Free Social Media Webinars at HubSpot

HubSpot is a webbased internet marketing suite. The service supplies some interesting social media marketing information at marketing ressources. There white papers and webinars beside others. HubSpot hosts live webinars and makes archived versions available. Especially at marketing tips and webinars there are a couple of interesting social media marketing papers and presentations. The following links to a comprehensive and free Social Media Marketing Kit download with a video and an ebook.

The HubSpot service is an interesting up to date internet marketing suite. The webbased service contains several publishing tools, a search engine optimized content management system and a publishing tool for business blogs. Furthermore there are optimization tools for search engine marketing and social media marketing. For both there are analytical tools integrated like keyword intelligence and link management, automated buzz monitoring and lead management. There are two versions, one for business owners and one for marketing agencies.

Some amazing eMedia Trends

At the end of very month I do some basic research for the update of FOLDEN.INFO and I have found some really interesting articles and trends, that are most related to the topics here at emediablogger. This concerns interactive video and is even related to the former post about machinima, interactive films made within virtual reality or games.

At the first article there is an expert opinion that there is not only a shift toward video consumption at the internet, but that there is evolving a new kind of media format. This new format is described as storytelling by video. Whereas there is no example mentioned, I do think about the latest movements of converging various forms of internet media into new kinds of services. Exemplary I do think about interactive video services like the new YouTube feature to link videos or Seesmic, which is for video conversations enabled by follower functions that are usually available at microblogging services. Last but not least there are the live video services, that are beloved here. You will find this statement at the end of the following article.

Online Video Market Evolves, Begins Morphing Into New 'Storytelling' Device

The second case, that is related to new narrative forms of video, are alternative reality games. At these kind of games there is a given and designed playground with a story and some characters. But the story and the game evolves by the engagement of users, who are solving tasks and contribute to the story. This happens as well in the real world as online by using all means that seem to be suitable. At the article especially the usage of internet video is mentioned and the possibilities for marketing. Here is a wikipedia definition of alternate reality games.

Industry Watch: Games Break Loose

Last but not least two articles about an interactive tv advertising pilot project and the emerging social media space.

MPG, Navic Test Interactive Ads (TV)

Social media goes global

Of course there have been more noteworthy occurrences. If you like to have a look at my review of latest internet marketing and emedia trends, you may visit the monthly internet trend coverage at FOLDEN.INFO. To stay connected and to be informed about updates you may either subscribe to the full text newsletter or to the newsfeed, which links to the newsletter contains parts of it.

Do you know Machinima?

I found an article related to the video posted a couple of days ago showing a scene within Second Life. There is a special term describing such videos. It is Machinima. I have not known this, but this is what research is for. Here is a link to a definition at wikipedia. The article describes Machinima as "animated films created by using a number of different game or virtual world engines" and is stating that this kind of films may be an option for marketers. This is similar to my statement at the former post, in some way marketing related and a possible new form of journalism.

Machinima is a futuristic, viral option for marketers

Video Business and Advertising

Business Thursday: Video is the new darling of internet marketing. Research studies give most promising predictions for the online video market, even better than the broad adoption that already happens. There is indeed a broad range of services and solutions available for the usage of internet video as well as for video advertising.

For video advertising a new breed of services came up. This is product placement at internet video. Product placement is an advertising format, where products are obviously introduced or used within a story. That is nothing new and it has been reported that already Lonely Girl, one of the first stars of online video, has been visited by marketers and has been talking about the marketers products. Usually product placement is arranged by advertising agencies. But now there is a trend for marketplaces connecting video producers and advertisers aiming to place products within internet video.

There is StoryBids targeting filmmakers and video producers, which have reached a significant audience at new media and by viral videos. StoryBids brings together creators and advertisers for auctioning available placements.

Trendessence is both, a marketplace for product placements and a provider of video advertising solutions. At the marketplace video makers and advertisers may come together. What Trendessence is offering next is the delivering of ads and the tracking of the video usage, which makes the success of a campaign countable.

Zadby is offering a business opportunity for everyone. They encourage freelancers and hobby filmmakers to join their service.

Reach is always crucial for success in the advertising business. To increase the reach one may use several services, which is done best by a social media strategy using aggregators. Some special aggregators are available for the video business to upload videos to several video sharing sites. Services for aggregated uploads and the tracking of the number of views and downloads are Hey!Spread, TubeMogul.com and VideoCounter.com.

Newsfeeds, a Business Basis, Marketing and Monetization Opportunity

Business Thursday: Newsfeeds have become mainstream and they are a basis today to distribute and syndicate information, keep in touch with customers and for social networking. This all has started with a development by Netscape in 1999. The basic reasons for the development have been the handling of the information overload and to evade the increasing spam problem. Today newsfeeds are used everywhere. Every common browser has a feed reader implemented and newsfeeds are used for various social networking purposes. Examples are personalized startpages for general information purposes made available by most search engines and specialized services and the use of newsfeeds to distribute information and media with widgets. By this newsfeeds are a must have for every business and publisher.

