Websites and Video for your business
As I add posts to my blogs I find there are a number relating to motivation and enhancing the individuals performance. The message contained within video can be both powerful and extremely effective, especially if conveyed in an unusual and entertaining way.
The video below is from the USA aimed at larger businesses, but the lesson can easily be applied to all western smaller businesses and individuals.
Online video is very successful at providing amazing information at the grand cost of zero pounds. If something costs nothing does it have a value? As individuals we each make our own judgement on the reply to that question.
There are so many excellent informative videos online and many really help with providing answers to problems.
A question many ask, especially those struggling to find a way to create a business or even those who have become bogged down in their own business is ‘WHAT IS SUCCESS?’
This short video gives just over 3 minutes of information that everyone can benefit from.
We live in a world that is becoming increasingly self centred – yet there are unwritten rules that all people across the planet follow. Why, well maybe it is like a bird that knows it has to fly, it is part of the human psyche that is ingrained from birth.
We all like to feel we are evolving and bettering ourselves in life, however we often forget the basic principles and one of the most important is…. You Need To Give In Order To Receive. We all forget this as we rush through life, but take the time to enact on this principle and things will always improve for you as an individual.
Check out the video below from Robert Cialdini on how to convince people to do the things you want and why it works.
Online video is becoming more sophisticated and clever. There have been several extremely smart and witty campaigns using online video enabling the viewer to put in their own name/photograph and generate a complete short film. These have had a viral impact on the internet attracting millions of views thus creating huge interest in either the products or services being advertised.
Here are a couple of amazing uses of video that not only hold your attention but require some form of interaction to get the best from them.
The first is a You Tube video that promotes Tippex – You know the fluid we use to use when we made mistakes on a typewriter!!!!!
Well the product has advanced with the times along with their promotional video work. This does require interaction – the thing is you will want too because it is such great fun. The message here is make it fun and integrate your product pitch at the same time.
The next online video shows how to have fun with a friend by placing their name and picture into a video. The video style is American, however it still captures the attention of the viewer.
There is so much media being pumped out on the internet that it becoming increasingly harder to create something that is original and attention grabbing. Often it is the simplest of ideas that achieve this. I am always looking for new great ideas and remember receiving an email a while ago with a video of animated stick men on a windows paint page creating havoc in a hilarious way. The guy that created this Alan Becker was ahead of his time and the footage went viral online when released back in 2006.
I did not forget and still recall the video as something that was great fun and definitely highly original. I have always wanted to create something like this for my own website but the experience and time needed was a little beyond me. However I have had the opportunity of putting something of a similar style on the front page of this website. It was created using After Effects and I think it looks simple, entertaining and original.
Here it is again to save you clicking onto the home page. It has not been loaded onto You Tube yet and should load pretty quickly.
Our website has just been updated and given a new fresh look. Standards and expectations change faster on the internet and if your website is looking old and tired to you, imagine how visitors feel. The adage of ‘it’s whats on there that counts’ is partly true as good quality content is very highly regarded especially by Google. It’s algorithms are so smart that Google can now tell if content is worthwhile or not. However if your website is curling at the edges a revamp will make the very best of the content and probably be quicker to load in the modern browsers.
I have just completed a short video that it designed to just get the word out. It is short and sweet and would look nice on a website home page. The other option if you are starting to use video and you want an ‘intro’ and ‘outro’ this could be ideal ( I will put a couple up soon to show what I mean). There is a smaller version in the sidebar to the right .
It went up onto You Tube today. Just click and see what you think. I will be organising a portfolio and pricing structure for these style videos, so keep us on your radar.
Every now and then something unique comes along that captures the imagination and this video certainly made me watch all the way to the end.
It looks as though it based around the a well known movie (Batman) and creates a unique atmosphere.
There was a time when the internet was used only for research. As the popularity of the internet grew, so did the way that it was used. Today, millions, in fact billions, of individuals rely on the internet for entertainment. If you are one of these, there is a good chance you have heard of YouTube. You Tube is an online video website that allows visitors to view homemade videos and much more, you can now easily make and share your own videos online.
