SEO Web Design by BardicMedia.com

I first started learning about using video and social bookmarking to get loads of free traffic without expensive pay-per-click advertising from Jeff Johnson. He demonstrated how he quickly made top 10 ranking for highly competitive keywords in Google and other search engines by placing videos he made using inexpensive tools like Traffic Geyser. The program is very cool, and I see evidence of it’s use by most of the top marketing bloggers I follow.

Here’s why the video and web2.0 marketing strategy is so popular…over half of web traffic is now video and 12% goes to YouTube! If you “keyword load” your videos, they’ll show up in Google faster than any other way I have seen, other than PPC advertising (which can be costly). The main cost of the video strategy is production time and the time it takes to submit the videos to dozens and dozens of sites. That cost is now lower than you could ever imagine with Traffic Geyser.

Traffic Geyser is a marketing publishing platform that will broadcast a video to over 35 video locations (YouTube, Google Video, Revver, iFilm, etc), social bookmarking sites, blog posts, and podcast directories with the click of a button—all linking back to your web site.

The new version of Traffic Geyser, features a completely redone interface, more power and many new features:

- more places to submit to

- An “intelligent submission system” that warns you ahead of time if something you’re about to submit will fail

- A progress bar to show the status of your files uploading to our server

- A greatly simplified remote upload feature

- Dramatic speed increases due to a sweeping change in our database structure and a fleet of new servers at a new data center

- Brand-new, updated training videos

- New help files and a user manual

- A new toll-free telephone recording system (it’s already functioning)

- The new Slideshow Creator

The reason why you need to start using video in your marketing mix today is this:  you’ll be  practically guaranteed that you can communicate and present to over 1 billion internet connected users and 2.2 billion mobile phone users.

What are you waiting for?

Viral Video is all the rage these days, and we’ve blogged a lot recently about how easy it is. It still takes time to produce, edit, and upload video. This week we’ve been bogged down producing some videos to upload… Note to self: REMEMBER to always budget three times the amount of time for new technical processes and projects. The Flip Video Camera we recommend here is truly a breeze, compared to other methods we tried, but it took a few trial and errors before we got the first video uploaded properly. Now it’s got some strange watermark that seems to be added by YouTube.

Before you spend a dime or hours of your time playing with video titles and graphics, READ THIS:  you could have a funny viral video promoting your site on social media spaces like Myspace and Facebook in less than 10 minutes for FREE. If you are in a rush to get your viral promotions going, there’s a cool tool that let’s you start out using videos that someone else produced. This free viral video enhancement tool called BubblePly lets you add your own pictures, text comments, and even clickable hyperlinks overlaid on top of existing videos from popular sites including these: YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Hi5, Blip, Bolt, Break, CNN, CollegeHumor, Comedycentral, Dailymotion, Flix, GoFish, Grindtv, Grouper, ifilm, JibJab, LiberatedFilms, Metacafe, Podtech, ScotVid, Stupidvideos, Travelistic, Virginmedia, Webshots.

The creativity you employ to link your site, blog, product or service to an existing video on one of these sites could create a viral sensation, if done well. For example, maybe you find a really funny video that your customers would forward around because it’s an “inside joke” for people in your niche. Or maybe its a popular “Seinfeld” moment that everyone remembers and can help you bond with your audience around a key problem that your product or service solves. How about that episode with the infamous car stink used to sell a car ionizer air freshener? Linking that in a clever way to your product could inspire others to forward your “ply’ed” version of the video around to colleagues and your viral campaign has begun.

At the bare minimum, you can at least start the process of getting into viral video. Use this tactic to let your visitors show you exactly what they will respond well too, BEFORE you start producing videos. Experiment with different content, styles, and approaches to see which ones bring traffic and conversions. You may save yourself a lot of trial and error, and leave more time for marketing.

When someone enters keywords into their favorite search engine, they are trying to do one of two things:

1) solve a problem
2) answer a question

By “pushing” out content in the form of blogs, podcasts, white-papers, articles, and instructional videos, you “pull” in customers looking for solutions or answers. Buy providing quality free content that helps them with the problem they are looking to solve or question they seek an answer to, you pre-sell yourself or your company. This pulls the prospect closer to you and shortens the decision-making cycle for them to choose to do business with you.

While this is a well-know tactic that many have blogged about before, there is an art to designing campaigns that effectively use this approach to gain permission to continue these conversations in a way that results in increased business. While most businesses can launch a blog themselves, it takes a trained marketing professional or lots of trial and error to leverage the value of these “push” content efforts. The best approach for most businesses is to budget for development of a Web 2.0 marketing strategy by a consultant who has experience with website conversions. Maintaining a blog, podcast, or article series can be very time-consuming, so to get the kind of ROI you have been hearing all the buzz about with these tactics, you need a plan to attract and retain an audience for this communication.

Social networks that are now the backbone of Web2.0 allow your prospects to locate you and your website by the principle of “birds of a feather flock together.” Tags are small clusters of keywords that allow members of these communities to locate others interested in a similar set of subjects to network with, usually by adding people to their list of friends or through groups that share a common interest. If you or your company are well represented on networks like linkedin.com, facebook.com or myspace.com (which one you use most will depend on your industry), then you are also pre-selling by showing who you are associated with. You want to use profiles in these spaces to demonstrate affinity with thought leaders, innovators, and other impressive people and organizations in your industry that help to convey your style of approach to solving problems and finding answers.

Video has become a major traffic trend. Video content now outranks text, photo, and audio content in most search engine results. You’ve probably heard this already and thought: “I don’t sell video…” Go ahead and stop reading here if you want your competition to be the only one to learn the secret to leveraging this amazing trend for under two hundred dollars.

Driving streams of relevant visitors to your pages could cost a lot more than that if you are buying ads or keywords using Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Building traffic through online video just got so cheap with the release of some new technology and services that make running a Video Search Marketing campaign the greatest ROI for most businesses.

And, you have probably heard this before, too. But you still say you don’t have any way to afford the gear you need or understand video editing and uploading. The whole game changed with the release of Traffic Geyser. This tool lets you create videos from still photos and audio files you have or create, and upload video to 30 video sharing sites in the time it would take to post to just one. You just simply have to read the details of this product before you decide to blow off video as a promotional tool.

For a little more cash you can have a video camera in your pocket that shoots video good enough for internet marketing, too. See the Flip Video Camera. It’s amazing!

The size of a cell phone, this camera actually has editing and uploading software built into it. It’s so easy you can have your grandmother uploading your promo videos. Subscribe to this blog’s feed or leave a comment so you will get updates when I blog about some creative examples of people using video to promote everything from wholesale soluble coffee to saving rainforests in Costa Rica.