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By Jill Whalen in Featured

SEO2My husband and I were talking the other night about one of his pet peeves: When people start exercising and eating healthier, they usually measure their success by how much weight they’ve lost (or not) as shown to them by their trusty scale. It annoys him because, while losing weight is one sign that you’re doing things right, after a certain point, it can only tell you so much.

It reminded me of my own pet peeve: how people usually measure the success of their SEO work by checking how well their site ranks in the search engines. Yet, similar to weight loss being a poor main goal for your health and fitness regime, where your pages rank for specific keyword phrases is also a poor main goal.

Healthier Body – Healthier Website

Your principal goal when eating in moderation and exercising regularly should be to become healthier overall, and ultimately to live a longer and more satisfying life. And your chief goal with an SEO program should be to create a better overall website and make more money from it – which, incidentally, can also make for a more satisfying life! ;)

Writing articles nobody is really interested in about the history of your products is like eating lots of junk food. It’s empty calories. There’s no value in it to anyone (except perhaps the donut store) and it keeps you from eating the good stuff. Writing keyword-filled content just for the sake of search engines works the same way: It keeps you from adding true value to your website. While you can try to cover your big ole body in a floral mu’umu’u, let’s face it, you’re still out of shape underneath it all.

By Chris Bucholtz in Featured

crmBefore you embark on the five steps, make sure you understand the customers you’ll be working with and the social media ecosystem you’ll be working in. Other important considerations are time and resources. How much staff time can you spare for social CRM (SCRM)? And what budget will you have for sentiment monitoring and listening tools?

Step 1: Find Your Customers

You need to learn how your customers relate to social media. Many people connect to the major social media sites which have broad appeal and large user communities. Facebook, for example, has 750 million users. In 2011, the site’s fastest growing age segment was 55+.

A second class of sites attracts people based on their interests. There are social networking sites for all kinds of people, from schoolteachers and sports fans to parents and programmers. A simple Web search reveals many of these sites.

You also need to keep an eye on sites that might have a peripheral connection to your products and services. For example, the customers of an outdoor equipment company may frequent a site dedicated to adventure travel. You want to be where your customers are and when it comes to social media that means following their interests not just their buying habits.

Step 2: Learn The Language

Once you’ve located the places where customers are either talking about you or about things that relate to your business, don’t jump in right away. Spend some time observing how the group works, who its leaders are, and the kind of language and tone the members use with each other. Your first step is to behave like you deserve to be part of the conversation. Take Mark Twain’s advice, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than it is to speak and remove all doubt.”

Step 3: Listen

Once you’ve located the sites where your customers congregate and spent some time getting a general idea of how they talk with each other, dig a little deeper. If there are subjects that you want to follow and the site has search capability, take a look at what’s been said in the past about those topics. This is listening in the social media world; it should precede participation.

Since you’ve probably identified multiple social media channels to track, how do you listen in on all of these conversations? If you have the resources, consider a staff member dedicated to social media. That person can keep track of the sites you’ve chosen, coordinate responses to conversations, and incorporate data from conversations into your CRM system. Don’t engage in more channels than you can monitor effectively.

Listening is made easier by social media monitoring and sentiment measuring tools. Listening tools can tell you what’s being said and where; sentiment tools can gauge the general tone of the conversations that mention you. Both can increase your social media productivity.

Your company also has great monitoring tools already in place — your employees. Many will use social media outside of work, and they may run across topics that pertain to your business. Employees should be encouraged to report anything they learn to the person you’ve designated to monitor social media.

Step 4: Engage

When your business is ready to engage with customers in a social media conversation, establish clear rules about who does the talking and where they do it. Someone from service could participate in conversations on a site where service issues are discussed. An engineer would be appropriate on a site geared toward developers.

Look for places to engage that will have an impact. If you see the opportunity to make a difference in a conversation, jump in — even if it’s only to say that you don’t know the answer to a question but can find someone who does. Then be sure to follow up. That level of authenticity coupled with tangible assistance builds loyalty with the person you helped. It also establishes you as a reliable participant in the community.

You can also start your own conversations. You could begin with a legitimate question about your customers and what they’re thinking. This approach can deliver actionable intelligence more quickly and inexpensively than a formal survey. Don’t make these the only conversations in which you participate. You’re there to participate as a peer not an interrogator.

Step 5: Make Use Of What You Learn

You can use two types of social media information: the data you uncover in conversations and the data that your customers and potential customers volunteer in setting up their profiles. Don’t focus only on the latter. It ignores the truly social aspects of social media and the richer information that conversations can bring to your attention. It’s also a source that’s likely to diminish as social media users become more sophisticated in their use of privacy controls.

