Video content is the future

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about content marketing and its great importance in promoting brands, products or services. Many people equate the term primarily with text material, but the reality is that video and audio files are increasingly important – especially YouTube videos and podcasts. This is how more and more people most readily absorb information. Hence, the optimal environment for advertising is also changing. Today, more and more companies are taking advantage of paid content on YouTube – including small and local businesses. Reason? It is simply a very effective promotion channel. What’s more, YouTube, thanks to its advertising policy, makes it possible to publish even without a large budget.

Advantages of advertising on YouTube

The portal has enormous power, it is used by over 90% of Internet users. Advertising via YouTube is more and more often described as more effective than television advertising, especially as it allows you to target the message only to specific recipients. What are the main advantages of promotion on the site?

– Broad coverage – the already mentioned over 90% of Internet users who may find your ad! The website has overtaken Facebook when it comes to the popularity of social media and is increasingly serving as a search engine for users. Thanks to this, the advertisement can have a really wide range of impact. It is also an ideal place to reach young people in the 18-34 age group, who most willingly spend their time using YouTube.
– The ability to precisely define the target – this is something that makes many methods of Internet advertising much more effective than spots published on TV or e.g. billboards on the streets. You can precisely select the viewer profile to which your video will end up. YouTube provides criteria such as age, place of residence or interests. Also, your ad may only appear on videos from certain creators or in a specific category. It also supports remarketing activities – the spot can reach people who have previously visited the advertiser’s channel or website.
– Effect control – in the case of many types of advertising, it is impossible to check how many people actually reached. By acting on YouTube, you can get detailed analytical reports showing how many people watched your ad and how many of them interacted with your business through it. This is extremely valuable information that helps to refine the promotional message and check the return on investment in marketing. Affordable prices – despite many advantages, publishing a spot on YouTube is still much cheaper than on TV. In addition, in this case, you only pay for the actual impressions of the ad, and not for the mere placement of the ad before or during the video. This makes it possible to get much better promotion results.
– Possibility to share – a creative, surprising, funny, touching and interesting advertising film can work for you for a long time, even after the end of the paid promotion. It can be shared just like any other YouTube content. This in turn allows you to reach even more people. That’s why it’s worth creating ads that engage the viewer!

Types of YouTube Ads

YouTube allows advertisers to use several methods of displaying their content. The selected type of promotion affects its visibility as well as the price. It is worth knowing all the possibilities to choose the right one for the character and goals of a given campaign. There are:

– display ads – standard banners, on YouTube displayed under the video or on its right side; do not interfere with video playback, which increases the chance of clicking;
– advertising overlays – displayed on the watched movie, have a graphic or text form; they take up about 20% of the area of ​​the window in which the film is displayed and can be turned off at any time
– TrueView In-Stream – a negligible advertisement displayed before, during or after the video; attractive due to the pricing model – if a viewer skips the ad, there is no fee for the impression;
– In-stream advertising without the possibility of skipping – lasting from 15 to 30 seconds, usually less perceived by Internet users;
– ads in cutscenes (Bumper Ads) – cannot be skipped, lasts about 6 seconds; usually shown before the movie, sometimes also during and after the movie;
– mid-movie ads – may or may not be negligible; are published only in films longer than 15 minutes;
– sponsored cards – shown in the movie viewing window; they most often present film-related products, allowing the viewer to expand the card.

What to choose? Much depends on the type of content presented, but also on your budget. In the case of using longer, negligible spots, it is necessary to ensure that their first few seconds encourage the recipient and present a specific message. Interesting advertising will certainly help you get much better results, so it is worth taking care of its careful planning and implementation.

How much does advertising on Youtube cost?

Many advertising formats have different billing models. The most commonly used is Cost Per View (CPV) – you pay for each ad impression in full (or at least 30 seconds, if longer). In image campaigns, Cost Per Mile (for every thousand views) is also sometimes used – primarily in relation to non-negligible TrueView and Bumper Ads videos. In the case of ads that are primarily aimed at encouraging the viewer to interact, the CPI (Cost per Interaction) model is used – fees for each click resulting in a redirect. Importantly, YouTube allows you to adjust the billing model to the advertiser’s needs. Therefore, with specific types of paid promotion, it is possible to use the selected scheme. As you can see, however, the answer to the question of how much does advertising on Youtube cost is not obvious and unambiguous.

