Every day the human condition becomes more interactive and more dependent on using the Internet as the main “go to” for information…and answers. If we need to know how to spell a word, translate an idea from one language to another, get a medical term defined, or just shop for a product or service, we go to the Internet first. We use the Internet to learn many things from how to perform small specific tasks around the house to acquiring new career skills, and more. At the forefront of all of this is website video.

Website video has developed into the most effective tool for marketing and disseminating information. With this being so strong a strategy for any business it has become a very popular and important service we offer to our clients. Incorporating video into a website is something we recommend whenever a client’s budget allows.

When creating a website video there are some guidelines to follow in order to achieve the best result. The following are some tips to consider when creating website videos:

1. Keep you content current

The content of your video needs to be in line with your purpose. However, the process of creating your video will usually begin with an interview by the production team to determine the best approach to accomplishing your goals. The content can then be written in shot sequence or roughly storyboarded out.

Sales:

Whether you’re selling a service or a product, the viewer wants to know something about the source…YOU. The potential customer wants to be sold. Website video is your opportunity to make a meaningful first impression and leave an impact on your potential client. Use this opportunity to introduce yourself and your product or service with the right spirit and enough information to close them on at least contacting you directly, if not purchasing right away.

Training:

Maybe you’ve sold a product and now you want to provide usage, training or assembly instructions via on-line video. Nothing works better than a website video, as long as you provide an interesting and accurate presentation.

2. Technical Quality of your Video Production

The Shoot:

The production team you hire, if well experienced, will know exactly how to set up any shot, light that shot, and capture the video and audio with professional quality. The team will give direction to any spokesperson or interviewee, as well as have control over all technical aspects of the shoot. This team should also insure that anyone in the shots be properly made up by a professional make-up artist, then, capture the shots in a way that enables proper cohesion when cut and edited together.

Editing:

Usually, this is a longer process than shooting. All of the shots must be reviewed for best takes. Audio must be synced and linked to the chosen video files. A rough edit of the shots must be done, and then refined. Text, special effects, intro graphics and closing graphics must be digitally generated and cut in during editing. Music, voice and sound tracks must be mixed for believability and aesthetic impact. Finally, the final video must be properly exported for maximum quality when posted on the Internet.

Below is an example of an interview video we produced to market The Grove, a newly renovated banquet facility located in Cedar Grove, NJ. It was shot on location and features banquet manager Michael Subarsky.

3. Publishing legalities and copyright

All content of your video should be owned or licensed to you for publication. Intellectual property, music, product inclusion, descriptive or instructional copy, product branding, all have publishing rights and ownership. Putting a video containing any or all of these commodities on the Internet has legal copyright implications. You’ll want to make sure you’re not legally liable for copyright infringement before you begin production.

4. Proper Video Integration with your Website

Any video on the Internet should be formatted to play within a website page that is visually consistent with your website. This website page should exist within your website host and be included in your navigation strategy to be available in the appropriate area and be found easily by the user. Furthermore, this video should play on any browser and on any platform (PC or Mac). It should load correctly to minimize delay in playing and it should not stop during playback. All of this can be accomplished by a knowledgeable webmaster who can prepare a good, HD video file for YouTube and have the web page source the video from your YouTube Channel.

5. Integrating with YouTube

What?!? You don’t have a YouTube Channel? And you have a website for your business? Shame, shame on you. With a properly constructed YouTube Channel you not only have a central location for all of your videos, but you have taken a reasonable step towards enhancing your search engine listing. Google owns YouTube. Need we say more? Yes, actually we can. YouTube allows the use of descriptions, tags and titles, all of which augment Google ratings once Google verifies this against the content of your website (which should be coded correctly and contain verifiable content). If that isn’t enough, YouTube also makes sure your video is viewable across the browser/platform variables.

As always, if you need help implementing any of these techniques give us a call at 973-305-8999 or email us at info@fastforwardunlimited.com.

Facebook has gotten a lot of scrutiny about changing business page layouts to timeline. I have to admit, I was one of those people bothered by this change when I first found out about it. The lack of custom landing pages for businesses completely wipes out a service that we offer to our clients. However, after thinking about it I’ve realized that this opens up a lot of other opportunities. I think people sometimes get so accustomed to certain things they don’t really see the improvements in front of them. As we construct our Fast Forward Unlimited Facebook timeline it really makes us look into the history of our company, and as it turns out it is a very interesting story. I feel that putting our history together for a current or potential client to see really gives that person an idea of who we are because they can see where we’ve been. It almost acts as an online resume and portfolio.

