More and more companies and entrepreneurs are using video to help them promote their products and services online, to build buzz and drive traffic to their sites and rightly so: posting videos can be a great way to build your online exposure.

However, many of the videos out there are of extremely poor quality – blurred images, poor sound quality, that omnipresent “Flip arm” and the list goes on – they are just not pleasant to watch.  You’ve got to ask what these say about the company posting the content.

In the most excellent social media marketing handbook, Friends with Benefits, Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo point out, in reference to video popularity, that two factors don’t matter, one is quality, but I tend to disagree to some extent: I don’t know how often I have viewed videos by entrepreneurs on Facebook or YouTube that are so poor quality that they make me question whether I would actually want to do business with the company in question.  Everything you do online should represent your brand.  A video that is really poorly produced is simply going to reflect poorly on your brand. Its not necessarily all about how often your video is viewed but more importantly about the impact it has on your intended audience.

The challenge however, especially for entrepreneurs is to be able to upload good quality content without breaking the bank.  Which leads me to introduce you to BBN3.  SoMedia Networks is building Broadband Network Three (BBN3) websites in major cities across North America and then internationally to provide a platform and marketplace for a new class of user-generated video creators – the near-professional content producer. What this means is that you have an affordable alternative to the self made flip video.

Through a simple online interface, BBN3 allows you to work with them create and customize video projects easily and inexpensively. We worked with them in December – you may have seen my status updates about how much fun the shoot was – to put together a short intro to Out-Smarts.  Other than the fact I look a bit like the incredible hulk (only smaller), I like the end result. Take a look and let me know what you think:

Thanks to Gina for allowing us to shoot in the Meridian Pacific boardroom.

Yesterday, we talked about how you can use LinkedIn for recruitment purposes, today we look at some of the other tools available to support your recruiting needs.

Plaxo – another prominent professional networking tool with over 20 million users, Plaxo is similar to LinkedIn in that it allows you to search job listings and to connect with people who are hiring but unlike LinkedIn, it does not have tools aimed solely at recruiters yet.

Xing – Another professional network which is becoming more popular with over 8m users.  It is very similar in its functionality to LinkedIn but posting jobs is much cheaper.  The downside is that lots of users are in Europe so its not the best tool for North American recruitment purposes.

Other professional social networks that facilitate recruitment:

Viadeo

Biznik

Social Networks – Facebook

Facebook Groups:  there are groups on Facebook dedicated to getting the word out about jobs.  To do so you can join and post or participate.  Examples include:

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=jobs&init=quick#/group.php?gid=29593013279&ref=search&sid=745281396.2828234181..1

Facebook Pages – some companies have Facebook pages dedicated solely to helping them find staff.  The best known example is the Ernst and Young Facebook Page.

Facebook Events – having a hiring fare?  You can use Facebook events like this one to promote it.

Facebook Ads: allow you to post ads aimed at people you want to employ: location, education level etc.

Twitter

Twitter is proving a great tool to promote job openings.  You can use corporate or staff Twitter pages to Twitter to your community about job postings or you can even have your own dedicated Twitter feed that serves this purpose alone like KPMG http://twitter.com/kpmg

As with any Twitter effort, your follow strategy will be important.

Twitter Ad-ons

You can also use third party tools like Twitter Job Search to search listings and post your own.

Here at Out-Smarts, we are looking to hire an intern right now.  So far we have had 3 suitable and interested candidates contact us and all we had to do was post the fact to Facebook and Twitter.    If you are interested please contact us, otherwise good luck in your recruiting or job search efforts.

Social media isn’t only a great tool for networking and marketing online, companies are using these tools more and more to connect with potential employees, to attract new hires, to build brand awareness (as a great company to work for) and to research prospective employees.  This is the first of 2 blogs looking at social media for recruitment.

There are a number of social media tools you can use to enhance your recruitment function – here are a few:

• Professional Networks,
• Social Networks like Facebook,
• MicroBlog platforms like Twitter,
• Blogs,
• Video
• Podcasts.

Perhaps the main social networks that support recruiting are the professional networks.  To use these effectively, your company should have a presence in these forums whether it be through a company presence or through staff profiles.

Professional Networks:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has over 47 million users in 200 countries.  As a “professional social network” it is ideal as a tool to use to assist recruitment.  There are a number of ways you can use LinkedIn for this:

Searching Jobs on LinkedIn – this is useful from a recruiting perspective as it allows you to search other positions in your industry that have been posted in this forum.

Find People

You can use your LinkedIn Profile to find people – LinkedIn is a free professional network but if you upgrade your LinkedIn membership you can communicate more effectively with possible candidates.  Paid LinkedIn accounts start at $24.95 and run to $400.95 depending on volume (of emails, interactions etc).  By using this paid LinkedIn functionality you can contact, communicate and interact more than with the vanilla version but more importantly for recruiting, you can check references.

