Video is great for promoting your business, but once you’ve made the decision to get one or more videos produced and you’ve been given the video files, what should you do with them?
The obvious answers are put it on your website and share it on all your social media channels – but how do you do all those things?
Posting your video on your website
When you put your video on your website, don’t make the mistake of loading the video file to your website, as your website hosting platform won’t be optimised for streaming video, so your video won’t play very well when people visit your website.
Video Hosting Platforms
The two most well-known video hosting platforms are YouTube and Vimeo, which both allow you to set up free accounts or channels. There are other video hosting platforms, such as Wistia, but these charge for their services.
I tend to use YouTube, because it is the second most used search engine on the internet, is owned by Google and you can link your Google Analytics for your website with your YouTube channel so you can get all your Google performance metrics in one place.
Once you have put your video on your hosting platform, you need to embed the video onto your website. It’s fairly easy to do this, on YouTube you click on the share button, go to the Embed tab, copy the line of HTML code that is shown and then copy this into your web page at the place you want to embed it on your web page. Note that there are some options available to you when you create the embed code, including video size, so choose the settings that you want.
When you embed the video on your web page, think about where you want the video to appear. In general, it is best to put the video as near to the top of your web page as possible, as you want website visitors to watch it and they are more likely to do this if they see it at the top of the page.
Posting your video on Social Media
Although it is possible to share your video from YouTube, it is better to post the video natively onto the social media channels you are looking to share it on, as the algorithms they use for deciding whether to share your post with others all favour video hosted locally over video links. Loading videos locally onto each social media platform will also give you access to post insights. Facebook in particular provides some very detailed insights to how your video is being watched and there is a second level of detail provided about the audience once the video has been viewed 100 times.
Uploading video works the same across all the platforms, but they do have some nuances that you need to be aware of.
Facebook
When you load a video onto Facebook, the system will select 10 thumbnail images from the video and you can choose which you want to use. You can also load a custom thumbnail if you don’t like any of the options available to you.
Facebook also has a very good tool for adding captions to videos and as over 90% of video views are made with the sound off, it is advisable to add captions if your video doesn’t have captions already. It is possible to export the captions file to reuse elsewhere, should you wish.
Twitter
Twitter is fussier about the video files you can load. It only allows you to load .mp4 and .mov formats and the video files must be less than 512 Mb in size.
Instagram
Instagram will only let you load videos that are less than 1-minute-long and you can only load files from your mobile device – there isn’t a facility to load a video from a desktop browser.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is currently rolling out a facility to load videos natively, but this is only available from the mobile client.
What to do with your social media posts
Once you have your video on your social media platform, there are things you can do to increase their exposure. On Facebook you can share your post into relevant groups. On Twitter you can get people to like and/or retweet your posts and similarly you can do this on Instagram. Follow this link on more ideas for sharing content.
If you need more help or advice on what to do with your posts, please call me or leave a message and I will be happy to pass on my advice. If you are looking to get videos produced, let me know by calling the Red Knight Solutions offices on 02392 265725.
Video has become one of the most important parts of any digital marketing strategy. Research shows that 1 minute of video is as powerful as 1 million words of text, 85% of consumers are more likely to buy a product or service after watching a marketing video and video content is 12 times more likely to be shared on social media than regular images.
Once you have decided that you need video, you need to consider the different ways a video can be used to promote your business and then decide which ones are best for you.
So, what types of video can you have and how and where should you use them?
Overview of company services video
This video provides a high-level overview of the different goods and services that your business provides and should be one of the first videos you consider producing.You don’t want to make the video too long, but it should give a good, clear overview of what your business does and the benefits a customer will gain from working with you.
You would want to have this shown on the home page of your website and if you have a web page giving an overview of services then you would include it there too. You will also want to share this on all your social media channels and you may want to consider pinning the post that features this video to the top of your social media feeds so it is clearly in view for anybody looking at you. If you have a Facebook business page, you can consider using this video as your page banner, as Facebook has now rolled out the facility.
Product / Service description videos
You should consider producing a video highlighting the benefits and features of each of your services or products. The video should feature the benefits potential customers will gain from using your goods or services. Once produced, the video should feature on the appropriate product/service page on your website, as well as being featured on your social media channels.
