Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit Case Study
November 16, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 2 Comments
I wanted to pass on a quick recap. I posted on my participation in IES this past weekend where I streamed my talk on Interactive Marketing. I told the participants in my session to Google “Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit” in 30 days and see where my post was in the results. The net result is that…
My content (both the post and the ustream.tv recordings of my chat) appears on the first page of results and did so within 24 hours of me hitting “publish”.
Here are the reasons that I see for this result…most of which we talked about in our session.
- I have used the 3 key words that define the event. I used “Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit” in my title and it’s sprinkled throughout naturally. I haven’t forced the issue or “tried to pack in more instances that the post deserved.” I’ve also used IES multiple times but there are a lot of organizations and groups out there with that acronym so that will be harder to get on page 1.
- I have embedded video that I streamed live and recorded into the post. This is another “content outpost”. Why not stream something live and get the recording with almost no effort? Sure it’s not the best recording but I told my participants as I always do that “I don’t use handouts” but how would you like to replay this entire chat again anytime you’d like to extract the key points? They thought that wasn’t a bad idea. Notice that this recording is ALSO on the first page of results.
- I am probably the only person using a WordPress based / blog based site to talk about this conference. The conference doesn’t have its own site yet and anyone with information about the conference has a fairly static site. My blog post was done before I left the conference on Saturday. Was this a lot of effort? No. It took about 15 minutes to write and post.
Summary: I have the platform that lets met rapidly put out fresh content (WordPress). Google loves fresh content and since I’ve been doing this a while…the magic Google engine gives my site a little respect. I used the exact keywords that people will probably search for if they’re trying to get information on this event. I’ve used multiple forms of content (video, written word) and I’ve pushed that content into additional outposts (ustream.tv). This blog post will be part of an automated newsletter that goes out occasionally to my email marketing subscribers too. When I get 5 new posts…the newsletter is “magically created” with no effort on my part thanks to (aweber email marketing). Remember that setting up your infrastructure NOW means you don’t have to think about it later. I also linked out to many other sites in my post so perhaps these folks know this and are now aware of me…increasing my chances of getting inbound links back from them.
BONUS: During the conference, I ended up meeting 3 people that I have known and follow only through Twitter. During the day, they told other people that we’d met and that we were having lunch, attending my session, etc. 10 new people have followed me since the conference and if we consider that they’re ALL Des Moines based…I have just added to my local network in town, solidified some FACE TO FACE relationships that were purely and casually online until now, and created some case study results to share with my audience.
Not a bad 48 hours I’d say. Now anyone who knows me understands that I’m not your typical, “SEO guru”. I don’t know the ins and outs that some companies practice to “back door sites to the top” using buried meta information (did I lose you? me too). Like a good business person, I worry about that which I can do something about…and I pay to have the rest taken care of. I let the tools and systems do their job for me like having a WordPress site with the best plugins to say “Hi Google…I’m here”. Then, I write and create video with rich content with an eye for key words. See…simple.
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Ask the Google Video
April 23, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 1 Comment
Ok, so I think our recent 8 week stretch of creating and launching and being totally immersed, I think we were craving a bit of fun times. So we put our skills to work and created the most comprehensive video to date showing how to use “The Google” to execute searches. Enjoy and share please.
A sign of the times for radio? Google drops ad program
February 16, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
So if you’re looking for a trend here, Google has now dropped its newspaper ad model and its radio ad model. Hum. Not tough to see right? Here’s a quote from the story “Google to discontinue radio ads program” from B to B.
Susan Wojcicki, Google’s VP-product management, said in a blog discussing the shutdown of Google Audio Ads: “… we have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and focus our efforts in online streaming audio. We will phase out the existing Google Audio Ads and AdSense for Audio products and plan to sell the Google Radio Automation business, the software that automates broadcast radio programming.
We’ve been learning quite a bit about the radio market here locally in Des Moines. The create WOW media team helped local daily talk show Mac’s World Live begin streaming live daily and built a blog based web site for him. Then, Mac actually began streaming the show live from our studio daily after his recent deal on AM radio fell through.
The number one takeaway so far? “It’s actually more cost effective in our local market to produce and host a 1 hour radio show each week than it is to buy advertising on a show.” If that sounds counter-intuitive to you…I’m with you.
I’m not going to sound the death bell of terrestrial radio because like other things, it will find its place. But think: How many millennials will be getting their information from an AM signal in about 5-10 years? I think Gen X is already about the cutoff point that still even knows that AM exists. Of course it does depend on your market considering in SoCal the ONLY station in my life was the talk radio powerhouse KFI AM 640. If I want a dose of AM radio now, I actually stream it live on the web. Sign?
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What’s your “I google it” ratio?
January 26, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I’m at 99% over the last 6 months in my ad hoc sampling when I ask any sized group, “Where’s the first place you go to find information about a person, product, or service?”. The answer, “I google it.” But I did get a new twist on this answer recently.
“My grandpa asks me to Google it and get back to him.” Nice. Google by proxy! Isn’t that a syndrome?
Inaugural episode of new weekly podcast – “Managing the Edge” is now live
January 12, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 1 Comment
I’m blessed to have an amazing sphere of friends and talent orbiting the create WOW media mothership. One such uber dude is Andy Brudtkuhl (that’s BROOD-COOL). You won’t hear him correct me on that during the podcast…due to the magic of editing software! Look at how that name is spelled for goodness sake. Huh???
