All posts by drodecker

Because there is much less video content online than text content, your video has a greater chance of showing up in the search results than your web pages. That is, as long as your video is optimized correctly. Before you upload your video to YouTube, make sure your target audience can find it, by optimizing the video with relevant keywords. Here’s how.

1. Save your video to your computer. Put a keyword in the name of the file. For instance, in this example, the video is about local SEO so the name of the video is called “LocalSEO.”

2. Right click on the video and choose “Properties.” Click to the “Details” tab on Properties and add your keywords to the Title, Subtitle, and Tags sections.

videooptimizationproperties

3. Sign in to YouTube or create your account. Click the “Upload” button at the top right hand side of the page. Then choose “Select files from your computer” and choose your video file.

4. While your file is uploading, fill out the “Basic Info,” with your keywords. Give your video a descriptive, eye-catching title that includes an important keyword. Fill in your description with keyword-rich content and add relevant keywords to your tags. Choose the best category for your video and set your privacy settings to “Public.” Once it says upload complete, click “Save changes” at the bottom of the page.

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5. Your optimized YouTube video is now ready to share! Post it to your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit and anywhere else you can think of online to spread the word about your business.

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If your engagement on Twitter seems down, it’s time to wake up those followers and get them interested and re-tweeting again. Here are three great ways to interact with your Twitter audience so they will go from followers to customers before you can say “hash tag.”

  • Ask a question.  People love to express themselves on social media. So asking them a question that allows them to express their opinion will get them talking to you. Tweet a question and have them attach a hash tag to their answer. Who knows, you may be able to get a trending topic going.
  • Tweet a series. If you tweet that over the next few days you will be tweeting a series of “how-to’s” or sharing an exclusive peek at new products, people will keep checking back to see the next exciting tweet. People always say, leave them wanting more; tweeting a series will do just that.
  • Answer a common question. If yours is like most businesses, you probably get a lot of the same questions to your customer service representatives. Why not do a Twitter FAQ? Tweet out the answers to some of your more common questions and the people who follow you will not only appreciate it, they’re likely to get excited about their newfound knowledge and share the wealth with others by re-tweeting.

Try these three great Twitter engagement techniques and you’ll not only engage your existing followers but attract new ones.

Google recently made changes to its review interface to put less of a focus on the Zagat review system. The new interface allows review authors to choose words or phrases like “Excellent,” “Very Good,” “Good,” and “Poor-Fair” rather than Zagat’s 0-3 number system.

Zagat’s 0-3 numbering system may have been too confusing to users because it is a unique, unusual system compared to what many people are used to. Many ratings are based on a 1-5 scale, with 3 being the rating for an “okay” or “so-so” experience. However, on Zagat’s rating scale, 3 is the highest score you can give. Google has done away with this Zagat scale. The reviews interface now looks like this:

googlesreviewinterface

Google is still displaying the overall Zagat score on each business’s Google+ Local page. This score is a number between 0-30. However, the fact that Google has done away with the initial 0-3 Zagat scoring scale may show that it’s taking steps towards completely eliminating the Zagat scoring system. What do you think? Do you like Google’s Zagat scoring system or should Google do away with it?

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