operational. Publishers and media outlets have lived and died on the strength of their content generating sales, not engagement. In the new world of content marketing, as brands seek to become publishers, they will need to adopt a publisher's commercialism too. The most forward-thinking brands that have been doing content marketing for some time are starting to ask "What next?". Instead of focussing on making content marketing merely engaging, we should now look to make it profitable as well.
To learn more about how to make your content marketing engaging and commercially profitable – please do get in contact to talk about idio's Content Intelligence. We'd love to chat!  |
| Forget About SEO and Focus On Youtube (Optimization Tips & More) Posted: 22 Jan 2014 04:15 AM PST
Why? well in short, it’s due to major Google search algorithm updates which have been making it harder and harder to rank brand new websites these days. In the past newer sites would get some exposure but these days you have to be extremely popular to get any type of exposure from Google. To summarize for you, Google expects a site to be “popular” or “established” prior to giving the site any traffic. I would go deeper into this, but I would prefer to go over how I drive traffic to my startup sites rather than what Google wants. So how did I do it? Well, first I would like to say that I prefer to put most of my effort into my sites rather than online marketing. In addition to this, I don’t really like buying traffic or relying solely on paid traffic because that type of traffic only comes while you can afford to spend money. Your site also has to convert well in order for it to be worth paying for traffic. As for “typical” social marketing (like through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google+), you have to have a bit of an established social presence in order to benefit from it. So after taking all this into consideration, I decided to look into the power of video — Youtube to be a bit more specific. Why? Well, mainly because this type of marketing works well with just about any business model. In fact, I gave an example of how Youtube can be used to sell products in this article, so I have mentioned it before but never really went into detail and I figured I should now. Keep this in mind when it comes to Youtube First, I want everyone to realize that in order to succeed with Youtube, a bit of effort is necessary and unlike with SEO, there are no loop holes. Luckily, most of the effort needs to go “into” your videos rather than marketing — which is why I like Youtube so much. Do keep in mind that when I refer to effort, I’m referring to making the video captivating. To be captivating you don’t necessarily need to be amazing and your videos don’t have to look amazing — they basically just need to be useful. Getting more people to view your videos If you’re asking yourself why your videos need to be useful, it’s because of how Youtube works… You see, Youtube ranking factors focus on user engagement so if you want to get traffic flowing to your videos, make sure that your viewers are actually watching them. Now you might be asking yourself how will you get people to watch them, if the videos are not ranking well initially? Well, from my experience, it’s easier to rank in Youtube than it is in Google due to there not being as much competition and due to Youtube search algorithms being a bit more welcoming to new users. So while your videos might not rank well initially, there is a good chance that people will find them if you target the right keywords. By right keywords, I mean by making sure that the title, description and tags are relevant to what the video is about and that they are not targeting keywords which are highly competitive. You can tell if a keyword is too competitive by doing a search in Youtube and seeing how many results are returned. So if there isn’t much competition, you will likely be able to rank well from the start. Now if your keywords are highly competitive, you can always target other keywords which don’t return as many videos or you can focus on long tail keywords until your video gains some views and proves to Youtube that it is worthy of being ranked well. Of course, once your video has proven to be worthy, your video will also be recommend to viewers at the end of videos which are similar to yours and in the recommendation column on video pages so it’s not like Youtube search is the only way that your video will gain viewers, but it is where I like to focus my efforts in the beginning. So before I go over tips on how to make your videos gain popularity, I want to also explain that the popularity of your channel plays a role in rankings as well. For example, if you have some popular videos uploaded to your Youtube channel, newer videos which are uploaded get a slight boast in rankings because Youtube algorithms see you as a trustworthy source. Making sure that your video is worthy of views So when you make your first video, you need to ask yourself what you would expect to see in a video that was focusing on your niche. For example, I think it’s safe to say that you wouldn’t want to watch a video that simply advertises a product that you are trying to sell? I mean who searches Youtube for commercials? Instead, focus on showing people how to do something, do comparisons, release new casts etc. — basically, just make videos that people are willing to watch. For example, I have found ‘how to videos’ to be a very good way to get people