You Tube in Your Sites

A very popular avenue many businesses take these days is to create a video representing their business their products or some aspect of the services they provide.  In this post I will talk about how to get your videos played on You Tube.

GREAT CONCEPT
= GREAT VIDEO

The video should not just be a static, boring synopsis of the services you provide, it need to be dynamic and interesting, something somebody wants to watch.  For example, if you sell construction equipment, you could produce videos of stunt drivers doing freestyle tricks in a Bobcat. Or perhaps a clothing company could create video fashion shows of embarrassing styles that were once popular. You don’t have to create traditional TV commercials to get people talking about your brand.

YOU TUBE IS HUGE

The one thing that people do not realize is that You Tube is actually the second largest search engine in the world, Yahoo and Bing are smaller.  So a natural thing to do is going to be to get a video (or series of videos) out there and get your name in that directory.  So once you have made a great video that is great and has a lot of marketable stuff in it, then you need to get it out there as fast and as often as possible.   This is where a series of videos in very important, because it creates many more opportunities for your page to be found on You Tube.  There are also a lot of ways to optimize your You Tube video through its name and description, I won’t be getting into that right now but if you want to do some further research on that try this link: 10 Tips for You Tube.

SYNDICATE, SYNDICATE, SYNDICATE!

Syndicate your video.  There are tons of video websites like You Tube out there… VIMEO, MetaCafe, DailyMotion just to name a few.  Uploading to these site also creates more opportunities for your content to get in front of your audience.

These are some basic tools you can use to increase traffic to your website and to your videos and hey if you are interested in getting your business into You Tube and beyond don’t hesitate to contact me anytime.

Money Grows on Trees!

Recently I got a call from a client inquiring about a potential website project.  They wanted to build an online auction site.  Now at first glance you would think, that is really difficult and you would either have to develop something completely  from scratch (which would cost a ton) or hire some high-priced web guru.

Why Reinvent the Wheel?

To be completely honest websites are one of the most overpriced items any business can buy.  Often website designers give you the impression that what they are making is something you can’t get anywhere else, like they are the experts and will make your site “from scratch”.   The truth is that there are hundreds of themes, applications and plugins that designers use to create websites.  Often these plugins are free (open source) or sell for a relatively low cost.  Most designers will find these applications and customize them to match your needs, this does take some knowledge and expertise, but the ability needed is nowhere near what most designers will tell you.  For instance with this auction site, I was able to find the exact plugin that was a complete solution that had its own content management system built in for a one time fee of $850.  That is not much considering that most web designers would probably charge at least $5000 for that kind of project.

It used to be that business owners were OK with paying a huge up front fee for the design under the premise that: the more they are prepared to pay, the more ‘unique’ their site can be.  This however is no longer the case.  I have seen countless websites that cost a couple thousand dollars that aren’t really any better than one you can get for a couple hundred dollars.

What are you paying for a website designer to do?

The answer to this question depends on your needs, most websites have the same basic design and function… a splashy homepage with lots of options and things to click on, a header that carries the design through the rest of the site, content area that is easy to read and find, site navigation that makes sense.  What else is there?

So basically what you are paying someone to do is

• Know where to find the solutions you need
• Customize them to fit your site.

Content Makes Websites Great

What good is an expertly designed website that has no content or offers anything useful for site visitors?  One fact about any website is that content drives traffic to your site!

• You need to have stuff that people want to see or read
• Make it easy for people to get to it

My Advice

I always tell people you should pay the least amount possible to make your actual website, and put the most time and effort in making your products relevant, having superior customer service and doing the things that your business does well.  If these things work everything else will fall into place.

In my next post I will talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how you can get the most bang for your buck to drive more traffic to your site.

Wedding Website from Olean Digital Video

I am pleased to announce that we have upgraded the online version of our wedding videos (& the website itself).

The new format offers our clients better quality in the videos themselves as well as an enhanced interface where user can post messages, comments, even photo galleries.  The site also contains a clock that is set to count up from the wedding day.

We also have plans to expand this service to include pages for clients other than those we make videos for and an online directory of local wedding businesses.

You can see an example at www.wnybrides.net/billandheather

URL if embed doesn’t work:

http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=07a995bd440e13dde971

Journey Church

Visit Journey Church in Cambridge, MA near Harvard University.

www.jcboston.org

Passwords: Not just a technicality

I can’t count how many times I’ve clicked “forgot password”, passwords can be annoying. I this information age, we need a password or PIN everywhere we go. We have so many that we can’t keep track of them all. We forget to update them; and when we do, it’s difficult to come up with effective ones that we can still remember.

More often than not I have talked with people who, for ease of remembering, always use the same identical password for every time they are asked to create one, whether it be online banking, facebook or whatever.  In my opinion this is a dangerous process.  Imagine having one singular key that opened your car, your house, your safe (if you have one), you business office… etc.  You are at the gym, you drop off your keys so you can get a lock from the front desk, then you find someone has taken your key.  What now, whoever has your key now potentially has access to everything!

Another important facet to developing good practices with passwords is called “password strength”.  It is kind of self explanatory, a strong password is one that is hard to figure out.  For instance if my password for everything was “dave”, that would be vulnerable to various types of hacks trying to gain access to my information.  However a strong password like “H5et*6S” presents a much tougher obstacle for anyone trying to break down the door into your information.  I can’t tell you how often I have seen companies or individuals with passwords like “2468″.  Remember, simple passwords are easy to remember, both for you and for anyone trying to get in.

To help you here are a couple links to articles that have helped me in keeping my personal information my own.

Wikipedia “Password Strength”

The Simplest Security: A Guide To Better Password Practices

Cool WordPress Logo

As you might have figured out from some of the websites I have designed, I typically use WordPress, not just as a blogging tool, but also as a content management system.

I recently got an email from a client who said when they were in the back end (admin section) of WordPress they had a problem with their menus not expanding properly, and the “add image” screen in the post editor was not functioning.  I had encountered this problem before and after searching  a number of forums and the WordPress Codex, I had trouble pinpointing a solution to this problem.

After a while I finally figured out what my problem was.  It was actually quite simple, I had upgraded WordPress to the most recent version, what I hadn’t realized is that I had a few plugins that needed to be upgraded as well.  So the plugin conflict was causing the admin panel to be “broken”.  That is actually a typical problem if you ever come across something that is a bit “squirrely” in the back end of WordPress, check the plugins!

Digital Photography School

These days pretty much everybody takes pictures on a regular basis. Whether you are a professional photographer, a real estate agent, or you just are the official “family photographer”, you can improve your skills by learning from others who have been there.

I found this particular link quite a while ago and thought I would share it with everyone. The Digital Photography School is an awesome blog that offer daily information including quick photography hints and tips as well as product reviews and post production methods and tutorials. There is also a forum where you can submit questions and search for user added tips and tricks.

Please subscribe to this technology blog, as I plan on adding many interesting posts. I plan to post pointers for Photoshop users (and other web/graphics/video software products), equipment & software reviews, links to sites that will help you as your business grows, and also some stuff that is just plain fun!

Thanks again for visiting, and I hope you have great year in 2010!