There is no technology that can automatically detect the social media data relevant to your business and sort it by your customers or accounts. People engaged in conversations and monitoring social media sources will need to manually incorporate important information into customer records.

But the use of social media information doesn’t stop there. It also involves careful process design. For example, since a call for help in social media is heard by many people, the transfer of responsibility from social media monitor to designated service contact to the service personnel who can respond is vitally important. The same is true for sales, marketing, and product development.

Finally, make sure your employees know that social CRM can be an all-hands exercise that benefits the entire company, just like traditional CRM.

Chris Bucholtz is a recognized influencer in customer relationship management. He’s Editor in Chief of CRM Outsiders, and a founding editor of both Forecasting Clouds and InsideCRM. To find out more about how to build your business and empower your employees with CRM Software Solutions please visit http://www.sugarcrm.com

By Terri Seymour in Featured

bloggingWe’ve all heard the phrase “content is king” but this isn’t always true. First of all, the content has to be quality, well-written content and you also have to know what to do with the content to make it king. Years ago writing articles and submitting them to article directories and ezines was the best way to promote with content but things have changed.

Today, with blogs being so popular and powerful, the best way to use content is to provide guest posts for bloggers. Below are ten tips to help you become a successful guest poster.

1. Quality Content – Be sure to write an effective guest post. The content has to benefit the visitors of the blog where you will be posted. Don’t try to pass off a badly written, self-promoting sales letter as quality content. All this will do is ruin your reputation. Write something to make people think or provide really helpful information. That type of content will really help the readers and give them a reason to check out you and your site/blog. So, you, the readers and the blog owner will all benefit.

2. Form Partnerships – Work with the blog owner. Let him know that if he uses your guest post you will work very hard to promote your post so as to bring the blog more traffic helping you both. Take time to discuss with the blog owner what his readers are looking for and what interests them.

3. SEO – Take the time to do some search engine optimization on your post. Don’t just leave it to the blog owner. Optimize your post with relevant keywords in the title and body. If your post does well with Google you could continue to receive traffic, and sales for a long time to come.

4. Use Images – Enhance your post with images such as graphs, tables, or any image that will bring depth and more strength to your content. This will grab more attention from the reader thus increasing the chances for your post to be read and your links to be visited.

5. Original Content – Most blog owners will probably request original content that has not been submitted or published anywhere else on the net. Be sure to follow the owner’s guidelines. Don’t try to sneak in an article you have posted elsewhere because the owner will probably check.

6. Proper Format – Discuss with the blog owner which format they would like your post to be. Some blog owners will prefer the post to be written in specific font, size, etc. If you can provide the specifications they need, it will save them a lot of time and work.

7. Respond to Comments - Watch for comments on your post and when they do come in be sure to respond to them properly. Encourage interaction on your post to increase popularity and bring the blog owner more traffic which, in turn brings you more traffic.

8. Don’t Just Be a Poster – Be sure to read and research the blog for which you will be posting. Know what type of posts the owner looks for and what type get the most reaction from the readers. You want your post to get a lot of attention and interaction as well. Link to other posts in the blog that might be pertinent to your post. This will help with SEO as well as show the blog owner that you have taken the time to read his blog.

9. Look for Something Unique – When you take the time to read the blog you can find topics that might not yet have been tackled on that blog and you can offer a wider scope of information for the blog owner’s readers. This will show the blog owner that you can fill a void in his blog that has yet to be filled.

10. Show Some Personality – Don’t make your content just a bunch of facts and statistics. Put thought into it and add depth and meaning. Use your experience and knowledge to add layers of interest. By adding a little of your personality to your content, you are providing something that no one else has on the blog.

Becoming a successful guest blogger might take some time and work, but it will be worth it for the blog owners and for you and your business. Blogs are the now of marketing and being able to get your content on a good number of quality blogs should increase your traffic and sales dramatically!

Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com

By Julie Ann Ross in Featured

SEO2Social media SEO has increased in importance, thanks to some changes in Google’s algorithms, most recently the Google Panda update. What Google Panda has done is made social media connections a bigger part of their SEO algorithm – in other words, the more connections a person has, the more likely some of their material they have read or recommended will show up in the person’s search engine results page.

And social media SEO looks like it is going to become more important with the introduction of new tools like Google+.