Post a Job

Posting a job on LinkedIn costs $195 for a 30 day listing.  The benefit of posting on LinkedIn is that it facilitates candidate research and allows you to identify and connect with people who can recommend and refer them.

In addition, LinkedIn also provides a service aimed solely at recruiters called LinkedIn Talent Advantage which aids in the sourcing, getting the word out about jobs.

More on social media for recruitment tomorrow.

Our strategic partner, Louise Desmarais of Mud Creative always writes great and valuable blog posts and the latest is no exception, its all about effective online PR on a shoestring:

Why free press release sites may be all you need

Online press releases are perfect for an SEO tactic called “link building.” Link building is the process of creating inbound links to your site from other sites. The more inbound links your site has pointing to it, the more popular your site is perceived to be by the engines. And that bodes well for your rankings.

An online press release will offer readers a story that is newsworthy and have – at the very least – your site’s URL in it. Because your press release stays on the web for extended periods of time, that link is always working for you.

Readers of this blog know why I like PR Web for online press releases. I have also used www.marketwire.com and www.newswire.ca for releases that are geographically targeted with good results. But these are all paid services and for many small business owners, their rates can be a little out of reach. Plus, for best SEO results, online press releases should be issued on a regular basis – once a month or more frequently, which can really drive your costs up.

Start out free, and see what happens

If you’re just trying online PR for the first time or you have a tight budget, you can still get solid results by using free services. To find a good one, look for these characteristics:

• Free to use – or low cost for additional features
• Releases show up in Google and sometimes on Google News (Pick any release on the site, type the headline in the Google search bar, and see if it comes up.)
• The releases posted on the site are newsworthy, not sales focused. This is an indication that the site has editors who care about which releases they accept
• They allow at least one direct link to your site

There are gazillions of free press release distribution sites, (A Google search of “Free Press Release Sites” shows 70,900,000 results), but you can save yourself tons of time and still build inbound links with just three or four services, like these:

• www.prlog.org
• www.24-7pressrelease.com
• www.free-press-release-center.info
• www.onlineprnews.com

• For $12US, www.onlineprnews.com lets you add an image (could be your logo) and three anchor text links, gives you listing above the free releases, tweets the headline and guarantees inclusion in Google News. Not a bad deal.

Did it work?

While free services won’t provide a results report, it’s easy enough to see how successful your release was with these tricks:

• “Google it” – A day or two after your release, simply “Google” (or Yahoo) your company name, your targeted keyphrases, or even the entire headline of your release. Google will let you know which services, blogs, and industry publications picked it up.
• Google Alerts – Google Alerts is a time-saving feature that delivers results right to your inbox. Here’s how to set up Google Alerts.
• Google Analytics – Google Analytics are free, and easily added to your site. Your analytics will tell you where traffic came from and even which keyphrases were used to point them to your site.

If you’ve got news to share on the web, but you are avoiding press releases because of cost, give the free services a go. Online press releases just may be the extra boost you need to improve your rankings.

Thanks again Louise for letting me post this for my community too!

Vancouverite, Josh Rimer is very active online,  infact his goal is to become famous because of his online activities and he’s doing a great job of that.  This week he shared on his blog a post discussing the benefits of commenting on YouTube.  He has kindly allowed me to share it here – thanks Josh!

Reasons Why You Should Comment on YouTube Videos

Do you comment on YouTube videos very often?  Well, you should.  Contrary to what you might think, there are actually potential benefits to you for leaving comments which can help get you noticed.  Here are a few:

1. You’re engaging the video producer when you comment on their video.  If you leave a positive comment and something substantial (ie. more than just “cool video!”) the video producer is more likely to notice you and respond back.  The video creator may also click on your username to check out your channel and of course watch a video or two, and possibly even subscribe if they like your content.
2. When a video creator responds to your comment it also brings other people’s attention to that comment because the creator of the video’s comments are highlighted and their reply is shown directly below and indented from your comment.  Again, some people may click on your username to learn more about you and possibly watch some of your videos and even subscribe.
3. Comments can be searched on YouTube.  People can go to www.youtube.com/comment_search and type in anything they want to search from YouTube comments in a similar way to how you can search for things being tweeted about on Twitter.  So if your comment includes something being searched it could lead that person to click on you username, watch, and subscribe.
4. Your comments could be quoted outside of YouTube.  Everything from blogs to magazines have quoted comments on YouTube videos.  It even happened to me in a newspaper in Victoria, BC.  I commented on how I couldn’t get enough of a video that I thought was really hilarious and because the newspaper was doing a story on how funny that video was, they quoted me and included my name (you can click on the photo above to enlarge it and see).

