April 30, 2010 in Blog, Online Video by Patrick McNulty

85% of U.S. Internet Users Viewed Online Video in March

Our thirst for online video consumption is at an all-time high  Trends consistently show large-scale growth in this internet medium.  If there was ever a time for you to have a professional video produced for your local business, it’s now!

People aren’t just watching video for fun – the viral kind.  People are using video to learn about brands, products and services.  They are using it as one of 8 medium the consult before making a purchase decision.  Utilize online video to accelerate your leads by engaging potential customers with a 60 second online pitch.

Data from the comScore March 2010 Video Metrix report shows more than 180 million U.S. internet users watched online video in March, up 3.5% from February alone!  Total video views soared to over 31 billion, with 42% of those views happening on Google properties, more specifically, YouTube.

comScore-march-2010-video-metrix

Other notable findings from March 2010 as quoted by comScore.com include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group) with 38.0 percent penetration of online video viewers, SpotXchange Video Ad Network with 19.9 percent, and BBE with 19.1 percent.
• 84.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 135.3 million viewers watched 12.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (95.6 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 26.7 videos, totaling 2.6 hours of video per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.

April 23, 2010 in Blog, Search Engine Marketing, Websites by Patrick McNulty

Google Makes at Least One Change Per Day to Search Algorithm

In a recent video from Matt Cutts in response to a user-submitted question, he addresses two issue: Algorithm changes and content.

To my surprise, Cutts says Google makes nearly 350-400 changes in a year – nearly once a day! In a recent article from Search Engine Land covering an article by Wired on Google’s Algorithm, they have stated Google makes 550 changes a year… in any case, this means it’s even more important to keep your metadata fresh and up to date with search standards.

As for content being king… it still is, however, Cutts eludes to people actually viewing your website and content hierarchy standards.  This is getting back to the basics – how many inbound links and how many visitors you have will contribute to your organic ranking.  Best practices also says to have landing pages for each product/service/topic, making it easy not only for users to navigate your site and digest content, but equally as important for spiders to efficiently index your entire site frequently.

The bottom line: Use proper site architecture through taxonomy and site map strategy, update your content regularly, keep your meta fresh and utilize and inbound linking strategy with directories, reciprocals and by writing articles for other blogs to use.

April 13, 2010 in Social Media by Patrick McNulty

Using LinkedIn in Your Small Business

LinkedIn is a valuable professional social media tool that small business should be leveraging in a number of ways.  Guy Kawasaki does a good job of listing ways small business uses LinkedIn.

Some great take-aways from the article that I’ve been preaching:

- Building your industry network
- Customer acquisition through recommendations
- Raise funding and VC
- Competitive intelligence and research