For example, Craig is looking for information on vacuum cleaner repairs. If Craig is not logged in to Google, or does not have many connections, Google will present him with the most objective posts that rely on the typical search engine optimization techniques. He will most likely be presented with the best optimized site about vacuum cleaner repairs.

But, if Craig is active on social networks like Twitter, is connected to a lot of people on Google+, and even has someone in his Google Contacts list, Stacy, who has a keen interest in vacuum cleaner repair shops, then anything Stacy has said about vacuum repair is going to appear on Craig’s search engine results. If Stacy has left a comment on a vacuum repair page, or shared a vacuum repair blog post, or even written a vacuum repair blog post herself, then her results will show up on Craig’s page.

This will have two positive effects on social media SEO. One, the more connections a business has with potential customers, the more likely they are to show up on the search engine results page. And two, people who write blog posts about vacuum repair can finally show their faces in public without being embarrassed.

Social media SEO takes advantage of the connections between a searcher and their networks, because people tend to believe and trust testimonials and opinions of their friends more than they do of complete strangers. But they believe and trust testimonials of complete strangers over the information provided by traditional marketers.

The implications of this for traditional marketers is that they may no longer bark at their customers with new special offers and promises of big savings and crazy prices. Customers are no longer looking, at least on social media, for typical marketing behavior. They are skipping TV
advertisements, leaving commercial radio for satellite radio and Internet radio, and blocking ads on websites with software, all to avoid being slimed with traditional advertising methods.

These days, customers want relationships with their companies. They want to hear from companies they trust, and that have provided value to them in the past. They want to connect with companies that will not send them constant advertisements or pester them with needless communication. They would rather work with companies who help them answer questions, solve problems, and help them fix issues.

This means that for social media SEO to truly work, businesses need to connect with potential customers via social networks like Google+, Twitter, and Facebook (if appropriate), and communicate with them in the manner they want, not the way the marketing department thinks it should be. The businesses need to create a valuable newsletter, add people to their email list, and ask them to add the business email address to their white list. They also need to frequently write blog posts that address different questions and problems these potential customers are facing.

As these businesses connect with these customers via social media, it also means the business will show up with a high search rank whenever these customers do a search for a topic the business can handle.

Article by Julie Ann Ross. With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Ventures has refined the social media SEO Expert Formula. http://www.rostinventures.com/ offers social media marketing services that are affordable and easy to access and are combined to build the formula that drives search engine ranking through Social Media Optimization, Online Reputation Management, Social Marketing and web 2.0 communities and resources.

By Karl Walinskas in Featured

business1Substandard business reports don’t attract the reader’s eye, they neither inform nor entertain, and worst of all, they don’t get action. Don’t let the author of the next bad report in your company be you.

Have you ever been forced to review a business report that was so monotonous you had to jab yourself with a pin every two minutes to avoid fading into rapturous states of unconsciousness. Maybe you didn’t pierce yourself in time and your cranium hit the desktop, allowing a bit of drool to leak onto the report. Guilt immediately sets in because you know that the author worked hard on the thing and that the subject matter is important. Regrettable for that guy, because the other key readers of his report won’t be as sensitive as you– they’ll just line their coops with it. You silently have a good laugh and form a wicked grin at the notion– bird cage liner– funny stuff. The grin gets wiped off of your face in an instant when a second thought invades your brain– you have a report due next week to hand into the same crew. What will you do — WHAT WILL YOU DO?!

Well, have no fear. There is hope for you beyond this, and you don’t need to be the Ernest Hemingway of business report writing. All you need is a little design, a tinge of confidence, and some courage!

HEADINGS DOMINATE THE DAY

Many business reports get the pet shop treatment because they suffer from a lack of cosmetic appeal. Yes, your company report needs to look beautiful. It also needs to be accessible, just like it’s a web site, so it is simple to navigate. Wanna hear some unsettling news? Most viewers of your report, no matter how much labor you put into it or how impressive your data reduction is, will not go through it. Oh, they ‘ll browse it, take stock of it, and try to get something out of it, but it ain’t a best-seller and it won’t capture their attention. Make it easy for them to get something out of it. Use headlines that clearly define the parts of the report. You know what I mean, stuff like Suggestions, Budget, and Financial Interpretation. It sounds so basic, but many people skip this one. Appropriate headlines act like visual hyperlinks in the document, allowing the reader to quickly recognize sections and check only what she’s engaged in. Your headlines should be clear, without deceiving the viewer as to what is in the following section. They should be bolded and a larger font size so they really attract attention. Don’t presume to take a chance on the titles though, and use a header that’s a bit unusual, because it adds to the charm. Recommendations are better than Summary, but Actions for Future Growth blows away Recommendations. Get it?

