One of the greatest benefits of video is its ability to end up all over the Internet. You post a video to YouTube, the message resonates with viewers, and they share the video with the world. For example, after helping my nephew tie a tie before his first job interview, I decided to do a video of the process. To my surprise, the video took off and now has over 5,500 views.

Now imagine these 5,500 people were viewing and sharing your small business’s content.

Some users will share your videos on other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Others will actually embed the videos in their blogs – very common on video and music blogs. Then there are blogs that automatically display your videos on their site for the sole purpose of driving traffic to their site. There may be little or no attribution on these different posts.

Note: In this post, I refer to YouTube content but most of the tips also apply to other video platforms like Vimeo, Viddler, and Animoto.

Here are five tips for taking control and branding your video content.

1. Mention your name and company Web site at the beginning and end of the video.

I learned this tip from video blogger Steve Garfield. You’ll always hear Steve’s video start with “Hi this is Steve Garfield from SteveGarfield.com.” If your video ends up at the far reaches of the Internet, away from the main YouTube site, this tip can help connect viewers to your brand.

2. Actually display your name and company URL in the video.

Feel free to be creative here. Write your name and URL out longhand as part of the video, spell it out in the sand on a beach walk, do some animation, whatever. Just make sure your company information is visible and a part of the video. Once again, as your video runs wild, viewers will be able to refer back to your site.

3. In YouTube, start your video Description with your Web site URL.

This little trick is amazing at connecting your video content with your company site. If you start the description with the URL it also creates a clickable link.

4. Once you start adding your site URL to your Description field, you can start to track mentions of your video.

I use Google Alerts to check for mentions of my different blog sites. When I receive an alert over “jesseluna.com” and see the name of a video next to it, I know someone embedded the video or linked to it.

If your company strategy is to let your videos run wild, then tracking where they end up isn’t as important. However, I personally still get flustered when I see my videos being sucked into a site that is obviously using the content for the sole purpose of driving users to click on ads. Basically, they’re using my content to make tiny sums of money.

But that’s the balance video producers must make. Do we share and let the content spread or do we try to over-control it and keep it from getting out? The answer will depend on your own strategy.

5. Maximize the way videos are presented on your own site.

In the mad rush to prepare quality videos, sometimes they only end up on YouTube. Using video on your site or blog is a huge opportunity to extend the reach of your video and brand. It will also provide compelling content for your blog.

I just relaunched this blog to help highlight my video tutorials. I’m displaying “featured videos” on the right widget bar and I created a page that displays a 20-video playlist of tutorials. The Tubepress WordPress plugin is an excellent tool for displaying YouTube and Vimeo videos.

Ironically, the Tubepress plugin can be used to suck in other people’s content as well. But you don’t have to use it that way.

Do you have any extra tips?

We’ve just stepped through five ways to brand and take control of your videos. This is not an exhaustive list but should get your brain juices going. Take control of your content and maximize its use.

Did I miss any obvious items? Please share your experiences and tips in the Comments section.


Photo Credit: Cookieevans on Flickr - License

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[Originally posted on jesseluna.com]

Facebook Pages allow businesses and individuals to create rich branded pages within Facebook. Every major brand in the world is running to build engaging and “sticky” pages on Facebook, because that’s where the people are.

Are your customers, non-profit supporters, constituents, and neighbors on Facebook? You betcha. So why not give them an opportunity to connect with you and your brand?

This tutorial will show you how to get started on building your own Facebook Page (I refer to them as “Fan Pages” in the video). This is Part One of the Facebook Fan Page project so make sure you bookmark this page, subscribe to the email blog posts, and/or subscribe to the RSS feed to keep track of further developments.

Your feedback is golden. I love Comments like a fat kid loves cake.

And don’t forget to view the full Transcript below.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Transcript

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[This item was cross-posted at jesseluna.com]

One of my themes for 2010 is Own Your Content. In that light, I’m sharing the Amazon.com review I did of Aaron Brazell’s WordPress Bible.

Here is the text of my Amazon review for the WordPress Bible:

I’ve been developing Web sites for over 12 years and jumped into WordPress design about two years ago.

This book will help me super charge my development. Having come from a .Net developing background, I’ve only been tweaking PHP code and using software to create 80% of my new theme code. This book will give me the tools to further explore the code and learn how to do things from scratch.

In addition, the WordPress Bible provides great sets of “cheat sheets” to help figure out some of the complexities of theme layouts, the dreaded loop, and other structures.

I’ve also been Alpha testing the WordPress 3.0 code and the contents of the book are still highly relevant. In fact, I’ve never used the WordPress MU functionality but will take the tips and information in this book to help direct me on the 3.0 multi-site setup which is still being developed.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in taking their blogs to the next level and for WordPress designers and developers. I can’t wait to use the book to get under the hood of my next project and super charge that sucker.

* Direct link to my Amazon Review Feel free to “Like” it or leave a comment there.
—
As you decide where to spend your hard-earned money, I recommend the WordPress Bible for WordPress developers and theme designers. WordPress beginners (non-developers) might have trouble understanding it so you should browse through the book before buying it.

I would have liked to have seen more information on adding video to blogs since I’m a lifestreamer and do a lot of video. But photo bloggers will be happy since the book does have a special section for them.

I tweeted a link to this image on Posterous when I went to purchase the WordPress Bible. Despite Chuck Norris’s will, I only purchased the WP Bible.

