Twitter, Twitter, Twitter! Everywhere you go, you will see the word Twitter on people’s blogs or websites. Twitter has no doubt taken the virtual world by storm! So, if you have not jumped on to this Twitter bandwagon, it’s never too late to jump now! As probably this might be something new for you and it’s also why you end up reading my article now:) let’s take a few minutes and see what a Twitter beginner can do on his/her first day with Twitter!

To share links, shorten URLs

Alright, some of the web pages might have long URLs and you will be wondering, how on Earth can I squeeze those urls on a micro-blogging system that only allows 140 characters?! Fret no more. There are a lot of free tools to shrink or shorten the URLs so that you can tweet it within the limited characters allowed. The popular ones are bit.ly, is.gd, tiny.cc, ow.ly

To reply, use @ sign

So, if you want to create a reply to someone on twitter or send a message to that person publicly and you do not mind others knowing what you write for him/her, remember to put @ in front of the person’s Twitter username. For instance @username, meet you tonight!

To direct message, use DM

If you want to send a private message to Twitter users, you can locate this DM function in your Twitter control panel. However, do keep in mind that you can only direct message Twitter users who are following you only.

To retweet, put RT

Sometimes you find that certain tweets by other users are worth sharing. So, you intend to share it with your list of followers. It is best if you can retweet the original tweets and give credit back to the original user. Just put RT @username before you post it yourself.

To share photos, use TwitPic

Web 2.0 is all about sharing. Therefore, if you want to share photos via Twitter, you can opt to use TwitPic, the most popular image sharing services on Twitter. Go to twitpic.com and sign in with your Twitter username and password. There are other Twitter image sharing services as well. Those notable ones are TweetPhoto (tweetphoto.com), Twitgoo (twitgoo.com) and Picktor (picktor.com).

To categorize your tweets, use # hashtag

When you want to create a group or special keywords, you can use #. For instance, #Obama will create a group that specifically mentions Obama. Hence, when you run a search on Twitter on Obama, it can easily track all the conversations or tweets on that topic.

I hope the article manages to help all of you get a glimpse on how to use Twitter.

By: Ken Mcewan

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Mental Illness News

Using video marketing strategies as a way to promote your ministry online can be extremely effective. Let’s face it: Video compels people.

Look at the popular wave of YouTube! YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid-February of 2005 by three former PayPal employees. “As more people capture special moments on video,” its Web site declares, “YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.”

It’s popularity has grown at an incredible rate. Other video sites are staking a claim in this emerging force of video, such as iFilm, Dailymotion, video.googleand vi deo.yahoo.com. Christians have also taken advantage of the video upload craze with their site called GodTube, which specializes in Christian-themed videos.

In addition to all the sites available, you can also find websites that give you step by step methods to teach you how to use video to promote yourself, your business or your ministry.

Ruth Klein, a nationally renowned writer, speaker, strategic marketing consultant and productivity coach, has a powerful 7 Part Mini-Course on branding and productivity. I found Ruth’s simple video course and her website extremely helpful. She lays a solid foundation in utilizing video marketing strategies especially in the area of branding, as you take steps to promote a business on line.

No doubt, many more entrepreneurs and marketing coaches are encouraging others to take advantage of using video. In fact, some recent studies conducted over the years have continued to show the persuasive effectiveness of video. One such study, by The Wharton School of Business, showed that video boosts comprehension and retention by 50% over a live presentation. In addition, studies have shown that six times as many people prefer a video to printed information.

As a Christian, you may still ask, “Why would I use video to promote my ministry online? Do I really need video marketing strategies?”

Here are Four Reasons:

1) Using video marketing strategies is the best way to engage an audience. Whether it’s a church marketing video or simply you looking into the camera sharing a message, you have the opportunity to convey a message on multiple levels. You have sight, the spoken word, sound if music is involved, and visual text.

2) A Video can reveal who you really are, your sincerity, your passion, your wisdom as you begin the pursuit to promote your ministry. With powerful content, you can make an emotional connection with your audience that motivates them to pass it along to others.

3) You can reach a large audience with a minimum amount of investing in the production of your videos.

4) Video not only helps in marketing your business but it’s also a powerful tool to build up the Body of Christ with teaching, encouraging and sharing the Word of God.

Finally, don’t stress getting started. Get an inexpensive Flip Video and you are on your way!

