There is no definite secret for having a successful web video, but there are little tips and tricks that the lucky ones, or the smart ones, will discover along the way. A web video is like a little newborn baby, we want to see it grow and become successful, but we worry that it might be forgotten and lost in the big world of YouTube. Well there’s one way, at least, for us to ensure our baby grows to be big and strong, but there’s still a long way for them to go once they’re out on their own. Let’s be nurturing parents from the get-go and try to raise our baby up right.

Knowing how to properly tag your online video is crucial. You don’t want to overfeed your baby with a swarm of tags, and you don’t want to neglect them with just a single tagline — so where is the happy middle?

If you’re hungry for tags, remember the mantra for every happy diet: don’t overdo it. Remember, your animated website video is your baby, take good care of it and be attentive to its needs. And what exactly does it need? Useful tags of course! Tags are used to help searchers find relevant results and answers to what they need. Tags are commonly used on YouTube and Google, so your chances of tag-topia have just doubled.

What is your web video about? First and foremost, you have to discover relevant tags. It’s easy to just put in every popular tag imaginable, even if your video is about soy milk, it’s hard to resist throwing in a few celebrity names to hopefully drive more traffic onto your video, but that’s wrong. YouTube and Google are a lot smarter than you think, and they can easily trash your video because of misleading tags. Just be yourself. Even if your tags may seem boring, you can still optimize to get the most out of your tags.

Try to put the most important and relevant tags first. Generally the first three tags should be the perfect fit for your video, and the tags that follow are just the backup dancers of your little performance. So order your tags accordingly, put the star of the show first, and then everyone else follows the leader. Your first tag is the most important, so also mention it in the description box, incorporating it in a proper and logical sentence, as well as try to fit it into the title somehow, even just a single keyword will help.

Here’s an example:

The example video is about ‘house slippers’

• Title: House Slippers for Everyday Living
• Description: Comfortable house slippers to keep you comfortable at home (the description can go for as long as you like)
• Main tags: House slippers, comfortable slippers, at home shoes

Notice how the main idea, ‘House Slippers’, is repeated constantly throughout the example. The main focus of your video needs to be mentioned more than once. So when users search for ‘House slippers’ online, your video is most likely to pop up as a top result, since the title, description, and tags, feature the term ‘House slippers’.

Your tags need to appear at the beginning of everything in order to become a top result. At the same time, you can’t be a tag robot, you have to make sentences and phrases that work and sound logical.

Also, with the right tags on YouTube, you will also become a ‘suggested video’ alongside other videos that are related to your topic and tags. So when someone is viewing a video, say, on comfortable sneakers, the ‘House slippers’ video will appear as a suggested or related video on the sidebar on YouTube. This is another way to show you why tags are so important. You can’t neglect them!

Optimize your web video for business with the perfect tags and watch your lil’ baby grow into an Internet superstar! Or, well, we can all dream at least — who doesn’t have high expectations for their baby?

It’s hard to believe the year’s 2012 already, I can still remember when it was 2002 and we were all innocent and teenagers weren’t avid social mongols yet. But let’s face the truth, it is 2012 and we’re racing toward the future as the years seem to skip their way through the months.

So what’s in store for 2012, in terms of marketing?

When we’re looking toward the future, we tend to look at the past and see what new things have come up and what changes were made. Looking back at 2011 and 2010, a large percentage of businesses were moving online, with websites, blogs, social media, etc.

In 2011, about 75% of businesses had their own official website, and of those businesses with websites, only about 30% had mobile optimized websites.

From this, we can clearly see that a large percentage of businesses are operating online. When it comes to social networking, however, there is a bit of a different reaction. From 2010 to 2011, businesses on Facebook increased from about 40% to 45%, whereas Twitter is hanging around a 20% in both years.

With these statistics, let’s take a look at what is happening in 2012 now.

According to a recent poll done by AT&T, about 60% of small businesses intend to spend as much, or more, on online marketing and advertising as they do on regular advertising (such as in public and locally).

About 65% of small businesses use their website to promote new products and events, and about 40% of businesses use social media as a marketing tool.

Perhaps businesses know that the majority of consumers spend a great deal of time on the computer, browsing the web. But of course, you have to consider the type of consumer you’re searching for.

Each business is different, targeting a different kind of audience and market, so the approach has to be different, obviously.

Using the Internet as a form of marketing is a must-do move in our modern world. Almost everyone on earth has access to the Internet, and it is just as effective as marketing locally in public and by other means. The Internet is a great tool, and businesses should learn how to use that to their advantage.

