A Free eZine for Business Owners & Professionals by MediaPower & Mediastreams.ca

November 2008 issue

Dear  !-FIRSTNAME-!,

Did you know that the average Internet surfer loses interest and clicks away from your site in just 6 seconds if they don't see something that catches their attention? And did you also know that if they don't find what they're looking for in the next 16 seconds, they're gone - forever!

So what's your solution? How do you get them to stay longer?

That's Why They Invented Online Video!

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Thought for the Month

Which came first, The Chicken or the Egg? And which do you think comes first... The Web or the Video?

Driving tons of traffic to your website is all well & good, but how many of those visits result in a Sale?

Do visitors find your site interesting?

How long do they stay?

Will they ever come back?

Will They Buy From Your Website?

How do you get them to stay long enough to understand your message?

How can you get them to make a buying decision in such a short time?

The answer is...

Web plus Video!

in this issue...

• Main Feature: Web Video Marketing for Business Success

• Internet Marketing: Top 10 Search Engine optimization Tips

• New Media Advertising: Facebook Advertising

• Tip of the Month: Blogging

• Did You Know...

• New Service Announcement:  Live Event Webcasting

• Free Offers & Promotions: FREE TESTIMONIAL VIDEO ON YOUR WEBSITE...

• Featured Business: A small website promoting a Free Financial Seminar series,  made more useful by the use of streaming video... Simple Yet Effective!

• Laugh (and the world laughs with you - sometimes!)

• Helping People by Helping The Earth

• Contact Us

Websites are a highly cost-efficient and valuable promotional medium and a dull, static site is just a waste of your time, money and resources! Our sole mission is to raise awareness of powerful & inexpensive New Media promotional tools and how they are used to Convert Viewers into paying Customers!

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Feature Article

Ever so often I carry out an audit of a business website and tell the owners why they're not getting the results they want. Some of these sites are simple 'corporate presence' sites, others are e-commerce sites with shopping carts, and some are straightforward sales pitches with 'free offers'. Very few have used some rudimentary, do-it-yourself audio and video and even fewer have had their media professionally produced; And they wonder why they have not achieved the desired result...

Very few of these site owners have ever bothered to to reflect on why they have a website and what purpose it serves.

Part of the problem stems from a very narrow definition of what a website is: by thinking of your site as a brochure, a catalog or an e-commerce-site, they have fallen into the trap of being fixated on the 'What' rather than focusing on the 'Why' - Features instead of Benefits!

This focus on the 'What' is a detriment, worsened by SEO (search engine optimization) techniques which are only designed to drive traffic, without bothering to convert visitors into customers. Don't get me wrong, traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is so much more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers will tell you that their job is to deliver volume not sales - closing the deal is your job, and anybody who tells you that closing can be done by means of some automated machine, is doing you a huge disservice.

You want to guard against search engine tactics and second rate content that gets in the way of effectively delivering your marketing message, of telling your business story, of creating a memorable brand image, and above all of generating profitable business clients.

Web-Video is a Presentation Marketing Strategy you just cannot afford to ignore...

If you've been following marketing trends in general, you should be aware of the shift in thinking that has gripped the online world - the acceptance of Web-video as a one of the core Web-marketing tools. But like most things, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

The strength of Web-video as a presentation marketing strategy lies in its ability to transcend the Web's naturally bland (and even dull) environment, by incorporating verbal and non-verbal elements that deliver well-crafted, compact and memorable messages far more effectively than any other medium in use today.

Can a Web-video campaign solve every sales-related problem for your company? Of course not! But it can deliver the right message based on the 'Why' using cost effective, presentation techniques that position your business, brand your product, and generate more sales leads.

Don't kid yourself: you still have to close the sale. Don't expect to sit back and count your profíts while your website runs your business automatically. Automated sales may work for sites that sell commodity items and recognizable brands of merchandise backed by millions invested in advertising, but unless you fall into that category, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Businesses who want to use their websites as a marketing vehicle have to get past thinking of them in terms of merely digital print media.

