Social media leaders Facebook and Twitter Driving Video Referrals

Based on the new Q2 Online Video and Media Industry Quarterly Report released by BrightCove and TubeMogul this month and reported by WebProNews, Facebook and Twitter video referral traffic is growing faster than the traditional search engines. If this trend sustains, look for Facebook to slide into the Number 2 position right behind Google.

I’m not surprised to see that engagement metrics via these social media channels are higher as well. Based on the very nature of social media, sharing good video content amongst friends has never been easier. I remember a time when my inbox was full of video content, now it’s my Facebook newsfeed.

What does this mean for you, internet marketer?

Video should be absolutely be a part of your marketing strategy whether you are using it for brand awareness, lead generation or meeting your ecommerce goals. Why? Because according to the survey 85% of your peers are currently using video as part of their marketing mix and more than 60 percent say they plan to invest more in on-site video initiatives in the next 12 months. With Facebook users watching an average 1:24 minutes of video compared with 0:52 seconds for traffic originating from display ads or Yahoo!, video is great way to reach your audience. Factor in all media verticals and that engagement number goes up to 2:00 minutes.

Other report highlights:

• Viewers watched 11.8 percent more videos per month in Q2 than last quarter.
• Brand managers have embraced blended distribution strategies with 80 percent including video on their own brand sites, as well as YouTube and 90 percent distributing video through Facebook.
• The volume of unique viewers accessing online video grew across all media verticals in Q2 by an average of 2.8 percent per month compared to .05 percent month-over-month growth in Q1.

Do you have a video strategy?

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YouTube Now Serves More Search Queries than Major Search Engines

It is no surprise that Google reigns supreme as the most utilized search engine based on November’s search query numbers. More interesting, however, is that Yahoo and MSN, the next most popular search engines respectively, were both outnumbered by YouTube searches. The total number of YouTube searches this November was 2.79 billion, more that the total 2.62 billion searches in Yahoo owned sites. Meanwhile, Microsoft and its sites barely stayed in the game with 1.05 billion searches in November.

Of course with YouTube being owned by Google, this is just another step toward Google’s search monopoly.

The importance of website content?

Hello everyone, I am new at Ten Golden Rules! - and I will be blogging about my favorite subject; internet marketing. This week while I was driving I kept thinking why google and other search engines emphasize on content? We all know that search engines "reward" websites if there is a constant flow of new content on a site, but why? What is the reason behind this? If we take a look at any news website, look at their page rank, in most cases is always a high number.
In a snapshot, all internet marketers know the importance of content - titles including keywords, meta descriptions and meta keywords (although meta keywords are not that important now), body copy, etc. - okay, we know all these basics but the reason why search engines "reward" websites for content is because at the end of the day everything comes down to business, right? - and search engines need to make money. If they do not have all of us creating content on the web where will they place advertisement? They need us to give them content to be profitable and keep their business growing.
Another example I always think about is why google (you'll be hearing a lot of "google" from me) gives away so many free tools, because they are nice? And how can we learn from this idea and incorporate it on our own website? In addition, I will also be covering the list of free google tools in my next couple posts - so come back because there is always one cool tool you might not know...

Ex-Googler Launches Cuil (Cool) New Search Engine

Ex Google employee, Anna Patterson and her husband launched a new search engine Cuil. They are aiming to index more pages then Google and become the leader in search.
Cuil said they will go beyond traditional approaches and analyze the context of each page and the concepts behind each query so it can provide better rankings by content rather than popularity.