1. Video Attracts New, Relevant Search Traffic
No conversation about ebusiness is complete without discussing search engine optimization (SEO). An ebusiness cannot gain on a competitor until consumers know it exists and can easily find it through organic search. Today, ebusinesses that utilize video assets are at an advantage, since Google is structuring its search engine results to reward sites that include video. According to Forrester, any given video in an index of searchable keywords has a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page.

To better promote their video investments and derive the greatest SEO rewards, ebusinesses are making videos more accessible to visitors, scaling videos to reach long-tail keywords, and automating video production in order to have video available as soon as new products are introduced.

2. Video Assets Can be Easily Syndicated
Online video is usually channel agnostic. By syndicating video properties to multiple sites — includingYouTube, the second largest search engine today — ebusinesses extend their reach to innumerable eyeballs. In addition to traditional channels, online video plays equally well via mobile networks, TV, and in-store screens. It is a cost-effective way to maintain brand consistency and strengthen consumer awareness.

3. Videos Encourage Sharing
Videos are far more likely to be passed and shared than text-based pages. Additionally, a video thumbnail on a social media platform — Facebook, for example — grabs more attention than static text and often results in more comments, more “Likes,” and more traffic to the brand’s website. When you like or share a video link, a thumbnail appears on your wall and is also seen by your friends.

According to a study from YouBrand, pictures and video within Facebook get engaged with and clicked more often than just text and questions.

4. Video Engages Site Visitors
Video provides a familiar user interface for site visitors. When videos are properly produced, they captivate the user. Instead of the need to navigate, scroll and click to access information, the video is a one-stop shop for information. It takes less energy than the hassle of reading and the user is engaged until he or she is ready to follow an embedded call-to-action. Today’s automated video production platforms easily enable this flow, in many cases directing visual and auditory calls-to-action that guide the viewer to a shopping cart.

5. Video’s “Halo Effect” Drives Conversions
Video can give customers an in-depth view of a product or a demonstration that quells any hesitancy they might have about purchasing online. The peace of mind the customer gains from the video seeps into the way he or she feels about the brand and website overall, building trust and credibility. This is essential to gaining market share, especially for businesses that sell products with a lot of competition.

6. Video Increases Customer Loyalty
Video newsletters are more likely to attract consumer attention. By some estimates, the open rate for a video newsletter is two to three times higher than for a text-based newsletter. While many brands compete for consumer attention with the latter, those who employ the former stand out from the crowd. These video communications can be personalized for each recipient with individualized greetings, references to previously purchased items, or offers based on shopping history, geography and segmentation.

7. Video Creates Online Personalization
By improving and tailoring the customer experience, online retailers in every sector have increased customer loyalty, conversion rates and average order price. The quality of online personalization continues to rise and in many cases can rival or outperform the “live” shopping experience. This is a key factor in gaining market share, since consumers increasingly shop online but still express a desire for the personal touch and the social aspects of in-person browsing.

When prospects go to a store, they get recommendations and help from in-store staff who point them to relevant products. Video delivers this experience online, with far less variability and chance. With new technologies that offer personalized video created on-the-fly, ebusinesses can bridge the gap between live and virtual experiences.

8. Video Production Costs Are Falling, ROI Is Rising
Online video clearly has an impact on competitive advantage. But is it feasible for most ebusinesses? Thanks to today’s automated video production technology, the answer is “yes.”

Two decades ago, the market struggled to replace the labor-intensive process of website management. Today we hardly think about the steps required to update or add web content: Images and text are now template-based, database-driven and easy to manipulate.

Video production is experiencing a similar change. While many website owners once fought the limitations of manually produced videos — including slow production times and prohibitive costs — today’s solutions tend to be automated, cost effective and high quality. With relatively little human intervention, online video production can increase a business’s competitive advantage while creating a better shopping experience for the user.

By  Yaniv Axen
Mashables.com June 2011

Call (786) 594-0435 to contact Kompani Group and learn how we can help your business succeed.

This new web design and online marketing company is a new breed of no-nonsense interactive company, where functionality, cost effectiveness, design and strategic ideas are guaranteed.  Kompete’s mission is to always to seek to empower the client to manage their websites in-house, thus allowing Kompete to focus its efforts on delivering online results for the client’s business.  Their unquenchable thirst for new ideas and tireless advocacy of working smart assure the clients that their online solutions will outperform their competition’s online efforts, today and in the future.

