On this episode of the Dot Com Lifestyle vlog, I take a trip from LAX to JFK New York with JetBlue Mint. This is JetBlue’s first class flight experience for travelers who looking for a first class travel experience at at a very affordable price.
When it comes to video sharing platforms, they don’t get any bigger than YouTube. And when it comes to social networks for individuals and businesses, it doesn’t get any bigger than Facebook. And while you shouldn’t rely on rented land to build your business, you’d be foolish not to leverage their tremendous reach and power when it comes to distributing your content and reaching both new and existing audiences.
Of course, the easiest way to share your YouTube video with your fans, followers and friends on Facebook is simply to share your YouTube video on Facebook. You plunk in the URL to your YouTube video in your Facebook status update and click the blue “Post” button. That may be the simplest way to do it, but it may not be the best or most effective way to do it.
Here are some key tips for getting the most out of sharing your YouTube videos on Facebook.
By all accounts, Facebook generally favors content that keeps people on the site. They want people to stay on Facebook; they don’t want them to leave and go to some external site to consume external content. If you want your post to reach more people and be shown on more news feeds, you need more content that is purely on Facebook. What’s more, experts generally agree that Facebook prefers visual content rather than simple text-based status updates.
Following this, some marketers and creators have found some success by uploading an image to Facebook first, then writing out the status update, and including the YouTube URL at the end of the text-based update. When you do this, the clickable thumbnail preview of the YouTube URL won’t automatically populate and users will be shown the uploaded image instead.
This presumably helps with reach and people who see the update can then click on the YouTube link to watch your video.
This tip follows the exact same philosophy and mindset of the previous tip, but it simply takes it up to the next level. You could cross-post your entire video on both Facebook and YouTube if you want, but if your ultimate goal is to get more people to watch your video on YouTube (perhaps to get more views for social currency or to attract more subscribers), this is the next best thing.
Cut together a “teaser” or shortened version of your full video and upload that to Facebook. As with the first tip, you then write out your text-based description, and include the link to your YouTube video. Tell your friends and followers to “watch the full video on YouTube.”
Video content performs very well on Facebook, so while this is decidedly more work than creating a single image, it may be worth the effort.
Part of the problem with sharing YouTube videos on Facebook is, by default, your YouTube video thumbnail gets cropped into a square and it gets shrunken down to a much smaller size. If you have any text in your thumbnail image, it could get cut off and now the image makes no sense at all. And the smaller thumbnail is more easily ignored as people casually scroll their way down the news feed.
At least a couple of websites are trying to overcome this very common challenge. Both Fbvidthis.com and VidRise.com function in fundamentally the same way. You go to the respective website, enter your YouTube link, and it will generate a new link to either Fbvidthis or VidRise. When you paste this URL into your Facebook update, you get a full width video thumbnail instead.
This larger image is more engaging and is harder to miss. It used to be that these larger thumbnails were also clickable such that the video plays within the Facebook feed itself, but Facebook has disabled that function as of this writing. Hopefully VidRise and Fbvidthis are able to overcome this soon.
While this may not necessarily help with improving your reach on Facebook (there’s always boost, right?), it does come with at least a couple of important benefits. Instead of linking to the YouTube video directly, link to a blog post (or other webpage) where the YouTube video is embedded.
The first benefit is that the preview image will be full width, just like when it pulls up the featured image on a regular blog post that you share on Facebook. This makes for a more appealing visual presentation than the shrunken down thumbnail when you link to YouTube directly.
The second benefit is that now your website (blog, etc.) gets a potential page view, which means you get an extra ad impression and extra opportunities to monetize that traffic. It boosts the traffic numbers for your own site and not just for YouTube. The hurdle is that now the visitor needs to click at least twice: once to click through to your blog and one more time to start playing the embedded YouTube video.
And finally, one strategy that I see being used increasingly by a lot of YouTubers is that they will post a standard, plain text status update where they deliver a short preamble about their video. In this status update, they’ll say that the YouTube links is in the comments.
This follows a similar line of thinking as the first two tips above, except it doesn’t include the YouTube URL in the status update itself. The rationale is that Facebook will still “see” that there is an external link in the status update and it could de-prioritize it in the algorithm. The comment potentially circumvents that and it has the added benefit of giving the appearance of added engagement.
Does this work? It’s hard to say, but when it comes to all things social media-related, it’s usually a good idea to try several strategies until you find the one that works best for you.
Everyone wants to know how to make money online. However, in this video, I will show how you NOT to make money online. Why? Because learning what not to do is just as important as learning what to do.
We often hear about the importance of content marketing and are so caught up in implementing it to our marketing. However, it’s important that you plan ahead because content marketing might NOT be right for you. Just like any other type of marketing, you have to make sure you plan ahead and understand how content marketing will help your business. Only then you’ll find out if it is right for you or NOT. I must admit implementing content marketing to your strategy can be very tough because of the following reasons which I’ll be discussing below. With that said,
Let’s look at some reasons why you’ll avoid content marketing.
Some people are NOT built for a systematic approach and rely way too much on automation. Content marketing is a strategy which requires very little automation and a lot of skill. If you are a blogger which can’t handle manual work then your going to have a hard time implementing content marketing. For example, content marketing requires:
With all this said it’s important you are ready to put in hard work and rely very little on automation.