There are different ways to connect with the audience you want using the Internet, that’s where blogs, social media, and web video come in. These are different basic approaches to marketing that can have a varied effect on different consumers.

When you figure out where your online audience is, whether if it’s in forums, blogospheres, or YouTube, it makes it easier for you to choose your tactic. When you look at online marketing in a specific sense, it’s obvious that it’s the new and innovative way for businesses to market themselves. So why isn’t everyone on board already?

Modernity takes a while for everyone to transition into sometimes, so we may feel a bit of a lag this year. But by 2014, it’s been predicted that everyone will be connected to the Internet, as well as the mobile web. So even if things are still catching on now, they will definitely make an impact.

I mean, since the Internet first came along, who has been able to function flawlessly without it? We can access new information, connect with distant people within an instant, and upload and share our own content with the entire world. It’s incredible!

There’s no surprise that online marketing is hitting small businesses this year. It’s time to be modern!

Take a leap into 2012 with some online marketing, and why not start with animated web video for your business? Sounds like the perfect way to stick with the new trend.

It can be hard for small businesses to compete in the market if there are many other small businesses or even if there are limited number of businesses. Marketing for a small business is all about customer interaction and networking. It’s important for you to market your business online to hopefully get the most attention.

The online population is surprisingly large, and naturally there’s bound to be some people in your local area that could be interested in your small business. It’s important to become a part of the online world, because it is indeed much different than reality.

So give it a try, here’s some ways for you to market your small business online.

• Create an official website. Now don’t get this confused with an online e-store! All you need is an official website that has the basic information such as your location, phone number, email, to start with. There are some websites that have no content at all, only information, and there are some websites full of content and features. It’s up to you how you want to create your official website.
• Join the social network. When you join a social networking site, just start with one or two because you will have to update it frequently. Social networking is about being social, so you have to be committed once you start.
• Browse a ‘classified’ site such as Craigslist. You can post ads for services, assistance, or even sales and events. Make sure to join the local site and try to find the locals near you.
• List your official website to an online directory, like a phone book. It will help if someone is looking for exactly what your business has, so then they’ll know you exist and where to find you etc. And again, stick to local sites!
• Join an app like FourSquare, where you can also list your business and provide basic information, so that it will appear to locals that are around the corner. You can also connect FourSquare with your social networking site and encourage customers to ‘check in’ when they visit your store.
• YouTube is a great way for you to create fun content for your followers and subscribers. Upload event video, slideshows, business animations, and whatever else. This is a great way to interact with your customers.
• Try coupons or exclusive offers, such as, bring a friend and both get 25% off, or something promotinal like that. Attract new customers and keep the loyal customers coming!
• Write articles or reviews about your business and upload them onto your website or submit them to local newspaper or magazine. A little effort could easily go a long way!

Having an animation in a PowerPoint presentation can be very useful, allowing you to use moving visuals, sound, and to keep the attention of the audience. For every business, a presentation is a pretty normal thing, and that makes it also become real boring real fast. So liven it up a bit with animated business video embedded into your PowerPoint presentation.

There are different style videos you could embed, depending on what the presentation is initially about. Use your animated presentation to welcome new employees, give a general seminar, present a new product or ad.

Animation allows you to creatively design your product and tools in the video, which is great if you’re planning to create a new product, then you can effectively show it off beforehand to get the investors on board.

Already have an animation? This is how you include your animated video into your PowerPoint presentation.

If the animation is saved on the computer as a separate file:

1. When you launch PowerPoint, click the ‘Insert’ tab and then click the arrow underneath the ‘Video’ button. There are three options, you need to select ‘Video from File’
2. Locate the Macromedia Flash animation file from your computer. The file should have a ‘SWF’ extension. Insert it into your PowerPoint presentation approximately where you want it located, according to slides, etc.
3. Click to select the inserted animation. Two new tabs will appear on the right of the Microsoft Office ribbon. The ‘Video Tools’ tabs gives you customizable play options. Playback options are limited for animations, but you can choose when the video starts and set the animation to rewind when it’s done playing. Formatting lets you choose the size, borders and shape of the animation.

If the animation is located online (on YouTube):

1. Launch PowerPoint, click the ‘Insert’ tab and then the arrow underneath the ‘Video’ button. Select ‘Video from Web Site’
2. Open to the website with the animation you want to play. Select the embed code for the animation
3. Copy the embed code from the website (if you’re using YouTube, select the box to use the old-style embed code before copying the code). Make sure to copy the entire code!
4. In PowerPoint, click in the dialog box. Paste the entire embedded code into the box (make sure the entire code is there). Finally press ‘Insert’

If you don’t have your own animation yet, find one online and test it on PowerPoint if you want, then see for yourself how good your own animation would look in a presentation.

