Okay, here are the three key steps required to add Youtube Video to your Blog:

1. Upload Your Video to Youtube.
2. Download and install the Wordpress Plugin named “Smart Youtube.”
3. Place your embed code into your Wordpress Blog Post by copying the video URL from Youtube to your post and changing http:// to httpv:// (notice the ‘v’ character).  The video will be automatically embedded to your post in the proper way.

For example:

        www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiXZz4N97Pc

If you want to post a high quality/HD video you would use httpvh:// (‘vh’ for video high)

To embed a playlist use extension ‘vp’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=528026B4F7B34094

Additionally, you can set how do you want the video to be displayed in your RSS feed. Smart Youtube can show the preview image of the video (automatically grabbed from Youtube), the link to the video, or both.  One recommendation is to enable only the preview image.

If you want to go to the source for more information, here is a link to see instructions on how to embed YT videos in Wordpress:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-youtube/installation/.

In this Unilyzer Blog, you can read more about the benefits of adding video to your blog, read the article on this blog name Dominate with Video, http://www.unilyzer.com/social-media-marketing/dominate-with-video/.

Good luck!

Finally!  A Way to Track Your Facebook Fan Page

If only there was a way to track Facebook Fan Pages with Google Analytics…

As Facebook Fan Pages gain momentum as a leading Social Media Marketing outlet, the need to effectively track this medium becomes all the more important.  Up until very recently, the only way to monitor your Fan Page was through the extremely limiting Facebook Insights.  Insights provides page administrators limited data on visitor demographics and fan interaction but is unable to report on visitor statistics, traffic sources, keyword data and some of the other extensive reporting that Google Analytics provides.  Thanks to some crafty out of the box thinking by London based web developers Webdigi, the code has been cracked and now everyone can track their Fan Pages using Google Analytics.  In this post, we will show you how to track your Fan Page with a step-by-step guide, including the necessary links to generate your personal Google Analytics tracking code that will be installed on your page.  We will also introduce you to the Social Media monitoring tool Unilyzer and show you how it can be used in correlation with Google Analytics to extract even more detailed and valuable information from Facebook and other Social Media outlets.  Let’s get started. 

Google Analytics for Facebook Fan Pages + Unilyzer = Tracking Bliss

Once you complete the installation of Google Analytics on your Facebook Fan Page, take your tracking to a new level using the Social Media Monitoring Dashboard from the Unilyzer (www.unilyzer.com).  The Unilyzer is a data-to-dashboard tool that uses Google Analytics to pull data from a wide range of Social Media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as social bookmark sites like Digg, Stumble and Delicious – using this data, the Unilyzer generates a personal dashboard with insightful charts and trending arrows which allows you to adjust your Social Media marketing efforts accordingly.  Before we tackle the process of tracking the Facebook Fan Page on the Unilyzer, let’s take a look at the following step-by-step guide you will need to follow to install Google Analytics on your Fan Page.

Google Analytics Installation Guide for Facebook Fan Pages

Installing Google Analytics on your Facebook Fan Page isn’t all that complicated, but you will want to closely follow the steps provided below as there are a few moving parts.  Luckily, the aforementioned web development company Webdigi (www.webdigi.co.uk/) has written up an extremely comprehensive “how-to” that will facilitate the process.  Let’s take a look at some excerpts from their article below.  If you’ve already installed Analytics to your page, scroll down to the “Unilyzer” section to learn how the Unilyzer, when used in correlation with Google Analytics, allows for an even more extensive tracking experience.

How to setup Google Analytics on your Facebook fan pages

“The workaround we use in our code is to include Google Analytics as an image instead of setting the standard Javascript. This method tracks every visitor to the custom facebook pages on Google Analytics. It required a combination of server side cookie management and an additional <img> tag to the bottom of the facebook fan page. Here are the steps to get Google Analytics working on your facebook fan page.

1) Setup Google Analytics account. If you already have one, create a new website profile. You can name it facebook.com or facebook.com/your_page_name. You will finally get your tracking code which looks like this UA-3123123-2
2) Create your custom img tag for each of your pages you like to track. EG: contact form, services, products etc. You can use our tool to create the Google Analytics link generator for Facebook pages.
3) Add the entire custom image html tag from step 2 to the bottom of each Facebook fan page that you need to track.

That is all there is to it! Google Analytics is not real-time, so you will need to give it some time. Approximately a day before you see the fruits of your “hard” work.”

