So, just how do popular YouTube videos make money? The most obvious answer is that they can act as links that drive traffic to your website. Like updates on Twitter or being featured on social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, your website can benefit from exposure to a huge Internet audience. Video is a growing trend and you can use your creativity to help your site rank higher in search results. From product placement to running affiliate ads on your videos, there are many ways to monetize your YouTube efforts. Just like any other social media campaign, videos are a great utility in promoting your website.

Many have found that video blogs are catching on because you can easily promote yourself, your company, and your brand. Embeddable videos are user-friendly because they are easy to access and share. A popular video can help you gain leverage that you might not get otherwise from using standard PPC ads or SEO. The next time you see a viral video that you like, analyze some of their techniques and see how it can help you in your efforts. Do you have any videos that you’d like to share?

When it comes to Facebook marketing and Twitter advertising, which do you prefer? Both have advantages and disadvantages and social media marketing is still in its early stages of development. Users may have trouble keeping up with all the new changes as marketers struggle to find an effective strategy. An analysis from Compete, shows that Facebook is in the lead, but is Twitter a threat? I believe that Twitter and Facebook are strong competitors that and can be strongly beneficial when properly utilized.

People like to use Facebook because they can keep in touch with old friends and easily meet new ones. However, with Twitter, individuals and companies can build a strong following and promote their awareness of their brand. It is important to keep up on changes with both of these giants because it is hard to tell which has more potential. Taking it up a notch, viral marketing is also becoming prevalent on these social networking sites. For example on Twitter, Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a “popularity” contest and won! This may be a victory for Kutcher and embarrassing for CNN, but both parties certainly gained more followers. How are some pros and cons of both Facebook and Twitter:

Facebook
+ Rapidly growing number of users
+ Potential to use third party applications for advertising
+ Some report using Facebook messaging more than email to connect with real friends
- Takes time to learn how to navigate
- Requires testing and research to realize long term benefits
- Numerous applications and features could clutter your message

Twitter
+ Easy to use, navigate and use to promote or share anything
+ Cost advantageous in comparison to Facebook (for the time being)
+ More people can be exposed to your message without any formal confirmation or even logging in
- Limited to 140 character for each update
- Potential for abuse by spammers
- Too early to tell how effective it is in advertising

In the growing age of social media, researchers are scrambling to study how effective advertising on social sites really are. Research by SEO and paid search PPC firms find that users do spend time clicking paid ads on social networking sites. Some studies show that users look at the paid ads before clicking on the actual search results. In a recent study, 65% of participants clicked on sponsored ads during the first ten seconds of their search. But what does it mean and how are these studies useful?

These results are surprising and shows that social media has changed the way people normally search online. Traditionally, users look at search engine results starting at the top left hand side of the page and move downwards to the right. The first few search results that appear at the top or near the top of the page are most likely to be clicked. But this isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to search results on social networking sites. Users typically pay more attention to pay per click advertising before they scroll down to look at the fourth or fifth search engine result.

Since this is a growing online trend, it means that more research needs to be done in order to effectively understand how users respond to advertising patterns on social media sites. Facebook advertising can be a helpful tool for your company but you need to keep some things in mind:

• Do your research and perform an updated analysis on competitors and consumers. The more you know about how they behave, the better.
• Tests, tests, and more tests. Testing your ads will help you differentiate the winners and losers.
• Keeping track before and after an ad campaign. It is important to take notes on how much traffic you’re receiving before and after a campaign. Without numbers, it is impossible to quantify whether your efforts have been successful. If the results aren’t as good as you’d like, your notes will help you learn from mistakes

Have you ever found yourself fascinated by a fun flash game or an interesting video clip? These may have been part of an online viral marketing campaign. Through using online buzz marketing and word-of-mouth on social networking sites, marketers work hard to use clever techniques to capture online attention and increase brand awareness of a company. A notable marketing campaign is Blendtec’s Will It Blend? channel on YouTube. The company demonstrates their product’s strong blending abilities by testing different objects ranging from golf balls to the Apple iPhone in an infomercial type series of videos.

By using unique approaches, marketers can capture more attention than when using a more traditional marketing method. YouTube videos are particularly popular because they are embeddable and easy for users to pass along via links or on their blog. You don’t have to always use outrageous techniques or videos, but it can certainly help when it comes to attracting potential customers.

