In the last post we looked at Sparks, Google+’s tool for collecting information around an area of interest. Today we’re going to talk about how to share that and other content, and how to determine who’s going to see that content.

Sharing content with friends, family and business associates on Google+ is easy.

At the top of your stream–similar to Facebook’s News Feed–is a box where you can choose to share an update, photos, video or a link.

Let’s say you want to share a video; go ahead and click on video. Then you’ll be given the choice to share video in three different ways:

1. upload from your computer,
2. grab something from YouTube or
3. upload a video from your phone.

Choose the appropriate selection and then you’ll either upload a video or find a video on YouTube.

In either case you’ll be able to add comments and then choose which circles and/or people you’d like to share the video with. Video of your most recent presentation? Share with business associates. Video of your daughter’s birthday? Share that with just friends and family.

This may be easier understood by watching it in action. By chance, I’ve created a video called How to Share Video on Google+, which you can watch on YouTube or down below.

This is just one of a series of videos we did on Google+, and we’ve got plenty of other web marketing and social media videos at our YouTube channel. You should check it out. Really, you should.

Rich Brooks
Join Me On Google+

If you’re interested in increasing your online visibility, then you need to create quality content that engages your audience. There are many channels that you can use to distribute this content: your website, your blog, an email newsletter, online videos, photo sharing sites, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, webinars, ebooks and more.

Many businesses struggle with how to create new content after they exhaust a few obvious topics. However, there are plenty of online tools that businesses can use to drill deeper, to find more long-tail search terms that they blog about or could create a webinar that would attract new business.

One of the tools that helps accomplish this–and is fun to play with as well–is Google’s Wonder Wheel. It’s a mashup of a mind mapping tool crossed with search results.

I created a short video of how to to use Wonder Wheel to create new content ideas for your own business.

You can watch the video below or check out How to Increase Your Online Visibility With Google’s Wonder Wheel on YouTube.

Rich Brooks
The wonder wheel goes round and round…

Online videos are a powerful tool for search engine optimization (SEO).

Search engines like Google or Bing want to deliver the most relevant content to their users, regardless of the form or medium of that content. To that end, they look at the words in the titles of videos on websites like YouTube or Vimeo, as well as the description and the tags.

There’s also some evidence that they look at other factors, such as the number of views, the number of comments, viewer ratings, whether people watched the video to the end, number of incoming links, the number of times shared, etc. Search engines may even be converting the audio to text and using that to better determine if the video content is relevant to a given search.

It’s also been my experience that search engines want to present searchers with a mix of media in the results: web pages, images, video, local results, news, tweets and more. Each one may be another opportunity for you or your business to rank higher and get in front of your best prospects.

So, if you’re looking to leapfrog your competitors in search, you should add video to the mix.

For example, we wanted more visibility for the search term “maine web design.” (If you’re a Maine web designer you can stop reading now. This doesn’t concern you.) So we created a video slideshow called “Maine Web Design – Maine Business Websites” and posted it to YouTube and a dozen other video sharing websites. (I recommend TubeMogul for posting to multiple video sharing sites at once.)

Within a day that slideshow made up half of the top 10 results in Google’s video search for “Maine web design.” That was nice, but there were no video results displayed on the first page and I don’t know how many people click over to video results for that type of search. Still, it showed the potential of video.

Then, about two weeks ago I happened to perform that same search again and, lo and behold, the video was the sixth result on Google in the regular, organic search results. I logged out of Google to confirm my results, and the video was still number six. (When you’re logged in your results are skewed/tailored based on your previous search history.) Although the sixth position isn’t as good as the first slot, many people are more drawn to video than text links, so it has that added benefit.

I’m not sure when the video started appearing in the regular search results, but it is still hanging tough at the time of this post.

Something to note about this video: it’s just a slideshow of screen captures from websites we’ve designed for Maine-based businesses; there’s no audio, just imagery. However, we did feature this video on a previous blog post, which may have helped its visibility and views, which in turn may have improved its ranking. Blogging about it again should give it an additional boost.

What’s the takeaway? If you’re looking to leapfrog your competition for popular keyword phrases, you should experiment with video. Just don’t expect overnight success; be patient, and keep on uploading new videos targeting different keyword phrases you want to rank well for.

Rich Brooks
Ready for My Close Up

It won’t bite, I promise.

You can watch this video, How to Add a Video to Your WordPress Blog, or read the brief description below.

Step 1: Grab the embed code. YouTube and other video sharing sites make it easy to grab the code that displays the video, often called the “embed code.” In the case of this client the video was from a segment on a local television show. Luckily, this show posted the video along with the embed code. You’ll want to copy that embed code to your clipboard.

Alert! After making this video I noticed YouTube has a new iframe embed code (pictured below). WordPress “cleaned up” that code. If this happens to you check the “Use old embed code” box on YouTube. More details below.

Step 2: Post the code into your WordPress blog post. First, determine where you’d like the video to be placed while looking at the Visual editor. If you’re not familiar with HTML code, you may want to create a placeholder by typing in something like “Video Goes Here” or “xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”.

Then click on the “HTML” tab in the upper right hand corner so that you can view the HTML code.

Find your placeholder (if you made one) and copy and paste the embed code there. Switch back to the Visual tab and you should see a pale yellow box where your video will appear. If this doesn’t happen then try selecting the “Old Embed Code”.

That should do it! If you get the video going on your own blog, feel free to post a link below.

Rich Brooks
Video Marketing

Search Engine Optimization:

Would you like your site to rank higher at the search engines? Do you wish you could attract more qualified leads to your Web site? Do you wonder why your competition beats you at Google?

If so, register for our Search Engine Optimization Consultation, that includes two one-hour consultations, a review of your site and recommendations, and a mini-keyword analysis from Nicki Hicks, our search engine marketer.

Web Marketing / Social Media:

Are you struggling to understand Facebook? How Twitter can help grow your business? How YouTube can attract qualified leads to your Web site? Whether a blog will increase your search engine visibility or eat up your last remaining free time?

If so, register for our Web Marketing / Social Media Consultation, with your man about town, Rich Brooks. We’ll talk about social networking sites, blogs, video and anything else you need to drive more qualified leads to your Web site and grow your business.

Both contests wrap up on Sunday, 1/31/2010, so be sure to take advantage of this offer if you’re looking to build your business in 2010.

Rich Brooks
Web Marketing for Small Business