Today there are two main newsfeed standards available for general purposes. The up to date version of RSS and the Atom Standard. The RSS Standard is available by a Creative Commons License and Atom is an internet standard maintained by the IETF. Both standards are suitable for media and to distribute audio and video files by podcasting. Beside the common standards there are a couple of newsfeed standards for particular purposes like GeoRSS for local information and OPML to syndicate multiple feeds. There is an ongoing development, which is worth to be observed. New developments at the social media space e.g. are lifestreams, which enable people to share their web activities.

The basis to distribute information and participate in syndication is an own newsfeed. To develop or start a newsfeed there are two ways, developing a feed based on the standards mentioned above or to use a feed generator. Feed generators are available by popular feed services like FeedBurner and on the web by forms. After a feed has been developed, it should be checked with a feed validator. This is recommended for both, self developed feeds and generated feeds. This will assure that everything is correct and may give hints for improvements. A popular feed validator for both Atom and RSS is Feed Validator. A broad range of general and further information about newsfeeds and tools is available at RSS, Newsfeeds and Content Tools.

If a feed has been created it is time to promote and share it. Basicly this is done by placing a link at homepages and submissions to newsfeed directories and search engines. Doing some social networking for sharing a newsfeed is the next step. For example a widget may be created to share a newsfeed in another way. Last but not least there are opportunities to monetize newsfeeds. Google now is offering monetization of newsfeeds by AdSense and at FeedBurner. Further services again are available at RSS, Newsfeeds and Content Tools.

Widgets, Advertising, eCommerce and Widget Development

Business Thursday: Widgets are small internet applications, that may become installed at web sites and social media pages or at the desktop and mobile phone. Synonymous names are gadgets, rich internet or web applications. Like a software programmed for a particular purposes, widgets may be used for most every meaningful intention. Technically widgets are client side applications, which means that applications become loaded just one time or installed like software. Then only the information becomes updated. Typical purposes are the distribution of information or media, games or communications purposes like chat, messaging or even video conferencing. Widgets are most popular to obtain information at internet devices and at social media. They have become such important that even the W3C internet standardization body has launched a group called WebApps Working Group aiming to define standards for widgets and other client side applications. Popular widgets are loaded millions of time and some networks deliver billions of impressions daily.

To participate in this business opportunity there are several ways depending on the targets and it might be easier that the introduction has sound. By developing a widget enterprises and even homepage owners may get viewers and visitors. A popular example for blogger are blogrolls. Depending on the approach widgets may easily become generated by automatic means, the widget generators. Enterprises may develop branded widgets themselves or by a service to better deliver a message.

The second opportunity is the widget advertising, which is mostly the same as on the web. But additionally adverts could be included within a widget. As a widget is either the marketing tool itself or carrying adverts, commercial widgets may be found and distributed at a company homepage or at widget directories, advertising at widget advertising networks. Popular affiliate widgets for example are the amazon widgets, which are customizable to display particular products.

Widget generators, development kits and services often are offered by widget directories, too. So does LabPixies, a widget directory offering advertising services, too. Another directory is SpringWidgets, which is offering a widget development kit. Widgetbox again is offering an easy way for developping by its widget generator and syndication services at the directory. The latter is what Widgipedia does for desktop, mobile and web widgets. YourMinis is directory and does offer further services. Google and Yahoo both do offer a directory and a development suite by Google Gadgets and Yahoo Widgets.

Do not miss the feed to obtain further information about widgets soon and feel free to bookmark and spread the word.

Ping Tools for Blog, Feed and Podcast Promotion

Business Thursday: Blog and newsfeed readers mostly find their ways to the information source by search engines or links from other pages or blogrolls. Further ways to promote blogs and feeds are submissions to blog and newsfeed directories and search engines. Most of these blog and newsfeed directories do support pings. Pings are messages send to the server of a directory informing the server about updates of the information resource. Some directories or search engines do allow submissions by pinging. Others do only accept update messages by pinging, if a source has been submitted already. Because of this manual submissions are the best way to assure that a source is listed at a particular directory. Ping services are available for blogs, newsfeeds and podcasts.

Autopinger delivers pings for blog updates and podcasts. They got a list of english spoken services and services in other languages.

Feedshark is a general online tool for pinging. It accepts the sending of blog, newsfeed and podcast updates.

King Ping does carry out blog and podcast pings. There is a tool that will check back for new updates automaticly.

Ping-o-Matic is rather dedicated to blog updates, but allows mentioning particular feed urls. It submits updates to blog directories and some specialized services for podcasts and geo location.

Last but not least there are ways to automate the ping process. Usually this is done by a code, that needs to be added to a blog. Information about how to automate pings and update messages are mostly available at faq pages at particular services.

Big Money at Social Media

I read two most interesting articles about where the big money is at social media. Social media is big business, but a most discussed issue is how social networks may monetize. CPM advertising rates are low at the social space, but there are alternative earning opportunities. According to the articles mentioned below the big money is spend for the development of rich internet applications or widgets used for advertising actually. Widgets are applications able to deliver information or entertainment and may contain banner adverts or are the advertising medium themselves. Being the advertising medium themselves widgets are great branding and retention tools. Typical content of widgets may be games or up to date information.

