Videos are a great way to communicate your message through social media. They have a much higher viral probability than a blog post. People are more likely to sit and watch an entertaining video rather than read a blog post.

After you’ve created an informative video you must distribute your content so that it will be viewed by as many people as possible. Remember the second rule of social media: “People are more likely to view, interact, and share content using a platform with which they are familiar.” (In case you’re wondering, the first rule of social media is that your content must be entertaining, informative, and/or clever.)

Never just upload your content to one platform. You must diversify your content distribution! The social video world does not evolve around YouTube. While the big brand name sites have a wide user base, other smaller niche sites can provide a lot of activity.

For example, here is a short list of some less mainstream social video sites.

1. Blip.tv
2. Dailymotion
3. Metacafe
4. Revver
5. Vimeo
6. vSocial
7. VideoSift
8. sevenload

Content distribution is the key to a successful social media campaign. Diversity!

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One of the many benefits of embracing the latest online marketing technology is the ability to integrate RSS feeds into your website. RSS stands for (Really Simple Syndication) and it’s basically your “website inbox.” I’ll let the guys over at commoncraft explain what RSS is all about.

As a business owner there are a lot of different ways to utilize RSS feeds to generate constant customer connection.

1. Blogs: Let your readers know as soon as you publish a new blog post.
2. Articles: Subscribers will be informed as soon as you release a new press article about a new product or service.
3. News: Any news media readers will know as soon as you release a press release about company news.
4. Specials and Events: Subscribers can keep track of the latest promotions or events happening.
5. Syndication: You can submit your RSS feed to news aggregators like Google News and they will display your content when someone performs a search for specific keywords.

RSS feeds can also be distributed using email! That means your blog, articles, news, and events will be delivered just like you would send out a newsletter. For example, you can subscribe to this blog via email and each post will be sent to you each day.

Related:
What is Refreshing Content and Why is it Important?

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SocialTwist in California is debuting a new type of social ad unit that is based on word of mouth marketing and advertising.

…the company is introducing advertising widgets that come with the ability for visitors to share the ads with their friends by e-mailing them a template e-mail and link to a destination chosen by the advertiser. The widget makes a clickable Tell-a-Friend link appear at the top right of an ad unit, which pops up a box where surfers get to e-mail a template message along with the original ad and a link to the website where the ad originally appeared to their Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail contacts, or alternatively send it out to a specific e-mail address.

I went and tried out the demo page and I noticed a small note at the bottom of the pop up window.

So we’re trusting an ad distribution agency to not store our personal information? What about the person’s email that we send the ad to? Are those safe as well?

It’s an interesting idea, but the only ads I’ve ever enjoyed so much that I have shared them with friends have been videos or an entire website, not a content ad on a website. And if the ad was talking about something I might want to send to someone else, I would typically click the ad and send my friend the website URL, not the actual ad itself.

Tell-a-Friend: Word of Mouth Marketing via TechCrunch article.

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Social media is difficult to understand if you don’t know what the words mean. Let’s take a look at a few more social media buzz words and define them.

Social bookmarking: A website for sharing interesting links with your friends and anyone else that might be interested. It functions like your internet browser’s bookmarking function, except you can access them through any computer.

Wiki: Harnessing the power of community knowledge, a wiki is an online open source hub for information on many different topics. The most well known wiki is Wikipedia, but there are many many wiki sites available on a varitey of topics. (Wikitravel, Recipes Wiki, even a Star Trek Wiki)

Meme: An idea or item of pop culture that becomes popular and people begin to build upon that idea. It often starts with a simple idea that spreads. It is pronounced “meem” (rhymes with theme or dream). A popular internet meme are lolcats.

Mashup: Two separate ideas or content that are mashed together to form something new. Mashups can be a video, a song, or between websites. Memes are commonly mashed-up, which leads to the viral effect.

Social Media Optimization: Making content easily accessible through RSS feeds, social networks, and social bookmarking sites. If a video is optimized for social media it is able to be embedded on other sites. If your website is optimized for social media it has an RSS feed.

Web 2.0: Don’t worry, it’s not a new internet. You won’t have to upgrade your internet connection. It’s a new way of thinking about how users interact with the internet. Rather than websites being static sources of information, the internet is changing to provide streams of constant information that is provided by multiple data sources. Less mainstream news centers and more bloggers and freelance journalists.

Viral Marketing: As the name implies, it is an item of interest that becomes so popular it is passed on from person to person much like a virus. You can not create a viral video or a viral marketing idea. Something becomes viral by the fact that people pass it on because they want other people to see it.

Read “Social Media Terms, Defining the Buzz Words Part One”

Have a word you want us to define? Leave a comment and we’ll add it to the list.

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