In order to calm some of your minds about this, I’ve put together a few tips that may help you make it through this transition.

1. Use your cover wisely

Facebook has increased the amount of space you can use for a cover image. Use this space to sell your business. Use imagery as best as you can, without too many words. There are a few guildlines to this so be careful. Here are a few examples of what we’ve done for our clients.

2. Use your old custom landing pages

Even though Facebook has gotten rid of default landing pages, you can still direct people to them using the direct url. Change the link to your Facebook page on your website and anywhere else it may reside to the address of your app, that once was you default landing page.

You can now increase the size of this page to 810px wide but you really don’t have to. Depending on your old landing page, it may work just fine. If you use arrows to direct poeple to the very important like button, you’ll have to adjust this a little bit.

3. Use the app icons to your advantage

You can now customize the image icons for any of your existing apps on Facebook. Be creative with this so people will be interested in looking at all the cool things you’ve integrated with Facebook. That really is your main goal here, to have people browse around your Facebook almost as if they were on your website.

4. Don’t rush your timeline

Putting together this timeline or history of your company can be a huge undertaking and should be well thought out, not just thrown together. Take your time on this. Write everything down first. Interview the people who can help you put this together. If you do it right it could be a very valuable marketing tool.

5. Don’t be shy

Let everyone one know about all the great work you’ve done with Facebook. A lot of your existing clients will find the history of your company very interesting. If your in a sales meeting let the potential new client know that they can see everything they need to know about your company on Facebook. When clients see this I’m sure they will feel much more confident in doing business with you.

Facebook will never replace your website, but can be a very valuable marketing tool moving forward. If you have any questions or need help developing your Facebook page please contact us.

About a month ago we were contacted by Caravan Trading Company. Caravan Trading deals in the “green” energy market, feedstock supply and all natural bath and beauty products. Being “green” and discovering alternative energy sources is the future of our world which makes what they do so significant.

Caravan Trading is the parent company to Cima Green, Augsburg Energy, Tru Verde and the recently acquired Green Grease Solutions. The main focus of our work has currently been based around Cima Green. Cima Green offers consulting for alternative and renewable energy sources such as biodiesel and ethanol. In their efforts to show how important biodiesel is, they have teamed up with Orange County Choppers to create the world’s first street legal biodiesel motorcycle.

You can check out this biodiesel motorcycle on the upcoming episode of American Choppers March 19th and April 9th on the Discovery Channel. You can check out a lot more on Cima Green’s website and Facebook Page.

When Caravan Trading called us they were in desperate need of several new promotional items for the National Biodiesel Board Conference where they planned to unveil this breakthrough in alternative energy. Not only did they need several new pieces, they needed them done within 24 hours. Fortunately within the required time frame we were able to produce a collection of beautiful artwork for them to display and handout. This turned out to be the start a very promising relationship. See below some of the graphic design material we have created for them.

We look forward to a long standing relationship with Caravan Trading Company. We are currently working on a new design Cima Green’s website which we hope to launch very soon.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a very comprehensive process that is constantly changing and takes a complete marketing strategy. However, these are a few simple ways to start you on the right track for ranking higher in search engines.

Spruce Up Your Title Tags

Title tags name the individual pages within your site, and can be one of the most important parts of on-page SEO. These are what search engines use as headings for their listings. They are also displayed at the top of the browser when a user views a page.

For example, on the food photography page of our website I have added a title tag that reads: “NJ Professional Food, Restaurant Photographer NJ”, not just ‘food photographer’. Doing this gives the search engine more details and tells it exactly what the content of this page is going to be. You can see that this title tag is also displayed in the gray bar at the top of the browser.

Google Listing

Top of Browser Window

In the above example my Google search was for “food photographer NJ“. You can see that the listing in Google matches the title tag that I programmed into this page. Google also bolds the words that are exact matches between the search and title tag. The more word matches you have in your title tag, the better.

The title tags should be around 70 characters long and the most relevant keywords should be placed toward the beginning. If you are developing a brand and are a new website it is also a good idea to add the company name to the title tag.