Kompete offers cost effective smart web site packages for any size budget, and their crew is passionate about creating winning online solutions for any type of business model.  Their creative, technologically advanced, and flexible interactive solutions will stand the test of time, propel lead generation, online orders and impress visitors.  At Kompete you always win, because they understand that their success is only through their clients’ success.

So what exactly is Social Online Marketing? Social Online Marketing requires the use of Social Networking sites such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Digg, Blogger, Twitter and YouTube to add/edit content for others to be able to access. Information placed on such sites allows consumers to not only view it, also link to it and/or post their own comments about it.  The end result of Social Online Marketing is to increase visibility on Social Networking Sites, create inbound links, and increase traffic to your website which can be tracked through analytics software.

Not only are Social Networking sites useful for Social Online Marketing, their content can also be informational to their viewers. Social Networking sites can allow people to catch up on trends in the Internet world. There are many blogs for example that offer information solely on Internet news. Social Networking sites don’t just give information on the Internet; they can also give readers access to almost any information imaginable.

Although consumers are in control of Social Networking websites, they don’t have full control; Social Online Marketers can also participate in these sites. Customers don’t necessarily want to be marketed to all the time, but they want to be communicated with, which can be done through online discussions. Consumers are out there expressing their thoughts, opinions, recommendations and complaints about your products regardless and not accessing/engaging in these conversations is ignoring an excellent opportunity. By engaging in conversations with your customers and hearing their thoughts, you can get feedback on what changes/improvements your product can use as well as give you an opportunity to address their views through your comments. All the hype of Social Online Marketing is causing an exponential growth in users and its possible uses as a powerful online marketing tool.

Before starting your Social Online Marketing campaign it is important to think about what exactly it is that you are marketing. Brainstorming about your Online Marketing goals should include research of your target demographic and your key competitors.

Once able to locate your target audience it will enable you to answer key points that define what Social Online Marketing tactics will be successful. The following are questions to keep in mind about your users when determining how to proceed in your campaign: where do they spend a majority of their time when online? (or sometimes even when offline) and what are their hobbies, interests and needs?

By researching your leading competitors you can gain knowledge of how they have tackled Social Online Marketing. Whether competitors have published in wikis, posted on blogs or created a Facebook Fan page they should all be easily traceable through their website. Many Online Marketing attempts can be found just by performing a link search of their website.

You can create a custom Social Online Marketing plan for your website since you now know who your consumers are, information about them and what your competitors have done.

Although Social Online Marketing is relatively easy to perform, it is nearly impossible to engage in every single website out there, nor is not necessary (in most situations) to use every form of Social Online Marketing. The more relevant avenues your campaign exhausts the more likely you are to have a successful results, which more often than not means the more time you have to spend on your Online Marketing campaign the better your results will be.

There are massive amounts of Social Online Marketing websites currently available, with literally hundreds of new ones emerging each month making it even more impossible to access them all.

Examples of Social Online Marketing websites include, but are not limited to:

1. LinkedIn is a Social Networking website that revolves around networks of professionals. Your professional network of trusted contacts gives you an advantage in your career, and is one of your most valuable assets. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return. Their mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. They believe that in a global connected economy, your success as a professional and your competitiveness as a company depend upon faster access to insight and resources you can trust.
2. FaceBook is another Social Networking website that gives users the ability to keep in contact with friends. People can publish notes, upload photos, view news from friends, join networks and so much more. By posting a photo of your brand on your companies FaceBook page it allows friends to view your product and hopefully generate traffic to your website.
3. YouTube is a video sharing/distributing Social Networking website. It allows visitors that don’t register the ability to watch videos or those who do register the ability to access the websites full potential, offering many of the applications that sites like Linkedin do. YouTube is one of the fastest growing and largest Social Networking communities currently available, so it is a great avenue to perform Social Online Marketing.
4. Blogger is one of the more popular blogging networks. By commenting in open-ended conversational marketing it allows the community to have a lot of control over conversations. Social Online marketers can create their own blog to share specific information to the community and plug their own product/brand.

