The post offers a variety of interesting predictions for 2010, but the point I found most interesting suggested that business marketing will increase focus on content creation. The literal quote is:

“Companies will start to turn their marketing departments into production studios for creating content”

What does this mean to small and mid-sized businesses? As the effectiveness of traditional marketing continues to decline, wise companies should increase the importance of content development in their marketing strategy. Here are a few examples of how smaller companies have created content to market themselves:

Attract Interest in Jewelry on Flickr.com – Catherinette Rings leverages the photos they take of their existing jewelry by posting them on Flickr.com. By effectively tagging each photograph with phrases searchers might use, Catherinette attracts the interest of prospective buyers who can follow a link on their profile page to buy rings on Estsy.com. This technique can be used to publicize a variety of products and services not limited to something as popular as jewelry.

Sell Vinyl Fencing Using YouTube.com – Hoover Fence is a fencing supplier located in Newton, Iowa. While I’m sure that they use many traditional marketing methods, they’ve created a series of videos that give prospects a good idea of what they do and how they do it.

This video has received over 31,000 views. How many fence buyers watched this video, saw the ease with which this product can be installed and purchased the materials from Hoover?

Promote Your Services Using a Blog – Radiant Plumbing uses it’s blog to answer simple questions, discuss new products and focus on its community of Austin, Texas. It’s post My New Navien Tankless Water Heater is on the Google’s first page for “Navien Tankless Water Heater“. Not a bad investment in time for what is likely to generate interest in Navien and sales for Radiant.

These were just a few diverse examples about how businesses might shift their marketing strategies to focus on the creation of content to “pull” prospects in the coming year.

What do you think? Will a shift toward the creation of content make sense for your business?

Bill Rowland

Keywords: inbound marketing, content creation, flickr, youtube, blogging, internet marketing

Sign Up for Local Business Directories

There are a wide variety of local business directories that offer SMBs the opportunity to list their companies for free. Of course, the “800 pound Gorilla” is Google Local, but Yahoo!, Yellow Pages and YellowBook are nothing to sneeze at either. Businesses should be prepared to provide a complete profile, hours of operation, a photo, etc… Here are a few links to get started:

• Google Local
• Yahoo Local
• YellowPages.com
• YellowBook

Geotag Content

Businesses should make every attempt to occupy as much of the first page for their business location as possible. This is particularly helpful for B2C businesses, but it can also be helpful to B2Bs too. Briefly, Geotagging Geotagging is the inclusion of geographic information when posting content. This can include the town, a street address or even longitude or latitude information on sites like Flickr, YouTube and Google Maps .

These are just two examples of how businesses can help themselves by spending a modest amount of additional efforts in their online marketing efforts to dramatically improve their online visibility.

We’ll offer more tips in the near future. In the meantime, can you offer any of your favorites?

Bill Rowland

The post offers a variety of interesting predictions for 2010, but the point I found most interesting suggested that business marketing will increase focus on content creation. The literal quote is:

“Companies will start to turn their marketing departments into production studios for creating content”

What does this mean to small and mid-sized businesses? As the effectiveness of traditional marketing continues to decline, wise companies should increase the importance of content development in their marketing strategy. Here are a couple examples:

Attract Interest in Jewelry on Flickr.com – Catherinette Rings leverages the photos they take of their existing jewelry by posting them on Flickr.com. By effectively tagging each photograph with phrases searchers might use, Catherinette attracts the interest of prospective buyers who can follow a link on their profile page to buy rings on Estsy.com. This technique can be used to publicize a variety of products and services not limited to something as popular as jewelry.

Sell Vinyl Fencing Using YouTube.com – Hoover Fence is a fencing supplier located in Newton, Iowa. While I’m sure that they use many traditional marketing methods, they’ve created a series of videos that give prospects a good idea of what they do and how they do it.

This video  has received over 31,000 views. How many fence buyers watched this video, saw the ease with which this product can be installed and purchased the materials from Hoover?

Promote Services Using a Blog – Radiant Plumbing uses it’s blog to answer simple questions, discuss new products and focus on its community of Austin, Texas. It’s post My New Navien Tankless Water Heater is on the Google’s first page for the search: Navien Tankless Water Heater . Not a bad investment in time for what is likely to generate interest in Navien and sales for Radiant.

These were just a few diverse examples about how businesses might shift their marketing strategies to focus on the creation of content to “pull” prospects in the coming year.

What do you think? Will a shift toward the creation of content make sense for your business?

Bill Rowland

The post offers a variety of interesting predictions for 2010, but the point I found most interesting suggested that business marketing will increase focus on content creation. The literal quote is:

“Companies will start to turn their marketing departments into production studios for creating content”

What does this mean to small and mid-sized businesses? As the effectiveness of traditional marketing continues to decline, wise companies should increase the importance of content development in their marketing strategy. Here are a couple examples:

Attract Interest in Jewelry on Flickr.com – Catherinette Rings leverages the photos they take of their existing jewelry by posting them on Flickr.com. By effectively tagging each photograph with phrases searchers might use, Catherinette attracts the interest of prospective buyers who can follow a link on their profile page to buy rings on Estsy.com. This technique can be used to publicize a variety of products and services not limited to something as popular as jewelry.

Sell Vinyl Fencing Using YouTube.com – Hoover Fence is a fencing supplier located in Newton, Iowa. While I’m sure that they use many traditional marketing methods, they’ve created a series of videos that give prospects a good idea of what they do and how they do it.

This video has received over 31,000 views. How many fence buyers watched this video, saw the ease with which this product can be installed and purchased the materials from Hoover?

Promote Your Services Using a Blog – Radiant Plumbing uses it’s blog to answer simple questions, discuss new products and focus on its community of Austin, Texas. It’s post My New Navien Tankless Water Heater is on the Google’s first page for “Navien Tankless Water Heater“. Not a bad investment in time for what is likely to generate interest in Navien and sales for Radiant.

These were just a few diverse examples about how businesses might shift their marketing strategies to focus on the creation of content to “pull” prospects in the coming year.

What do you think? Will a shift toward the creation of content make sense for your business?

Bill Rowland

• Find a unique style and stick with it.
• Popular videos tend to be short, fast-paced, and offer a “big finish”.
• When possible, use an external microphone and avoid public places with horrible acoustics and ambient sounds.
• Your video is more than just the video.  Your thumbnail, description, title and even keyword tags are part of the package. If these elements aren’t consistent with your video idea, it won’t have the same impact.

Nalts also shares quite a bit of wisdom about becoming an active member in the YouTube community (in which he has achieve iconic status of sorts). Not only can your community offer you valuable feedback, but they can also help spread the word about about your Golden Globe masterpiece.

In addition to these, and dozens of other helpful tips, How To Become Popular On YouTube (Without Any Talent) contains all kinds of useful links to other sites and resources. 

All in all, if you are just getting started with YouTube video, or if you’ve been publishing clips for a while, but are looking to “Go Viral, then there probably isn’t a better (or cheaper!)  place to go than How To Become Popular On YouTube (Without Any Talent).  You can visit Nalts’ blog here: www.WillVideoForFood.com

Paul is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul Fleming has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.