If you write a blog post featuring any of your products or services, you should feature your appropriate product or service video too.
Promotional video
Promotional videos can be used for marketing any sales or product promotions you are currently running. The video should feature the benefits of the product or service you are promoting, along with details of the promotion and how long the promotion is running for.
You can also use video to promote any events you are running or any occasions where you are exhibiting or speaking. Make sure you feature all relevant details, such as the location, date and if relevant the time you will be there.
Customer Testimonial videos
Having a video of your customers providing a testimonial about your product or service is an extremely powerful marketing message, so you should look to create some of these as soon as the opportunity arises. You should ask your customers if they are willing to be recorded when providing you with a testimonial and record this if they are willing.
For many businesses it can be difficult to get customers to be available or willing to be on camera to record a testimonial, so an alternate style is get customers to provide written testimonials and to turn these into slideshow videos.
Video Logos
You will notice that all of the example videos shown feature a video logo. Having a custom video logo created for you helps to present a powerful, coherent branding for your business throughout your video marketing.
Case study videos
Case studies are a great way to demonstrate how your customers have benefited from your goods and services. Explaining these in a video is a very strong way to get your message across, telling the story of the work you have done for your client and how it has benefited them.
What to do with your videos
Your videos should feature on all the relevant pages on your website. It is best to do this by hosting the video on a video hosting site such as YouTube, Vimeo or Wistea and embedding the hosted video into your web page rather than trying to host the video directly onto your website, as these hosting sites are optimised to stream video and have the bandwidth needed to do this, where your website probably doesn’t.
You should also share your videos on your social media channels. It is best to upload your video to each of the channels rather than sharing the hosted link, as all social media channels have now optimised the algorithms they use so that it favours videos hosted locally. This means that videos loaded directly to each social media channel are more likely to appear in people’s timelines.
If you are considering using videos for your business and would like to know more about the video production services we can offer you, please call on 02392 265725 or e-mail video@redknightsolutions.co.uk
We recently came across this infographic giving some detailed statistics about video marketing and felt that we must share it. This infographic was originally produced by Hyperfine Media
It is really important to have a digital marketing strategy and at Red Knight Solutions we have developed a 6 step process for developing a successful digital marketing strategy. We will work with you to help you develop and implement yours.
The 6 steps are:
Know WHAT you are promoting;
Know WHO your target audience is;
Know HOW to engage with them digitally;
Develop a detailed plan showing WHEN you will be doing things;
Take regular Action, following your plan;
Measure the outcomes
The most common mistake companies make is to start doing digital marketing, often just trying to copy the latest trend, without developing a detailed picture of what they are promoting and who they are promoting it to. The outcome is normally an expensive disappointment.
Know what you are promoting
Build up a detailed picture of the product or service you are looking to promote digitally. This should include a detailed description of what the product or service is, what problems it solves, the benefits gained from the people using it, how much it costs to produce, how much you can afford to spend on marketing it, profit margins that you are generating, whether there are any associated products you can upsell, whether these are likely to be one-off or repeat purchases.
Who you are marketing to
The detailed picture should include age, gender, existing or new customers, location, what their needs, wants and fears are, how they are likely to want to be approached, what their likely budgets are going to be and whether they are business customers or consumers.
Know how to engage with them digitally
Now you have your detailed pictures of your product and customers you can consider all the options available to you for digital marketing. You need to consider which are the best social media options to reach your target market and how best to use more traditional web tools.
Develop a detailed plan
Your plan should detail how you are going to use each of the digital marketing options, when you are going to use them, how you are going to use them and who is going to be doing these for you. You should also include details of budgets available, as although some digital marketing options are free, others will need to be paid for.
Take Action
This may appear to go against the advice this article is laying out, but it is important to take action, quickly once you have your plan laid out. One of the slogans that Facebook use in their offices is “Break things – Fast”, which is good … provided you fix them fast too.
Measure your success
Make use of all the available digital marketing tools to keep an eye on your digital marketing campaign. Use Google Analytics to see how visitors to your website are increasing and what they are doing, use the analytical tools available on social media platforms to measure the effects of your social media activities and other tools to track your progress up the Search Engine rankings.