Just as damaging is the over-reliance on search engine optimization or cute techie gimmicks that have little or no relationship to your primary goal of delivering a memorable message that sticks in the mind and stimulates your audience to take action.

A New Way of Thinking...

Start thinking of your website as a stage, a presentation and performance platform that allows your company to present your message to your audience in an entertaining, informative, and memorable manner.

Knowing the age, sex and hat size of the last ten thousand visitors to your site may impress some, but reams of statistical information on your visitors doesn't necessarily mean you know what that data means or how to use it effectively. In the same vein, tons of traffic generated by the latest SEO manipulation doesn't necessarily translate into business.

Tell Your Story In A Memorable Way that produces results...

There are many ways to present what you do and why your audience should care, but the most effective way is to deliver that information in person and in a story format. When people come to your website they are putting you on trial, judging everything thing you present to see if it is relevant, convincing, and if it resonates with their needs.

There is an article, in the 'Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, "Evidence Evaluation in complex decision making" which explains that when prosecutors tell their version of events to a jury in story-format they are able to elicit a 78% conviction rate, as compared to just 31% by lawyers who do not.

Make no mistake - when visitors arrive ato your website, you are on trial!

Effective Communication is All About the Performance...

Your message must be brief, powerfully delivered and to the point - a single point. Don't mix too many ideas and muddy the waters. Remember, you have 6 seconds to capture the viewer's attention and just about another 16 seconds to give them the information they are looking for.

Effective communication begins with a clear concept. If you don't have a well-defined, focused concept that deals with 'the why anybody should care factor', your communication will be irrelevant. Unfortunately, all you'll end up doing is confusing people and your message never gets heard, let alone understood, remembered or acted upon.

A professional presenter can do wonders for your message and of course a well thought out script  that is well written, entertaining, and informative is a must.

All these requirements can be met with the use of Web Video...

An expensive, movie-style production is not necessary, especially considering the relatively small, Web-friendly format.

All you need is 60-90 seconds of a well-crafted message on your home page that tells the story quickly and efficiently.

The short, compact and powerful video 'presentation' fulfills the conditions that make it easier to convert your visitor into a customer. It gets the entire point across in the short time span at our disposal, making sure that the viewer gets all the information they need.

Video engages, entertains, informs, motivates and finally, it persuades - and that's the power of video!

And last but not least - the Internet has opened up this huge opportunity to display our powerful video marketing messages in a way that is easily distributed, available to audiences anytime and anywhere - and which just by the way, is FREE!

Any business or professional not making full use of the incredible opportunity that the Internet presents... is just plain Nuts and deserves to lose!

'If You're Not Using It, You're Losing It!"

Watch Streaming Video in action....

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Internet Marketing

10 Tips for Search Engine Optimization

Any ethical Internet marketing consultant should tell you right up front, that achieving success through search engine optimization is dependent on a wide range of factors, has no guarantees and doesn't happen overnight.

It takes time but if you're willing to be patient, search engine optimization (SEO) will rank you higher on search engines like Google and help drive more traffic to your site.

Your 10 Search Engine Optimization Tips:

1. Know Your Target Audience

Before any code or content is written for the site, think about your target audience and keep them in mind at every stage of site development. Consider age, gender, and especially, think about the things that will make your target audience want to visit your site often.

2. Build a Clean, User-Friendly Site

Web users have very short attention spans and the decision to linger at your site or clíck the Back button is made in a few seconds. Build a site that's easy on the eyes and structure it so that information can be found quickly and easily. Use bulleted lists, subheads, bold important text but don't overdo it, and use clean, intuitive page layouts. Avoid building pages with frames, PDF's, and Flash. By the time these pages have loaded, your viewer is probably long gone. Use Video to engage the viewer's attention and keep them longer on your site - but be careful to see that your video loads quickly and streams smoothly.