By: Theresa Croft

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business marketing strategies

If you are not using online video to grow your business and generate free online video traffic to your website or blog, consider these statistics:

- YouTube gets 2 times the traffic of Google!

- Longtail searches drive 80% of traffic to the top online video sites

- 18-24 year olds watch more online video than television

A December 2008 report by ComScore showed the following online video data:

- 78.5 percent of the the total US internet audience viewed online video

- The average online video viewer watched over 5 hours of video

- On YouTube, 98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos

- The average YouTube viewer watched 59 videos

There is no doubt that online video is the next big online marketing trend.

It is a huge and rapidly expanding market, and it can drive significant traffic to your website.

It is also the best online media for branding yourself. Your marketing goal is to get people to know, like, and trust you. Video is the next best thing to face-to-face communication for accomplishing this goal.

There are some other benefits to using online video traffic generation. You do the work once and the online videos continue to generate leads for months or even years, 24/7.

Online videos get very high google rankings, making it easier to get on the front page of google and drive free targeted web traffic to your site.

There is really no risk because online videos can be produced for free. Presentation videos can be made without a camcorder using free software. And it doesn’t cost anything to submit your videos to online video sites.

Make sure to follow these marketing tips in your videos:

Online Video Tip #1 – be authentic

Online Video Tip #2 – provide value

Online Video Tip #3 – keep your videos short, about 2 minutes long

Don’t miss out on the huge potential of online video. As you can see, it is definately worth the effort to create the videos. Get started now, your competition probably is!

And now I would like to invite you to claim your Free Access to “15 Ways To Grow Your Business Online”. Just click here to send me a blank email and you’ll start receiving valuable information that can help you get more traffic to your website or blog and make more money from your visitors.

By: Karen Sielski

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It is now the beginning of 2009 and we, the ardent users of interactive technology are riding the crest of a Golden Wave of web video and corporate website video possibilities. I have no doubt that in a conceptually altered Chinese calendar this would be the ‘Year of the WebVideo’ in all its’ various forms and methods of deployment. Anyhow, i’ve been reading up on the subject and this is the impression i’m getting from people in the know.

Technology has again moved forward and new encoding procedures coupled with a general awareness of narrative have brought the great and fantastic possibilities of video, online and into the hands of the common man.

His or her under £150,000 gross operation is obviously crying out for an effective means of one on one communication and somewhere along the line I read that potential customers are 4 times more likely to become actual customers if your web presence is graced with the luminance of video. People buy off people! CEO’s everywhere have, for some time now been scrambling to put into place the most efficient systems and operations that will fully exploit this ardently touted paradigm shift in online visual expectancy.

The figures are all there. Findings in the American market have indicated that the number of consumers who actively engaged in the viewing of online video rose by 18% in the second half of 2006. A total of 3.7 billion streams having been watched. Male to female ratios stand close to even on a 52-48 percentage scale. Surprisingly in 2006 it was Yahoo Video that led the pack with around 21 million visitors a month.

MySpace came in a close second with around 20 million a month. So with the stats in mind I guess it wasn’t that surprising to see Google swallow up YouTube which was getting around 16 million faces a month.

According to Jack Flanegan, executive vice president of ComScore Media Metrix who, amongst other things provide detailed analysis of online consumer activity is quoted as saying: “Consumers clearly view video as one of the most accessible, interesting and entertaining sources of content on the web”. And, well…I completely agree. Video has an accessible grounding in reality, and… all things considered… there’s a thirst for it. We are all obsessed with peeping through the ***** in the doorway, watching without ‘being watched’.

Video was built for this kind of mentality. There’s no way I would be writing this blog about some useless, defective communication format sent to the archives of history to hang out with smoke signals. Oh no, not me! I am here and now and so is online video, and in this here and now if you want to make some money through your online presence, WebVideos are the progressive medium you should employ.

Ditch the expensive call centers and put your customer service rep on your site in an interactive video display for first hand guidance. Why have a static image of your product when a WebVideo can shift more units. Go ahead, make that play for a full grasp of socially relevant media deployment, move forward, gain the edge. This is the 21st Century in the history of the fine beast that is man. What? You don’t have video on your website?

How to do you maintain peoples interest? Things must be so tough for you. How are you coping? Anyhow that’s what people were saying about websites and that soon caught on. Now look where we are. If the internet is just another room to peer into then it stands to reason that it’s gotta have a TV in the corner.