Shameless Affiliate link so you can buy a copy or three:

(Note/reminder: The Chuck Norris book is not included, although it really wants to be)

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I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

[Cross posted to www.jesseluna.com]

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YouTube allows you to create a custom video player but the process doesn’t include an easy way to set the player size. I’ll show you how to do both.

Create the custom player
You can create a custom player by logging into your YouTube account then selecting “Account” link next to your user name at the top right of the page.

From the Account page, click on the “Custom Video Players” link under the “More” column.

Click on the Create Custom Player button, add the player name and description, select the layout, then select the video(s) you want to include. If you want to create a player for only one video or for a specific group then you can save what you have at this point and create a Playlist with those videos. Otherwise, select the video(s) that you want to include in this player.

Click on the “Select” button once you selected the videos(s) to include in the player.

Once things look good, click on the “Generate Code” button then you’ll see the Embed Code box with the HTML code in it.

At the time of this post, the default player size is 416 by 337 pixels. You probably noticed that the Create a Custom Player process never allowed you to set the player size. I’ll show you how to edit the code so you can get the right player size.

Edit the Embed Code
Copy the Embed Code and paste it into a Notepad or Text file for now. Now, we’re going to change four parts of that code, the two “width” and two “height” parameters which are both 416 by 337 respectively.

To avoid strenuous math at this point, I included a data table that has the width and height at different percentages of the original player size. So if you want the player to be around 300 pixels wide, you’ll need to set the height to be around 240 pixels, based on the chart below.

Final Steps
Now that you have the desired width and height, change those values in the Embed Code then add the entire code to your blog. If it doesn’t fit correctly, revisit the table above and find a combination that works for you.

You just learned how to create and resize a custom YouTube Player!

[Cross posted on jesseluna.com]

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[I originally wrote this during Thanksgiving of 2008 but this still applies today. I mention "fans" here but by that I mean super loyal customers.]

It’s great seeing all the Thanksgiving thank you messages on social network sites like Twitter and Facebook. So how can you say “Thanks” to your fans?

Here are two quick examples:

1. ROLL CALL

Internet Marketing expert Douglas Karr extended a special Thank You to all his blog Commenters by listing them on today’s blog post. He listed them in order of how active they’ve been on his site.

Wouldn’t you rather comment on a site that listens to you and appreciates your comments? I would!

Thank You message from Douglas Karr

2. MAKE YOUR FANS FAMOUS

Here’s an offline example of how to thank your fans. Make your fans famous and post pictures of them!

My favorite little burger place in Ventura, CA is BJ’s. They have great burgers and have lots of loyal customers. When the shop changed ownership, they wanted to keep the regulars coming back so they started posting pictures of folks. The picture below is a bit dark because it was raining but there were still people standing out there to look for their friends and relatives on the picture board.

Loyal customers can see thier pictures on BJ's fan board

Do you have any other great ideas for saying Thanks to your fans? Let me know in the comments.

Would you like to be a part of Build Your Fan Base? Post a link to one of your pictures and a link to your blog/site and I’ll post your picture to my new Fans Only page.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it.

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The revolutionary part of social media is that it takes offline ways of doing business – networking, one-on-one communication, relationship building – and offers an online way of building and fostering them.

This is a fundamental shift in the way companies sell and market online.

In this new sales and marketing world, “leads” and “eyeballs” will now be seen as “people” and “fans”.

The only way social media will go away is the way the “e” fell off of “e-business.” Social media will be folded into the way all companies conduct business.

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I recently had “the Twitter talk” with the CEO of a high tech B2B company. His one main question was, “Will Twitter help us make money?”

My response was that B2B companies should not look to Twitter as a way to sell widgets, but to view it as a trade show.

At a trade show:

1. Conversations and actions are focused on building relationships
2. Outcomes are evaluated on a long-term basis, not a quick hit
3. Strong partnerships are the greatest financial reward. In the CEO’s business, a new vendor can mean millions in sales per year
4. It’s a great place to share the company’s brand and personality
5. To get the most out of a show, you have to engage participants or you will get lost in the crowd

So there is a reward at the end of the Twitter rainbow for B2B companies. But it takes time, work, and a decent strategy.

Oh, and don’t forget the swag.

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I’ve been buying IKEA furniture since the company first opened its doors in California. So when a Twitter friend tweeted about an IKEA social media case study video, I had to take a look.

IKEA ran a promotion this Fall on Facebook to engage its customers and fans. By cleverly using the picture-tagging feature built into Facebook, they drew in over a thousand friends for one of the store owners, Gordon Gustavsson, and spread awareness of IKEA’s products.

The IKEA promotion, as described in the video below, had three key features that made it engaging and memorable:

1) Easy – For Facebook users, the promotion was simple. All they had to do was friend Gustavsson then tag pictures. There were no spammy applications to install in order to participate and share with other Facebook friends.

2) Interactive – It required fans to keep an eye out for new showcase pictures so they could rush to them and be the first to tag a furniture item.

3) Clearly Defined – Facebook fans knew the rules of the promotion – that there would be limited number of showcase pictures to tag and that they had to be first to tag them to win.

I don’t have the numbers on the overall reach of the promotion, but engaging over a thousand fervent fans on Facebook is great way to build a fan base.

Did YOU hear about the IKEA promotion before this blog post? What would YOU have done to extend the reach of this promotion if you were in charge of the campaign?

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