Archive | August, 2018

Which would you rather do – spend two hours thinking of a great blog post idea, researching that idea, writing the post and finally editing the post… or dashing off a video post in less than half the time?

Heck, let’s be honest: If you’ve got a good idea and the ideas are flowing, you can dash off a video post in the same time it takes to make the recording. Post it to your blog, and you’re done.

No wonder why so many bloggers are turning to video.

Problem is, video is not the holy grail of blogging. In fact, if taken too far it can actually lead to the downfall of your blog (notice the crickets chirping, the tumble weeds, err, tumbling, etc.)

Here are five tips for using video on your blog without totally alienating your readers or camouflaging yourself from the search engines. Or more specifically, five reasons NOT to use video exclusively.

Video is no substitute for the written word (sorry!) Users don’t just want video. Visitors want a clear idea of what they’re about to see before they hit that play button. Not to mention the fact that many of your viewers aren’t at their computer, they’re mobile users who may or may not have a speedy connection. If they can at least read your story and then decide if your video is worth downloading, you have a better shot at capturing and holding their attention.

Obvious solution? Incorporate video and writing into your blogpost, not just video.

The search engines don’t know what you’re talking about. The day has not yet arrived that search engines can figure out the words spoken in your video. Thus, if you have video only, or video and poor content from an SEO stand point, then you might as well have donned a cloak of invisibility as far as the search engines are concerned.

Instead, you want to couple good writing that incorporates your SEO terms with your video. The two paired together make a smashing team and work hand-in-hand to make your blog post even better.

Lousy videos are, well, lousy. Okay, if you’re breaking a story in front of a burning building, you’re going to use your cell phone to take the video because that’s what you happened to have handy at the time. But if you’re in your office doing “how-to” kinds of videos, PLEASE invest in an inexpensive HD camcorder. Please. Your viewers will thank you.

Also, ad-libbing is something few people can get by with. Before you begin recording, make an outline of all your major points and post it right next to the camera so you don’t get lost and you don’t forget anything. Notice I said outline – writing it out word for word and then READING it is a big (HUGE!) no-no and will make your audience fall asleep faster than two blinks of the eye.

Please be aware of camera positioning. I recently saw a video on a major marketing website that was positioned on a coffee table and afforded a perfect crotch shot for the entire duration. Ewww.

One last thing – forget the umms, errrs, and ahhhs. If you need to pause for a second to think of a word, then just PAUSE. You do not need to fill in every second with sound, especially when that sound (um er ah) makes you sound like a bonafide rank amateur.

Hiding your content underneath your videos is not cool. Look, you want people to spend as much time as possible on your page, right? Then begin your post with written content and place your video within the content – not ahead of it. Your headline and lead-in should capture their attention enough to get them reading, and within the first 2-4 paragraphs you can reference the video. If they’re engaged, odds are they’ll read the rest of your post and then watch the video.

On the other hand, if the video appears first, then they will either watch the video and leave (they’ve seen the video, why read your content?) Or they’ll just leave because they don’t want to watch a video without first having a clue why they should bother.

Don’t over use video – think of video as an hors d’oeuvre or side dish, not the main course. Videos should be short – under 2 minutes whenever possible, and certainly under 5 minutes unless your content is drop-dead riveting.

Bottom line: Video is an excellent supplement to your blog, but it shouldn’t be the only thing on there. Provide plenty of SEO friendly content that grabs readers’ attention and you’ll keep visitors on your website longer and visiting more frequently, as well.

(And One Is Very Easy, Wanna Guess Which One?)

There are only 5 ways to increase the money you’re earning in your online business. Every method you might think of falls into one of these five categories. And at least one of these methods can put more money in your pocket within the next week – can you guess which one(s)?

1. Get more traffic to your offer
2. Increase the profit you’re making on each sale
3. Sell more stuff to your current customers
4. Cut your expenses
5. Make more sales

If you do all five, obviously you’ll see more money. But some of these take more effort than others, so let’s review them one by one:

Get more traffic to your offer

This is much easier said than done. You can tweak your SEO to rank higher, you can solicit joint ventures and recruit affiliates, you can hit the social media and even buy traffic. While all of these can be good, none of them tend to be quick or easy.

Increase the profit you’re making on each sale

You might do this by increasing the price of your products. Then again, increasing your prices might decrease your sales, so study the market before you do this.

If you’re providing a service rather than a product, it’s entirely possible you might earn more by charging more, since you can focus on gathering a few big (ie: well paying) clients rather than servicing a lot of low paying clients.

Sell more stuff to your current customers

This can be a really simple thing to do and it’s one of two that I recommend you work on this week. If you don’t have a one time offer, get one. Even if it’s not your product. Buy resale rights or strike a deal with another product owner.

Next, place links to offers on your download page and inside your products. Your download page is the first thing a customer sees after making a purchase, meaning they are still in a buying frame of mind and this is the perfect time to offer them something different but related. And the inside of your products is a great place to make recommendations for appropriate products and services.

Cut your expenses

Unless you have significant expenses to begin with, this won’t give you much return on your time. For example, if you switch hosting to a company that’s $3 cheaper a month, how much are you really saving? You’ll have to switch everything over, and if you’re happy with the service you have now you’re potentially switching to a less reliable service. Use caution with this one.

Make more sales

This might be the easiest of all, as well as the fastest to employ. You’re going to tweak your sales copy and even your sales process to increase your conversion rate. Think about this: You don’t have to drive any more traffic or even offer any more products to make more money with this. You simply need to increase the number of people who say yes.

Let’s say that right now your product sells for $47, it’s converting at 3%, and you’re getting 3,000 unique visitors to your sales page each month. If you increase your conversion rate by just 1%, you’ll make another $1,410 per month.

Best of all, you only need to tweak and test and improve once to reap these added sales for as long as you’ve got traffic going to that sales page.

The data is in – if you want people to pay attention to you online, you need to do the following two things:

1. Be your original self. Don’t be ordinary, be unusual. Be different.
2. Don’t talk about yourself much.

Here’s what we know: Tweets with uncommon words and phrasing get retweeted 4 to 5 times as much as common tweets. This means if you sound like everyone else and use the same words as everyone else, your message will get lost in the crowd of clones. The more original your style, the more likely people are to pay attention to your content and forward it. (And also remember your content, but we don’t have data on that.)

And it makes good sense. After all, if you’re saying the same things everyone else is saying, why would anyone retweet your stuff?

Now then, if you want more followers on Twitter, don’t talk about yourself so much. There’s a direct correlation to referencing yourself less and having higher follower counts. Not to mention the fact that your tweets are twice as likely to be retweeted if they’re not talking about you.

Bottom line? Be yourself, just don’t talk about yourself.