So how do you go about employing video on your website? What is the right format? More importantly, what should it look like? Obviously with the advent of new encoding procedures it has become incredibly easy for web deployment of video. At the forefront of this new wave of encoding is the On2 VP6 codec which is used primarily by Macromedia Flash 8 and up. The ‘flash player’ is freely available for download and is reportedly on 96% of all internet configured Windows & Macintosh computers. Which is pretty high as far as stats go. Java (84%), Windows Media Player (87%) and Apple Quicktime (59%) all trail behind.

Flash enables anyone to stream videos from their browsers cache at a fraction of the size of other formats thanks to the On2 VP6 compression. Also it has a whole different level of options for interactivity that none of the others have. With flash you can play a hundred videos through the same file without leaving the page and tag a form on the end of the video asking for comments. This is sure to keep people immersed in an interactive video experience. WARNING – Ideas not supplied. Well… not for free that’s for sure. Flash was built for the active medium of the internet and it’s flourishing.

Micro-sites or the huge rise of .tv sites are the high end of video usage for a lot of companies, but high end means high prices, maybe six grand upwards is not in your budget. The average business will probably find use for a handful of videos for an initial outlay of a couple of grand. Obviously there will be niche markets out there where the businesses will have to have video on their site and cannot function without it. Soon enough though it will all be like that. As prophetic as that sounds, I can only image this sort of thing snowballing. Remember the Golden Wave. Ride it and flourish. For if you don’t, it will drown you.

Anyhow, there are companies out there that will put together a 1 minute video for you for around £500, but i’ve seen these videos and from a professional standpoint I know they are operating on a second rate level. The obvious lack of perfectionist ideals and aspirations belongs only to the guy who amazes himself too easily. Another form of online video is the 30 second slot on the homepage. This is fast becoming the successor to the animated header.

The web has for the most part been a silent affair, with users choosing to listen to their favorite band whilst surfing away. Video is changing that and users are becoming used to a little noise. Over time the expectancy values will change and sound on every website will no doubt become a normal affair. This is why a 30 second, dynamic montage based intro will succeed.

Next up is the talking head which can run anywhere from between 20 seconds to 3 minutes long. The talking head can offer a much subtler welcome message and when combined with the use of graphic elements and transparent backgrounds it can still retain an element of entertainment. It has a keen simplicity that doesn’t overload the user and can be acquired for around a grand a minute and upwards, depending on your demands for graphics or titles.

Product or service explanations are very popular uses of the talking head by many companies from insurance to mobile phones. A sort of very subtle advert or showcase to watch at the users discretion. I mean why have bunch of still photographs taken from every conceivable angle when for a little extra cash you can have a 30 second video of someone showcasing the product.

No doubt the usual link to ‘enlarge image’ will change to something like ‘view product video’. A handful of these could be produced for around £500 a pop and considering the ‘click through’ rate you’re bound to make your money back shifting extra units.

All this of course is small change in comparison to what the majority of people are responding to. That my less than inebriated readers is of course, entertainment! By far the single most popular use of video ever. Billions of people, like fragmented herds of hedonistic swine, completely alienated from police state politics are lining up with baited breath for the latest ‘close shave’ video or some pair of seventeen year old girls trying their hand at singing Whitney Houstens’ “I Will Always Love You’. This is bedroom theatre at its’ greatest. This is where the mainstay of WebVideo opportunity lies.

Well… where does this leave the average website I hear you bleat? Simple. Format popularity has very specific impacts on everyday habit and culture. Just look at how far the viewing screen itself has come in all its’ varying forms. The impact entertainment video has on the web is perfectly aligned with a certain expectancy. Users grow through saturation of an idea to expect an element of it in all aspects their everyday lives.

The majority of the world still have boring day jobs and they still yearn for excitement and entertainment. The more saturated we become with online video entertainment as it stands the more demanding we will become. Static websites will always be around because some things need to be static, but hey… if it can be brought to life it better be, cause otherwise i’m outta yer. Boring!!!

The web may well be conceptually as a whole a fascinating work of art, but individual sites are but a mere brush stroke on a gigantic canvas of information. There are a lot of people in the world, maybe 7 billion in all and a few billion of these have internet ready computers, a thirst for entertainment, short attention span and a pocket full of cash to spend on anything that can hold their interest long enough to get their bank card out. If you haven’t got video on your website in one form or another, well… what have you got?

By: Mark Griffin

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