For advanced users

“Use this method, if you don’t want to use our hosted link redirection as mentioned in the method above. You can download the entire source code which is just about three files to get this setup working on your own server (running PHP4.3 or above). The code is written in PHP and essentially creates the Google image tracking URL with the referrer, page information, ID, etc. The additional advantage of hosting this on your own server and domain is that visits from your website to your facebook fan page gets tracked, etc. You will also be able to customise further if you wish. Please do share any useful updates you apply to the tracking link code.

Facebook – Google Analytics Version 1.1 (Updated 21st Feb, 2010).  For advanced method – Download this code to use on your server.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page yet, visit our tutorial for code and help on creating customised Facebook fan pages.

PS: We could not find any other source / blog that described how to get Google Analytics on Facebook fan pages! There is support for canvas pages and applications but nothing for Static FBML fan pages. Hope this helps and please leave your comments below.”

UPDATE:
1) A lot of users have asked how to track visits to the wall. Yes, this can be done. Please see the comments by iphp below.
2) Here is a screenshot to a staticFBML where the code should be placed

Source: http://www.webdigi.co.uk/

Google Analytics is now tracking your Facebook Fan Page – Wait, it gets better…

Facebook Fan Pages have really caught on as a great way for individuals and companies to create micro-communities of followers of their brand and/or cause.  Now that you have the capability of installing Google Analytics on your page, take the next step and use a tool that works with Google Analytics to even further enhance your tracking and monitoring efforts.  The Unilyzer (www.unilyzer.com) is just the tool you need if you are looking for even more in-depth reporting on your Fan Page and other Social Media channels.  We will first take a look at what the Unilyzer is and how it works before moving on to a more detailed explanation of how the Dashboard can be customized to report on specific information. 

The Unilyzer – a new comprehensive Social Media Monitoring and Tracking Dashboard 

A bevy of tools for tracking social media have been developed over the past few years, many of them quite effective in what they do.  With that said, they all have their shortcomings – too expensive, lack of reporting breadth, uninspired user interfaces, minimal tracking channel capabilities.  Some tracking tools are great but medium specific, reporting on only one Social Media outlet and requiring the user to manage multiple monitoring tools in order to get a truly clear vision of their Inbound Marketing efforts.  The new Social Media monitoring Dashboard Unilyzer, developed by Eman Bass, provides a great overall package combining a great user interface, numerous customizable data points, user-friendly functionality, and broad reporting on all of the major Social Media channels.  And now that Google Analytics can be easily installed to track Facebook Fan Pages, the Unilyzer is even more attractive as it offers the best combined analytical reporting of Fan Pages the market has to offer.  For more information about the Unilyzer’s tracking and reporting capabilities, visit www.unilyzer.com or click here to watch a short video that describes the Unilyzer’s basic functions.

All in all, the fact that we now have the capability to properly track Facebook Fan Pages is a very good thing and it will give Page administrators a level of insight that Facebook Insight does not.

About the Video: Did You Know 4.0
This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.

Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Music by DoKashiteru, “Home Tonight.” Design and development by XPLANE, http://www.xplane.com. You can follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/xplane

“While we’ve become smarter at discovering this information on our own, we’d certainly appreciate some hints directly from webmasters,” says Google’s Michael Cohen, Product Manager for the Video Search Team.

To help make videos more search-engine friendly, Google now supports the following mark-up formats for videos:

• Facebook Share
• Yahoo RDFa
• mRSS (media real simple syndication)
• Video Sitemaps

It’s too soon to say if one mark-up is better than the rest. Personally, I recommend the Facebook Share method of mark-up because it’s simple; all you do is add a few lines of meta tag information in your header tag. Just like you enter title tags, alt tags, and keywords for your website pages – you also need to optimize your videos to be search friendly.

The Facebook Share mark-up includes the following information for the search engine spiders:

• Link to the Video Thumbnail
• Link to the Video File
• Video Title
• Video Description
• Video Dimensions (Height & Width)

Example of the Facebook Share mark-up: Copy and paste into your header tag, customize the bold sections to your video content. If you’re embedding video from Youtube the video source would be something like “http://www.youtube.com/v/jPtBdydGnWY&hl=en&fs=1″

<head>

<link rel=”image_src” href=”http://example.com/thumbnail_preview.jpg” />

<link rel=”video_src” href=”http://example.com/video_object.swf“/>

<meta content=”My Video Description “/>

<meta content=”My Video Title” />

<meta content=”296” />

<meta content=”512” />

<meta content=”application/x-shockwave-flash” />

</head>

This site has some examples and additional information about the Facebook Share mark-up format and a place to treat your page to make sure you did it right.

http://developer.search.yahoo.com/help/objects/video

Both Google and Yahoo are accepting the Facebook Share mark-up language for videos. While it’s not guaranteed that adding this code to your site will get your videos indexed, at least your videos are now search engine friendly. I would make sure to use your targeted keyword phrases in your video title and description. Just don’t abuse the system. Make sure the content in your videos matches the title and description you tag it with.