to watch your videos. I know that my channel became a huge hit with Youtube users and it has really helped me drive traffic to my site… When I first launched my site my videos were the best source of targeted traffic. You can check out my channel here and view a video of mine below: Of course there are other online marketers that use the power of Youtube to drive traffic to their sites. Below are some other channels that have really impressed me and inspired me to focus on Youtube. For example, JewelrySupply.com offers quite a bit of jewelry how to videos that are very useful and really help them cross promote their site and the products that they sell. See a video of theirs below: News anyone? Barry Schwartz is a very well know search engine news reporter that manages to promote both Seroundtable.com as well as Rustybrick.com through his videos. To learn a thing or two about shooting news casts, check a video of his below: Everyone is comedian these days and so are the folks at Woot. Their crew manages to make people laugh and drive traffic to their store with some really creative videos — see an example below: The guys at MetalRescue really know how to advertise a product by demonstrating how the product works while keeping their viewers watching their videos. You see, these videos remind me of those as seen on tv infomercials that we see so often… Well, who said they won’t work on Youtube? See for yourself: Taking full advantage of Youtube Whenever I use a website, I always do my best to take full advantage of all the features available and with Youtube, things are no different. When I first started I verified my Youtube account because this was the only way that I could upload videos that were longer than 15 minutes and since many of my videos are longer, this was necessary. So if your videos are longer than 15 minutes, it’s way better than splitting your videos and uploading them separately. While writing about verification, I’d also like to mention that a Youtube account which has been verified and is in good standing, may have the ability to upload custom thumbnails. While I have gotten lucky on some videos where the auto-generated thumbnails looked great, there were some videos that had awful auto-generated thumbnails… On these videos, the custom thumbnail option really came in handy. So keep this in mind and use it to upload a relevant and attention grabbing thumbnail. While I have already mentioned that the title, description and tags should be relevant because they play a role in rankings, I haven’t mention how important closed captioning is…. While I have yet to transcribe all of the videos that I have uploaded to Youtube because I have personally found this to be a time consuming task, I do believe that it’s worth doing if you have the time because as it has been said, the Youtube transcription plays a role in rankings so transcribing is something that may pay off. In addition to this, a little CC icon is displayed in search results next to videos which can grab a little more attention. Additionally, this may even play a role in Google search rankings since Googlebot may be able to better understand what the video is about. HD quality, is something that I also like to shoot for since I am able to show my viewers detailed closeups of what I am doing on my computer which is especially important when doing screencasts as I do. A nice little advantage to this is that I get an HD icon next to my video in Youtube search results which is a nice attention grabber. Why stop at Youtube?
How Youtube has helped my SEO So did I forget about SEO? Well, basically I did, but of course I didn’t forget what I have learned about SEO over the years… It’s just that I have decided not to do things can eventually get me in trouble with Google and hurt my rankings. Instead, I have decided to focus my efforts on videos. You see, these days natural links are the kind of links that you want pointing at your site and from my experience, I can tell you that my videos have helped me get some high quality, natural links pointing at my site that I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise. For example, since I mention my site in all of my videos, I have received many links from my viewers! In addition to my site getting ranked, my videos have seen some nice rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo as well. As for the social part of SEO, I am pleased to say that I have received many social shares on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ etc. So if you’re looking for a way to generate some real buzz, Youtube is definitely the way to go.  |
The good old days of driving traffic to a website quickly and easily are pretty much gone. In the past I was amongst the many that relied on Google alone for traffic… I remember making sales with startup ecommerce sites within 2 weeks of launching them thanks to the traffic that I would get from Google… I did this without doing any marketing whatsoever! I remember how my sites would practically market themselves because news reporters, bloggers, forum users and other active internet users would find my site via Google and spread the word about my site in no time at all — and my site would climb further up the SERPs and I would receive more and more traffic… but unfortunately, those days are gone.| You are subscribed to email updates from Popular Articles | Business 2 Community To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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