3. Use Well-Written Content & Layout

Make sure the text content on your site is well-written, gets right to the point, and doesn't insult the intelligence of your readers with wild claims and exaggerations. Good content encourages readers to explore the other pages of your site and creates high-quality inbound links. Good layout makes it easier for viewers to get the point of your message quickly and efficiently. here's a tip - design your home page much like a magazine cover - with images, headlines and captions but little body text.

4. Let Keywords and Key Phrases Occur Naturally

Both search engines and readers alike will notice obvious keyword stuffing immediately and your credibility will suffer. Let the words and phrases that you want to optimize occur naturally in the content without overdoing it.

5. Use Short, Relevant URLs

Give your page URLs good file names which include the keywords optimized for that page and definitely avoid query strings. Try to limit page titles & filenames to relevant words separated by hyphens. For example, instead of "yoursite.com/productname" try "yoursite.com/heres-what-my-product-does"

6. Good Meta Descriptions

Keep meta descriptions between 200-250 characters and make them relevant to the page and informative. Good meta descriptions raise confidence that the page will contain the information that web users seek therefore making it more selectable.

7. Quality Inbound and Outbound Links

The quality of your inbound and outbound links far outweigh quantity for SEO purposes. Link farming and using paid links is frowned upon by search engines and readers alike. If someone clicks on an outbound link from your site, make sure that it takes them somewhere interesting and informative or they're not likely to return.

8. Limit Keywords and Key Phrases

Feature two or three optimized keywords and phrases on each page and again, make them occur naturally in the content. If you want to rank well for other terms, simply build other pages optimized for those terms.

9. Update the Content Regularly

Add new content to your site on a regular basis. It gives your site visitors something new to read and the search engines will be inclined to index your site more frequently.

10. Avoid Unethical SEO Techniques

Link farming, duplicated content, cloaking, spamdexing, and other attempts to fool search engine crawlers will get your site penalized and buried where no one can find it. Search engine algorithms are increasingly sophisticated and "Black Hat" SEO methods will destroy any possibility for ranking well.

These are just a few SEO tips that will help your site rank well. For a more thorough understanding of how these strategies and others work together to bring positive results, contact an experienced Internet marketing expert.

The best SEO tip of them all...  avail yourself of the services of an ethical search engine marketing consultant and you will save time and money.

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New Media Advertising

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is an auction system similar to Google AdWords. Advertisers bid on keywords after setting their own maximum daily budget, or they can bid on CPM basis as well for display ads. Ads, based on contextual relevancy, will then appear in various places on Facebook - in member news feeds, along the side of pages on the site, on user photo pages, etc.

But advertisers can also select their target audience, down to the color of their trousers. Bonobos, for example, a high-end men's pant retailer, makes a $120 pair of royal blue slacks with a white belt. Now any man with a discerning and caring spouse would be prevented from buying these pants, but Bonobos isn't targeting that guy, they're targeting Cubs fans.

When Bonobos set up their account, they were able to select the target geographic location (Illinois), age group, gender, and education level. All this information, of course, is available via Facebook profiles. They then targeted specific keywords like Cubs, Chicago Cubs, and Baseball.

As you can see, this is a bit more specific than the large net one has to cast into the vast search ocean that is the Internet. This kind of targeting can be enhanced with widgets that advertisers can create for Facebook. Schoen uses a coffee shop as an example of a business creating a calendar of events for their own page, upon which Facebook users can sign up as "fans" of the business, which also extends the brand.

The next step beyond this type of audience targeting for Facebook seems fairly obvious: behavioral targeting. Schoen said that while there were no specific plans currently on the table regarding behavioral targeting, Facebook was still considering behavioral options as part of their long-term strategy.

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Tip of the Month: Getting Your Blog Noticed

So you have started your own blog and filled with with great content. You sit back and wait for everyone to flock to your website and read what you have written. Right? Wrong!

Unless you happen to be a very well-known personality and everyone's dying to know what you have to say, or you say something incredibly outrageous or funny, nobody cares. Besides, even if you're that funny or witty, you still have to figure out how folks are going to find you in the first place.

What can you do to get your Blog noticed? Here are some things you can try when you are first starting out.

