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Video Marketing – Trump the Competition and Win New Customers In No Time

As a savvy marketer, you’re always looking for an edge. Competition for customers is keen. You need to generate leads, build your brand, and promote your products and services.

Fortunately, online video marketing helps you do that. And when it’s properly integrated you’ll see results in a zip.

Simply put video marketing works and now ranks as the sixth most popular content marketing tactic. Seventy percent of B2B marketers create online video.

Let’s examine five compelling facts about online video marketing:

Fact #1: Online video marketing is exploding

To say that video marketing is growing is an understatement. Its rate of acceptance and adoption is remarkable. Alexa, for example, ranks YouTube, as the third most popular website in the world. In just the U.S., YouTube has over 189 million unique viewers.

But effective marketing must be targeted. For B2B marketers that’s not a problem. Today, 83% of senior executives watch more online video than last year, according to a survey by Forbes Insights.

This means you can achieve greater exposure. More viewers – viewers that matter – lead to more customers. And more customers lead to more sales. You won’t have to explain this to your boss.

Fact #2: Online video marketing is versatile

One reason online video is so popular lies in its versatility. Marketers can use online video to repurpose other marketing materials such as white papers and case studies.

Also, marketers can promote their products and services using a fresh delivery method that informs, educates and even entertains prospects.

Internet videos can be found in e-newsletters, blogs and websites. And prospects and customers can subscribe to them as RSS feeds.

Let’s not forget social media. Videos abound on sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, to name a few.

Versatility translates into extraordinary marketing power. Video introduces a new way of communicating. It enhances existing marketing platforms by bringing them to life, such as email marketing.

This uncovers a sea of new consumers who perhaps wouldn’t “read” your content. Viewing videos is faster and in many cases more preferable to reading text. Now you’re reaching a wider audience.

Fact #3: Shareability is fast and effortless

In the same Forbes study mentioned above, 54% of senior executives said they share

videos with their colleagues every week. A slightly greater percentage, 59%, says they receive work-related videos.

Again, these statistics show that online videos are highly shareable. More important to B2B marketers is that decision makers share and receive these videos.

The future for sharing videos online is bright. The data suggest this trend will significantly increase. Younger executives share videos at much greater rates. While 47% of all executive say they post videos to social networks, that percentage increases to 69% for younger executives.

Fact #4: Video Search Engine Optimization Extends Reach and Access

Search engine optimization work wonders for textual content. And it works especially well for videos. As with text, video content has to be useful. Relevant and valuable content attracts prospects.

For videos embedded on your website, you can optimize videos by including keywords in the title. And use those keywords in the description.

On YouTube you have three opportunities to add keywords. A form pops up that includes fields for the title, the description and tags.

Optimizing your videos makes them easier for your target audience to find. Keep those senior executives in mind when optimizing your videos.

Fact #5: Internet Video Achieves Great Impact with Low Cost

By now, I’m sure you agree that video marketing has great impact. It reaches millions of viewers, depending on the platform you use. Its shareability is instantaneous. And it does a good job in reaching and attracting your target market.

Video drives action. According to a Forrester report, click-through rates easily double and even triple when inserting video into emails.

Michael Miller, author of The Idiot’s Guide to Video Marketing estimates that a business can invest as little as a $1,000 dollars to develop quality videos. Some businesses may not need an investment at all.

Round Out Your Marketing Campaigns with Video

If you haven’t already integrated videos into your marketing, consider adding it now.

You can easily rev up your lead generation and branding by adding online video to your marketing mix. Video has many advantages with no obvious downside.

It adds another dimension to your marketing content, while expanding your prospect universe. More viewers lead to more conversions. More conversions lead to more profits.

It’s fast. It’s affordable. Most importantly, your customers love it.

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Boomers In The Work Force

If you follow the baby boomer demographics and you are a baby boomer (born between 1946-1964) you begin to wonder about a lot of things because the numbers are staggering when it comes to our generation. We are 76 million strong. (39)They numbers say that 64 million baby boomers (over 40 percent of the US labor force) will be eligible to retire in large numbers by the end of the decade. Statistics also show that the average retirement age today is 63 because baby boomers are staying on the job longer, either by choice or because they need to stay employed. (57)The increase in retirement age from 55 to 63 represents a trend for baby boomers and requires a change in our culture to recognize that retirement age is an arbitrary number and must be adjusted to respect the choice many make to stay in the work force. (45)As a society we must change our vocabulary and shift the paradigm that life begins to decline once a person enters the fifth decade of life, to life for many is just getting started in the fifth decade. If we replace the word retirement with “transitional phase”, for example it creates a different image in our minds and leaves more room for individual design of that phrase rather than a “one size fits all mentality”.(75)The word retirement leaves no room for variation on that theme in terms of employment and it is very cut and dry… either you are working or you are retired. Why can’t employers work with employees of retirement age to develop a transitional plan that allows the worker to remain productive and the employer to continue to benefit from the knowledge and skills provided by the experienced employee? (68)

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Outdoor Fitness – Tips To Get Fit Out Of Doors

Experts advise to break up the long-term fitness goals into shorter, smaller and more realistic ones in order to ensure success and to be able to stick to an exercise regime, many professional health instructors suggest making work-outs fun to do! Once you eliminate boredom from an exercise routine, such as only working out on a stationery bike or hitting the home-gym where you are faced with the treadmill and the same old environment by taking your workout out, you stand a better chance of sticking to the routine – thanks to the novelty factor as well as the freshness of the ideas as such.

Moreover, with increased health awareness and learning about the ill-effects of obesity, there is no dearth of the number of open-air fitness options that are increasingly being made available to singles or groups of people wanting to explore being outdoors – and benefit health-wise from it, too!

So, it’s a common sight today to find people engaged in sporty pursuits for a health purpose as well as one that combines a certain amount of communing with nature or socializing such as walking the dog or swimming in a community pool ensures they benefit from.

The advantages to taking your daily work-out outdoors are many: from needing little by way of expensive gym equipment (read nothing more than your own two feet or a pair of dumbbells, if you wish) to avoiding the sweaty crowds at the local gym, from no having to drive back and forth to a health spa to availing the benefits of fresh and pure oxygen, from ensuring your daily dose of vitamin D that is only available from sunlight to being free to exercise anytime of the day, anywhere – the benefits of outdoorsy workout are huge!

There are also many different types of activities one can pursue outdoors, some of which we list here for your benefit and healthful knowledge:

Apart from exercising your lungs and filling them with pure oxygen that an outdoor work-out in the early morning guarantees you, you also get to benefit from the added room and spaciousness of an outdoor environment where you can perform lunges to build leg, buttock and thigh muscles. You can team these with other forms of exercise that are restricted by limited space indoors, such as jogging and stretching.

Thus, when outdoors, you can accommodate various forms of energetic exercise to sweat more, weigh less and look great by combining different motions such as performing standing lunges, brisk walking and rear lunges besides elevated walking.

The benefits of performing push-ups for a toned upper body are many and these can best be realized when performed in a natural environment that does away with the need for investing in a bench-press machine or an expensive gym membership fee. Basic movements for a push up includes standard, wide and close gripping of surfaces that will help to stimulate shoulder, chest and triceps muscles and this can be achieved with simple elevation of the hands; more intense work-outs can be performed by elevating your feet.

If you feel up to it, try clapping between push-ups or even squatting on one leg then standing and trying a wider stance; do remember to repeat till you feel the legs experiencing the effects of your efforts.

Other great outdoor exercises include sit-ups, chin-ups (try a tree or playground), uphill running or even walking like a duck – and you will be on your way to good health, cost-effectively!

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