We sometimes find that clients get confused between the “Follow Us” icons added to digital media and the “Share This” functionality that allows visitors to directly share web pages through social media. These 2 things are not interchangeable.

Follow Us

The sole purpose of Follow Us links is to build your social media following. The convention is to display the logos of all your social media networks on your website or blog in a consistent button format. The buttons are simple html links to your accounts, pages, and channels within the social media networks. This allows users to quickly add or follow you from their own social media accounts.

Don’t underestimate the importance of these buttons. Or, more accurately, don’t underestimate the extreme ineptitude of social media search functions. It is often much easier to visit an organization’s homepage and click on their Twitter link than it is to search and find them within Twitter itself. The same can be said of Facebook and YouTube. The easier you make it for people to follow you, the better.

Follow Us links should appear in a sensible intuitive place on a website. Ideally, in the same place on every page of the website. Our favourite spot is somewhere in a vertical navigation bar. Try not to bury it in the footer because it’s too far past the content for people to find. Putting it in the masthead runs the risk that visitors won’t notice it.

Don’t get into the minutiae of social media logos unless your audience is very active within the networks. If your audience isn’t on Digg, Reddit or Friend Feed, don’t overwhelm them with logos they may not even recognize.

Make sure you post regularly and make a solid effort to build up your following. Nothing is more counter productive than asking visitors to follow or fan you, only for them to learn you have a tiny following and you haven’t updated in months.

Share This

Share This, AddThis, TweetMeme, etc. are an entirely different ball game from Follow Us icons. They are not simple html, but require code (usually javascript) that performs a very specific function. They do not link to your social media accounts. Instead, they open up a social network, make sure the user is signed in, and “talk to” the social network code to create a custom post from the user’s account linking to a webpage specified by you. This is not easily done which is why one uses prepackaged plugins like Share This, AddThis or TweetMeme.

Share This functionality is wicked cool because it lets your supporters promote specific pages within your website or blog on your behalf. It’s complicated because it has to work with a 3rd party system it can’t really control (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and tell it what to do.

The Catch

It is not easy implementing Share This technology with anything other than a simple webpage. For example, including it in an email or a Flash page is a bitch. Why? Because they aren’t compatible with javascript. While it is possible to manually create a share this link by passing information to Facebook and Twitter through the html link, it’s capabilities are very limited. The cool part is it allows you to custom write tweets and Facebook posts on behalf of yourself. The drawback is it’s almost impossible to guarantee consistent results for a client. Think, “I tried to Facebook it from home and it looked all weird.”

This tech is being improved all the time to work within these limits. AddThis, for example, can be used with Flash. In my opinion, however, it’s not worth the hours of code tweaking and trouble shooting for more challenging media.

It’s my experience that if you don’t have someone who can quickly add the plug ins for you, straight social media promotion works just as well, especially since that’s where the majority of your share-inclined traffic will be coming from. Users are just as likely to retweet your bit.ly link right from Twitter as they are to use the Share This links on the page itself. The same goes for Facebook. If the content is cool, folks may be more inclined to just post it using the good ol’ cut and paste function than to use any fancy do it for me button. After all, the more things change, the more technology is a work in progress.

The Power and the Glory

Managed correctly, social media can significantly increase the traffic to your website. With a big enough following, anything you promote through your networks will get views – lots of views. So use that power wisely.

But before you try to promote something in social media, consider what people like to read and share, not just what you’d like to advertise. For example, we don’t put Share This links on our main website, only on our blog. Why? Because, really, does anyone care enough about our services to share them with their network? Hardly.

People like to share news, articles that teach them something, or opinion pieces that support their ideas. They likely won’t share a page about a product. But they might share a review about a product, or news about a new feature, etc.

Use social media for what it’s meant for and the rewards will be great: lots of your content being kicked around the social hemisphere. Bore people with your own agenda and people will think your Share This links are arrogant decorations.

Social networks are a funny place. See Angie’s top ten favourite things about Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And while you’re there, get some valuable insights into viral marketing and using networks for social responsibility.

YouTube is much more than a video site. Google enjoys 63% of the search engine market and of that, YouTube (owned by Google) accounts for 25%. With Yahoo at 11% and Bing at 9%, YouTube is the second largest search engine. It has over 300,000,000 user accounts and is the second largest social media website after Facebook.