Do more of what is working well, do less or even stop doing things that aren’t working and don’t be afraid of trying new things either, as digital marketing is evolving all the time.
Help with your strategy
Although it sounds simple to develop and implement a digital marketing strategy, there is a lot of expert knowledge required to do it right. If you would like to know more about the services we offer to help you develop and implement a strategy, call us on 02392 265725, e-mail us at enquries@redknightsolutions.co.uk or fill in the form below:
As 2016 comes to an end and 2017 looms over the horizon, I thought it was time to stare into my crystal ball and see if I can predict the big things that will happen with digital marketing in 2017. It will be fun to look back at this post towards the end of 2017 to see which, if any of them, will come true.
Video – even more important in 2017.
Let’s start with something that’s a safe prediction – video will be even more important for digital marketing in 2017 than it is in 2016, which is saying something as it’s a major influence in Facebook and Twitter’s algorithm already. The functionality of Facebook Live will continue to be enhanced and the use of Facebook Live will get even better results in their algorithm.
There have also been announcements of live video streaming developments both for Twitter and Instagram and I wouldn’t be surprised if LinkedIn and others followed suit.
In summary, you really need to include using video within your digital marketing mix in 2017.
Augmented Reality and 3D
The success of Pokemon Go earlier this year was the first real demonstration of augmented reality, where the digital world was overlaid on the real world, in real-time. There will be more games like this in 2017 and this will lead to digital marketing opportunities for business.
The 3D world is also developing at pace. Facebook has made an investment in this technology, as our many of the games consoles and Samsung are now promoting a 360-degree camera to support it, so it’s coming. I don’t think it will be big in 2017 but I can see it happening in 2018.
Google – it’s plans will influence your website
Google will continue to refine its algorithm and these will focus on improving the ranking of websites that perform well on mobile devices, so your website needs to be designed for mobile. Key things to focus on are a mobile responsive design, use of AMP pages and quick loading pages. I predict a further refinement to Google Adwords too. Oh and don’t forget to post those videos onto your website too.
Social Media
Facebook
Facebook will continue to go from strength to strength. Video and Facebook Live will become increasingly important and influential in the performance of posts. I am expecting some augmented reality and virtual reality features to be introduced in 2017, but these technologies are still in the development and experimental phase so it is difficult to predict exactly how this will be done. Back the right option and you will get an advantage but there will be many false starts. The developments that have started in Messenger for businesses will continue to deliver additional features.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn was purchased by Microsoft in 2016 and I believe that their influence on LinkedIn will grow in 2017. Some areas of LinkedIn, such as the company page, have already been revisited and revamped and this will continue across 2017. I can see groups being re-vamped as LinkedIn groups seem to have lost out to Facebook groups in recent years.
Twitter
Twitter is going to have an interesting 2017 and its success or otherwise will depend on who eventually buys Twitter and the direction of travel they take it in. Salesforce were rumoured to be the most likely buyer and if this is the case then there is the potential for some exciting developments towards the end of 2017, assuming the sale takes place early in 2017. Whatever happens as far as the potential sale, I predict there will be enhancements made to the paid advertising feature.
Other social media
Pinterest and Instagram will continue their rise in prominence within the digital marketing sphere and there will be a social media channel that develops from left-field. I don’t know which one but either SnapChat or WhatsApp appear to be well placed.
Is this the year of the small business app?
I read an article recently that predicted the death of websites and the advent of app only internet marketing. I wouldn’t go that far, but I can see the introduction of simple apps for small businesses becoming more popular, especially as we consuming so much of our digital information via mobile devices and apps work so well on them … definitely one to keep an eye on and even if it doesn’t happen in 2017 it is going to happen in the next few years.
Summary
In summary, it will be interesting to revisit this post regularly during 2017 to see which, if any, of these predictions comes true.
Finally, I would just like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year, where digital marketing plays a big part in your success.
Helping you with your digital marketing
If you would like help with your Facebook marketing or any other aspects of your digital marketing, call Red Knight Solutions on 02392 265725 or e-mail us at enquiries@redknightsolutions.co.uk to find out more about how we can help your business thrive online.