PUT THE BOTTOM LINE FIRST

Here’s a crazy, contrarian notion for you. Most business reports are written in a silly order. They start with an Intro that gives record of the problem at hand, and then start covering their procedure, and so on. Challenge: people who read business reports already know, in most cases, that material. For them, this filler is just getting in the way of the real stuff. Try starting by putting the bottom line first. That’s why a good report should start with an Abstract or Executive Synopsis. Here’s what we did, here’s the results, and here’s what we suggest you do about it. After that 1/2 page to 1 page overview, try out your Recommended Steps section. Usually, this is what is truly essential to the viewer– what should we do about it? “Wait a minute, Karl, are you saying we cannot include the sacred Introduction?” No, there’s always someone who’ll want to read that as well, but I’m suggesting, putting it at the end. This leaves the heavy data stuff still in the middle, where it fits.

DEMONSTRATE SOME HUTZPAH!

Remember way back in the last paragraph when I said the head honchos want to read the Recommendations first. Re-read it! Many professionals will shy away from this section and remain on the fence because they don’t want to be judged. HORSE FEATHERS! Show some courage and tell people what your interpretation of the outcomes is. You can be mistaken and the world won’t reach an end. If you’re fairly intelligent and have functioned well for the company, this is what they want out of you anyway. Just be big enough to recognize that you could be wrong and if the company goes another direction, that’s OK too. Look, the report is for the world but there is no legislation that says you can’t gain from this golden opportunity to extend your ideas and suggestions, so take a stand and watch the value of your report, and you, go up.

SUPPORT IT, BABE

You know, if there is one item that won’t fly in a business report, it is the unsupported assertion. Even though most CEOs won’t read the whole thing and crawl through the analysis and facts stuff, you’d better have it in there for the boss who just lunched on a burrito and took your report into the throne room. Somebody will have the time on their hands, and if the rest of your report excels, hopefully the need to check out the fine details behind your views. Don’t get caught being an empty suit. That’s worse than not voicing an opinion, because now you’re a loose cannon with a lazy streak. The data should support your points and it should do so in multiple ways. If research doesn’t do it (some issues won’t have “data” per se) then back yourself up with like opinions from professionals within the company or in the field that is being examined in the report. At least that way, you’re in good company. Albert Einstein said you should always “back up your convictions with evidence.” I’m absolutely sure of it. See how effective that is?!

DON’T SPEAK IN THE 3RD PERSON

Another component of bad report creation that literary talking heads call the official style is speaking everything in the third person. Unless your name is the Rock or Bob Dole and it’s part of your schtick, forget the third person bunk and talk in the first person. Take the credit, take the blame, or assign it to the applicable party. “It” was not found– Joe Schmoe discovered whatever “it” was during his investigation. “I got the account by busting my buns” is much more effective than “There was a bun busting situation in which an account was awarded to the firm in question.” Don’t agonize about appearing arrogant. Like the man says, it ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up, and you will.

So what have you discovered today? Notice that not a single time did I say something about gerunds, descriptive adjectives, action verbs or dangling participles. That’s another article. All I have said is to make it appealing, put the best stuff first, shake things up and take a stand, making sure you can support your points, and speak in the first person. Do these things and your business report to the canary enthusiasts won’t end up in the bottom of a cage and you’ll see that your level of career success is on the upsurge. Trust me. Arnold Schwarzenneger said that too, and he turned out OK.

Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development and cost management consulting firm for small to mid-size enterprises, and Virtual Mastermind, an online network of Mastermind Groups for small business owners. He has made a career of leading, inspiring and raising the game of small business people. He is the author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in the Smart Shop, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com. He can be reached at kwalinskas@smartcompanygrowth.com.

By David Jackson in Featured

SEO2The two most important elements that qualify companies to promote themselves as SEO experts are competence and professionalism. And the way you find out if a company is competent and professional, as well as legitimate, is to do your due diligence and check their credentials thoroughly, by exercising good old common sense and following these steps:


1. Verify Their Contact Information

If the company provides a street address, Google it to see if it’s a real address. If they provide a telephone number, call the number to see if it’s answered by the company or an answering service. If they don’t provide a telephone number, walk away. SEO is serious business. You need to have the ability to talk to whomever is going to be handling your account. You need to be able to ask questions, and you have a right to expect your questions to be answered in a professional manner.

