Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 20 [32:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

We’re a little late this week but got going relatively quick.  We chat a bit about social media and taxes in this episode, and have a good time doing it.  I think we were keeping Mike warm with our banter!  The episode comes in at a chunky, too-fat-to-fly 32:30. In in this episode we discuss:

• Google Buzz is a Buzz Kill
• Audience Conference 2010 is now open for registration.  This year’s theme is Comedy.
• Kevin Smith’s Social Media battle with Southwest Airlines
  • SModcast – Listen to 107: Go F— Yourself, Southwest Airlines and 106: Thinicism
  • YouTube Videos of Kevin’s Final Words
  • Southwest Airline’s Blog: Not So Silent Bob and My Conversation with Kevin Smith
• Follow hashtag #noadtax on Twitter for updates on the fights against the advertising tax in multiple states
• More information on the tax issues going on in various states can be found at:
  • Performance Marketing Association: California Affiliates – It’s Time To Get Involved
  • PMA: Vermont Affiliates – Your Urgent Help is Needed
  • PMA: You Can Help Fight the Advertising Tax
  • Affiliate Advocacy: Tension Mounts in Maryland
  • AA: Illinois Internet Sales Tax Bill Surfaces
  • AA: Virginia Gains Momentum and Double Threat
  • Stephanie Lichtenstein’s blog: Top Ten Things On My Mind This Month
• EDIT: The Sacramento and San Diego trips we talk about were canceled late tonight.  The CA bill will be heard in the morning and we may make a trip on Monday for the house hearing.  Stay tuned!

Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show?  Find us on Twitter: @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn.  Or leave us a comment!

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Guest Post By Ryan Sammy

Everyone knows the importance of video marketing as well as the tremendous potential YouTube offers in creating a strong presence for your brand and company image. However, does everybody know how to use YouTube optimally to gain the desired advantage and leverage for your videos and thereby your company?

Just creating a good video of your company, or a video containing information intended for your target customers and uploading onto YouTube is not enough to get the desired results. There are many ranking factors behind YouTube that you should know if you want your video to score high marks in the popularity charts. Good VSEO takes into account these ranking factors to help build a good brand image and enhance the reputation of your company.

Apart from creating quality video content that information seekers will be willing to watch, there are other important factors that you can use to optimize your videos for YouTube and get higher rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The first and foremost is not to be just a passerby, but a player. Create a presence in the YouTube community for yourself. Listen to others and be heard. The rankings on YouTube depend on various factors, just as the factors behind organic search results on Google or any other search engine. YouTube in itself is a major search engine now, and it adheres to its own algorithmic parameters to decide rankings.

YouTube ranks videos that are watched most number of times rank very high on its SERPs. So you need to make videos that have a strong viral capability to bring in more viewers for your videos. The more people your videos can bring in to watch, the higher in rankings your video climbs. Now, this does not mean that by simply uploading a video that will be watched by many people can get you top spot in rankings; the videos have to be acceptable and engaging to make people vote for the videos. The more times your videos get viewer votes; the higher the chances of you getting top billings in the rankings! Another factor that could push your videos up is the number of times your videos are bookmarked for attention. These are the basic factors that can help your videos to get maximum visibility, and your attention when making videos should be to make them in such a way that they satisfy all the conditions stated above.

Having good titles, meta-descriptions, tags, comments, flagging, shares, comments, channel views, subscribers, inbound links, and latency do matter, but if you stick to the ground rules and include some, or all the above factors, there is no reason why your videos should lag behind. That said, being an active member of the community will help tremendously, and using video analytics such as “YouTube Insight” and “TubeMogul” should help make your videos better and to stay constantly updated on developments. Make good videos and stay engaged; that should drive you to the top spot very soon.

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Session Description: I’m all a Twitter ‘Cause your MySpace hurts my Facebook when I’m Linked-in – Learn how to leverage social media and your current website to DOMINATE search engine results and improve your organic rankings! Sponsored by Verio.

Industry expert and published author Heather Lutze gives you the rundown on her social media strategies from her new book, The Findability Formula. This breakout will give you actionable tactics you can implement immediately to get your website ranked higher in search engine results. Social media is HOT and delivers results if you know how to use them to their fullest potential. Learn how to use keywords effectively with Twitter, Linked-In, Youtube, Facebook, as well as your own company website to increase your search engine rankings. It is all about knowing and understanding the Findability Formula – and that is what you’ll learn in this workshop!

This session took place Thursday, April 2, 2009. The speaker:

• Heather Lutze, Lutze Consulting

Heather had a lot of great things to say; it was a shame that she didn’t have enough time to really go over it because of such a long pitch by Verio, the sponsor of the session.  One thing Verio did that was annoying but I can’t really fault them for, was parking someone at the door and using the leads scanner to scan the name badges of the people coming in.  Annoying, but since they were sponsoring the session, I can’t really fault them for it.

Bullet Point Review!

• Social media gives you a platform to position yourself as an expert in your field.
• Strategy:
  • Connect with the right search keywords.
  • Edit your social media profiles and elements with keywords.
  • Track the results in Google search results.
• Know how users search:
  • 15.2% are 1 word search phrases
  • 31.9% are 2 word
  • 27% are 3 word
  • 14.8% are 4 word
  • 6.5% are 5+ words
• The longer the keyword, the faster you’ll show up.
• Longer search terms are looking more to purchase, less informational or shopping.
• Resources: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.
• Tool: Google External Keyword Tool
• Tool: Keyword Discovery
• Connect with the customer when they’re ready to take decisive action.
• Misspellings can rank highly (sometimes they convert higher).
• Look at the pages and be sure you actually want to show up amongst that company.
• Anything over 100 searches, long tail.
• Open tool, whats most targeted keyword, then write blog post (put the keyword at the front).
• Recommends All in One SEO Pack, ShareThis for Wordpress.
• On LinkedIn, when you put your last name in put a dash and your keyword.
• Start on the long tail and work your way backward.
• Do it for your name, do it for misspellings, rank the whole page to push out the “sucks” terms.

Because of the 20 minute pitch for Verio at the beginning of the session, there was zero time for questions, which was a shame.  I was hoping for some more real-world examples that weren’t just about Heather.  There was time for one where a woman who is a voice-over talent was looking at it from her standpoint and Heather walked through the practical application, which was pretty cool.

Overall it was a good session once Verio was done talking, and I wish she’d shared her slides with the Web 2.0 Expo folks, but alas it’s not on their website.

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