Want to know how to use video to harness the power of social media?

On Wednesday the 22nd September at Forte Mandurah Quays Resort I’ll be hosting a seminar for the Professional Women’s Network on “How to use YouTube to enhance SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and drive more traffic to your website.

The PWN has opened its doors up to the men again so invite your partners, bosses, husbands and friends to this “too good to miss” event.

Here’s what you can look forward to:
1. Introduction – Samples of successful YouTube campaigns and channels
2. Choosing your topics – what do your customers want to see?
3. Shooting your video – How to make a great 2 min video
4. Creating you own YouTube Channel – Where you will host your epic productions
4. Optimising for SEO – (This is where the power is!)
5. Building a base of viewers – Creative ways to “seed” your video
6. Embedding videos into your website and social media – Sharing the video and creating links.

$15 for Chamber Members, $20 for Non Members
Includes canapés – drinks can be ordered from the bar.

Bookings are essential.

Please book by emailing paulinebright@actioncoach.com
OR phone Pauline Bright on 0413 739196

There have been 4 major events this past year that have changed the importance and the effectiveness of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
1) Yahoo & Google announced that they no longer use key words and meta tags in their searches that effect search engine rankings.
2) Facebook passed Google as the most visited website on the Internet.
3) The phrase “Facebook” became the most searched word typed into search engines.
4) Google created their own social networking site, Buzz.

SEO is still important but not as important now as SMO (Social Media Optimisation). With Facebook recently overtaking Google as the most visited website on the internet shows that people using the Internet are the ones that are dictating where it’s future is heading and what it’s going to be used for. Searching for information will still be a part of life on the Internet, but entertainment, socialising and sharing experiences is what most users are now looking for and doing online. And the scramble is now on to take advantage of this shift.

Brands and companies need to have a social media presence. This shows that it’s now more important for brands and companies to have their message on social media, it’s now not good enough what companies and businesses write about themselves on their own website, it’s what others are saying about them and how their message is being spread through social media.

This ‘shifting of the cheese’ shows that users of the Internet are the ones that are unconsciously but effectively controlling and designing the way the the internet will be used in the future and how we will interact with it.

Businesses must now combine both SEO and SMO if they wish to be found and have an effective online presence or they run the risk of not getting their message heard.

Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the US’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

With 450 million users globally (and millions more being added each week) Facebook is dominating the web in unparalleled ways. Yet, even as the social network has steadily grown over its short but remarkable history, many brands have remained on the sidelines of the social media revolution.

Facebook was the most visited site on the web for the week ending on March 13, 2010, surpassing even Google in week-long stats for the first time in history, according to Hitwise. The shift in user habits and audience targeting is palpable and it provides marketers, brand managers, issue advocates, and political campaigns today with an age old choice: Adapt and change or face irrelevance and extinction.

Realizing the Critical Value of Facebook

In the modern day maze that is the digital and social media realm, these lessons were again on display as the online community debated the value of the new Facebook user statistics this past week.

Viewed simply, the cheese moved again this month –- and just as intelligent companies adapted their marketing and communications models for the advent of Google over the last decade, Facebook’s dominance has forced another “change or become extinct” moment. To thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace, corporate communicators must understand that the shift now underway is just as powerful as the one that transformed Google into the modern Yellow Pages and turned a Silicon Valley start-up into a $200 billion everyday necessity.

Far too many executives still see Facebook as a vast, uncontrollable outpost for college slackers –- one better equipped for picture sharing and random life updates than corporate reputation management, crisis response, and brand bulletproofing.

But the numbers don’t lie. Almost half-a-billion users each spend an average of nearly 6 hours per month on the site –- inhabiting networks that are largely free of corporate messaging, spam, and expensive advertising. This ought to make at least a few corporate titans rethink that next $1 million Super Bowl ad buy (even if Google did buy its first in 2010).

3 Ways Your Brand can Get Started on Facebook

Facebook users are openly sharing their life’s passions, personal interests, and their affinity –- or lack thereof –- for corporate brands, political candidates, and the key public policy stances. In effect, they are openly sharing every bit of marketing data a 21st century company covets.

For those still wary of change but now ready to dip their toe into the waters and begin to understand and benefit from the power of social, there are three free and relatively painless steps to begin the journey through the social media maze:

First, evaluate your current advertising efforts and identify how they can best be tailored to Facebook. Consider allocating 10% of your current Google AdWords or online advertising budget to a 90-day trial run on Facebook. Be sure to develop clear benchmarks for success, and remember, unlike Google AdWords, Facebook ads rely on both keywords and a variety of demographic information –- information you no doubt have already identified as key indicators of your target audience(s). You can now put this information to use to further micro-target your advertising buy, narrow the net you are throwing in the online marketplace, and increase the return on your investment.

