Tag Archives: Katonah NY Real Estate

Katonah NY Real Estate

Armonk NY Leads Bedford and Katonah in 2012 Sales Price/foot | RobReportBlog

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2012 Average Sold Price per Foot$328.00   Armonk$290.00   Chappaqua$262.00   Pound Ridge$224.00   North Salem$322.00   Bedford NY$232.00   South Salem$288.00   Bedford Hills$256.00   Mount Kisco$303.00   Katonah
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8 Ways to Brand Yourself on YouTube | Katonah Realtor

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How do you develop a brand on YouTube?  It definitely takes more than just an awesome logo.  Why is branding important?  You want to give people something familiar and recognizable in which to attach your content so that viewers will likely want to check out all of your other videos and ones you upload in the future.  It makes you easier to find, and trust.  Our own Tim Schmoyer went over to the VidiSEO channel to discuss 8 ways to brand your channel.  The tips he gives are excellent, so you should pay attention if branding is something you’re curious about.

8 Steps to Branding Your Channel on YouTube

Let’s give the floor to Mark Ballek of VidiSEO and Tim Schmoyer:

OK, so let’s review what we’ve learned from this video:

1. Upload A Quality Avatar

Almost everything you do on YouTube will be accompanied by this avatar.  If you subscribe to channels and the kind of person who likes to see all of that channel’s activity, you’ll see that avatar when they like, favorite, share, subscribe, comment…you know, everything.  So you want to pick one that not only looks awesome and would compel people to click on it, but something that looks good even when it’s really small, which is likely when it comes to your activity on YouTube.

2. Watermark Your Videos

This is your logo, usually found in the corner of the screen, and as Tim suggests, “at 60% opacity.”  That way it will be an ever-present reinforcement of your brand on the video, while not being in the way of your content.

3. Mention Your Channel Name

In the first 15 seconds, be sure to find a way to mention your channel name.  “Hello, welcome to [insert channel name here]” is going to be a common one.  It’s a verbal reinforcement of your brand and helps people remember it and associate your content with it.

4. Brand Your Channel Page

Over on the sidebar of your channel page, you should have all of your social media links.  The page should have your logo in the background image somewhere.  Also, take the time to give a succinct description so that people can tell who you are and what you’re about, and not so long that it would be cut off and they would have to click to see more.

5. Add A Brand Tag to Videos

When you upload a video, you’ll be putting tags that describe the contents so that they can be found in search.  But you also want to put a “brand” tag at the end.  While tags at the end of a series of tags are not given as much weight, what they will do is give YouTube a frame of reference so that your videos show up in the “Related Videos” section while people watch your content, and not some other channels’.

6. Branded Intro Bumper

Place a video bumper no longer than 5 seconds at the beginning of the video somewhere, either right at the beginning or right after your intro.  This is more visual reinforcement of your brand and you can make these look pretty cool with simple graphics and sound.  But don’t make them too long or people will start leaving your videos en masse.

7. Branded End Slate

At the end of most popular channels’ videos you will see a whole bunch of links and previews of other videos that people can click and watch.  Throw your logo in the background somewhere, and now you’re associating this content with other content people might enjoy, all the while reminding them, “Hey, this channel, this brand, is awesome.  Watch more.”

8. Turn Off Channel Ads

It might seem counter-intuitive but this would be for your channel page only.  Taking ads off of that ensures that when people visit your channel page that they are seeing just you and only you, and not a whole bunch of unrelated images that might confuse them.

We’d like to thank Mark Ballek and Tim Schmoyer for breaking down how to brand your channel.  These are all fairly simple to do, so if you want to brand your channel, follow these easy steps.

via reelseo.com

Facebook Graph Search: Why This Could Be So Important for the Future | Katonah Realtor

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Last week Facebook launched Graph Search.  This is an attempt to turn Facebook into Google – i.e. make it a place where people go to ask questions, but with the supposedly added bonus that the information you receive is endorsed by people you know rather than people you don’t.

This is a very important step, not just for Facebook, because it could come to be understood as one of the critical opening skirmishes in the Battle of Big Data.  How it plays-out could have enormous implications for the commercial future of many social media properties, including Google.