A focus on web design marketing can be just as crucial in attracting visitors to your site. Your website should always accurately represent your company. It should also display a consistent message that is easy for your clients to understand. Not only should your website be eye-catching, but also easy to navigate. In order to gain favorable traffic, it is also important for your site to be search engine friendly.

So, whether you want to try to build momentum by creating an innovative video clip or adapting a new web design, there are countless different options that you can look into. Remember to do your research and keep in mind that these options are not mutually exclusive. You can mix and match the different methods that work best for you and your company.

Your internet browser is probably full of bookmarks that you’ve never really gotten around to using. Every minute, there are so many new and interesting things that you can find online. Accumulating so many sites can quickly lead to a cluttered bookmark list. Did you know that social bookmarking can help you organize your favorite sites and make them easier to find? By using a social bookmarking site such as Delicious, you can organize and save links that you want to remember or share with others. As opposed to traditional bookmarking on your browser, this type of bookmarking is considered social because you can share it with the public, other users in your networks or specific users.

Social bookmarking is becoming more widely used in social media advertising. So how can you use this as a marketing tool? Utilizing these methods allows your website to gain exposure from Internet users allover the world. By using tags, your site is categorized to the keywords that are relevant to your business. A great advantage is that if others find your site useful, they may bookmark it and share it with other users on their network. Sharing your helpful website with others will improve your online reputation and help your business gain online recognition.

However, many people may have the misconception that bookmarking your site a few times will instantly boost your website traffic. This isn’t the case as you constantly need to update and maintain your social bookmarks. Your website won’t be successful in the online marketing environment if you are not actively networking with others. If you are unfamiliar with social bookmarking and other forms of social media advertising, it may be helpful to consult with an internet marketing firm. An experienced firm will help you with all your social media needs and keep up to date with the rapidly changing nature of internet marketing.

Search Engine Optimization is a term that regroups various optimization methods of website, blog, or forum in the search engine. SEO is effective in improving your website and also help you save time. Its objective is to adjust the position of your website in the results of a search engine such as Google and Yahoo on specific words corresponding to the main themes of the website. In general, we take into account that the best position a website could have is mostly when it is positioned or classified between the first ten responses of a search.

Nowadays, as the technology is improving, online marketing is also improving.

Have you ever thought of promoting your site, articles, and maybe officially attaching or connecting with your products? Then consider video marketing. When I first heard of website video marketing, the only thing that came straight up to my mind was uploading videos like we usually do on youtube, myspace, or even facebook.
However, video marketing is far more that just uploading videos. It is by far one of the most effective way to top of the search engine landing pages and it could give another touch of glam to your website and will surely set you apart. Also, adding new video is giving a new twist to your marketing strategy.

Here are some examples of Video Marketing:

•   Celebrity Rehab Commercial
•    Political Spot
•    Virtual Tour
•    Educational Interview

If you like to know more about website video marketing and how it works, feel free to check out this link:

http://emarketed.com/website-video-marketing.htm

DMM: Please give us your thoughts on social media marketing.

emarketed: First of all, thanks for taking the time to interview me. Social media has become more important in the last several years due to the fact that people are networking online and participate in groups and communities. From Ning to Facebook, these sites are allowing one to stay connected in a way that never before was possible. And now companies are finally starting to realize the importance of this and trying to use this to their advantage.

DMM: How are companies taking advantage of social marketing?

emarketed: From HP to Dell, pages and groups are being started that offer information related to certain demographics that are getting people to join in on the dialogue with whatever topic is being discussed. At this stage it’s important that these companies don’t take advantage of this and bombard users with advertisements and promtions.  If they do users will see through this and leave. But the branding is happening at this point which is key to these comapnies.

DMM: Can you give us an idea of how emarketed has used social media marketing?

emarketed: Yes of course, we recently launched a new site called Divine Forces Media which is an online radio station powered by a custom CMS software that we developed called Organic CMS. The site was developed in a way that would allow users to connect with each other. We also assisted in their myspace campaign and they now have over 6,000 friends.  We have also worked with the founder of this site on blogging and email marketing.

More excerpts from this interview in a future post. Thanks for reading!