Are you a business owner who is frustrated by the impact of your posts on your Facebook business page? Despite working hard to gain lots of likes for your page, Facebook is hardly showing your posts to any of your followers – statistics show that often less than 1% of people who have liked your page will see your post.
If this sounds familiar, despair no longer, here are 5 tips to follow that will see your post reach increase dramatically.
Facebook loves Video.
Video is the number 1 way to boost your posts, as Facebook loves video and its algorithm is heavily weighted to extend the reach of posts that feature video. If you really want your post to reach its maximum potential use Facebook Live for the video feed, as Facebook is really promoting Facebook live.
If you’re not comfortable using Facebook live then produce a video, but load it onto Facebook if possible rather than hosting it on YouTube or any other video hosting platform, as Facebook does favour hosted video. If you are producing a video, it is also a good idea to include captions on the video or produce the video in such a way that it communicates its message without sound, as a high proportion of the people that will see your video on Facebook will do so with the sounds off.
A further benefit of having the video hosted on Facebook is the detailed analytics that Facebook provides you with.
Include a picture when you post on Facebook.
If you are unable or unwilling to include a video, include one or more photographs with your post. Facebook likes seeing photos with posts and it is also more eye catching in timelines that Facebook does add your post to.
If you can post several pictures that relate to a post, then you should use these to create a slideshow. There are facilities for doing this in Facebook or you could you a tool like Animoto or ripl. Facebook will treat a slideshow you have created as a video.
Encourage Interactions with your post.
If people are reacting to your post, the Facebook algorithm will give your post a boost. There are three types of interaction you should try to encourage, sharing, commenting and liking. They all have an impact.
Sharing your post.
You can extend the reach of your Facebook post by sharing your business page post into any groups you are a member of where your post will be of interest. You should also share your post on your timeline.
When sharing your post, you should include a comment that encourages interaction from group members – shares and comments seem to have the biggest impact on posts, but likes have influence too.
If you employ staff, you should encourage them to interact with your post and share it. If you know other business owners, then you should consider asking them to share your post too, with a reciprocal offer of sharing their posts too.
Page Settings
There are numerous business page settings that affect where and how your post will appear on Facebook, most notably your preferred page audience. Use these to let Facebook know who your target audience is and your posts are more likely to appear on the timeline of people who match this description. There are options available to help with selection across the 150 odd attributes that Facebook holds about its users.
Boosting your post
If all else fails, you can consider boosting your post. If you decide that you want to boost your post, don’t press the boost post button, but got into the ads manager to boost the post. This is because Facebook advertising manager lets you choose what the purpose of boosting your post is and if you look closely at the options available, boosting your post doesn’t necessarily achieve the outcome you would expect it to.
Helping you with Facebook
If you would like help with your Facebook marketing or any other aspects of your digital marketing, call Red Knight Solutions on 02392 265725 or e-mail us at enquiries@redknightsolutions.co.uk to find out more about how we can help your business thrive online.
Phew, what a relief. You’ve finished writing your blog post and you’ve avoided the 7 content marketing mistakes that I recently wrote a blog post about, but now what do you do with it? How do you get people to read it? Here are 7 steps you should take to maximise the exposure of your blog post, without spending any money.
Step 1 – Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Make sure you have maximised your search engine optimisation when you published your blog by:
including appropriate key words and phrases within the text of your blog;
using appropriate file names and completing alt-text and description fields for all of the images you have used in your blog; and
Completing SEO meta data on your blog post, especially page title and description.
Step 2 – Facebook
Post on your Facebook business page
The first place to post your blog is Facebook. Post it on your company page, making sure it pulls through an appropriate image. If it doesn’t pick up an image from your blog, then upload one to go with it.
Share on your Facebook timeline
Lots of people think they’ve done what they need to on Facebook at this point, but they are wrong and are missing so many opportunities, as sharing your post from your business page on your personal timeline will increase the number of readers, as your friends and family (well at least some of them) will want to read what you have written and hopefully think it is worth a reaction, comment and maybe even a share. If you can encourage them to react to it in some way it will help, as getting interaction is part of Facebook’s algorithm on deciding whether to display a post in somebody’s timeline.