Andy runs 48Web, a Web Strategy consultancy in town. Among the zillions of things Andy does, one is to lay out excellent-tangible-actionable web strategy plans. Andy’s services are very complimentary to createWOWmedia’s and we often collaborate heavily on projects.
createWOWmedia focuses on deploying infrastructure, coaching the reasons why we need to organically grow our findability, and amplifying online brands through rich multimedia (walk on video + green screen video + podcasts + custom music). While 48Web lays out what we need to do each week to be successful, what technologies need to be deployed, and how much time we can expect to devote to each per week. (SEO + analytics + budgeting + hosting) etc.
Bottom line, this Podcast called Managing the Edge will be a weekly MEGA value informational powerhouse for the premium price of ZERO bucks.
I’d recommend subscribing to the Managing the Edge Podcast Feed so you’re in the know. As always, your comments, feedback, suggestions, and mojo are welcome. I’ve embedded the podcast below but please, subscribe to the Podcast feed to ensure delivery every time.
Thanks for listening.
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Are you avoiding the use of web video?
December 30, 2008 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
If you are avoiding the use of web video to tell your story, promote your business, or communicate with your target market…you may want to reconsider. Comscore has put out a report (thanks Tech Crunch) that states the following:
Video search on YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google search queries in the U.S., according to the latest search engine numbers from comScore.
‘Nuf said? Do you see how being findable on many fronts is key to an effective web strategy? Video is power. Either do it yourself or engage professionals like us for heavy lifting…but DO IT. Tell/show/live your story.
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No Surprise: Google – Youtube Number 1 Destination for Video Search
December 10, 2008 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
Where do people go overwhelmingly when searching for video? Of course it’s YouTube or “GooTube”. According to emarketer:
Google, including YouTube, has a 55.4% share of video viewing visits to online video site properties among US Internet users, according to September 2008 figures from Compete.
So does that mean you should not post your videos on other sites? Heck no. With the advent of TubeMogul, you can post one video to YouTube and 10+ other video hosting sites with a single upload process. Yes you need accounts at those other sites (Viddler, Blip.TV, Metacafe, etc.
You see it’s all about Increasing Your Internet Findability Factor.
When we post a video, often times our “view count” resembles the percentages you find in the data presented above. But who’s to say that the one company/person that finds you on one of the other less popular sites won’t turn out to be your largest and most profitable client?
Don’t make hasty judgments about where you think someone should find you. Logically and methodically give your potential audience as many places to find you as you can affordably and efficiently. Before Tubemogul, I posted to 3 sites individually and that was time consuming. Now I post to 8 with the 1/3 the effort. That’s takin’ it to the bank.
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More Businesses leveraging web marketing and video in down economy
October 30, 2008 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
Image by niallkennedy via Flickr
Kelly Spors always puts out relevant articles over the Wall Street Journal’s “Independent Street”. In this piece, she opens the conversation about small businesses turning to affordable online marketing methods with more reach. She quotes Matt Booth of The Kelsey Group:
“Web sites will be viewed as a cost-effective alternative; a channel that didn’t make sense in a booming market will fast become a necessity,” said Kelsey Senior Vice President Matt Booth in a news release.”
The benefit from online marketing that many SMB’s don’t fully grasp is the analytics. There are free tools available from Google and others to actually track results and produce comparisons between “ad effectiveness.” What’s the ROI of having an entry in the phone book in your experience? Do you ask every customer where how they found you?
With online marketing, whether you look or not, much of the data is readily available for digestion. The same things apply for web video marketing as well.
Get your web/online marketing program rolling and reap the benefits. While you’re at it, this would be a great time to learn the ins and outs of web video and some other Internet Findability tools.
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Google search produces video results at bottom of page
October 1, 2008 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
The guys at Reel SEO continue to be on the cutting edge of researching the changing face of video search out there. They put this post together that describes the direction “The Google” is taking with regarding to displaying videos at the bottom of the results page when doing a typical google search.
I talked about this a couple days ago when I noticed that out of the blue…I had a video show up in the results for searches on my name. Check out the results when using Google’s video search on my name. Wow. I’ve been busy!
Let’s bring this back to the bottom line for small businesses.
Why do you care about this? Internet Findability is your friend. If you’re a Pest Control business in Des Moines, Iowa and you don’t show up when people search for “pest control Des Moines Iowa”…you’re “hosed” as they say. As more of your business depends on being “findable” you need to increase your reach. Video serves this purpose quite well. Video let’s you connect with your potential audience in a way that most businesses simply aren’t leveraging. Now is the time.
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This is how video is supposed to help your presence online
September 29, 2008 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I was clicking through to see some of the searches in google analytics and noticed that a simple google search on “doug mitchell” was executed. It’s been a couple weeks since I googled my name so I followed the link and got the page of results below. Before you click in and open the full sized image, notice all the way down at the bottom.
Related Google/YouTube video appeared as well. This is the FIRST time I’ve seen this happen on my name and it made me happy.
This is what is supposed to happen when you organically grow your Internet Findability factor. Not only will your name and relevant material produce higher search results…you’ll also give people a chance to SEE YOU and HEAR YOU through another powerful means of findability…video. I’m the one on the right…please 
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