Making your own video – that sounds like fun? Internet users of all different ages are making their own videos. Many are used to share information with others, showcase favorite family scenes, express their beliefs, or just for pure fun. If you are interested in making your own video you have to start with an idea.
The really good news is if you are planning on making a video for You Tube, you can relax and concentrate on producing the content, because the uploading process is probably one of the easiest you will find online. This is great news as so often people have good ideas for a video but are put off by the complexities of how to get the finished product onto the internet.
To make a start you will need a standard video camcorders or webcam. You can make just about any type of video that you want but it is important to remember that your video may be seen by thousands of internet users, so it does need to be appropriate and NOT boring.
When making your video it is important to note that You Tube does have small limitations which include the length of your video and the size of the file. Currently your video must be no more than ten minutes in length and You Tube now compresses it when you upload via their site. The content cannot be copyright material such as snippets from TV shows or other peoples work. This also applies to music, if you use an artists music as background without permission You Tube will either remove the video or the soundtrack.
What is it that creates the success many strive for?
You can have a website with everything working the way it should, plenty of links, good SEO and traffic visiting your site, but NO SALES. This is a huge problem that many online marketers have and it is not getting any easier. The thing is there 
are more people looking to the internet to help provide an income creating much more competition.
The one mistake with many businesses, both on and offline is not having a plan.
A plan does not need to be something that fills pages and becomes complex, it needs to be clear and simple to implement. Above all it needs to be achievable and you need to have the passion to make the plan come alive by taking the necessary action.
If you draw up your plan with a practical time frame it will put you ahead of a high percentage of the competition because most do not bother.
So for 2010 consider where your business is going and whether you need to take time out to properly plan your goals to help you make things happen and if it fits on a matchbox so be it.
Search Engine Optimisation is a subject that many people think they know what it means, yet when asked often say ” It’s what gets you onto the first page of google isn’t it?“ 
This is true and yet it is such a small part of the whole SEO story. There are so many myths and variables associated with this subject that books, websites and internet guru’s have committed themselves to just this one element of what really makes your website work on the internet.
I will not be going over all the historical facts of the rise and rise of SEO other than to say it is one of many things that needs to be considered when building a presence for your business on the internet. I am therefore going to lay out in a very simple and explanatory way the essential elements required with SEO.
Ok to start with when we speak of search engines, we tend to say Google because it accounts for the vast majority of searches carried out on the internet. There are many others eg MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos to name a few, and they should not be dismissed as they often do searches in a different way and can give superior results.
Search engines are essentially a document retrieval program that follow links on the internet and catalogue web pages. They analyse the pages and with the inbuilt sophistication they can figure out what the pages and websites are all about, so when you enter a search term into the the search bar you are presented with the most relevant web pages. The best analogy would be to a dating or match making service, trying to get the best match with the information available.
The three main elements of website optimisation are:
On page refers to the elements of your website that tell Google what to index your page under. This is achieved with things like the HTML title tags, the image ALT tags, the image file names and the textual content. The most important though is the title tag (best described as the label for your page ) which will synchronise with any off site work and help create some good results.
Off page is all about links coming in to your website. This can be achieved in so many different ways, here are a few to give you an idea: Article submissions, video with links built in, forums, and links to directories. What you are aiming to do is get your website as much exposure as possible and lift it up through the ranks in the search engines.
Keywords are important and a common sense approach would be to write down all the terms you think people would be searching for in your website product or services. For example with a cake decorating theme, maybe people are looking for icing techniques or cake design. You then need to research and expand your list as though you were anticipating what someone was actually typing into the search bar. A good free tool for this is Wordtracker, there are many paid services available, but this is a great starting point.
These are some of the basics and the good thing is if you wish to build your own website there are many tools out there that can help.
I will be writing about my absolute favourite website software shortly, so take a trip back soon.
Grahame
