Video marketing is an extremely powerful method for free traffic generation. With the right kind of videos, you can generate laser targeted traffic for free and boost your image.

Small Business Marketing Tip #1: Create A Video Sitemap

Video sitemaps are one of the biggest examples of greatly underutilized features. Many SEM/SEO companies out there are not aware of this simple but powerful feature and do not offer it as a service.

Video sitemap is a powerful shortcut to high rankings for high competition keywords. They get ranked in Google top 10 within days if not hours. For video sitemaps to get ranked, you need to host the videos on your own server or hosting account, not on youtube. You can then insert these videos in your blog posts and generate a dynamic video sitemap, and submit it to major search engines via their webmaster tools (Google webmaster central is great for this).

Video results for your target keyword will come up before all those optimized web site results, and generate plenty of free traffic.

Small Business Marketing Tip #2: Video Responses

Youtube allows posting your videos as responses to other videos. Submitting video responses to high traffic videos is a great way to get some of their traffic and generate leads. The important thumb of rule to follow: Submit video responses related to the topic of the video and use the same tags and keywords to ensure your video has a high chance of getting features in the ‘related videos’ section at the end of high traffic videos. You can post only one video as video response at a time, posting the same video on multiple video responses is not allowed on youtube.

Small Business Marketing Tip #3: Viral Videos To Be Shared

Make your videos related to current news, hot topics, popular culture items to gain more social media exposure and viral traffic. If your video is interesting, funny or unusual, it has higher chances of going viral. Viral videos are the kind of videos people share with their friends, email around, post on facebook. Remember the Star Wars Kid and the Numa Numa guy videos which became internet culture icons quickly. These are great examples of viral videos. If you run a shop or service business, you can record some funny or interesting videos. Do you attend trade shows, charity events, etc? These can be great places to shoot interesting videos.

Last, but not least, don’t forget to upload your videos to top video directories!

Share/Bookmark

Facebook has recently updated the facebook pages and made some major changes. The new system allows you to use facebook as your business or brand, rather than your individual profile.

New facebook changes bring opportunities for small businesses

Here is the official update from facebook:

You now have the flexibility to interact with the other areas of Facebook as a page.

Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
Like other pages and feature them on your page
Make comments as your page on other pages

What does this mean for your business and brand?

You can “Like” and intract with other business pages, post under your brand on their walls and build relationships along with more visibility. You can feature each other’s pages with your joint venture partners. You can also watch your competitors in the newsfeed if you follow their pages.

Navigating around Facebook and posting comments on other businesses’ pages as your company brand is a pretty big opportunity if you do it right.