Description Tags Sell Your Listing

A description tag is the brief text that comes up with your title tag in a search engine. A description tag isn’t really going to influence your Google ranking, but this can be the make or break moment when it comes to whether or not the user is going to click on your link. This is where you really have to sell your product or services because this is most likely the first thing people will read about your company or product.

In the example below I searched “graphic design NJ” and this is the listing I got.

Google Listing

You can see that the viewer is given a brief description of what we do. Even though Google doesn’t place too much weight on the description, I still fill this with as many different keywords and locations, which are very important when trying to persuade someone to click on your listing. Google once again bolds all the matching keywords which helps grab the user’s attention.

Use Keywords In Your URL

Another strategy to help SEO is naming all the html pages using keywords wherever possible. You can see above the name of our graphic design page is graphic-designer-nj.htm which is also bolded within the listing in Google. This may help convince the user that that page is exactly what he or she is looking for.

Be warned… you have to be careful when renaming your html pages. If you have had a site live for some time, your pages have probably already been indexed by Google, and if you change the name of the page you will run into a 404 missing page issue. To handle this you need to make sure you put 301 redirects in place to tell Google that the page is still active, but has just moved to a different location. If you do it this way you will not hurt your Google ranking and Google will eventually re-index your pages correctly.

Make Your Keywords Headings

If you embed keywords throughout the pages of your website in the form of headings Google will recognize that. Below is a screen shot of our website design page. I’ve created what’s called heading tags for all my important keywords on the page. I gave the main heading “Website Design and Development” an h1 tag. The list of services underneath that is my sub heading, which I gave an h2 tag. Google sees these keywords and places more emphasis on them.

To do this you need to wrap the text in heading tags within the code of your website. This portion of our website’s code looks like this:

Complete Your Google Places Listing

This last tip happens outside of your website. You should search Google and see if it has your listing within Google Places. If it does, you need to claim your business and make sure it is up to snuff. Complete the listing by adding all the information that you have including address, phone number, and web address. You also can add categories to your listing to help your rankings. It is also a great idea to add any photos or videos you may have available. If your business is not listing you can create a Google account and add a business to Google Places.

Check out our Google Places listing as an example of how yours can be set up. Click here to view it.

If you complete all the above steps you may not come up #1 overnight but you’ll be well on your way to climbing the Google ladder.

If you need any help implementing these things on your site please give us a call at 973-305-8999. You can also visit the main section of our website to see all the services we offer.

It seems that these days everyone uses Facebook to stay connected to family and friends. From a business standpoint Facebook offers you the ability to stay connected with your customers, but can also serve as a catalyst for great growth of your clientele. The trick is to get as many people as possible to your page. Getting new customers to “Like” your business provides you with a lasting connection and allows you to pass along information to them on a consistent basis. It makes your business, relevant, current, and easy to reach. Sounds pretty simple right? Not so fast…

Unfortunately, just using Facebook in the traditional way probably won’t attract the fans you are looking for, without which your business loses out on endless opportunities and connections.

When someone looks at your Facebook page, by default they are sent to your wall. Your wall shows people your most recent activity and posts, but really doesn’t provide any information on what your business is or what you provide to your customers. More importantly it doesn’t give anyone any incentive to click on that little “Like” button at the top of the page. Take a look at the picture below. In this screenshot of the business’ wall the button is hidden and the user has no reason to click it. A potential client may browse around a bit and look at your posts but will then most likely leave your page, losing you the connection.

When someone finds your business on Facebook you need to seize this opportunity to promote it and give the person a reason to click “Like”.

So having a potential customer look at your Facebook wall just won’t cut it. What do you do? Create a custom Facebook landing page and make that the first thing people see. A landing page is almost like a mini webpage that grabs the customer’s attention and draws them in to what your business has to offer. A custom landing page also showcases that all important “Like” button and gives the customer a reason to click it. The screenshot below is the custom landing page for the same business as above.

The landing page offers the potential customer a hook. In this case it’s an opportunity to actually win something, which is very appealing to most visitors. You can see how the user is directed to the button with a huge arrow that can’t be missed.

Even if you don’t currently have a promotion to offer your visitors, you can still create a graphic that will grab the user’s attention and intrigue them.

This is our Facebook page and it doesn’t offer any information about our company right off the bat but it does engage the user’s curiosity, which is also something that most people can’t resist.

While there are several challenges to keeping your business’ Facebook page current and interesting, you need to get as many customers as possible to “Like” your page. Creating a custom landing page is the first important step in achieving this goal.