So how much does advertising on YouTube cost? The good news is, as much as you choose to pay for it. The advertiser can set the budget himself. How much do you have to invest to make it pay off? Here the answer is much more difficult. It all depends on the type, model and target of the campaign. It is worth noting, however, that advertisers are often positively surprised by the relatively affordable costs of publishing on YouTube. It’s hard to look for specific numbers – even on the website itself – without providing specific data, but you can assume that a single ad impression costs about $ 0.01 – $ 0.3. Considering that most billing models are based on real impressions, that is, you don’t have to pay for missed spots, this is a very good result. It is also worth remembering that thanks to precise targeting, the ad can go exactly where you want, which further increases its effectiveness.

Effective advertising on YouTube – choose your target carefully!

The effectiveness of any ad depends on who it will be shown to. As an advertiser, you want it to reach your target group – people who should potentially be interested in a given product or service. Therefore, the return on investment in the promotion depends on precise targeting. In the case of YouTube, the whole machine works similarly to Google Ads campaigns. However, your ads can be targeted even more precisely. What criteria can be considered?

Demography
This is the basic criterion by which you can significantly narrow down the audience of your ad. There are specific age ranges to choose from, identical to those proposed by Google (18-24; 25-34; 35-44; 45-54; 55-64; 65+), as well as an interesting “unknown” category including both users under 18 life, as well as other people who have not been classified into any age category. It also appears when choosing the target gender (of course, next to women and men). In addition, you can decide on the parental status of your ad audience or your household income.

Geotargeting
Geotargeting is an important category, especially for local businesses. Thanks to the precision of Google Maps, you can only direct your promotional message to YouTube users located in a specific area or at a specific distance from a point designated on the map. You can also exclude specific locations from targeting, which creates a very wide range of precise messages.

User information (interests)
Thanks to the information collected by Google, it is possible to create a profile of the user’s interests. Thus, you can only target your ads to people who have visited websites on a specific topic or watched videos devoted to it. The frequency and intensity of interactions with a given topic are taken into account in order to obtain the most reliable data. There are many categories available to cover various areas of life. It is also possible to select a more specific, narrow group of recipients in which, for example, there has been a significant change recently (e.g. wedding, moving house, graduation, etc.). Google also divides into market audiences (people who are in the purchasing process and focused on searching for information about specific services and products) and non-standard recipients with similar intentions who actively search for information on the Internet using a search engine. This allows you to determine the most current interests of users.

YouTube video themes
YouTube videos are divided into thematic categories. This makes it easy for you to assign your ads to a specific topic. It is an easy way to reach users interested in specific issues, regardless of their age, gender or other behavior on the Internet.

Keywords
The ad can also be placed on videos whose titles or descriptions contain specific keywords.

Remarketing
Remarketing is a very popular and effective form of promotion consisting in displaying advertising content to users who have already expressed interest in the company’s offer (e.g. visited its website). Thanks to data integration with Google, remarketing is also possible for advertising on YouTube. It gives the opportunity to reach e.g. to people who watched a specific video or subscribed to a specific channel.

Extensive targeting options affect the effectiveness of YouTube ads, and thus also their profitability. A wide range of options allows you to reach every target group, regardless of the device on which the website is used. Ads are displayed on the YouTube website, in the mobile application, as well as in applications on game consoles and Smart TV.

Is YouTube advertising right for you?

Is it worth being interested in the advertising possibilities of the most popular streaming service? Of course! Among other things, thanks to precise targeting, it is a solution for both large and small companies, including local ones. Precise definition of the target group allows you to reach only people interested in a given topic, and at the same time reduce the costs of the campaign. If you want to reach a very wide audience, it is also worth betting on YouTube – after all, it is used by over 90% of Internet users!

Advertising on this site can be particularly beneficial for new brands that want to increase their recognition, as well as for completely new products. Presenting your business as a movie can also be a great idea when it comes to innovation, hard-to-understand mechanisms of action, or business models. In fact, anyone can benefit from the promotion on YouTube.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a website that was created out of the need to apply the idea of a cork board in a virtual space. Its name is a combination of two words: “pin” and “interest”. It was supposed to be a catalog of visual inspirations, a place where you can collect ideas and images encountered on the web and group them on virtual “boards” according to the selected topic. The platform contains certain elements of a social networking site. For example, you can follow other users’ activities and view their public boards.

Despite its long activity (Pinterest was established in 2010) and visible growth (in May 2020 it was used by over 367 million users), the website did not change its basic profile. Over the years, only more features have been added to make it easier to gather inspiration and share it with others. In 2018, it was possible to sharing and storing video clips of any length. Today, Pinterest is also referred to as a visual search engine. It enables, among others search your database based on photos or their fragments, as well as existing “pins”, i.e. inspirations saved by users (images, articles, posts, videos, etc.).