Share in Facebook groups
Don’t stop there though. Have you joined any Facebook groups that relate to your business? Yes, then you should share your post in all those groups too. If you’ve not joined any groups yet, then there is a great opportunity for you to expand the reach of your post and for many unconnected people and businesses to learn about what you do by joining relevant groups, participating in conversations in those groups and posting your content there.
Step 3 – Twitter
Tweet your post from your business Twitter account, using appropriate hashtags and images. If it is relevant to a specific follower, then you could send them a direct tweet or direct message to allow them to connect.
Once you have tweeted your post from your business account log into your personal account, retweet your business account post and like it too.
If you are using any Twitter automation tools, such as Twitter Jukebox or Social Jukebox, then remember to add your post as appropriate to ensure that it is included in your automation.
Step 4 –Linked In
Post a link to your blog as a status update on your LinkedIn profile and if you think your blog is an interesting read you could consider copying it and posting it on LinkedIn as an article. This will give all your connections an opportunity to see your post.
If you think your blog is relevant to some of your contacts, you could also send them a direct message which includes a link to your post and an appropriate message as to why you have sent them a direct message about it.
Don’t forget to also post an update on your LinkedIn company page too. Your company page may well have a different set of followers to your LinkedIn profile.
Finally, post your blog in all the relevant LinkedIn groups you are in. Although not as popular as they once were, groups are still an active area of LinkedIn and posting will help attract additional readers.
Step 5 – Google+/Google My Business
Don’t forget to add your post to your Google+/Google my business page too. Although this is unlikely to bring you that many direct readers, it does help one very important reader – Google, Which means that this is one of the most important actions you can do.
Step 6- e-mail marketing.
If you are running an e-mail newsletter, don’t forget to add your blog posts to it. If you’re not running one, then sharing blog posts is a great way to start developing your e-mail newsletter content.
Step 7 – On-line forums.
Post a link to your blog in any on-line forums that you are a member of. If the forum has a good reputation, then this can have additional benefits to your SEO as your post will act as a backlink to your site.
Bonus Step – Other Social Media Sites.
Depending on the nature of your business and the style of your blog then there are other social media sites you may wish to post your blog on too. These include Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.
Lots to remember.
There is a lot to remember when it comes to posting your blog. I have developed a checklist to help me remember all the different steps I need to do and I’m very happy to share it with you. If you would like a copy please complete the form below and I will e-mail it to you.
I hadn’t really warmed to Twitter until recently. Yes, I tweeted some content and followed people who followed me, but I wasn’t really focusing on Twitter as a social media channel for promoting Red Knight Solutions and my following was fairly small.
However, I was asked to do a session on Twitter at an Elite Digital Mastermind group recently so in preparation for that session I have been working on my Twitter presence and have been pleasantly surprised to see my Twitter follower count jump from 400 to over 515 in a week, which is a rise of over 25%, so I thought I’d share some details of what I have been doing so you can consider doing it too.
Changing my use of Twitter
The first change in practice I’ve made is Tweeting to people who follow me as I follow them back, rather than just pressing the follow button and leaving it at that. I had already used Crowdfire to send a message to each person as they followed me, but I now I type a quick thank you tweet to them. I’m spending quite a lot of time on trains at the moment so I normally do this whilst travelling – mobile signal permitting, of course.
I’ve also started using Social Jukebox to set up regular tweets. This comes with a jukebox full of quotes which I have left running and a jukebox that I am using to quote links to my site and other relevant digital marketing material – a link to this blog will be added very soon. I have also done some tweaking to the quotes jukebox, creating pictures for some of the quotes and adding them to the quotes in the jukebox and this will be an ongoing activity as I quite like the idea. I have also added some additional quotes from other sources – my next challenge is to make some quotes of my own that I think are worthy of sharing.
I am continuing to also tweet interesting and relevant links from digital marketing articles I find and have become more conscious of ensuring that I include Twitter as one of the places to share information, whereas before I mainly focused on Facebook.
These actions mean that the number of tweets I am making has increased considerably, which has also lead to more interaction with my followers.
