Don’t get lost in Geo-location
FourSquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places: What you are doing when and where is what smartphones appear to have been designed for. Even Twitter lets you search for tweets sent locally – location is a big feature of social media and still much under-used by businesses. Most Smartphones now come with geo-location and if you’ve not used or don’t really know what it is all about you are missing out. Basically it is similar to tracking or positioning that you may be used to if you use a GPS sat nav. The location of a place or user is identified either by using the IP address of their computer or the radio-frequency identification (RFID) of the user’s smartphone. With the increase in uptake of the smartphone there it is a marketing tool with growing potential for the for small businesses. The first to use it for marketing have been the bar / restaurants and retail sector. Networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla combine gamification with check-in at new places and by encouraging visitors to check in, the business can use that information to track trends and even target specific campaigns to the users checking in. You can even encourage new people on the networks to sign in by offering special offers when they are in the vicinity. Once customers choose to engage in this way you can almost guarantee they are more likely to be better engaged than your average ‘casual’ customer so it is well worth the investment into looking after them. What’s more location-based social networks like FourSquare and Gowalla now offer integration into other networks like Twitter and Facebook so you can encourage your check-in customers to re-tweet or post to their wider audiences on the bigger networks too, spreading your brand. Geo-location is still in its infancy and many even with smartphones don’t yet fully grasp it, either as a business or end-user. However, the integration and possibilities seem endless and are only likely to improve, so if you invest time and effort now you could see yourself several leaps above your competitors in an area of marketing that will become commonplace in a matter of months. Do you already use location-based marketing? How? With what effect? We’d love to feature any innovative ideas.
9 tips for setting up your first YouTube campaign.
YouTube is massive. As a stand alone search engine it’s the second largest. It is the third biggest online destination behind Facebook and Google. Those facts alone mean that is has to be a part of your online media mix. But when consider how engaging video is, YouTube becomes even more important. Consumers like watching video online. YouTube offers a fantastic environment for it. As a marketeer YouTube also gives you lots of tools. It’s possible to target people by groups, video, and by channel. YouTube makes it easy to forward and share your video content to others or on their own website. As YouTube is a search engine you can use your video content to answer users search queries, putting brand in front of others people looking for your services. YouTube also makes it easy to link other content, closing the loop between YouTube and your website tools. And currently YouTube is currently very cost effective. Apart from the effort, a user or enhance channel is free to set up. You buy ads on a CPC or CPM basis. And at the moment there are more eyeballs than advertisers. So here’s a 9 tips to make sure your YouTube campaign gets off to a good start. 1. Choose the right name Your channel name should be keyword rich, to improving its chances of ranking in relevant search queries. If you have a well known brand then include that, so your video content shows up for brand searches, highlighting your great content to new and current customers. 2. Think about SEO Make sure you use titles, descriptions and video tags that are keyword rich, and include links to your website. YouTube search results are based on these, assessing their relevancy and popularity. Just 1,000 characters show up in the initial search, so keep is short and sweet. Although you get 426 characters for tags, stick to 150 or less. 3. Customise your Channel Brand channels used to cost £25,000, but in the last couple of months Google has allowed many advertisers to create ‘enhanced channels’ for no cost at all. These give you almost all the cool design elements of a brand channel, minus a bit of functionality. It’s a great opportunity to create a customised environment for your video content. See our Social Media Guides for how to do that. Check out the British Gas YouTube channel for a great customised background: 4. Think about disabling comment options Negative comments can harm a brand. Consider your Social Networking Policy and work out how you are going to respond to poor feedback. If you don’t have the time – or want to retain the control – consider disabling the comment option. 5. Keep it short Before you start adding content, decide on some basic rules such as the length of each video, and the number of points you want to make. Although YouTube lets you add up to 15 minutes of video, users don’t often watch more than 1 or 2. And don’t forget your call to action too – give people something to do next. 6. Add plenty of video Make sure you have at least 3 videos at the launch of your channel, to make it look at bit busier. It keeps users satisfied, and helps it gain popularity and visibility in the Youtube search results. And if you’ve paid for someone to click through to your channel, then it makes to give them plenty to watch once they get there. 7. Consider watermarking Users love to share video content. Make sure you get the benefit of this share by watermarking your video, or including a call to action to your website. 8. Use Promoted Videos to drive traffic One of the most effective PPC areas of YouTube is promoted Videos. These serve your videos at the top of the search results. Ads appear as a video thumbnail and several lines of text. Users just click to video. You can then use text overlays to push users onto your website. The concept of promoted videos – giving users something they’re looking for – is broadly similar to regular paid search, and as such they can deliver an ROI in line with those. 9. Make us of Insights and Analytics As a channel owner to you can use YouTube insights to find out lots of interesting stuff about viewers of your content. You can identify their demographic, and how they found your videos – through search, sharing or direct links. And you can also see which parts of your video they liked (hot spots) and what turned them off. Use this information to improve your campaign targeting and video content. That’s it When it comes to audience and engagement, YouTube is huge; but as a marketing channel it’s underused and undervalued. Don’t forget to check out the new 123-reg YouTube channel. Nick Leech runs Digital Marketing Agency Euston Digital