I mentioned research above and it’s true…you have to be able to put a lot of work into research. Almost everything you do will be based around research so it’s important you have the skills to know your audience and what they like. Research in content marketing involves testing the waters and using tools you have NOT used in the past. You have to take the time to learn these tools and dig out important information about trending topics and your audience. For example, here are a few things you have to always know about:
Once you have the patience to research your niche only then will you be able to excel at content marketing.
It’s no secret that networking is a valuable tool in building brand awareness and exposure. However, not everyone is great at building relationships and this will be a definite roadblock in content marketing. Once of the best ways to get your content in front of people is through authority bloggers which you have networked with. They mention your content or even accept a guest post which can drive enormous traffic to your blog. However, if you are NOT good at building relationships then your going to have a serious problem. Here are some things you should keep in mind when reaching out to authority bloggers:
Many bloggers simply don’t have the patience to explore different channels. For example, I’ve notice content marketing has a lot to do with value, but also visibility so you have to use different marketing channels. You have platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all ready to help promote your content, but you need to know how to use them.
I know many people simply don’t take the time to learn them so often have a problem with the whole concept of content marketing. If you don’t want to explore different marketing channels then content marketing is NOT right for you. It’s that simple!
Content marketing is huge and will continue to grow over the years. I encourage everyone to implement it into their blogging. However, I know many of you simply don’t have the skills or patience to go through what I’ve discussed above. You might think you should avoid content marketing which is an option at this point however you are way better off learning and implementing then not using it at all.
This week’s South OC Cars and Coffee featured some really crazy cars, like a Red Riding Hood 911 and a wheelie prone Volkswagen microbus with an engine that took over the entire back end!
Cars and Coffee happens every Saturday from 9am to 11am at the San Clemente Outlets in South Orange County. Everyone, and the dog, is invited. Enjoy the video
So, you’ve decided to go into business for yourself online. That’s great. Maybe you’ve already purchased your domain, set up your web hosting, designed your website, and nabbed all of the important social media handles. Maybe you’ve already converted on your first affiliate offer too. Or maybe you’ve converted on your 50th affiliate offer. That’s all terrific.
Now that your online business is generating some positive cash flow, you may be tempted to go out and treat yourself to something nice. Maybe you want to take your significant other out for a fancy seafood dinner or maybe you want to splurge on that big screen TV you’ve been eyeing. You deserve it, right?
Even if we were to ignore the profound pitfalls of lifestyle inflation for just a moment, we’re already sweeping right past a much more important lesson to learn. The profits that your online business are not yours, at least not entirely. If you want to continue to grow that business and if you want to continue increasing your bottom line year over year, you need to reinvest back into your business.
Would it be at all reasonable if John’s blog continued to operate on the lowest level of shared hosting? Would it be at all reasonable if he used a default WordPress theme and relied only on himself to write all the posts that appear on this site? Of course not. He was able to grow his business, because he was willing to reinvest those profits back into the business.
Don’t get me wrong. It can certainly fill you up with a sense of pride when you see your bank account balance continue to increase month after month. It can feel awfully rewarding and motivating when you see that your online business is “working” and that you’re really start to bring in some real money. That’s good. But simply having the money sit there doesn’t do you much good (you should set aside an emergency fund, but that’s another discussion for another day) and splurging on all sorts of unnecessary purchases won’t move your business forward either.
You need to reinvest.
When you reinvest some of your profits back into your business, you give your business a much better chance at moving up to the next level. It’s all about scale. If you spend $100 in an AdWords campaign and it nets you $1,000 in profit, you can theoretically spend $200 in AdWords next month and net $2,000. It’s never quite so simple, of course, but that’s the fundamental idea.
What’s more, when you reinvest those earnings back into your business, you make it far easier for you to plan for growing expenses moving forward, which can then lead to different income expectations in the future too. It takes money to make money, they say, and you want to make sure your money continues to work for you.
How you choose to reinvest that profit is up to you and it’ll depend on your individual circumstances. Maybe you want to move from shared hosting to a virtual private server. Maybe you want to invest in some software to streamline your workflow. Maybe you want to invest in a service so you can better optimize your campaigns. Maybe you want to hire a freelance to write excellent copy for you or to help you develop a better optimized website theme.
These all cost money, but they all have the potential for tremendous return on investment (ROI). These kinds of growth projects are what will ensure the future success of your business. They may reduce your take-home pay today, but they will help you earn more money over the long term.
Just as having all of your cash sit in a checking account that earns zero interest is probably not the best idea (you should consider all sorts of other investment vehicles for far better returns), you shouldn’t just “cash out” all the profits of your business and reap the immediate rewards of your hard work. Put that money back in and it’ll come back several times over.
I continue my video series on ClickFunnels by giving you a closer look at Actionetics. This is ClickFunnel’s contact list management tool. I show you all the unique features and compare it to Aweber and Constant Contact. How does it stack up? Watch the video to find out.
ClickFunnels is more than just a landing page creation software. It’s actually a complete business automation tool that brings your entire marketing system into a single, and tightly integrated, service. ClickFunnel is one of my foundation business tools and I wouldn’t be able to do what I without it.
If you wish to find out more about ClickFunnels and how it can help your business, then I recommend registering for a free webinar Russell and I are doing for ClickFunnels. If you wish to try out the service, then go sign up for the 14 day free trial.