So the next time you have a business conference or training session, why not test out a new animated PowerPoint presentation? You can easily reuse videos online, posting them onto your website and blog, so don’t think of it as a use-once only type of thing. There are so many open doors ahead, take a peek into all of them.

Discover how you can use animated video in your PowerPoint presentations for business, and even your personal life too!

We all know that there are two different ways to advertise anything, either online or in public. They both have different components and may have a different impact on the consumer, so which one is more effective? Is it worth it to advertise both online and in public, or is one better than the other?

First of all, let’s learn to differentiate the two.

Advertising online can be done through web ads, emails, blogs, social networking, etc. You can reach out to the consumer via computers and mobile devices, everything is done electronically.

On the other hand, advertising in public requires printed banners, fliers, posters, logos, etc.

Both online and public advertising will cost you, and depending on the type of ads you want, you may end up paying more. For example, if you want a giant billboard out on top of a building, it will cost you around $1000 to $3000 a month, maybe even more. And if you want to print out fliers, you have to pay for all those printing fees and distribution fees.

When you advertise online, costs may be minimal, depending on your approach. There are free ways to advertise online, through emails and social networking, and there are ads you can buy on popular sites as well. Having an ad onilne can cost you anywhere from $200 per year.

But still, we have to consider other important factors, like, where are you advertising?

Putting up your ad on a website may be effective, but how much traffic does that website get per month, per day? Each website may charge a different price for advertising space, and of course, the popular websites will charge a lot more than the not-so-popular websites, but it’s worth it to get that hot spot right?

And likewise for public advertising. To get your ad out in the middle of the city will cost you a lot, and having it in the alley behind a butcher shop probably won’t get you that many new customers. So location is important, both online and in public.

There’s another thing to consider also: who is your target market?

So what are you selling? Who are you selling to? When you can figure out who your ideal consumer is, then you might have a better feel of where and how to advertise. If your market is for teens aged 14-18, then you might be better advertising online in social networking sites or chat services. If your market is for working professionals, then it may be best to advertise at public transportation spots, like bus stops and metro stops or even in newspapers.

Let your consumers influence your advertising, because they are the ones you’re trying to reach out to anyway.

It’s important for every business to advertise in some way or other, that’s how you get your name out to the consumers! So don’t waste your time and money advertising in a way that won’t be effective, take notice of where your consumers spend their time and try to target yourself there somehow.

With effective advertising, your business is sure to flourish!

Online businesses rely heavily on technology, and it’s also important for you to know how to use technology. Running a business takes a lot of time and energy,  but with the right services, your work can become a whole lot easier and efficient. Here are some apps that could help you and your online business.

For productivity, check out Producteev. It helps you organize and manage your tasks with many options and filters. You can prioritize, set up reminders and sync your calendar with any dates and deadlines. Compatible with Mac and PC, as well as smartphones, so you can really stay connected wherever you go. Use it for your own personal life, or connect with coworkers and keep everyone in-sync.

Basecamp is similar to Producteev, but the main focus of Basecamp is to provide instant communication via chat and email. You can also sync and share files with your coworkers. It’s great for a team of any size to keep everyone informed and up to date with what’s happening.

Working through the Internet may make it harder to have meetings and conversations with people, but Fuze Meeting is an app you can use to have video conversations in HD quality and it’s also available for video-compatible smartphones. You can send and share files via Fuze Meeting, and also conduct presentations. It’s more than just a video chat service, it’s a real conference tool for professionals.

To check your web stats, use Clicky, integrate your website, blog, social networking profiles into one place and check all the stats using one simple tool. It’s important to see how much traffic you’re getting online, and it will help you to discover which sites are successful and which need a little more improvement.

And for your emails that get lost or servers that crash, MailStore  is an app you can use to backup your emails and recover them whenever necessary. Sync your email accounts into one place and don’t worry about any mix-ups or missing messages.

When you’re working through the Internet, something will often go wrong, a power outage, computer crash, or any sort of malfunction. Some of these apps can really help keep your online business together, with backups and scheduling, it will feel like your computer desk is an office with fifteen employees.

There’s no more hassle trying to figure the computer out, you just need to find the right help. These apps are available for free, or with a free trial so you can see for yourself how it can enhance your work life at home.

Think of an app as a personal assistant, the more the merrier, and soon work won’t feel like hard work anymore. Take care of your online business and discover the helpful apps that will make your life easier.