1. Email all your friends and tell them about your new website / blog. Get them to come and visit, give comments, and send your website address out to a few more of their friends. You can just add your blog address to the signature section of your email.

2. Join a forum or group and start taking part in discussions. Give constructive comments. Don't just say things like " please come and visit me." Eventually, people will come to recognize you and visit your blog to see what it is all about.

3. Visit other people's blogs and leave comments. Make it relevant to their blogs. The focus is about them, not you. There will be those who reciprocate and come to visit you.

4. Add links of blogs / websites that you like. The owners may then want to swop links with you and put your link up on their websites.

5. Submit your blog's URL (address) to search directories so people looking for blogs on a particular topic can find you.

6. Write articles with useful information and submit them to eZines. People with more interest in the topics you write about will come and visit your blog. Make sure you remember to write something in your author resource box that will attract people to click through to your site. Offering a free gift helps, I'm told. I tested it and there was a slight increase in the number of people who clicked to my site. But the article had to be reasonably well-received to begin with.

7. You can pay for your blog or website to be reviewed though I have my doubts about how accurate the review will be. After all, if someone is going to pay me $100 to review their site, I will be highly unlikely to say something bad about them!

8. You can pay for pay-per-click ads like those offered by Google or Yahoo. In theory, it should be a reasonable cost because you will only be charged when those who are interested click your ad. The costs for trying to secure certain words may raise the costs of this method though.

9. You can just pay a standard fee like $25 a month for someone to allow you to put your website ad up on their websites.
 

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Did You Know...

Your articles will be automatically made available to thousands of web site owners seeking free, quality content - and all you have to do is submit your articles once! This increases the amount of links to your site as well as enhancing your profile as an industry expert.

Don't underestimate the power of giving away free content. As your articles gain more exposure, don't be surprised if you're contacted by high-profile magazine and portal sites related to your industry looking for free articles to include on their sites, too!

Have you thought about getting a .TV web domain name to host your own videos online? Click here to see what one looks like...

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Upcoming Feature

LIVE EVENT VIDEOCASTING ON THE WEB

with WebcastLive.Mediastreams.ca

Extend Your Reach Allow audiences anywhere the chance to participate in your Event in Real Time & share your event "Live!" with your anyone, anytime, anywhere.

While Webcasting your Event Live is often used to broadcast sports or music events to the world, it is also a very powerful tool for companies who may wish, for example, to reach shareholders or maybe to have more of their workforce involved in a meeting - but without wasted time, effort or travel costs.

Live Event Streaming can send video and audio of any event being held Live - events like a company Annual General Meeting (AGM), weddings or just about any other event to viewers around the world, allowing them to watch it from the comfort of their own homes or offices. Anywhere you want to be, Streaming Media will help you broadcast successfully. You can now reach a much wider audience over a much larger geographic area anywhere in the world - an all this using a regular internet connection.                     Read All about it...

FREE VIDEO TESTIMONIAL ON YOUR WEBSITE

With your order of a "Walk-On Video" for your Website

Now you can harness the power of Streaming Video to generate more interest, Stand out from the Crowd and Convert Visitors into Customers.

Let your existing customers speak directly for you right from your very own website, using the most powerful form of customer testimonial ever!

This offer expires on December 31st. 2008

Call 604.926.5805

View examples of Video Testimonials and Walk-On Videos and see how they add selling power to any website

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Featured Website

A small and simple website, making good use of Online Streaming Video to promote a series of Free Seminars for Canada Financial.

click here to view the site and its 60 sec. streaming video

Simple Yet Effective!

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Humour

How the Recession has affected the US

click the PLAY button to watch the video

Helping People by Helping The Earth

Let's all of us take some corporate responsibility to keep our world clean and help the underprivileged at the same time

Click here and donate your old electronics to a worthy cause

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Contact Us

Mediastreams.ca is the Streaming Media division of MediaPower New Media Communications

Send us an email

Call 604.926.5805 or Toll Free 877.936.8377

visit us at: www.mediastreams.ca

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