The most interesting part to me has been the introduction of virtual economies at the second article. Virtual economies or currencies are reward systems, where users of these applications may earn points. This points may become exchanged at virtual economy services into real money, goods or may be used for other stuff supplied within the widgets. Do not miss the feed, as more about widgets is coming up soon at emediablogger.

Don’t LOL: Social Ads Rev Up Revenue
Social Media Part 2: Back to Basics for Cash Bonanza

Blog Comments, Enrichment and Monitoring Tools

Business Thursday: If you are on the social web, you want to communicate. A way to participate at the blogosphere and to discuss issues is by commenting. Comments are a great way to express yourself and for bloggers a way to enrich their weblogs and to increase the stickyness. This is great because interactivity is the reason why people are at the social web. If you are engaged with commenting either by having fun or in a professional way, you will need a tool to follow the dialogues you do participate in or which you aim to follow by interest.

coComment is a useful tool to track own comments and to be informed about answers by others. Even comments by others and third party conversations may be monitored and watched. At this service there are further tools like toplists of most commented posts or stories and website integration tools to share comments and to let own blog readers or website visitors participate in a conversation. Last but not least it is a social media community of commenters for making new contacts with others.

To enrich a weblog and to provide a better and more comfortable comment system there is Intense Debate. With Intense Debate people can track comments and follow them by a newsfeed. People may show their profiles and use this function for reputation management. Too, it is usable to enrich a website as comments are assorted by threads and users may engage in comment rating.

Another tool for the enrichment of a weblog and to engage visitors is PostReach. This tool encourages users to leave a comment and increases the stickyness by suggesting other post to the readers.

Video Advertising at and for Bloggers and independent Video Publishers

Video advertising is an emerging market. Forecasts expect the largest growth rates for this segment of internet advertising in the near future. This should be reason enough to contemplate video activities either by publishing or for advertising. Another strong argument to become involved with video is search engine marketing as by universal search videos have become an integrated part of search engine results. Here there are two interesting video advertising services, which do serve adverts to videos on blogs and websites. What makes these systems outstanding is the opportunity to earn money with own and even third party and shared videos.

CaptainAd is a video advertising system for blogs and websites. To put it on a website just a brief code needs to be copied into the website code. Then the system automaticly finds the video codes within a website and serves adverts to the video. The advertising format is text advertising by an overlay.

Something completely different is offered by Husky Media. The system, too, is dedicated to bloggers and publishers and works with own and third party or shared videos. But the advertising format is completely different. It is a full page ad, which is displayed in the background while the video is playing.

Both video advertising system are surprisingly easy to implement for publishers and work with a simple line of code. Advertisers of course find information at the mentioned websites, too.

The Domain Name Market, Facts and News

Domains are an essential part of the internet and trading domain names sometimes hot as nothing elses. This year the domain fund.com has set a new record by being sold for 10 million USD, pizza.com has been sold for 2,6 million and creditcards.com for 2.75 million.

The reason why domain names become such hot assets simply is because they are rare. There is just one domain name exactly suiting a particular term or description. Whereas there are a couple of country domains, there is just one domain name in a particular market. Last but not least the dot com domains are the most popular domain names getting the highest prices.

There are a couple of advantages for premium domain names. At first people like them and they do trust services with premium names. Because of this choosing a domain name should be a part of the marketing mix and a part of branding. This is due for everyone either for choosing a name for social media activities or for a real enterprise.

Another reason why premium domain names have become such hot assets is because a significant name may influence the ranking at the search engine result pages, which means more visitors. Trading domain names is a serious business, with has been examined in a study about The secondary market for domain names.

Choosing a name for a business wisely is something important as this name will be used for a long time. At internet marketing there are two strategies for choosing a name, which means choosing a domain name, too. The first is to build a brand with an outstanding name easy to remember. The second way is to choose a descriptive name. The latter might be a premium domain name as a brand name. For the first way there is a nice and helpful service. Name This helps start ups to find a suitable name.

The importance of a name might be shown by the case of business.com. The domain business.com has set the record for a domain name sale in 1999, when it has been sold for 7,5 million USD. Meanwhile a successful business has been developed at this domain and Business.com has become sold for 345 million USD in 2007 to a yellow pages publisher.

Finding a decriptive premium domain name is something tough today. Whereas it is not necessarily the big business mentioned above, most one word and even two word combinations are just no longer available. Finding the right name may start with a keyword research for your business. As you probably will not be able to get the wanted name by registration you may try to buy one at a domain name market.

In the future the domain name business may change as the internet authority ICANN announced important changes to the domain name system in the press release Biggest Expansion to Internet in Forty Years Approved for Implementation. New domain endings will be available and by this premium names will become available once again. But affects to the domain business probably will be just slightly as alternative domain endings like dot info and dot biz have never reached the popularity of the dot com domains.