YouTube’s search algorithm includes: title, description, tags, number of views, user rating and incoming links. All of these elements can be influenced by either the video producer or the viewer, and will determine the placement in YouTube and Google’s search listings. YouTube and Google absolutely influence each other. The higher your video ranks in Google, the more views it will receive, and the better it will rank on YouTube. The better your video ranks on YouTube, the higher it will rank in Google.

Optimization with Keywords and Meta Data

Google cannot read the content within videos, so you must include as much supportive content as possible. You describe the content by the use of incoming link text (if you link to your video from your website), title tags, description, and any words found on the pages surrounding it. The correct use of keywords is the most important influencer to getting more views on YouTube. Optimize the YouTube page of your video in the same way you would for a regular web page. Make sure that the keywords and text that you use to describe your YouTube videos match the keywords which you want to be ranked on in YouTube’s and Google’s search results.

The title of the video needs to describe the video in as few words as possible. For maximum SEO, place keywords to the left. Treat the tags on your video like you would the meta keywords on your html page. Make sure you repeat the keywords from your title in your description. Include a clickable URL to your website in the first line of the description tag. For each video you post, create unique titles, descriptions and tags, even with similar videos, as this will create “unique” content for the search engines to crawl.

Embed the Video on Your Website

Embed the videos that you host on YouTube onto your own website to optimize ranking. Google’s algorithms takes into account how many times a video has been viewed, and any views from your website will be added to the views on YouTube. Create a separate text-optimized page for each video on your site as the content provided by the text on those pages will help the search engines determine the information contained in your video. If possible, don’t embed multiple videos on one page. This is viewed as duplicate content and hurts the individual ranking of each video. Surround your videos with a descriptions and link to your YouTube page using your keywords.

To Google, the number of links describes popularity and link text describes what the video is really about. One way Google can measure the accuracy of your content claims is by evaluate the link text used to describe your video. Not only the number of links but the quality of theses links matter to Google. Websites with high page ranking that link to your video will positively impact your ranking.

Thumbnails, Branding and Call to Action

Make sure to consider the thumbnails of your video. YouTube pulls thumbnails from the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks of your video. Having a strong, attractive thumbnail will motivate the user to choose your video over the others. Remember first impressions count. Open your video with a title, logo and URL. Also consider using constant in-video branding and a call to action throughout the entire video. Keep in mind that YouTube watermarks the bottom right corner with their logo don’t use that area for branding. Close with a slide 10 seconds long with the same information that you used at the opening of your video to  remind the viewer of your brand and URL.

Use Subtitles and Captioning on Videos

Captions and subtitles make videos accessible to a wider audience. It’s optional but strongly encouraged to make your videos available to as many people as possible. “Google believes that the world of information must be accessible to all,” said vice-president of Google, Vint Cerf, 66, who has used a hearing aid since age 13. Captions are in the same language as the video’s audio track, and subtitles are in a different language. Also utilize the annotation feature to highlight certain areas of your video.

Social Networking and Video

After your video has been posted, embedded, and optimized, you need to place it where people will see it, and hopefully circulate it through their networks. Encourage participation by enabling all the features on YouTube. Ratings and comments will help with search ranking so be sure to enable these features. Another way to increase traffic to your video is by using the share link underneath the video. You can post to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, and StumbleUpon. You can also copy the link to share on IM or email.

If you have more than one video, create a channel. It is a public page on YouTube that you can brand with your colours and a background image containing your logo, URL and other information. Here you can create playlists, favourite videos, and subscribe to other channels. This will help to create a community around your videos, where people can subscribe, comment, and view your subscriptions and favourites.

As with any other social media on the web, you need to get involved by commenting on others videos, replying back to comments, and posting video replies to popular videos. If people like what you have to say they will follow your link back to your video channel.

YouTube has a enormous presence on the Internet and is very closely tied to Google. Make sure you put as much attention into optimizing your video content as you would any other online content. The proper optimization will make sure your video is accessible to the largest audience possible.

One of the best things to help your brand is to engage your audience with a blog. One of the worst things to jeopardize your brand is to let your blog go stagnant.