An animated annual report is exactly how it sounds, it is your annual, or even quarterly, report which expresses your newest achievements and other good and positive things about your company.

But why an animated report? (Here’s an example)

Animations aren’t just about marketing and advertising, they can be used for other personal and professional projects. Annual reports are important for everyone involved in your business, and combine that with animation and you have a cool and fun way of presenting something which is important to you and everyone else.

Here are some reasons why you should consider an animated annual report.

Instant and constant availability. Once you’ve created your animated annual report, it can always be available for anyone who needs to see it again and take a few notes. Upload it onto the web, or keep it hosted in the company share folder, but once it’s done, it’s always there and instantly available for everyone.

Share the success. It’s not just for your company and investors to see, you can also upload it onto the web and allow the world to take a look into your success. Maybe you’ll attract new clients or investors who are interested in your projects. Besides, when you do something great, who doesn’t like to show off a little? So take advantage of social networking and media, get your animated business report out onto the web.

Become engaged. For some reason, people prefer to sit back and watch something rather than to sit up and read something, so naturally you’d want to come up with an attractive animation that keeps everyone engaged and interested. Besides, you’re showcasing some valuable information here and everyone needs to pay attention.

Cost efficient. Believe it or not, an animated annual report could indeed be much cheaper than a paper-copy report printed out and sent to all of your employees, investors, and customers. Save money on printing and distrubuting, the Internet doesn’t charge to e-mail a link to a web video.

Saving the earth. It sounds wrong to say that using computers will help us save the planet, but in a way it’s completely true. Sure computers take up some energy, but like mentioned above, printing and distribution uses up much more energy than a plugged in computer. Not to mention, we all use our computers on a daily basis anyway, so we can sacrifice a few minutes to watch your animated annual report since we’re already online. It could make small improvements for your eco-friendly report, and small steps are sure to turn into bigger steps in no time. So working virtually, so to speak, is doing something for the environment.

And last, but surely not the least, when you have an animated annual report, people are more likely to actually look at it and take it seriously. You can’t deny that there are people in your company who just throw the report somewhere on their desk and leave it there until next year. We know that animations and videos are great learning tools, very effective and very clear.

Your progress shouldn’t go unnoticed, so give your company something they are sure to take notice in, something fun, creative, informative, and totally professional. No need to go all out on animations and cartoons, keep it simple and to the point, staying focused on what really matters.

A good video needs a good script. There’s no way around it, you have to write a script for your animated business video, even if you don’t want any spoken words in it, you still need a script.

Having a script lets you look at your idea in an organized way. It includes your audio and visual components, like dialogue, images, scenes, and special effects. These are all important to write down, because it keeps you in order and helps you have a better idea of how your animated video will actually run like.

So what exactly do you need in your video script? Here’s a checklist to keep you on the right track

• General theme. And by this we mean, it should relate to your business or product somehow. Do you want it to be a funny video, serious, casual; do you want it to be about animals, humans, fictional characters. When you can come up with the general idea for your video, everything that follows should be a bit easier for you. It’s important to have everything relate in your video, so the theme is important.
• Content. This can be divided into two categories: visual and audio. First decide if you want dialogue in your video, if yes, you have to plot out everything you want to say. First just write down all of the important sentences and divide them into bullet points. You’ll have to go through and edit the dialogue several times because you don’t want too much or too little. So try speaking aloud as you write so you’ll get a better feel as to how the text actually sounds. You want to be clear and simple with your words, you don’t want to lose the viewer with too many fancy words or too many conflicting ideas.
• Visuals. Next to the dialogue, you need some sort of visual, including background and any characters or subjects. So depending on your theme, you might already have an idea of the direction you want to go in terms of visuals. Try to keep your visuals connected with your dialogue. For example, if you’re talking about computers, make sure to have a computer in your visuals and not a tree.
• Transitions and effects. Of course, depending on how you want to set up your video, you might have different scenes, so you’ll need transitions. You’ll have to give an approximate time for each scene and begin to organize them. Special effects or any other details you want to include should also be included in your script, like if you want a firework explosion to happen in the background when a certain phrase is said, then mention that as a side note. Use side notes to indicate any other details you need to have in your video.

That’s basically the formula for writing your video script. Always keep in mind who your audience is, you want to speak specifically to them, so find a way for you to relate or connect with them somehow. When you’re planning out your theme and basic idea, start focusing on your target market and ideal customer, because after all, you are creating this for them.

If you need more help, send us a message! Have fun writing!