Promotion on Pinterest – get to know your audience

Before you learn how and why to promote your business on Pinterest, it is worth taking a look at the demographics of website users, as well as their habits and preferences. Sources say that the website mainly targets women. According to data from July 2020, as many as 76% of its users were ladies. In addition, the website itself reports that in the United States, Pinterest is used by as many as 8 out of 10 women aged 18 to 64 who have children. The median age for all users is 40 years, but most active users are younger.

The website carefully analyzes the content provided by users and on this basis prepares annual trend reports and other publications aimed at, among others help brands promote more effectively. He also orders research to understand the behavior of “pinners”. The data obtained in this way shows that:

– 85% of portal users say that they use it first when they want to start a new project,
– 98% admit that they tried the ideas found on the website,
89% agree that they use the website as an inspiration for their purchases, and 90% agree that it helps them decide what to buy,
– 70% discover new products thanks to Pinterest, and 72% say that the website inspires them to buy, even if they do not have them planned,
– 66% of users bought a product after viewing a brand’s pins.

In addition, as many as 9 out of 10 users associate Pinterest with a positive message. Most users enter the portal to take a break, seek inspiration for positive changes and get in good mood.

Pinterest in business promotion – is it profitable?

Pinterest is definitely an interesting place on the web. Its users are creative, motivated and actively looking for ways to improve their lives or try out new things. Doesn’t that sound like the perfect clientele for your business? In addition, the website is a great place to maintain relationships, and according to modern marketing principles, they are the most important for increasing sales. It is a great tool for implementing long-term strategies and building a community around the brand. Especially that the average “lifetime” of posts on the site is calculated in months. This is because it is used to make plans, often far-reaching. Meanwhile, other social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, focus more on “here and now” or even on the past. This makes the posts placed in them quickly forgotten.

According to the statistics given above, the platform should be of particular interest to companies that target young women, and in particular mothers. However, there are also ways to get great results with products and services that have a different target audience. Much depends on the adopted communication strategy.

Drive traffic to your website with Pinterest actions

The research cited above shows, among other things, that Pinterest is the most effective in directing Internet traffic to store pages from all social platforms – about 33% more effective than Facebook and as much as 200% more effective than Twitter. The additional traffic to your site means more customers who may want to use the services. All this means that it is increasingly used for promotion. American brands are in the lead in this respect, but they are not only large corporations. Smaller businessmen are also eager to use the website. There is also nothing to prevent companies from using its potential! There are many indications that it may simply pay off.

Pinterest for business – how to start?

What does it take to start promoting on Pinterest? The first step is to create an account. It is worth noting that the portal allows you to create two types of accounts: personal or business. Business users have access to much more tools that enable effective promotion – incl. statistics, analyzes, methods to promote posts. They can also make it easier for other users to get to their website via a direct link. Therefore, it is the only right choice for anyone who wants to advertise their business. The website regulations say that an account created for commercial purposes should be marked as business. You can also convert your personal account into it – just look at the settings.

After signing up for your account, you can start adding pins immediately. However, it is worthwhile to think carefully about your strategy first and analyze the target group and its activities on the website. It’s also good to spend some time observing the website and its customs – especially if you haven’t had any contact with it before. Don’t forget that your Pinterest account can be linked to other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube. This will make it easier to build consistent communication and help you reach more people with your posts. It is also worth remembering that the website allows you to publish not only photos, but also infographics or video files. In turn, this will help you diversify your content and create more diverse boards that can grab the attention of many people.

How do I connect my Pinterest account to an online store?

If you run an online store, company website, or even a blog, it is worth remembering about an additional step that will help you “start” your business on the portal faster. This is linking your Pinterest account to the website. This can be done in two ways:
– adding a “follow us on Pinterest” button to a website or blog;
– adding the “Pin it” plugin to product pages in the store – thanks to this, people visiting it will be able to easily add products of interest to them to their boards.

It is a good idea to use both methods and install the “Pin it” plugin in your web browser. Thanks to it, you will be able to quickly create pins from visual content on the web.

Promotion on Pinterest – what to remember?

Once you have your goal, initial strategy, and timing of your posts, you can start building your boards. Website users are usually actively looking for new ideas, so as long as you are able to offer them something interesting, you should not complain about the lack of interest. There are also a few rules to keep in mind.