What does having a blog say about your brand if there’s nothing to read? Nothing at all. Taking the time to plan your blog strategy makes tasks transparent and easy to execute.

Quality vs Quantity vs Consistency

The quality of your posts is, of course, far more important than how many posts you have. However, having a consistent blog keeps you from going stale. Balancing quality and engaging content with a consistent publishing schedule, on top of actually doing your job sounds tough – but it doesn’t have to be.

The first step in having a content creation strategy is to choose a publishing schedule that suits your organization. At Amalgam Design, we chose to publish an article for Bl’Amalgam at least once a week.

Plan Content a Month In Advance

Planning content a month in advance keeps your blog from getting derailed. Sometimes it helps to just take out a calendar and highlight the days you want to publish an article. For each day, decide the topic to blog about. Topics should be related to your industry and should remain within your audience’s interests.

Multiple Authors, One Editor

If you can’t squeeze writing a weekly blog article into your schedule, let others in your organization write too. While some worry that this may damage a company’s identity, on the contrary, it has many benefits:

1. Allowing employees to write for your organization’s blog shows transparency, honesty and trust within your organizational culture.
2. Your employees get to show off their expertise making your organization look more like leaders in your industry
3. It creates a feeling of community and ownership within your organization
4. You share the load in investing time into your blog

Take the time to review articles before posting to ensure accuracy and maintain tone.

Prepare Your Draft In Advance

Creating your draft days in advance ensures that you have plenty of time to edit, proofread and gather feedback from others within your organization. This also helps in the creation of a quality article as well.

Comments on your blog are awesome and you want to encourage people to respond as much as possible. It gives your blog life and offers an opportunity to interact with your readers/customers. Comments provide feedback on what customers think about your products, services, organization or opinions, all of which is valuable information you are receiving absolutely free.

How you respond to their comments, especially negative comments, is an extension of your online brand and people will take note. As in life, whenever I receive opinions or comments that differ from mine, I use some basic strategies to take the heat out of the situation and improve communication.

Don’t Take It So Personally

It’s important not to take comments personally and to understand the intended message. Assume that the person had good intentions and did not communicate their message accurately. Perhaps they are just trying to correct what they believe is incorrect information or convey a valid point in a tone that got away from them.

Sometimes people have unreasonably strong reactions which may have little to do with you. Without going all Freudian on you, don’t assume that because a visitor is complaining about you, that they are actually talking about you at all. They may be reacting to a personal issue of which you are completely unaware.

Different opinions and perspectives are what spark debate and discussion, and this is an important element in successful blogging. All conversations give you a chance to build a strong relationship with your readers. Not censoring their comments – even if they are negative – demonstrates that you respect their opinions and are open-minded.

What To Do About Negative Comments

Respond to the comment rather than react. Take the time you need to craft a response that will turn the negative comment into a positive one. Thank them for their feedback and encourage them to continue being an active participant on your blog. Or take the time to explain how you are improving your customer service. Treating them with kindness and humility will earn the respect of all your readers.

If the person has a legitimate point, start with that. If the reader is criticizing any aspect of your business or organization, address their concern. Again this gives you another opportunity to provide further details and explain your company’s policies and procedures. You may also take the conversation offline and respond in a private email.

If the comment has inaccurate information, respectively provide the correct information. If you, in fact, posted inaccurate information, admit it and apologize. It happens to the best of us.

Now, if the person is not interested in a discussion and is just looking to start a fight, do not engage. But ignore their comment rather than delete it. Censoring angry customers just enrages them further and kicks them into overdrive. Besides, some of your readers might even step in and defend you which adds credibility to your company. However, personally I would delete comments that are name-calling, personal attacks or use hate language. Make sure you enable spam filters that eliminate hate language, obscenities, along with other comment spam.

Haters Increase Your Ranking

Why yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Search engines love comments, both positive and negative. Search engines see them as new content and new backlinks which makes you rank higher. A fundamental criterion used by YouTube to rank videos is the number of comments. As long as these complainers are increasing your organization’s online visibility, who cares what they are saying?

Besides, allowing negative comments will encourage online conversation, turning your blog from a sales brochure to a powerful online communication tool that will increase readership and RSS subscriptions.

Any comments?