2. Talk to Previous Customers

If the SEO company publishes testimonials on their website, contact a few of their customers and get their feedback. If the company can’t provide testimonials, walk away, or if the testimonials don’t have contact information, they’re probably bogus. Walk away.


3. Visit Reputable SEO Forums

Visit reputable SEO forums like Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Forum to find out what forum members have to say about the company. If an SEO company has a bad reputation, it will race across the Internet at warp speed. Conversely, if a company has a good reputation, you will find that out also.

By Nicole Beckett in Featured

spn_exclusiveDon’t let the $2 offers fool you – buying SEO content is a big deal, and it’s not something you can cut corners with. After all, on the world wide web, your content is the only way that people can find out more about you. Whether you want to build up your reputation, get people to sign up for your email list, or sell your product, you’re going to need SEO content to do it.

And it has to be good.

Thanks to the Panda updates, Google is taking a harder stance on content now than it ever has before. But even setting Google aside, people aren’t going to take you seriously if you can’t even string a coherent sentence together. After all, people look for all kinds of reasons to avoid spending their hard-earned money. Mix up “to” and “too”, and you’ve just given them the excuse they need NOT to buy from you.

Because SEO content is so important to succeeding out on the world wide web, you may be looking to outsource your writing. Maybe you’re not a very good writer. Maybe you just don’t like to write very much. Maybe you have a million other things to do, and you don’t have time to stare at a blank Word document.

Whatever the reason, paying a professional to handle your SEO content writing duties can be a very good thing for your business. It can also be a very bad thing.

Hire the wrong content writing service, and you’re stuck with content that doesn’t get results. Or worse, content that makes you and your business look bad.

By Bryan P. Hollis in Featured

spn_exclusiveIt’s not so often that I will write on a subject that I am particularly well-versed in without using specific data to back it up (Well, I will use one example!). This article really is designed to take someone new to the World Wide Web, and “catch” them in time to create the proper tagline for their new site.

A site tagline is basically its sub-title. Before we hit directly on the subject, let’s take a step back and start with the domain name. Finding the most suitable domain name for your niche target is critical. However, with so many sites on the web, you may not come away with exactly what you were looking for. Let’s use my SEO Firm’s domain as an example.

Back about, well, almost 5 years ago now, I knew very little about SEO specifically. I was however, doing article marketing, ghost writing, and even a few ebooks here and there. I quickly learned what it took to catch the eye of search engines. In venturing out on my own, being from the middle area of South Carolina, I decided on midcarolinafreelance.com. Now just who in the world would ever make a search related to this domain? Yes, I showed-up for the single keyword “freelance” somewhere along page 3 or 4 of Google. Where am I going with this?

As time progressed and I built a solid foundation and had branded myself as a pretty good copywriter (and some web content as well), I decided to venture out into the world of SEO. It always seemed to me that the written word was ultimately the “kicker” for winning over true followers and Google. The question was, “How would I get my website on page one with this domain name?” My image was branded, article after article was published with some sort of reflection on Mid Carolina Freelance. I couldn’t dump it now. This is where the site tagline comes into play.

In the process of “re-developing” Mid Carolina Freelance, I decided on a new CMS (Content Management Solution). Since I am a WordPress lover at heart (and I believe that Google is too), I went with a business portfolio theme, allowing for a professional static home page. This allowed me to do several things.

First, I was able to “rebrand” myself with the meta title “Mid Carolina Freelance – A Complete SEO Firm.” The landing page content also read this way in a smooth and natural way…not “stuffed.” So, what was the result?

Mid Carolina Freelance has remained the number two ranked position on page one of Google for two years for various keywords. Of 200,000,000 SERPs, it is number two, page one for “complete seo” and of 42,000,000 SERPs, it is number two, page one as well.

So, the point of this article is to make sure that in the development stage of your site, do your homework. By simply typing in various combinations of keywords that pertain to your niche, you can see how and why it needs to be tweeked. Don’t “spam” your own title tagline. Make it a smooth blend of keywords that could make a search engine match in various ways.

For example, if you just bought graceskennel.com, while it may be cute, don’t use a trendy tagline for your site that no one will ever choose. Try to use 3 to 4 words (but no more than 4…too spammy). You already have the keyword “kennel” in your main title, so now you need to find a smooth flow of what essentially is a long-tail keyword. Going back to my tagline – “A Complete SEO Firm.” It is found by “Complete SEO,” “Complete SEO Firms,” and “SEO Firms.” All blended variations of my tagline.

Hopefully this article will help you along in your new ventures into the World Wide Web. Whether you are creating an e-commerce site or a blog, make sure you choose the correct and search engine optimized tagline for your site.

