How to Embed A YouTube Playlist on Your Website or Blog

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Playlists are a great way to group videos of a similar theme on the YouTube website, but their reach can be boosted by embedding them on your website or blog for whatever reason you wish. In my case, I place an embedded playlist above my YouTube "Subscribe" widget - you can see it at the bottom of this site's sidebar - to add some visual clout to the widget and encourage new viewers to click for updates.

How to embed a YouTube video playlist 

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1. On your YouTube account, select "Playlists" from the menu on the left-hand side. On the Playlists page (pictured above), hover over the group of videos you want to embed and select "Play all" if you want to add a whole playlist from the beginning, or click on the name of  playlist and select an individual video from which you want the playlist to begin.  

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2. On the video page itself, select the "Share" and then "Embed" tab beneath the player. Use the drop-down menus to choose whether you want to begin the playlist from the current video or from the beginning, and at what size you want the video player to appear on your website.

3. When you're done, copy the embed code and paste it into the HTML on your website where you want it to appear, as I have done above.  That's it!

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Slideshare's Hyperlink Clampdown: A Demo and Workaround Tips

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Slideshare is a fantastic tool for individuals and businesses to share ideas and reach an audience of many millions of people. And while the site enourages the publishing of insightful and helpful content, it looks now to be clamping down on those whose presentations don't quite share its priorities. As such, any links that appear on the first three slides of a Slideshare presentation will not be clickable. 

As you can see in the hastily-created four-slide demonstration above, the hyperlinks I have placed on the first three slides are not clickable, but the one on the final slide is.

In my book, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips , I recommend that Slideshare users include links in the opening slides of their presentations... not necessarily big, bold, and in your face, but at least given a presence in case a viewer takes notice but does not necessarily reach the end of the presentation. Better to have it appear even subtly than not at all! Placing it at the bottom of every slide, unobtrusively, is another alternatively. 

Now that this change has rolled out, I would not change my advice, but do suggest that if you are going to feature hyperlinks at the very beginning of your Slideshare presentations, that the URLs are short and memorable. If your links is long and complicated and  not clickable, the chances of someone taking the time to type it manually into their browser's address bar is slim to none.

Andrew Macarthy is the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips, available for Kindle and in paperback.

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4 Ways Snapchat is A Great Marketing Tool For Brands and Businesses

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Snapchat's growth over the past two years has been incredible, and with over 200 million photos and videos shared by its users every day, it is fast gaining the attention of brands and marketers who want a piece of its young and engaged audience. 

I'll save the particular methods of promotion using Snapchat for another time, but in this blog you'll learn four ways in which the make up of the app means that it is a great marketing tool for brands and businesses. 

1. The scarcity and exclusivity of its messages

Once a Snapchat users receives and opens an image or video, they have a maximum of 10 seconds to view it before it disappears and they can not access it again. For brands, this provides a sense of scarcity that posting to other social networks like Facebook or Instagram cannot provide. 

For brands who want to offer vouchers or promotions through Snapchat, the app provides a means by which the offer can be limited only to its followers, with no chance of it going viral as it'll disappear shortly after opening. That theory might sound counter-productive at first, but the feeling a consumer gets when they feel part of something small and exclusive is hugely powerful in terms of garnering brand loyalty.

The image above shows a promotion by New York-based 16 Handles, which exemplifies this approach.

2. The unexpectedness and surprise in its messages

The disposable nature of Snapchat's messages is loved and accepted by the app's millions of users, and brands can use this to their advantage. Many Snapchat viewers see receiving a message as a present. There's no way of knowing what it contains until a user opens it, and this element of surprise can be harnessed by marketers to provide all manner of messages and promotions.

3. The purity of its messages

Unlike Instagram with its carefully orchestrated photos and filters, Snapchat photos - because they have to be consumed so quickly - encourage a purity of message that its rivals cannot. This frees brands from the habit of overthinking or micro-managing the message they want to construct, and sets them free to provide content that is off the cuff, "real", and that will resonate with their audience. The example above is a photo sent by Taco Bell to its followers on Snapchat to promote its Beefy Crunchy Burrito - simple but effective.

