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5 Tricks To Help You Optimize Your Video for YouTube

Fun fact: YouTube is the second largest search engine. For some reason, this absolutely blew my mind. The more I contemplated this very fun fact, the more I realized that it does make sense. People search for music videos and funny videos on YouTube all the time, and I know that I use YouTube far more than search engines like Bing or Yahoo. As someone interested in business, I couldn’t help but wonder: Are businesses taking full advantage of the YouTube platform?

How to Write a Good Blogging Bio

As an introduction to someone who may know nothing about you, it just happens to be the most important aspect of any guest post you’ll write. Without a good bio, you risk losing credibility and significant traffic. Consider this your elevator pitch. As such, it should be short and to the point. There are three details you don’t want to miss.

Spell Out The Specifics

First and foremost you want to introduce yourself, and briefly explain what you do. “Your most important details should go in the first sentence,” according to Brand Yourself.

You want put it forward with intention and a strong sense of purpose. Your goal should be to move readers, and engage them so they’ll be compelled to click through to your site. Consider using phrases such as [Read more…] about How to Write a Good Blogging Bio

The Nine Best Social Media Influencers to Follow on Twitter

If you want to learn more about the social media industry, follow these top social media influencers on Twitter. Whether you are a social media marketing specialist or just interested in the industry, these experts provide valuable links and resources that you may not find elsewhere.

iJustine: Justine Ezarik is an Apple queen and does an amazing job at all things social media. She maintains an active presence on so many social media sites, it’s hard to believe how she does it. She is mainly known for her YouTube videos, but this girl is EVERYWHERE!
Scott Monty: Scott Monty is the head of social media for Ford Motor Company. What may seem like an overwhelming responsibility to some has been a platform of success for Scott, who often speaks at social media conferences and explains how to use Ford’s strategies in other industries.
Adam Ostrow: Adam is the Senior Vice President of Content and Executive Editor of Mashable.com, the extremely popular social media and internet news blog. He shares a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like working for Mashable while also re-tweeting great content and links.
Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a celebrated social media consultant and author. His book, the NOW Revolution continues to be a hot seller and he also writes great content at http://www.convinceandconvert.com.
Sarah Evans: Sarah is a great speaker and focuses on social media, public relations, and blogging. She does a great job with answering others’ questions and helping people when they need it. She also has a great perspective on industry trends.
Mari Smith: Mari is amazing at Facebook and Twitter marketing. She regularly produces video tutorials and blog posts on MariSmith.com that makes new concepts and marketing techniques easy to understand and implement.
Michael A. Stelzner: Michael founded SocialMediaExaminer.com, which is an amazing wealth of social media marketing information. Each article is heavily researched and contains great information.
Shelly Kramer: Shelly is part of V3 Integrated Marketing, which is based out of Kansas City, Missouri. V3 does a great job of both promoting the social media industry in Kansas City and in general.
Jeff Bullas: Jeff is a consultant and speaker specializing in social media, internet marketing, blogging, and content marketing. He blogs at http://www.jeffbullas.com, which gets over 100,000 hits a month.

These are just some of the social media influencers who would be beneficial to follow on Twitter.

Who else do you think would be beneficial social media-wise to follow on Twitter?

7 Easy-to-Miss Tax Deductions for Bloggers

If you’re in the United States, it is officially tax season. With barely two week weeks left to file your return (or file an extension) a lot of freelancers are scrambling to find some last minute deductions that they can claim to reduce their burden.

If you’re a blogger, or blogging is part of running your business, then it might seem as if there isn’t a great deal you can claim. After all, blogging is a solitary activity that doesn’t seem to accrue a lot of expense.

But the truth is there’s a lot that goes into blogging and, while doing the tax prep yourself is easy, there are a lot of tools and information out there that could easily help you keep more of your money.

With that in mind, here are just seven suggestions to get you started though, without a doubt, there are many, many more out there that you can consider. [Read more…] about 7 Easy-to-Miss Tax Deductions for Bloggers

How Social Media Involvement Can Help Your Company’s SEO Efforts

Both Bing and Google are now using social media activity to help shape and determine search engine results pages (SERPs). This is based off the notion that a user will be more interested in seeing content that their friends and others in their social network have already shared or read versus content that hasn’t been accessed by anyone in their circle.

Because of this, companies need to get more proactive on a positive, community-driven social media strategy that can help drive engagement and promote user activity via social media.