YouTube is a community in a sense and interacting within that community is a great way to stand out and get noticed.  I’ve had famous YouTubers subscribe to my videos simply because I commented on theirs and I’ve had other people find my YouTube videos through comments I’ve written on other videos so it’s worked for me, and it can work for you too!

What do you think? Have any other reasons to share on why it’s beneficial to comment on YouTube videos?

1. Customer Service – your company could provide a blog aimed at improving customer service. Users can share their experiences of using the your company’s product or services but beware, not everyone will be positive about their experience giving you the perfect opportunity to resolve their issues and prove your customer service excellence in the blogosphere. Not only that but it provides the perfect forum to monitor customer preferences.  Be ready for negative customer comments and have a plan in place to deal with these when they arise.
2. Market research – your blog, the comments it gets and the blog of others in your community are vital resources that you should monitored for market research purposes.
3. Humanising – a blog can be used to put a face on your company familiarising customers and prospects with the people behind the brand and building trust. Company board members and staff members can contribute and in so doing make them seem more real – more approachable. See the effect company wide blogging had on Microsoft as referenced in Naked Conversations.
4. Internal communication portal – a blog is a great way to communicate personnel changes, policy updates, CEO commentary and company events.
5. Establish expertise – this is often the main focus of this blog i.e. to show people like you that we know what we’re talking about so that perhaps you’ll think of us us when considering your Internet marketing strategy.
6. Expand Network – a blog is a great way to expand your network. Its always good blog practice to respond to those who comment on your web page and in so doing you are establishing contact and networking.
7. Leads – A blog can build leads for your company but remember if you do this though that outright selling and self promotion are considered taboo in the blogosphere and will only annoy.  The rule of thumb for blog posts is 20% promotional, 80% value add.
8. Brand – a blog is a great way to further entrench your brand.
9. Generate revenue – many successful blogs like John Chow’s put their traffic to good advantage by promoting related products and affiliate services to them through ads that are tailored to the intended audience and earn affiliate revenues in doing so.
10. Grow your base – a blog is a great way to extend your company’s reach beyond its traditional geographical base. This blog gets comments and traffic from people as far and wide as India and the UK.

This is a guest post from Jan Littler-Finseth.

Last night – driving home – I heard a discussion on the CBC’s ‘The Current’ about a Facebook page that has grown exponentially this week (it was set up last weekend and has grown from zero to over a hundred thousand members in a few short days). Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament is a page that provides a conduit to protest the decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to initiate prorogation and it is gathering steam.

Whether you supported the Conservatives or the Marijuana party in the last election or think that is wrong or okay for Parliament to be temporarily discontinued, the fact that a Facebook page is national news says something about the lengthening tentacles of Social Media.

In my car – windshield wipers working overtime – I was bemused at the number of ’serious’ people out there who are convinced that Facebook is mostly a vacuous portal only frequented by teenagers when on the contrary, the over 35 age group is the fastest growing.

Can Social Media sites bring about democratic reformation or real-world change of any kind? That remains to be seen but the truth is, Facebook, Twitter, and the likes are ‘little’ things that can make big change happen.

Grass roots politics has long been a facet of the Canadian political landscape but now tools like Facebook allow for communication and networking, bringing geographically diverse (but likeminded) communities together to join forces, communicate their message and have more impact.

Let’s face it, however, if your group, your idea, or protest is poorly focused and unsupported – no one thing will help. Social Media is only a part of a program – changes come when we act and believe that what we do makes a difference.

In December I read an article in the Vancouver Sun that inspired me.  The article, called “How Social Media Have Globalized the Shopping Experience”, related how the writer, Gillian Shaw, simply had to Twitter about her choice for next car and lo and behold she got a response from a GM dealer offering her a test drive. Here’s an excerpt:

My Social Media Experiment

So, I decided to try this out for myself to see whether organisations using social media are actually doing a good job of listening and responding to customers and prospects.

Twitter

First stop Twitter where I decided I would use the tool to plan a ski trip.  So I Twittered:

To date I haven’t had a response.  I tried a different tact and sent a Tweet to Sun Peaks who were listening to direct messages and did, thankfully, respond:

A few days later I got stuck in an elevator: what a perfect opportunity to see if anyone was listening and could help me.  So I posted my dilemma on Facebook and Twitter.  Followers we’re listening – I got 2 responses from friends, both in Alberta, both in no position to help me escape!

Facebook

On to Facebook, where I commented on the Marks & Spencer Page about my frustration with their delivery service (more often than not gifts for my family in the UK arrive broken or damaged):

Here was an opportunity for M&S to respond to my concern and to correct it in the public forum, to enhance their customer loyalty but again I had no response.  Very disappointing – this year I will find a more reliable supplier and M&S just lost a loyal customer of 20 odd years because they weren’t listening or were choosing to ignore my comments.

Shut Up and Listen

Whilst I might not have the following of a journalist like Gillian Shaw, I do have over 2000 Twitter followers and am very active online – I really expected to get more response to my social media comments.