The highlights in yellow show how optimized videos show up in the search results. What you use in your Facebook Share mark-up is what Google displays in the search results.

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If you post a video and get 1 million views for a video and only 3% of those viewers visit your site that is 30 thousand visitors! If 3% of those convert into sign-ups or customers, that is 900 signups or sales! Sound good to you?

I know it’s very difficult to get a video with 1 million views, but take a look at YouTube and see what videos are popular. Why are they so popular? What is so good about them? It’s not the production value, it’s not because they have celebrities or cost a large amount of money to create.

These videos are crazy popular because they are extremely funny, or cool, or amazing for some reason. The videos can be planned or spontaneous, but they are NOT selling something, they are NOT outwardly trying to get customers or build their mailing list. If you want to create a viral video you cannot be selling in the video. Instead, let the video generate buzz for you!

Another great idea is to give the viewer something in your videos for free. Teach them something, give them information they are looking for, entertain them. Become an authority on your topic, and they will love you and gladly tell others about you.

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Video SEO at its core is about the discoverability of video content via search engines. As a business, the goal of vSEO is getting video content to the top of search engine rankings within the video search results page AND the standard search results page.

A lot of the same rules that apply to SEO also apply to vSEO; you must have relevant and keyword rich text surrounding the video content and utilize inbound and internal linking.  Take advantage of social media to allow visitors to share, bookmark, rate and comment on your videos, and strong video title and meta tags.

Promotional videos and vlogs (video blogs) are important if your business is going to survive in the future of the Internet. Remember, we retain 7% of what we read, 38% of what we hear and 55% of what we see. That alone should tell you online video must be a part of your marketing package. Businesses that put their message in front of a customer through video marketing will be the businesses thriving in the future.

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• Write a blog post with the rule of three. The post contains an introduction paragraph, three supporting examples or arguments, and a conclusion.

• Turn the blog post into tweets. Take your main point from the introduction paragraph and post it as a question to your twitter followers. Then take the first sentence of each of your supporting examples or arguments and drip tweet them throughout the day. Make sure to link to your original blog post in all your tweets.
• Turn your blog post in to wall posts. The conclusion of your blog post summarizes the overall point you’re making. Take this nugget of an idea and find a related video, resource, or book on the topic. Post the video or resource on your Facebook wall along with a link to your original blog post.
• Turn your blog post into a video or podcast. Take the blog post introduction and personalize with your own voice and style. Take the three supporting arguments and find an expert in the opposing or supporting side and interview them. With a podcast format you can call them and record their voice. With video you can be like a journalist and interview a local expert in the topic. Suggest several resources for the audience to get more information and wrap up with your final conclusion. Don’t forget to plug your website and encourage folks to subscribe to your channel.

• Digg and Ping your blog & videos. After you post to your blog and video site of choice, make sure to recommend yourself on the social bookmarking sites. This introduces your content to folks and generates incoming links. If you’re using a tool like WordPress to write your blogsite make sure you have it set to auto-ping blog indexing sites like Feed Burnner and Technorati.

As you can see, one blog post can be easily repurposed into four different social media channels. This not only saves you time, but keeps your message consistent. If one blog post can generate four different pieces of content you can exponentially increase the reach of your online marketing.

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• Standard Facebook wall post:

• Facebook wall post with photo:

• Facebook wall post with video:

Facebook makes adding video super easy. Embed video from YouTube, Revver, and Yahoo Video. In fact, you can record video from your webcam directly into Facebook, no fancy editing software needed. (watch tutorial) When your friends or fans click on your video link they can watch the video (it expands and plays). They never have to leave Facebook to watch. What a great tool to keep users on your fan page or encourage them to learn more about you, and in the end your products and services.

People are naturally drawn to pictures and video. I know when friends post photos I almost always check out their profile photo galley to see more. Next time you post on Facebook, try adding a photo or video then observe your friends reactions. Did they have a tendency to comment more? Let me know how this works for you by leaving a comment below.

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