Lea Charlton

As 2010 would have it, my 1st video training took a “back seat” to an extremely important person in my life … My 10 year old son, Jonny “MJ” Charlton. I am using it as our January 2010 Video Marketing example. We hope that you pay attention to this case study and use this information to help YOUR business with video marketing

As the ball dropped on Jan 1, 2010, Jonny “MJ” Charlton (my son) appeared in a dress shirt and pants, Michael Jackson glove and hat, socks dirty from running outside to set off fireworks and EXCITEDLY announced that he wanted to make a video to get started on his 2010 New Year goal. I stood scratching my head wondering what he was up to. Roxy and Coby got the video camera ready. We ventured into a room with enough space (still unpacking from trip to Florida) and my son instructed us to play the song Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. When he was finished, he instructed us to load the video to Youtube and TAUNTED ME that he had made his video before me – LOL

We recorded as he danced to Billie Jean and had a great time – SEE VIDEO BELOW.

He announced that he knew what he wanted to do for a living, “be a Michael Jackson impersonator and professional WWE wrestler”, so that he could use these to help kids with Aspergers, ADHD, ADD, ODD and this spectrum of disabilities. Coby and I did as he requested. I launched his coordinating blog and told all of our family / friends. The next day we promoted his video a bit on January 1st and a few more hours during the month. In total, it was about 1 1/2 day of marketing in January 2010.  According to the Youtube statistics, Jonathan’s Michael Jackson video received 3,391 hits, 37 Comments and 30 five star rankings in 31 days? Google Analytics shows his blog received over 292 visits although the link was added to his video post mid-month. He is extremely proud!

Video Marketing Training #1 – What does this mean to you?

Well, this 10 year old started the 2010 new year with a goal in mind and the passion to accomplish it quickly. In comparison to some of the videos we come across and that I have marketed in the past, Jonny’s Michael Jackson video had fast branding success in under 2 days of video marketing. He did some things that many work at home and corporate professionals refuse to do:

1) He made a solid marketing decision and acted upon it quickly.

2) He utilized effective video marketing resources.

3) He asked help from people that were skilled in particular areas where he is not.

4) He chose a fantastic niche based on market popularity and personal interests.

Most of all, he dropped any insecurities about his chubby belly, not having the best dance planned and being shy about performing in front of others … went with the Nike “just do it” philosophy and just did what he set out to do.

With the Google Caffeine changes, social media marketing is even more important to your business than you could have imagined. Videos, Twitter, Press Releases, News Feeds, Blogging and other Social Sites like Myspace, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. are you very best platforms when it comes to organic SEO and Internet Marketing. My next Video Marketing Training will discuss a network that was VERY important to my branding and development in the past year … This friend has a new video training series that will help you, too.

How did I help my little Michael Jackson Impersonator accomplish his goal?

1) I supported my tween in his marketing decision although it felt like a risk to the parent in me.

2) I immediately posted the video to YouTube while doing marketing analysis in other browser windows to determine who he was competing with & what keywords (including his name).

3) Once the video was posted, I added the title, description and keyword in the YouTube boxes.

4) I made sure to add his website link as the first text of the description and mine at the end, then set it as the main video on my Youtube homepage – http://www.youtube.com/leacharlton

5) I cloaked the link, tweeted it and sent the info to family and friends, so that they could watch, rank and comment. Some retweeted and social feed for us, so that he could get the exposure.

6) I took a few minutes to post his Michael Jackson video as responses to other’s similar videos.

7) He already owned the domain, though it had a very old website builder on it. I added Wordpress, a cute template and the content that he dictated to me, while I had Coby posting his video to locations on the Internet, ping and feed. This took a few hours of the first day of marketing.

Imagine if you had over 3391 Youtube video views and 292 hits to your new website in less than 2 days of marketing. You would be much better off in your business, as a result of video marketing, than you were last year.

The following is his Michael Jackson Impersonation Video – Let us know what you think!

August 2008, Matt Cutts excitedly announced that a new Google Search Engine under development called Google Caffeine. He says that this is a new Google indexing system that required a team of architects to recode how the engine search works. SEO experts scratched their heads for a second while watching the interview (see below) and then scurried over to the Caffeine Sandbox (beta test site) to try the new Google engine search features.

The changes were not as apparent as I would have expected to see, though as Matt Cutt’s Q & A page explains,”even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure.”,  therefore it is agreed that there was not much to see on the surface. Every once in a while, I would spot a difference in a Google search engine position or two. The Caffeine Sandbox was available until after Google started testing live. I would like to note that I did notices the changes in the SERPS and this is what prompted my return to the test site. It was gone; just the message you see in the image below. I would have hoped they could have kept the Caffeine Sandbox active so that we could study the new architecture a bit longer.

Regardless, it is 6 months later and we are still waiting for the Google Caffeine Launch. I have been telling students and friends to expect Caffeine to launch after the holidays. This was validated when I placed a Google engine search for Caffeine and saw Matt Cutts new blog post, “Expect Caffeine After The Holidays“, in the 9th position on the first page. Guess I do know a little about how the search engine business works -eh? LOL

The following is what I have been noticing over the past few months. Google Caffeine may or may not have direct influence on these Google SEO changes, but after using similar strategies over the past 2 years and then all of the sudden not seeing Google search engine results as expeditiously as expected, I would have to say that these are direct results of Google Caffeine OR what occurs during live tests of the new algorithm. I am just grateful – as are most SEO experts – that the changes did not occur during the holidays. One year, Google did make code changes during the holiday season (I think this was two years ago; might have been three years ago). IT WAS TORTURE working on a rather large ASP website project at that time and clients having fits when seeing the page ranks changing on the Google toolbar. Little did they know, I was having fits as well because I was detecting inconsistencies in the SERPS and working double time to adjust metas and launch static pages. Keep in mind that one of the sites had many sets of dynamic metas to adjust for about 20k pages. This included changing the follow attributes until I noticed that the Googlebot was ignoring my desired crawl times. One of the changes of that Google update. The point is that we had to become psychics and work simultaneously in order to increase or maintain rankings DURING A HOLIDAY SEASON – this really ticked me off, so many thanks to Google for not doing the same this year. Meanwhile, wouldn’t it be funny if the Google Caffeine changes are so subtle that they launched it without telling us and will just announce in the 2010 New Year?

I will have to post a “stick foot in mouth” blog in that case – LOL – .  One never knows what to expect from this company!!!

What should we expect when Caffeine launches?

Caffeine will deliver Google search results faster and better.
- I personally did not see any major SERP changes aside of when logged into Google Accounts.
- The Caffeine indexing system was a bit more refined especially with the PPC & PPC rotations.

Parameter Control enables us to define which duplicate content the Googlebot should ignore.
- Click the Site Configuration tab in your Google Webmaster Tools.
- See the Settings and Parameter Handling – use it.
- This feature will instruct Google to read the duplicate content pages as ONE resource.

I will add more information as I determine Google Engine Search changes. Lets keep an eye out for when Caffeine launches and post comparison notes in the comments section of this page.

In the meanwhile … educate yourself on the new SERP and SEO changes.

This is what Matt Cutts had to say in the August 2008 interview with Webpronews.