Second, conduct a survey of your employees to see who is already on Facebook and thus, who may be your company’s most social media-savvy employees. You may find that your workplace is brimming with talent just waiting to be unleashed. For now, these future brand ambassadors may be ideal candidates to develop your Facebook presence and initial advertising program.

Finally — and this may seem obvious — become a face on Facebook yourself. Become familiar with the site, its features and the value hundreds of millions of people find in the world’s most populous online community. It may ultimately not be for you personally, but as with almost every new platform, the best way to understand its value is to give it a try yourself.
For those still looking for meaning in the numbers released earlier this month, the message is clear: Not only has the cheese moved again, the entire creamery has up and relocated. It won’t be coming back. And no manner of hemming and hawing is going to change that fact.

This is a great article from Bernie Boggs an Internet marketing strategist based in Massachusetts in the US. It all about building the right team of people around you and defining roles for social media marketing.

Having the Right People on the Bus
Successful social media marketing requires people who understand it, embrace it, and know how to work within the culture and technology. People need to understand the lifecycle and the types of community involved in social media to better understand the opportunities and the risks.

Roles should not only be well-defined and documented, but they should be discussed in depth. Everyone on the team must be on board with his or her roles and responsibilities. Then, the heavy lifting begins. In some cases, heavy lifting has been in place for some time, but now you are in a better position to turn it up a notch with better clarity of roles. Ongoing discussions about roles and responsibilities should occur as your social media plan matures. Changes may be needed as your plans evolve.

However, what if you realize you don’t have the right staff for social media marketing? The fact is some people just don’t understand social media. Sometimes the barrier is demographic, but most often, it’s just an “I don’t get it” attitude. Worse yet, some may resist it for any number of reasons. There are still many people who are stuck in the traditional marketing paradigm, and they are not ready to shift to the new social media paradigm. Don’t fret—the laggards will eventually get on the social media train because the forward momentum of the culture and the technology will sweep them along. The real problem is this: what if they’re holding you back today? If you face that scenario, here are some ideas to consider.

Give It Time
Don’t force everyone to jump into a social media strategy overnight. An overnight commitment with a take-no-prisoners mentality can produce corporate culture shock. You run the risk of becoming a maverick, which can trigger counterproductive results. The best way to win people over is to approach them gradually with small but highly visible wins. Assess the people on your team and determine who is best suited to contribute to your social media strategy. People have strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. It’s your job to recognize who may embrace social media and who may shun it.

People who embrace social media tend to be social. If this sounds a bit trite, hear me out. Being social doesn’t necessarily mean being gregarious, boisterous, or the life of the party. Social people are self-confident people, even if quietly so. Their self-confidence may be limited to a specific area of expertise, but they are confident about something. I’ve noticed that some people who might otherwise shun a public social setting are often very social in online social media situations. The key is to recognize the personality attributes of the people in your organization, as well as to recognize their domains of expertise and passions, and then convince them to dip their toes in the social media waters. Asking someone to display his or her expertise or passion in a way that helps your organization meet its strategic objectives is giving that individual an opportunity to shine. For some, it’s a new opportunity he or she may embrace willingly. Find the people who will embrace these opportunities and recruit them to your team. If necessary, move people around on your team. Along the way give people new opportunities where they can achieve tangible results and be recognized by peers and management. People who like to write and create content about specific topics and have some level of creativity or technical acuity are good candidates for your team. The bottom line is this: if you don’t have the right people on the bus, your social media strategy will not go very far. Defining the roles of the people on your team is my next point.

Definition of Job Roles
At some point, it will be wise to redefine job roles so that they reflect your commitment to a Marketing 2.0 strategy. If you consider social media marketing additive, to which employee’s plate do you add it? This will be different in each organization. In some companies, the CEO embraces social media by blogging or being active in a social network. This is a best-case scenario, because the CEO can set the tone for the rest of the organization. In most cases, you’ll need to allocate time away from one activity in order to allow time for social media marketing activities. In the beginning, always start small. It may or may not be too difficult to decide to cut back on some activities that don’t yield results. Don’t continue doing something just because you’ve always done it that way or because it always produces the same results. You do know this is the definition of insanity, don’t you?

Social Media Staff Requires a Blend of Skills
Social media staff skills require a blend of creativity, writing, organizational skills, analytics, and teamwork. A commitment to a social media plan requires a formal review of people’s job descriptions and in some cases revising job descriptions to reflect allocation of their time. A social media plan should leverage the individual talents of staffers while orchestrating them to work as a team to achieve results. As your social media strategy evolves, so should your staff’s skills, titles, the way they spend their time, and the way you recruit new team members. In the years to come, social media skills will be prominently displayed on resumes. In fact, they already are. Many hiring managers check candidates’ activities on the web to assess their subject matter expertise based on how proactive they are as a blogger and social networker before even considering them as a viable candidate.