In most Social Online Marketing communities it is recommended to not start out by promoting your brand or website. If you start out by “spamming” you are likely to get kicked out of that social community. Not only could the site administrators ban you from their site, but it could also scare consumers away from your direct online marketing tactics.

What is the next step? Initiating contact with your customers is important, but it is just as useful to continue to keep contact with them. You can’t just start something and not finish. Starting posts on a blog is great, but you need to show users that you are not just visiting, but are there often to listen to them. Customers are likely to add comments or thoughts to your posting which would in turn require a response from you.

Social Online Marketing sites are useful, but their content needs to be easily accessible by searchers. By making access to your Social Online Marketing attempts possible through a link on your website it makes less work for your users to view them.

So you were able to define your audience, locate your customers on the Internet, build a social relationship with them and promote your brand and website through Social Online Marketing. How can you tell if your Social Online Marketing techniques are working? Most analytic software allows goals to be set up and allows for the monitoring of conversion rates. (Note that you need to know what you are measuring first)

When just beginning your Social Online Marketing campaign it is recommended to perform one technique at a time. If using more than one Social Online Marketing technique it could be hard to tell which one elicits what results. To be certain which tactics work best, you should start your campaign by performing one Social Online Marketing form at a time. If you start a multitude of tactics at one time it will more than likely give you an excellent result, but will leave you wondering which one is better for me.

On the other hand, if you are familiar with Social Online Marketing and know which forms are necessary for your campaign it is best to perform more than one tactic at a time. By promoting multiple forms of Social Online Marketing at once it will give you quicker results than marketing just one at a time.

At Kompani Group we offer monthly online social marketing maintenance services. Ask us about what we can do for your company.

Making Design Matter.

The new Michael Wolk Design Associates’ web site has been launched. Kompani Group helped Michael Wolk convert his old site into a more user friendly showcase of his work. Check out the new site at www.WolkDesign.com

Making Design Matter. That’s our philosophy at Michael Wolk Design, and just like our design itself, it works on several levels. Making implies action. Our creative process doesn’t end in thought or discussion – it ends in creation. Every idea is developed to its fullest potential here, rather than passed off to someone else. Design is what we make. Anyone can create something functional, and anyone can create something beautiful – but true design will always accomplish both. PRATT had a motto – “Be true to your work and your work be true to you.” In my experience, being true to your work means allowing design – rather than money, politics, or other outside influences – to control the energy. Design is design; everything else is everything else. And we make design matter, in the sense that it needs to be physical. It transcends fantasy and speculation; it is exciting and inspiring, while remaining firmly grounded in the reality of time constraints and budgets. Most important of all is making design matter. Design matters to me – it’s what i love to do, and it’s what i do better than anybody else. Making Design Matter is what I stand for.

Since all businesses have a number of case studies that are relevant to their target audience, we suggest that you establish a CSS style web site, with a blog and content management backend where posting a new page or new blog is as easy as writing a word document or an e-mail. If you take a closer look at your competition, you will also realize that they aren’t effectively using the social media and other means of SEO friendly web sites, which in turn will send you scores of inquiries from new prospects.

Building a well designed and professional site, writing content and educating you on how to maintain or update the site is fairly inexpensive, and can be done for about $7,500 – $10,000.

Even though our own site www.KompaniGroup.com and www.ActiveServe.com are more complex than what you may need, they represent the web 2.0 CSS type of web site we are talking about. Both of these sites are receiving new hits and leads every week, mainly because they both are optimized for SEO and because we are active in posting blogs.

Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.  Gary’s eccentric personality and offbeat oenophile knowledge have proven a natural path to success with his Wine TV Library. Vaynerchuk found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 Billboard = 300 new customers, $0 Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter

eBay found participants in online communities spend 54% more

These are some startling and inspiring facts. If you are currently utilizing social media, what has been your measure of success?

And, when there is an opening in the seafood procurement department at your company, take the job, and consider teaming up with our friends from Portunus Group. Their CEO Palmi Palmason is one of these steadfast honest Vikings from Iceland, who will source the most nutritious and healthiest seafood from anywhere on the face of the planet and land it fresh in your seafood aisle. Enjoy. www.PortunusGroup.com

Check out the rest of the article here. Great read.