What is my point here?  I have two:

1) Shut Up – First of all companies should realize that we are living in a new world, one where they can and should interact with their customers in these forums to build loyalty and improve customer service.  Your audience expects this and not doing so puts you at risk of negative exposure.   This is no longer a push to market model where companies bombard their audience with one way messages but a two way street where they can build loyal and valuable relationships with customers and prospects and enhance brand value.  Shut up about yourself already and focus instead on your audience and providing value for them.

2) Listen - the first step any company should take when approaching social media is to implement effective listening strategies.  Listen to what online communities have to say about your products or services, company, industry and competitors.   By doing so you will not only get a feel for what is appropriate (very useful when building your social media strategy) but you will also identify sales opportunities, chances to improve customer service and to build loyalty so that customers keep coming back.  Our article Are You Listening? talks about tools you can use to do this effectively.

Conclusion

I look forward to the day when companies stop talking about themselves and start listening to and fulfilling the needs of their audience on social media.  There is a vast source of information and opportunity about your company and your market online just waiting for you to tap into it.  What are you waiting for?  Shut up and listen!

Welcome to 2010 and our first blog post of the new year.  I hope you had a great festive season and that you are raring to go in 2010.

2010 Predictions

I thought this would be a good opportunity to review our social media predictions for 2009 (to see how on the ball I was) and to make some new ones for 2010.  (Clips in red are from last year’s predictions).

Social Media

2009 was the year when social media really took off, Oprah helped take Twitter to the masses and everyone and their dog started using social media tools.  However, there is some disillusionment now as folks realize, after spinning their wheels for a while that, to be effective using social media, you have to have a strategy. 2010 will be the year that social media becomes an integral part of organisations’ marketing and business development strategies and not simply a stand alone tool.

According to Compete.com visitor counts to both Twitter and Friendfeed peaked in late summer (Friendfeed seing a rather drastic decline after announcing their acquisition by Facebook in August interestingly enough). I hope that 2010 brings added functionality to Twitter (that top layer I have been dreaming about that puts all that great content to better use and makes it more accessible).   Brightkite never really reached the heights I predicted but competitor Foursquare did (arriving in Vancouver in the summer).

Geo Based Networks

In 2010 geo based social networks like Foursquare will continue to grow in popularity but more importantly, these offerings will become more sophisticated allowing both business and users to benefit more from their use.

Also on the mobile front, watch out for more digital advertising.  In November I blogged about The Future Of Advertising, introducing offerings like ScanLife and Kooaba.  In 2010 we will see these being put to use more and the promotions will become more interactive.

Whilst smart phone sales continued to grow in 2009, I expect that the iPhone will be less dominant as the Android really takes off in 2010.  I got one last month (HTC) and LOVE it!

Apps

For 2009, I didn’t predict the growth of the smart phone app: the number of iPhone apps doubled in the first six months of the year.  With Android’s growth and open nature, this phenomenon will continue in 2010 and beyond.  So start thinking about using apps that can help you in business, or developing apps that can help you reach your audience.

Newsletter Renaissance

In 2010 I predict we will see a newsletter renaissance as marketers realize that: a) email is still one of the best ways to reach their audience (you have their permission after all) and b) blogs don’t replace e-newsletters and are often aimed at completely different audiences.  I also think that we will continue to see blogs being used in ways other than for posting articles i.e. blog outreach, blog comments and community building.

Be More Social and Less “Me” Centric

Which leads me to one wish I have for 2010 with regard to social media.  So many companies and entrepreneurs are still using social media to push out information that is completely me centric ( i.e. links to their own websites and not others).  Wake up and smell the roses peeps!  This is not the 20th century when pushing out information was all you could do.  It is time for you to realise that the key to social media is in the name itself – being social.

In 2010 please interact with others more, build networks and relationships, reach out to new peeps, but most important of all, rather than taking a me centric view, change your focus to hone in on those you want to do business with: interact with these people, find ways to connect, to answer their questions and add value.  Then you will see the true benefit of using social media as part of your marketing or business development strategy.

Here’s to growth, prosperity and being social in 2010.  All the very best.

Despite this being his busy season, Santa has been really active online:

Check out Santa’s trip on Twitter via NORAD and his Twitter profile.

On Facebook there are several Santas - its hard to see which is the real one but NORAD is on there too keeping track of his whereabouts.

Santa now ships to Canada – oh wait, I thought he lived here:  shifty You Tube promotion.  Ho ho ho.

Santa and Mrs Claus share some of their recipes on MySpace.

For more on Santa, check out his wikipedia listing.

And last but not least rumour has it that Santa uses an iphone app to track wish lists now.

I wonder how he finds the time.

Happy Holidays to all our readers.  We hope Santa is good to you!