This is how the Battle of Big Data squares-up.  On the one hand you have platforms, such as Google and Facebook, amassing  huge behavioural data sets based on information that users give out through their usage of these infrastructures.  Googlebook then sells access to this data gold mine to whom-ever wants it.  On the other hand you have the platform users, who, up until this point, have been relatively happy to hand-over their gold.  The reason for this is that these users see this information as being largely inconsequential, and have no real understanding of its considerable value or the significant consequences of letting an algorithm know what you had for lunch.  The fisticuffs begins when these users start to understand these consequences – because in most instances, their reaction is to say “stop – give me back control over my data.”

There is an enormous amount riding on this.  If users start to make demands to repatriate, or have greater control over, their data – this delivers hammer blows to the commercial viability of Googlebook type businesses, who are either making huge amounts of money from their existing  data goldmine, or have valuations that are based on the future prospect of creating such goldmines.  It also starts to open-up the field for new platforms that make data privacy and control a fundamental part of their proposition.

Initial reports from the field are not encouraging (for Facebook).  There were immediate issues raised about privacy implications which Facebook had to pacify (see this Mashable piece) and significant negative comment from the user community – as reported in this Marketing Week article.  See also this further analysis from Gary Marshall at TechRadar.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays-out.

From another perspective, I think this announcement illustrates what Facebook believes is its advantage over Google – i.e. its sociability and the fact that it can deliver information that is endorsed by people that you know.  The interesting thing about this is that the power of social media lies in its ability to create the processes that allow you to trust strangers.  The value of the information can therefore based on the relevance or expertise of the source – not the fact that they are a friend.  Google is the master of this in a largely unstructured way, and services such as Amazon or even TripAdvisor can deliver this via a more structured process.  Facebook can’t really do this, because it neither has Google level access to enough broad-spectrum data, not does it have processes relevant to specific tasks (Trip Advisor for travel – Amazon for product purchase).

via socialmediatoday.com

My 10-in-1 Content Creation Strategy | Katonah Real Estate

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Content creation calendars and schedules are the bane of most serious bloggers’ and content managers’ lives, depending on which side of the creative block you’re on.

I straddled this fine line on many occasions until my Eureka moment. Having amalgamated my home radio and video studios I realised that I could double up on content creation with my business-consultant partner, a content reservoir of genius proportions.

Soon we had discovered a 3-in-1, then a 6-in-1, and finally a 10-in-1 content creation strategy.

When I say “radio and video studio” (actually my third bedroom), be assured it’s not exactly state of the art, although I have slowly acquired suitable equipment and created a workable dual studio.

In saying this, anyone with a computer, some sort of USB audio interface/mixer, a reasonable microphone and digital video camera or DSLR can achieve the same results. In this article I assume you are familiar with your gear so I’m not going to go into any detail on how to use each piece of equipment in the process.

Time costs!

One of the most valuable, and rarest assets of a successful business consultant is time. To maximise the genius of my partner, when time is in such short supply, is a hectic operation usually resulting in a minimal flow of great content. This is where my Eureka moment has paid incredible dividends and saved many hours in the generation of multiple pieces of content at once.

Because we use a joint audio and video, green-screen studio, when we sit down and record a session, we create both an audio and a video recording simultaneously. The following ten points outline the quality content that we create from each five-minute recording session.

We now have this down to such a fine art that we can do six, five-minute recordings in 40 minutes. For me as the content creator, this is heaven, as it enables me to work in my genius. (A little side note here: your genius is simply working in your passion and talent, and I believe you need to be doing this for 80% of your working time.)

How it works

So, it all starts with one content creation session—just one!—where we have learned to maximise both time and genius. Of course there is preparation required to make the session go smoothly, and a good knowledge of your field of expertise is essential, but once we’re in studio, this is how the magic happens.