4. The brevity of its messages

Being that Snapchat messages only exist for a matter of seconds, there is little room for pride or embarrassment from the sender. While it is clear to see how this would relate to individuals (particularly in the prevalence of "adult" messages being sent between users!), it also has significance for brands, who can move on from misjudged or poor-performing content in no time at all. In comparison, if you posted a status update on Facebook, it lingers there for a lifetime in comparison to Snapchat. And if that content was poorly received, there is plenty of time for your audience to communicate their dissatisfaction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Macarthy is the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips, available for Kindle and in paperback.

Buy 500 Social Media Marketing Tips
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007L50HE6
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007L50HE6

Follow Me:
http://www.facebook.com/500socialmediatips/
https://pinterest.com/500socialmedia/
http://www.twitter.com/500socialmedia
http://www.youtube.com/500socialmediatips

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5 Ways Brands Can Use Hashtags on Facebook for Marketing | Facebook #Hashtags Marketing

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Facebook recently introduced hashtags to its site - and about time too! - giving marketers a fascinating new tool to help try to boost engagement and interaction with their fans. Here are five ideas to help brands kick start their use of hashtags on Facebook: 

1. Add your hashtag to your cover photo

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One of the easiest ways to promote your hashtag to fans is to feature it in your cover photo, whether it's a hashtag that will always stay the same (such as your brand name) or one that will change over time (like one related to a seasonal promotion). 

2. Search your hashtag and join the conversation

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Hashtags on Facebook give you a much easier way to find out what people are saying about you and your brand. So, search for mentions of your brand's hashtag periodically and join in on the conversation to help drive engagement and strengthen relationships with your customers. 

3. Use hashtags in your status updates and comments

Facebook hashtags work as clickable links in Page posts, personal profile posts, and in comments, so don't forget to feature them in these places where appropriate. With consistent use and the odd prompting, you will educate your customers to start using your hashtags too!

4.  Utilise your hashtag's unique URL to drive traffic and engagement

Each hashtag used on Facebook has its own feed and unique URL. In the above example, the hashtag is #500socialmedia to represent my book, and the URL is http://www.facebook.com/hashtag/500socialmedia. The format always stays the same: facebook.com/hashtag/yourhashtag. 

Use this knowledge to drive customers to your hashtag feed - especially in real world marketing material - to interact and engage. Utilise re-directs and URL shorteners like bit.ly to make a link to the feed more memorable.

5. Remember: #hashtags join across all Facebook-integrated services

 

One of the coolest things about Facebook hashtags is that their function is maintained across Facebook-integrated services. In the example above, I shared this image from my Instagram account to my Facebook fan page. The image's caption remained in tact, and its hashtags are there and clickable too. 

Conclusion

I hope this post has given you some inspiration for how you might use hashtags on Facebook as part of your own social media marketing strategy. Let me know how you intend to integrate hashtags in the comments below! 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Macarthy is the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips, available for Kindle and in paperback.

Buy 500 Social Media Marketing Tips
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007L50HE6
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007L50HE6

Follow Me:
http://www.facebook.com/500socialmediatips/
https://pinterest.com/500socialmedia/
http://www.twitter.com/500socialmedia

http://www.youtube.com/500socialmediatips

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How to Embed An Instagram Video on Your Blog or Site in 3 Steps | Instagram Video Embed Code

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Instagram video gives individuals and brands a great new way to produce fresh and exciting content to their fans and followers to view within the app and via instagram.com, but what if you want to embed an Instagram clip on your blog or website? There is no official method at the time of writing this, but there is a pretty simple workaround. Below, you'll learn how to embed an Instagram video in three simple steps. 

1. Grab the URL of your video

Visit your Instagram profile on the web at www.instagram.com/yourinstagramusername, click on the video that you want to embed, then copy its unique URL from your browser's address bar.

2. Generate the embed code

Visit www.instaembed.com, paste the unique URL you copied into the box here, and click the Generate Code button. 

3. Embed the code on your blog or website

Copy the generated code and paste it as HTML into your blog post or onto your website. The result will look like my example above.  The default size of the video is 640 x 640 pixels, but you can change this by editing the height and width in the code. Lastly, if you're feeling courteous, do leave the "Embed Your Own Instagram Videos" link in at the bottom, to give instaembed the credit it deserves. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Macarthy is the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips, available for Kindle and in paperback.

Buy 500 Social Media Marketing Tips
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007L50HE6
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007L50HE6

Follow Me:
http://www.facebook.com/500socialmediatips/
https://pinterest.com/500socialmedia/
http://www.twitter.com/500socialmedia

http://www.youtube.com/500socialmediatips

 

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