How much Social Media do you need??

[Tim Wilson]

No matter how much you decide you need, and which ones to take advantage of, please consider this:

1) Upload your videos to the Cow. Your reel, shorts, spots, trailers, etc. They look better than the other services. You can go bigger. More secure, you can embed them in your own site, blah, blah, blah. But seriously. Upload your videos to the Cow.

2) Tie your reel and other clips to your listing at services.creativecow.net.

Why? Video hosting and service listings are free. You can extend them and integrate them in a variety of ways, anchored around your profile page.

Google yourself. The #1 result is your Cow profile page. There’s no need to make potential clients follow a link if the information they’re already looking for — your reel, services, resume, etc. — are already here.

Your profile can also link to your LinkedIn account, Facebook page, your blogs, your Twitter feed, etc. — all in one place, along with all the other stuff I mentioned, in the place that most people are likely to find you.

3) Heck, they can even read your posts. Perhaps, Walter, you can tell the rest of the class how effective posting at the Cow can be for building your business. 🙂

PS. It’s not shocking that the #1 Google return for you is the Cow, Milton, since you’ve been here long enough to make nearly 500 posts. We’ve seen it happen for other people within a small handful of posts. Silly not to take advantage of it.

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

[Milton Hockman]

wow. that’s amazing. #1 on google from Cow! sounds like a good place to post more of my stuff!

is there anyway to get my business name #1 too?

Owner
Plus More Media Group
Marketing Design Services – PlusMoreMedia.com
Marketing designs and videos that do more for your business!

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Milton Hockman] “is there anyway to get my business name #1 too?”

A good place to start is to use it in your COW sig file as you are doing. The Google search system sees the COW as a trusted and important site and so anytime a search term is used that is pertinent or relevant to the COW, it gets heavy weighting in the search results.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Mark Suszko]

I generally HATE social media stuff as just too fluffy and irrelevant to me. But here’s an anecdote.

Guy calls me out of the blue recently about a potential video project. Apparently, he got my name thru a google search that involved my love of the x-plane flight sim as well as my home town, and that I make videos. That turned me up in some COW threads, and he decided I looked like the guy he needed for his project.

Now, it hasn’t turned into an actual GIG yet, however it could wind up to be not only a fun job but quite lucrative. Still, I did find it kind of creepy to have been found that way instead of more traditional word-of-mouth, and because the net is a wild and wooly place, full of people trying to scam you, I did vet this guy before begining to take him seriously.

No, he’s not from Nigeria.:-)

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “That turned me up in some COW threads, and he decided I looked like the guy he needed for his project.”

That was my point in referring to Walter: your posts at The Cow become not just part of your resume — they become part of your references. People can see whether you know what you’re talking about.

They’ll see for themselves whether you can DO what you’re talking about. The Cow just helps with the talk.

I’ll let him elaborate when he gets a chance, but Walter has said elsewhere in the Cow that folks working on Good Eats at the Food Network saw his posts in the Cow, and got him to work for them. He also had one of his clients refer Walter to someone else, telling the guy to check out Walter’s posts for himself.

My general feeling about social media is that it’s only as fluffy as you make it. “Social” is just people. “Media” is just media. Do you work with people? Using media? Then maybe some aspects of social media can work for you.

But if you’re working in media in this field, then READING the Cow provides one kind of help. POSTING in the Cow can provide another.

Now, Cow self-promotion aside, I’m interested in hearing more about what folks are doing, and what’s working.

One example I heard from the fine folks at Molecule in New York. (Their current gigs include VFX for “Rescue Me.”) They use Twitter to push subscribers to their blog, where they post really (and I mean REALLY) compelling write-ups of their own work. The idea is to remind customers that Molecule is there, and that they do great work.

The way I heard of Molecule? via their reel in the Cow — which, even though it was posted only 14 days ago, is rated just below their company’s own website at the GOOG when you search for “molecule VFX.” Check out their reel, which is of course connected to their Cow Services page.

Not that we’re not happy to help, and their use of them is still evolving, but they’re figuring out how to combine Twitter and their blog into hardcore marketing tools that are bringing them business.

Anyone else?

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

[Mike Cohen]

Speaking of SEO – what’s today’s opinion on meta tags in web pages. One book or blog says that meta tags have been so abused by idiots that the search engines ignore them, while other current publications say they are a must, and others say they are not important but still do it just in case.

I see that the COW’s home page has lots of meta key words, so that makes me say to myself “do it, it might be a good idea after all”

Mike

[Ron Lindeboom]

The META tags are legacy items, Mike. They really are a thing of the past, for most part.

We haven’t updated them in forever as the important search engines largely ignore them.

They have a very minor importance but the real importance is in understanding and learning to utilize SEO in a major, ever-changing and updating pertinence relative to what industry you are in.

Don’t worry about META tags in most cases.

Ron

[Mike Cohen]

My social media experience of late has had to do with the Connecticut film industry. Turns out, as in many regions, everyone knows everyone – go figure.

On Facebook, if you work in media and you are in New England, there is one producer who has likely friended you. As a result, you are connected to his thousand other friends. But I don’t make a habit of friending people I don’t know.

Fast forward a few months. I hired a couple of local actors for a shoot in Hartford. A few days later I noticed that one of the actors is FB friends with he who must not be named, so I friended her too. Then in June I attended a few events at the CT Film Fest, and added a couple of more FB friends, who it turns out are also friends with the actor and you know who.

Finally in August of this year there was a CT Film Industry Summer mixer – a wrap party to the annual mixer held during the CT Film Fest – so there I met a few new actors and other producer types as well as people I connected with previously at events and on FB. In other words, social networking online is just an extension of social networking done with actual voices and drinks in hand.

Mike Cohen

[Matt Smith]

With meta tags in mind it does not hurt to leave them. Therefore it would be in my opinion to put them in just in case. Lets be honest how much effort does it actually take to add them?

[Ron Lindeboom]

And they do help show up information about you in the search description fields, etc., so they are not totally worthless…just mostly useless.

Ron