Make sure that:
– treat the company Pinterest as a business card – carefully select the pins placed on the boards and take care of a consistent, specific message;
– the published content was of high quality – it is mainly about technical quality, i.e. photos, graphics and films in high definition and presenting a professional appearance;
– do not forget about branding – it is worth placing your logo wherever possible (but not in an intrusive way);
– post not only photos, but also important information – if you publish pins with your products, always include the most important information about them in the description (including the price!) or use a paid tool that will add this type of information for you;
– use keywords – more and more users treat the website as a search engine, so their proper selection is very important;
– do not avoid contact with other users – it is worth responding to comments and reacting to other user activities, e.g. pinning your pin or following the account;
– do not spam – too intensive activity and pushy promotion of your products will not be appreciated;
– create your own unique style – a consistent message with an idea is something that Pinterest users love and that will definitely make a good impression;
– publish various, interesting content – the photos of the products themselves can be unnoticed, so remember to create a story around them with inspirational pins that will help website users identify with the brand.

Also, do not forget about using the tools that are available to business account holders. The statistics and analytical tools available on the portal can help you a lot in increasing the effectiveness of your activities.

How to read Pinterest statistics?

Pinterest statistics are available at this address. For business account holders, they are a great source of information to help you improve your brand message. It’s good to know how to interpret them in order to use them to your advantage. Here are four basic measures to help you manage your account more effectively.

Range
Reach metrics tell you how many people see your posts – daily and monthly. In this section, you can obtain data on the views of pins published by your account. This allows you to recognize which content is the most popular and drive traffic to your profile.

Pins from your website
Business account users who link to their website can also check how many pins have been created from it. This data allows you to see how many people liked your products so much that they wanted to save them on their boards. You can also check which of these pins are doing best, for example in terms of impressions or engagement. The same data is available for the pins created by you. This provides you with loads of important information to help you create new content.

Save from your side
Savings, also known as surges, allow you to get more views. It’s a good idea to check if subscriptions are coming from your site and consider what you can do to get more of them.

Clicks
This is a very important statistic that tells you how many people came to your site through Pinterest posts. This is usually the main goal of companies operating on this platform. It is worth taking a look at which pins are the most popular and use them as a determinant for creating new ones.

Is Pinterest for you?

Pinterest can be a great platform to promote your online content and your business and offerings. It is not a complicated service, and at the same time provides many useful solutions for business. In addition to statistics, for example, paid ads that can bring excellent results, as well as the so-called. extended pins for the publication of more extensive content. All this means that the possibilities of using the website are very wide.

Hey Google, I’m here!

When Google recognizes our website, it is necessary to take steps to identify those elements that its users may find useful. The steps to encourage web crawlers to go on our side are mostly found in Google’s guides and webmaster manuals.

Basic activities focus on sharing your website and allowing traffic on it – both machine-made and human-made. Then, it is worth indicating the area with which the search engine should associate our site – e.g. by including keywords related to the industry within it. In the meantime, it’s also important to create access to a place where Google stores everything about our domain – Google Search Console. And then… then a more advanced part begins that should be discussed with a specialist!

But first, let’s focus on the basics and start positioning our site on Google!

Hey Googlebot, you’ve got Allow here

Positioning your site should start with the admission of web robots to your site. For old seo enthusiasts it is obvious, but for people who have not had any previous contact with robots, this issue may be interesting.

Internet crawler / indexer – a program whose task is to collect information about everything that is available on the Internet. There are different types of robots that specialize in collecting various data.

Googlebot performs a crawl – it goes through the links on the pages and indexes its content. The frequency of Googlebot visits to websites varies – visits may be repeated every few hours or every few days. Without crawling, it is not possible to display the page in search results.

Most of the web robots obey the rules imposed on them by the website. Information on this is contained in the robots.txt file and the “robots” tag located in the HEAD section of the page’s code.

Why is this information so important? When creating a page, in most cases you disable the ability to index your site, preventing robots from entering the page. Such action makes sense – an unfinished page, full of “lorem ipsum” or pictures of sweet kittens playing the role of place holders – will not be found in the search results by accident and will not mislead the potential customer. At the time of commissioning the website, the guidelines for web robots should be changed, but this is not always the case.

These types of mistakes are not uncommon and do not only happen to small players. In 2009, Skoda’s promotional campaign was widely discussed, in which the Internet search engine played one of the key roles. In the commercial, which was aired on television, it was encouraged to search for “Yeti kidnaps”. Problem? Access to the content on the page for robots was blocked in the robots.txt file.