Maybe you haven’t realized it, but there are literally millions of small business all around the world, and surely someone has the exact same business you do, but on another part of the globe, or even in the town next door. So how do you make your business stand out from the thousands and millions of other guys that want to stand out too?

It’s not so simple, especially when your business isn’t totally unique and creative, which is hard nowadays considering almost everything possible exists already. Let’s face it, there is a kebab car that drives around town delivering freshly made kebabs, so you weren’t the first to think of that one.

But there are ways for you to make your business stand out, if you’re willing to give it a try. When you have several competitors, or even one competitor, it’s important for you to connect directly with the consumer to give them a reason or advantage and convince them to choose you over the other guy.

The first thing to do is to join an online community, it doesn’t have to be 5 different social networking sites, it can be just one, or a blog. When you have a place for you to interact with your consumers, it gives a great advantage for you, allowing you to keep in touch and keep the consumer informed about what’s happening in your business and what’s important to you. So sign up for that Twitter account or make that blog and reach out to your consumers.

After you’ve established yourself online and have attracted enough followers, you can start to offer special deals or answer special requests from the consumers. Communicate with them and find out what they want. The best business is one that can deliver exactly what the consumer wants, so feel free to ask! Hopefully you’ll get great feedback when you post that question, So what do you guys want next?

Now that you have some loyal consumers, it’s time to attract more business, but how? You’ve already established the Internet connection, so what more could you possibly do? Aha! Not every business is so excited about it, but that’s another reason for you to do it: affiliate yourself with a charity or cause, give your business a purpose, like you’ll donate 10% of your total sales at the end of the year to a certain charity or that you use Fair Trade products, etc. When people see that you also care about other people, that attracts more friendly consumers to your business. It’s always nice to see people helping people, so don’t be too embarrassed to give a little bit of your business back to the world.

The small business that stand out are all consumer-friendly, they know how to build and establish relationships with their consumers and coworkers, creating a positive enviornment for everyone. When you show people that you’re interested in them, they’ll start to swarm around you and your business, you just have to let them know you’re there first. So sign up for that blog and get a Red Cross ribbon to put on the wall somewhere. Make your small business stand out in the big world.

A hot new site has appeared on the web and it’s called Pinterest. Maybe you’ve already heard of it, and maybe you’re already a member, but if you’re totally clueless about what Pinterest is, you should know that it can help spread the word about your business in a different way than Facebook or Twitter.

Pinterest is a cyber moodboard, where people ‘pin’ their favourite images of food, places, clothing, and other products and ideas onto a board. There are different categories of boards and images to browse through, from home decor to food to fitness to art, there’s room for everything on Pinterest.

The way Pinterest works is really unique. You can download the ‘Pin it’ button onto your toolbar, allowing you to ‘pin’ anything on any website directly onto your Pinterest. For example, if you’re browsing through a certain blog and you find a great post, you can ‘Pin it’ onto Pinterest, choosing a display image, and then the image will link directly to the URL where you got it from, and you can write a caption and categorize it.

So how exactly does this work to help your business?

Let’s say you have an online shop, you can open each individual item and ‘Pin it’ onto Pinterest in the appropriate category, say fashion or merchandise, and then you can write a description of the item like ‘Cool custom shirts from Shirt Store’ and Pinterest will directly link it to your online shop, and you can include the price on Pinterest and it will show users that your shirts are $10.

You don’t have to be an online shop to use Pinterest still, plenty of designers, like architects, use Pinterest to link images from their portfolio to get their name out on the Pinterest feed. So no matter what your business is, if you have plenty of images to show, then start pinning them!

Most people in our modern world are visual people, visuals natural appeal and attract people, but everyone’s taste varies of course. Pinterest is a great concept, creating a visual board of hundreds and thousands of images that fit exactly what you like.

Since you can filter through categories, it makes it easier for other Pinners to find you. Even if you’re the owner of a small bakery in a small town, you can still upload and link your images onto Pinterest and maybe you’ll find some fellow Pinners in your neighborhood.

If you’re tired of chasing followers on Facebook and Twitter, give Pinterest a try. With the right images, you’ll attract the attention of the righ consumers instantly.

So why not give it a go? Sign up for Pinterest and give it a test drive. There are many small businesses using Pinterest to share their work and products, so why not join the new crowd?

Pinterest is quickly catching on, with more than 10 million users since opening in 2010.

It’s time to join all the hype, sign up for Pinterest and get yourself on the waiting list — yeah it’s that popular it even has a waiting list! Sign up today and start pinning your business all over Pinterest!