A rationale for current design trends: an eye for detail, quality, and good taste

In the recent Smashing Magazine feature, Symptoms Of An Epidemic: Web Design Trends, Mr. Brunborg lists the popular design techniques and elements that has hit the community these past few years as the replacement the glossy, glassy gradients of the “Web 2.0 look”. It’s realism and skeumorphism meets textured and traditional. Get your bingo cards ready and check these bad boys off:

Stitching
Zigzag borders
Forked ribbons
Textures
Letterpress
19th century illustration
Muted tones
Justified or centered typography
Skeumorphic features

Taking pride in good design

Buck Turgidson Cocktail Recipe Cards by Alex Rinker — Vintage type treatments on modern products (by Alex Rinker)

I think the perspective missing in that article is that there’s a large sense of pride in creating graphical elements that imitate real life, since those things stir something in casual, non-designy people the same way they like other forms of eyecandy, or candy in general. There’s also a certain rush, a unique treat in the experience of gazing upon and using such interfaces as you are transported to a slightly different era, yet at the same time enjoy all the affordances that current technology has achieved. It’s like the appeal of Steampunk, which is an amusing marriage between the aesthetics found during the steam engine era combined with the bells and whistles of the modern world.

It may be easy to create the amateurish version of these elements these days, but the truly dedicated designer will spend hours on end perfecting every pixel. If it’s a rushed, half-assed job, it will reflect on the design, and will tell everyone you were just trying to jump on the bandwagon the same way you wanted a “Web 2.0” site, without even caring to figure out what that meant. If it’s a carefully crafted design, the quality will shine through.

Utmost attention to detail in icon design (by Román Jusdado)

I could even dare say that this trend is an on-going challenge among designers. An unspoken contest where one is able to say “I can pull that off” using these familiar objects as the common ground. Of course a more worthy challenge would be to use every form of inspiration in the universe and not be restricted to these elements, but that’s another context.

On a less cynical or narcissistic note, I like to think that designers, especially those for the web, consider themselves artisans and craftsmen that are very particular if not attached to their creations. When they use these current design trends, they tend to evoke those same qualities: authentic, vintage, nostalgic, imperfect, unrushed, simple, imperfectly polished, organic.

What does this mean for you?

Are you succumbing to the trends just because it's in, or because you believe it's a good fit for your brand? Hipster Branding is a blog that mocks the current "hipster" aesthetic craze by redesigning popular logos into that look.

What does this mean for non-designers, clients, and the like? It means this list of trends is getting to a point where you have to ask: where do you draw the line between being “hip” by adapting such an aesthetic, and being a “fashion victim” by slapping on too many of these styles at a time?

The other, more important question of course: do these design elements fit the message that your company, product, or service is trying to promote? Or are you just blindly following the bandwagon because you feel like it, or your designer feels like it?

The Best Free iPhone Applications for Social Media Marketing

More and more consultants and professionals in the internet and social media marketing realm are using their smartphones (especially the Apple iPhone) to stay connected and maintain their online presence. There are several social media marketing applications available for the iPhone for free that can allow a social media marketing consultant or professional to stay connected and updated on the go.

Popular Social Media Applications

Twitter: Twitter allows the user to add multiple accounts and switch between them. You cannot post on two accounts at one time. However, the interface is easy to use and loads quickly.

Facebook: The newest Facebook update allows users to write wall posts and publish photos onto the pages they are administrator of, but they cannot delete posts or comments.

LinkedIn: However, the LinkedIn application only allows for one account to be logged in at a time. The LinkedIn application is good for reading posts by other users, accepting requests, and sending InMail. Users cannot edit groups or company profiles.

Blogging Applications

WordPress: The iPhone WordPress application has a lot of versatility and allows users to add, update, and view posts on multiple blogs through the one application. Users can also view and edit pages and approve blog post comments. Additionally, if users have added the stats plugin, they are able to view basic stats about their blog, including traffic.

Tumblr: Tumblr iPhone app users can post photos, video, audio, quotes, links, and text from their phone, as well as handle multiple blogs via the single application. Tumblr posts can also be scheduled or tweets can be customized. Users can search the iPhone contacts to see if they have a Tumblr account.

Blogger: The Blogger application allows users to monitor and edit more than one blog and add photos instantly to posts. Users can also labels, save drafts, or automatically publish posts.

Social Media Marketing Applications

Sendible: The Sendible user via an iPhone experiences a similar interface to the online computer version of Sendible.com. Users can send the same message from multiple accounts as well as schedule when messages go out. Sendible has a free account version, as well as paid monthly membership, depending on usage and accounts.

Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck is similar to Sendible, but most users use the free version of this service.

These are just a sample of the several iPhone applications that are available for internet and social media marketing professionals.

What are your favorite iPhone applications?

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