The content of the result description is automatic information that appears when crawlers are not allowed to access the content. This situation is not conducive to website positioning, and the popularity of the slogan was used by the brand’s competition, quickly jumping over the website advertised on TV in Google.

Titles and descriptions

Page unlocked? Time for a title and description! The elements of the <head> section – title and description are the first fragment of your website that users encounter.

Both elements are also important, although it is assumed that the description (meta description) is of less importance from the SEO point of view. The title not only appears in search results, it also appears at the top of the browser tab.

The <title> element should contain information relevant to web robots and users. Keywords assigned to a given subpage have the highest priority here, and other information may follow them – for example, for industries such as road assistance it will be a contact phone.

The content of the title should be 65-100 characters long. Both values are approximate – for titles, this is where the number of pixels the title has been created is concerned. Google displays titles and lengths of about 460-600 pixels (depending on the size of the device we use), and in the case of longer ones – cuts the part and leaves a triangle, as you can see in the screen above. To make sure that the most important part of your title – your keyword – fits in the result, place it right at the beginning.

When it comes to <meta name = “description” content = “…”>, things are a bit different – its main goal is to encourage the user of the search engine to look at the site. When preparing a description, it is worth focusing on those aspects that make the website stand out from the competition. It is worth using the appropriate passwords – in the case of online stores, it will be e.g. information about free / immediate shipping. Call To Action should also be installed in the description – a password that will encourage you to take action – “Check now!”, “Find out more now!” and so on…

The description is limited to approx. 160 characters. When it’s too long, Google limits it to the appropriate size, leaving three dots at the end. The content of the description is available in the code of the website, but it is not displayed directly on it – its main purpose is to present the website in search engine search results.

During the process of positioning a website, analyzing titles and descriptions, and if necessary, changing them, it is one of the first steps that a positioner takes. Changing the above does not require technical skills, and in the case of popular CMSs, it is limited to placing appropriate content in dedicated places, usually marked as “title, description for search engines”.

Introduce yourself… or else Google will do it

In the absence of a title and description, Google decides what will be displayed instead of them. Unfortunately, sometimes Google also takes over when both tags are properly completed. In such cases, text fragments from the page appear in the SERPs containing the words and phrases searched by the user.

The lack of properly prepared title and description prevents the search engine from showing the most important keywords and finding the site in the right places in the search results. This hinders the procedure of positioning a website and associating it with a specific topic.

The presentation of topics and phrases important for our website and business also takes place through appropriate content. Content is as important to robots as it is to those more human users of the site. Each of them has their own preferences regarding its presentation… Robots like a well-described structure – texts with different headings – h1 as title and h2, h3,… as subheadings; subsequent paragraphs placed in the <p> tag, and the most important elements (keywords!) highlighted with <strong>. Additional description of it with the help of structured data will make the robot filter the content of the page faster (and more probably!). On the other hand, the web user will appreciate the structure of the text – its length, font size, breakdown into paragraphs, clarity of graphics and all other elements that will help accelerate the consumption and assimilation of the content.

Both aspects can be neatly combined, which usually has a positive effect on the visibility of the site in search results. Well-written and html-described text is popular among website visitors, and sometimes they even pass it on. Such action also stimulates its popularity among web robots, which translates directly into more frequent visits to the website and high positions.

What is website positioning?

Positioning is primarily emphasizing the advantages of a website, while eliminating all its disadvantages, in order to achieve the highest possible position in the search engine. Website optimization is nothing more than adapting to the rules that prevail in the Google search engine environment. It is these rules that are key to the order of the results displayed on the query.

Sounds simple and logical? Unfortunately, it is not – the above-described basic steps to be included in the Google index can be compared to putting the first track while learning to write – the title of a calligraphy master from this position is still far away. The following actions should be taken after the website is published and made available:

– optimization of its operation in terms of speed and efficiency,
– improvement of functionality, elimination of technical errors,
– appropriate description of the content of the positioned website – also using structural data,
– content analysis, creation and modification,
– activities aimed at extending the database of links pointing to our website,
– analysis of the effectiveness of these activities, and in the case of low effectiveness – changing the approach and building an improved strategy.

Positioning a website is a process dependent on many factors, including not only changes in the search engine algorithm, but also the specificity of the industry in which the promoted business or budget operates. Gaining SERP peaks requires consistency and constant control – the search engine is an extremely vital organism that is constantly being modified. Unfortunately, this causes uncertainty as to the stability of the position – which in the absence of appropriate and prudent actions – may result in spectacular mishaps.

In the case of positioning, it is worth relying on current knowledge and experience that allows you to develop an effective and safe strategy.