Along with increased activity on Twitter, I have spent some time updating some of the company profile. I have updated the profile picture to use our new logo and I have also updated the header photo to include a picture of me. One thing I learnt when updating the profile picture was to ensure that you have the minimum height and width to 400 pixels. I was getting very frustrated initially as the logo picture I was using was 400 pixels wide but not that high and Twitter kept shrinking it. Once I set the background to be 400 x 400 pixels it all worked fine.
Learning Twitter the hard way
It’s not all been plain sailing though, as I experimented with linking Twitter to my personal Facebook page and on through to the Red Knight Solutions Facebook page and for a few days I was getting regular posts on my Facebook page from Tweet Jukebox. The good news was that some my friends had conversations about some of the quotes that were posted, but it didn’t feel right to me so I have turned that feature off.
Twitter Tools
A really useful tool within Twitter that I have just learnt about is the creation and use of lists. One of my biggest frustrations with Twitter has been that as the number of people you follow and who follow you grows, your timeline becomes really noisy. However, if you create lists of people you are really looking to keep a close eye on, such as clients, potential clients or major influencers in your field, you can use them to see just those you are interested in. This allows you to start using the tools on Twitter, such as likes, retweets and quoting tweets, focusing on those you have added to your lists.
I have mentioned a number of tools I have started using and the world of Twitter seems to have an abundance of tools and add-ons that you can use to make your Twitter experience better. Whilst doing research about Twitter tools I did come across this blog which lists over 90 useful Twitter tools. Please feel free to research them further and if you find any of them are useful please let me know.
If you would like help getting more out of Twitter or any other social media channel please get in contact with Red Knight Solutions by calling 02392 265725 and we would be happy to help you develop your digital marketing strategy and ensure it is making good use of Twitter.
Content marketing is currently seen as THE way to get your website optimised on search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo (often referred to as SEO), but many business owners are disappointed with the results of their content marketing. Are you making one or more of these mistakes, so you are not getting the business results from your website that you are expecting?
Mistake 1 – Not understanding what content marketing means
Content marketing is a generic term used by digital marketers to describe using the content on your website to promote your business. By making sure that the text you write on your website pages, together with the pictures and video you include on it are focused on using the right words and phrases to describe your business and the services, you help Google, Bing and Yahoo understand the more about the goods and services your business offers and will show them high up in their search engine results pages when people enter those terms and phrases as a search.
Mistake 2 – Not knowing the words and phrases people would type into a search engine to find your business
This may sound obvious, but have you spent any time thinking about the words and phrases that people type into search engines that you would like or expect your company to appear on page one of google for? If not, it’s time to start thinking about them, writing them down and making sure they appear in appropriate places on your website.
Mistake 3 – Targeting individual words and short generic phrases rather than longer, more specific phrases.
Trying to get ranked for individual words and short phrases is very difficult, as you will be competing with other businesses both nationally and internationally. It is much better to try to target your content at longer phrases that are more specific. Although there may not be as many searches performed for these longer phrases, you will stand a much better chance of ranking highly for that phrase. It is also likely that the person undertaking a specific search is a much hotter lead as they are searching for something very specific and your business will be a very good match for them. For instance, it was very difficult for one of our customers to rank highly in search engine results for the phrase “Find A Care Home”, but they are now on page one of Google for the phrase “help find a care home for my elderly relative”.
Mistake 4 – Not including locations
Expanding on mistake 3, when people are searching for businesses and services they are usually looking in a particular location, so it is really important that you include location references in your content where possible. For instance, our client mentioned above is based in Hampshire and operates across Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Sussex and the Isle of Wight, so including these details in their content helps them to rank highly for phrases such as “help find a care home for my elderly relative in Hampshire”.
Mistake 5 – Not writing content very often
How often and how regularly do you write content for your website, either updating your pages, adding blog posts or news items? Website visitors like to see that the website they are looking at has been updated recently, so Google and the other search engines like to see this too. The best way to achieve this is by setting up a plan detailing when you are going to blog and what you are going to blog about. Doing something at least once a month shows that your website is alive and well.