Bryan P. Hollis is the owner and founder of Mid Carolina Freelance, LLC – A Complete SEO and Online Marketing Firm located in South Carolina. He also develops Linux web and email servers. Additionally, he is the founder of Blog Interact, a rapidly growing blogger’s network and a ‘dofollow’ bookmarking site.

By Donna Anderson in Featured

facebook-logoIf you’re still evaluating the merits of putting a Facebook Share button on your site, it’s time to get off the fence. And make sure you come down on the right side. Oh, and while you’re at it, you might as well just start tearing the whole fence down.

Right this minute there are more than 5 billion people who are using mobile devices. There are 2 billion, at any one time, communicating on the Internet. And Facebook alone has a membership of more than 750 million users. No man is an island, and no blog can survive without connections.

Sometime within the next few days Facebook is going to introduce Frictionless Sharing. Maybe it’s already happened in your neck of the woods. If not, fear not. It’s on the way. But the big question isn’t when. The big question is, will you be ready?

Frictionless sharing is going to be powerful. When a visitor comes to your blog or website, if they’ve enabled access, Facebook will automatically post your content on that user’s wall. No more clicking the Like button. No more copying and pasting links. He visits your site and it shows up on his wall.

Sound a little far-fetched? Only if you haven’t been paying attention. Start reading some of the tech blogs. Sound a little scary? Like maybe Big Brother is watching over your shoulder? Maybe so. But in a good way. If you use it to your advantage. Don’t think people will go for it? Think again.

By Brent McCoy in Featured

videoVideo is arguably the most powerful way to send your message across to an audience, yet it is surprising that such a small percentage of people use it both for their web content and marketing materials. This is perhaps due to a number of misconceptions that people have when it comes to creating video content, which are clarified below:

1. You Need To Spend A Lot: You may have seen or at least heard about companies that will produce your video for you, but charge an absolute fortune to do it (well, what the average person would consider a fortune). It’s not a necessity to get it professionally done – just take a look at the majority of videos on YouTube. Use your friend’s camera, or just record straight into the computer with a webcam.

2. It Needs To Be High Quality: The content of your video is what matters most – as long as this is helpful to somebody then there’s no reason it should look like it cost a million dollars. Don’t worry so much about your poor acting ability (or your friend’s poor acting ability), or whether the picture is too grainy – as long as the sound is okay then just about everything else is pretty trivial. People complain about unclear or low audio more than anything else when it comes to web videos, so keep that in mind. And also, it’s much easier to get away with a poorly produced video than it is a poorly written article – so don’t be afraid of turning your loyal visitors off, since they’ll usually commend you for at least having a go.

3. You Need A Camera: Even if you don’t have a camera or webcam you can still make a video. There are several programs like Camtasia that allow you to record a video from your computer screen, or you could even go much simpler than that and create a slideshow in PowerPoint and export it as a video. I tend not to waste too much time on YouTube anymore, but back in the day a high percentage of videos that went viral were nothing more than slideshows of funny photos chopped together with music.

4. It Takes Too Long: In the time it takes me to finish writing this post, I could probably have recorded a video to tell you the same thing about five times (and had several different takes at it, just to satisfy the perfectionist in me). Shooting a video is much quicker than writing an article. The only thing that could make it take longer is if you do any extensive editing or effects on it, but for most web videos this won’t be the case.

5. They Slow Down My Website: If you’re worried about bandwidth and issues like that, remember that if you store your videos on an external site like YouTube, they won’t have any negative effect on your own website. The other advantage to doing this is you do get some traffic floating in from wherever you post it, and if you use keywords in the titles or tags of your videos, this can add up to be quite a lot. While it is a reality that people in less-developed areas will have to wait a while for your video to load and so forth, most other people should be equipped with a decent enough web connection that this won’t be an issue. If it still concerns you, then you can accompany each video with a brief text description to satisfy the needs of everyone.

Some of the concerns that people do have with creating video are, of course, also valid. The primary one is that search engines will not be as fond of video as they are of text – they have no real way spidering the actual content of your video and will rely instead on the title and other text on the page.

Having worked in video for most of my professional career (yes, I am a man of many talents) I can definitely say first-hand it is a powerful and entertaining way to send your message. It will give you a break from writing, and give your visitors a break from reading (assuming they need it) – and everyone will almost certainly enjoy the experience.

Millionaire Studio is an online entrepreneurship blog that features articles on online business, blogging, marketing and social media: http://millionairestudio.com/

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