Sound Solutions: North Bank Audio Solutions

So, you probably know by now that you should be submitting articles to article directories by now, so I won’t bore with you why. I’ll just let you check out Article Marketer to find out more on that topic - they’re the experts. What a lot of people aren’t doing though is effectively linking their work together. What do I mean by this? You should have your body of work (your blog, podcast, articles, videos, and social media etc.) all refer to eachother. Here are a few examples:

1. When you create a blog post, include a link to a relevent vidoe that you posted on YouTube.
2. When you post something to Twitter, link to a related podcast, blog post or article you submitted to ezinearticles.com.
3. Post the videos you put on YouTube to your Facebook account.
4. When you upload videos to YouTube, include a link to your free report or teleseminar recording opt-in page for lead generation.
5. Link your blog to your social networking sites. Like Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin and Facebook.

The reasons for doing these things are two fold:

1. You want human beings to click on these links. This is pretty obvious, but remember, the more ways you can display your information, the better. Some of your prospects and clients might love to read blogs, but others might do better with video or audio.
2. You want search engines to know where your stuff is online. The logic goes like this - if you link to your YouTube video on your blog, then you are letting Google and Yahoo know that the video exists, thus pushing that video up in order of importance. The same goes with your articles, blog posts, social media, podcasts, etc.

One more tip - for those of you who are blogging (and I hope that’s all of you) may I make the suggestion, that you go a step further with these suggestions? If you take a look at my blog, you’ll notice that my Twitter updates are syndicated on the lower right hand side. This is done for a similar reason as I explained above. People might click on my updates and go to my Twitter profile and because search engines like fresh, new content, my blog site is constantly changing each time I post to twitter. You’ll also notice that I’ve integrated my podcast in a similar way. This is a slightly more advanced way of linking your blogs and social media, but all the more effective. You can actually do this on your static websites as well with a tool called Feedburner. If you’re not using Feedburner, shame on you. No, but seriously, check it out. It’s free. I’ll probably include some video tutorial of how to do these things in the near future, so make sure to subscribe to my feed so you get them as soon as I post them.

So, I wouldn’t consider myself to be an expert on the topic of SEO, but I’m learning. I’ve stumbled upon a great tool that you should definitely take advantage of.

It’s HubSpot’s Website Grader. You simply input your website and it tells you what’s good and bad about your site, with suggestions on how to fix it.

I don’t buy into the idea that SEO is everything when it comes to online marketing, but it is a piece of the puzzle that should not be overlooked.

Once you have made some adjustments to your site based on the feedback from this tool, I suggest using Google’s very own solution: Google Webmaster Tools. It will tell you what’s wrong with your site, help you gleam important info about your site directly from Google’s database and share info about your site with Google.

Here’s another question I helped a friend on LinkedIn with. I think the answer will help the general public. Check it out:

My original question:

What questions do you have about using audio or video in your marketing or product development efforts (info products, podcasts, online videos etc).

Alex’s response:

What are some of the best ways to promote online video into directories, search engines and RSS submission sites?

My advice:

Hi Alex,

I would start by submitting your videos to http://www.tubemogul.com/. This automatically submits them all the major video engines for free.

There is also a paid solution that has some other features at www.trafficgeyser.com.

I would post videos to your blog if you have one. If you do not have a blog, you should consider creating one. Wordpress.com is what I would suggest if you are just getting started.

You can take the blog a step further by making it a video podcast. This just means you are embedding the actual video files in the posts, so you have to link to the actual source file. If you use wordpress.com, you’ll want to purchase two upgrades: custom domain and a hosting upgrade so you can have your own domain name and upload mp3 files. This will only cost $30-40 per year!

You’ll want to set up a feedburner.com account too. It’s free. This helps you track who subscribes and gives you all sorts of cool tools.

Then, submit your feedburner feed url to directories using podpusher.com and submit to the iTunes directory by installing the free iTunes software and clicking on the “podcasts” button and entering your feed url from feedburner.

If any of the above makes your head spin, you can email me at caleb@northbankaudio.com and we can either set up a consultation or you can simply delegate the work to us so you can focus on your content.

I hope this helps!

Caleb Scoville
North Bank Audio Solutions
http://www.northbankaudio.com