Mistake 6 – Not using or optimising images
Do you include photographs, pictures and diagrams as part of your website content? It is a good idea to do so to break up your website content and make it more readable. When you add images to your website it is very important to use descriptive file names and include all descriptive details in all the fields available as Google, can’t see the picture in the same way you and I can and needs help to understand what the picture is about. You can do this by renaming the file, so for a photo rather than it being called img00012.jpg you could call it A person using a mobile phone to browse the internet.jpg.
Mistake 7 – Not using the meta data fields correctly
Sorry that this is a bit techie, but it is important to understand that within a webpage there is some additional information, known as meta data, that is not displayed when looking at a website but is used by search engines to get a better understanding of what the page is about. The two most important meta data fields for content marketing are the page title, and the page description. The method of updating these for your website will depend on the system you use to run your website. For instance, if you use WordPress to run your website then the best way to do this is to install a WordPress plug-in designed to help with SEO. The two most commonly used are All In One SEO and Yoast SEO.
Taking action to resolve these content marketing mistakes will go a long way to helping you move up the search engine rankings. If you would like help with this, please call Red Knight Solutions on 02392 265725 or complete the form below.
This week I appeared as a guest on the Business Express show on Express FM. I initially accepted the invitation out of curiosity, taking the opportunity to see behind the scenes of a radio station and getting experience of being in a radio studio. I have got so many benefits out of participating that I thought they would make a good blog post.
The first benefit has obviously been to satisfy my curiosity about how a radio show works and is produced. It was really interesting to see how it all works and as a bit of a techie geek at heart I was fascinated by all the equipment and how it’s all managed digitally.
The second and probably biggest benefit has been using the preparation for the show as an opportunity to really think about what I am doing and how I wanted to present this to listeners. It is very easy to lose sight of what you want to achieve in your business, but as part of the preparation was to provide some questions to help guide the show I was able to spend some time contemplating what I wanted to say and more importantly how and why. The only downside to this was that I forgot to get off the train at the station where I had left my car!!
The third benefit was that it took me outside of my comfort zone, as I wasn’t sure I would be able to speak for an hour about digital marketing or if there was a danger that I would waffle incoherently. I’m pleased to say that I have had some very good feedback from people who have listened to the show, so I want to say thank you to the Miles Henson who hosts the show as his very informative briefing before the show and off-air comments during the show were very helpful. This has helped me to stop procrastinating about an on-line mentoring service I have been planning to launch for a while, so keep watching this website or sign up to our newsletter for more information.
The fourth benefit has been that it has driven me to take some action on updating Red Knight Solutions website and it’s content, as I have sadly neglected it over the last few months and fallen into the trap of do as I say and not as I do. I have spent time updating content, adding new pages and planning my future blog posts, starting with this one. Although it’s not crammed with information about digital marketing it is a good place to start and I am now going to write a blog at least every two weeks. I will be monitoring how this helps with search engine optimisation and I am looking forward seeing an improvement in my search engine rankings.
Additional benefits are that participating in the show has boosted my confidence, raised Red Knight Solution’s profile on social media through posting about the show on Facebook and Twitter both before and after the show. The number of likes of the Red Knight Solutions Facebook page and the number of Twitter followers of Red Knight Solutions has increased and Google analytics shows that listeners were visiting our website after the show too.
Finally, I have been toying with the idea of writing a book about digital marketing for a while. I have signed up to Karen Williams 10,000 word challenge during August but haven’t got as far as I wanted, but as I announced on the show that I was writing a book and have now written it on this blog post I am now referring to myself as an author and will write my book.
The two most well-known video hosting platforms are YouTube and Vimeo, which both allow you to set up free accounts or channels. There are other video hosting platforms, such as Wistia, but these charge for their services.
Although it is possible to share your video from YouTube, it is better to post the video natively onto the social media channels you are looking to share it on, as the algorithms they use for deciding whether to share your post with others all favour video hosted locally over video links. Loading videos locally onto each social media platform will also give you access to post insights. Facebook in particular provides some very detailed insights to how your video is being watched and there is a second level of detail provided about the audience once the video has been viewed 100 times.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
If you need more help or advice on what to do with your posts, please call me or leave a message and I will be happy to pass on my advice. If you are looking to get videos produced, let me know by calling the Red Knight Solutions offices on 02392 265725.