  1. The primary piece of content is a video for uploading to our YouTube channel and if we choose, we upload it to iTunes as a video podcast. We also embed the same video on our blog at MurrayKilgour.com. A well-prepared, quality video is the basis for this whole process. We use either a script or a series of bullet points to make the recording. I personally enjoy using a script with a DIY teleprompter, because of my radio background. Cheesycam.com is an awesome resource for DIY ideas and equipment—a lot of it DIY or reasonably priced new gear.
  2. The recorded audio track becomes a podcast which is embedded on our blog, and most often is uploaded to our Living on Purpose iTunes podcast channel as well. There are many other podcast sites to upload to, but we choose just iTunes. If you are unable to create video, the podcast can become the audio for a Slideshare video presentation, so give the audio the same good preparation as you would a video.
  3. We send the mp3 audio recording to a transcription contractor hired through eLance.com for transcription at $2 per recording. From this transcript, we create a blog post for our site, a guest post for another website, or an article for a site like ezinearticles.com. This invaluable piece of text is also used as a caption or transcript with our videos on Youtube for SEO purposes. Because it’s accurate, we gain the additional traction of having hearing-disabled people able to enjoy your video using the Youtube subtitles feature.
  4. The video we have created, if it’s not placed on our YouTube channel, can now form part of a multi-part video ecourse. We use an Aweber autoresponder to give this away for free and gain subscribers to our blog, but it can be monetized in the form of a paid video ecourse. You can determine the value or purpose of the content here.
  5. We again take the transcribed text and repurpose it into a ten-part ecourse delivered in the same way as the video ecourse: as a bonus for signing up as a subscriber to the blog. This method has been extremely successful—we’ve signed up thousands of subscribers to our blog this way.
  6. The transcribed text now adds real value when it is compiled into a section or chapter of an ebook to be used as a giveaway or sold on the blog as a free download. This is where the value of the method comes in, because many bloggers battle to get into writing an ebook. We edited, added and modified a lot of the text to create an ebook, but what this method did was give us a great quantity of raw material to work with. We had created more than 140 podcasts by the time we woke to the fact that we could compile a quality ebook using that material.
  7. I am in the fortunate position of being a breakfast show producer for a local radio station, so the podcast becomes a regular slot on our community radio station, Radio CCFm, which has 250 000 listeners. But before you say this is a privileged position, I can assure you that, as a producer, I can say most local radio stations are always looking for quality content, especially if it is free. So short podcasts with a good intro and outro may become a regular feature on radio stations and give good traffic to a website.
  8. With the advent of HD video DSLRs it is possible to produce high-quality video footage for TV programs. We repurpose our five-minute content creation session again in the form of a short TV program for a local community TV station, Cape Town Television. If it’s quality content and free, TV stations will take your show—especially if it’s relevant to their viewers.
  9. When we repurpose the transcribed text into an ebook, the audio becomes part of an audio book. You might say that this is pushing it, but I use the audio as a companion free audio book to the photography ebook I sell on my website. It’s a bonus for the buyer and for me, because I didn’t have to do anything extra to create it.
  10. Finally, blog posts, audio, and video make an amazing weekly or monthly newsletter. I do this using Aweber templates, which are free with the subscription. We try to do it on a two-weekly basis, as we don’t always have enough content for weekly mailings. It works perfectly for a monthly newsletter and I would advise this when you’re starting out. The amount of content you generate will determine the frequency.

Ten points sounds good, and I thought that adding an eleventh point might be a bit much, but here’s a bonus idea. What we’ve done is created a boxed DVD set for offline and online sales as training modules. Not all people are excited about online, and some like a physical product in their hands. In our business we use all of the above content in its different forms as part of a DVD boxed series for sale to our coaching clients. They love it and we love it—especially the time it takes to create!

Unlimited content

There are no limits to how you can use your content if you begin with the end in mind, but the emphasis must be on quality content. When you sit down in front of the camera and microphone, think “end product,” and design your process to get the most out of the content creation session. I’m sure that most people can easily create seven of these ten pieces of content out of just one five-, ten-, or even 30-minute recording session.

So, think big in your content creation, begin with the end in mind, and maximize your time and effort to produce content that will attract the best traffic and convert those people into buyers. Your success will result from the quality of content you produce. So give it your best!

via problogger.net