Daily Resources for Web Designers & Developers by Andy Sowards » social networking

6 Ways To Drive Traffic to Your Website with Youtube

Andy Sowards — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:12:56 +0000

Youtube is a famous video search engine, recently purchased by famous search engine Google. There are lot of advantages associated with Youtube and one of them is that you can promote your business online via video. If you are offering any services, or a product or you are just willing to spread the word about your identity, then I can say that youtube can be the perfect platform to market yourself.

There are many ways you can drive traffic to your website – like famous webmaster forums, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc. I can understand you are using all above mentioned platforms to market your business, but if you are missing Youtube then you are missing a great opportunity to market your business.

Every thing in this universe is systematic; The creator of this universe has systemized every thing in this universe. God has created Clouds, then it rains water from rains flows in the streams and that water is used for cultivation which is later used by each and every living creature. In the same passion, if we want to be successful then we need to be systematic.

If you are planning on promoting your business online with Youtube, I can surely say that you need to follow some systematic methods to promote your video in Youtube, the video search engine:

1) Comment Videos

Youtube is now a huge community of people who place their videos in the giant database of Youtube on a daily basis. You need to appear among them by leaving a comment or no one would know you were there and would miss out on your voice and in turn, they could miss out on your brand! Visit your favorite videos and comment on them, it will automatically spread a word about your identity. Meaningful and insightful comments, especially on videos related to your niche, are invaluable in positioning yourself as an expert in your field to anyone who reads your comment and clicks through to your profile – and ultimately your website and brand!

2) Right Time to Post Your Video

You have just posted your video and you think you are failing to attain valuable visitors. It is best to do a little research and pinpoint the best time to post so that your video is in front of the most people and reach the people interested in your niche. Lets say you are posting a video regarding famous beaches of world, then you should make sure that when you post that video, the people who love travel and beaches can see it and have the time to visit these kind of videos. Everyones audience has different peak social network usage times, so the key is finding those opportune moments and using them to your marketing advantage.

3) Video Responses

Even Old Spice utilized video responses in their most recent campaign!

Personally I can say that video responses are one of the perfect ways to attain a lot of visitors to your video. If you are good in capturing natural videos; you should search the videos in your niche, and you should post meaningful and insightful video responses to those videos in your niche. Again this will help position yourself as an expert in your field if your video adds value to the original or to your audience in that niche.

4) Videos in Series

A single video can be beneficial to attain lot of traffic to your video, but it is even better if you keep your visitors happy with a series of videos. If you are posting a series of videos, I can surely say that you will have many marketing benefits and constant viewers of your videos. If you stay consistent and post regularly then people will consistently come back for more of your information and even make a routine out of looking forward to it.

5) Search Engine Friendly Videos

If you are SEO Expert offering affordable SEO services then you can understand what I mean. You need to follow some guidelines provided by search engines to have better ranking. I have already told you that Youtube is recently purchased by Google, so you can visit Google guidelines for successful marketing of your videos. Building organic search is probably the best thing you can do for any site to build the brand and traffic over time. Invest your time in learning the guidelines so that you build a great base to build upon, it will pay off in the long run.

6) Keep Length of Your Videos Short

Don’t post lengthy videos, but try to keep your videos short. This is the golden video rule as most people these days cannot find enough time to stick their eyes on a single video that is super long. The ideal time for a video is between 3-5 minutes. It will also help the youtube search engine to rank your video higher than some videos that are longer.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

Exclusive Download – 16 T-Shirt Social Media Icon Pack FREE w/ layered PSD file

Andy Sowards — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:19:42 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Another Freebie Today, we are happy to release an exclusive set of 16 social media t-shirt buttons for free for your websites and web-related projects. These icons feature some of the most popular social networks out there, including some of the newer ones like Dribbble, Forrst & Grazely. These buttons come in PNG format in 1 size of 60×76 pixels along with 2 layered Photoshop PSD files containing all the icon buttons (There is a PSD for the 60×76 sized t-shirt buttons, as well as a larger high res version that is 393×500 – in case you want to play around or make your own additions ).

(Higher Res Example – PSD for this size is included)

These icons are designed by me (Andy Sowards!) and released exclusively for AndySowards.com visitors as a royalty-free icon set.

All the buttons are free and you can download and use them for your individual or commercial projects. You should not upload the downloaded source files on your server and redistribute them as your own either in part or whole. If you want to share the icon buttons, you can link back to this article page.

Thanks everyone for the ongoing support – Hope you enjoy these!

Download The T-Shirt Social Network Icon Pack Here »

You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @andysowards and like us on facebook @andysowardsfan! We are also on that new fangled G+ doohikey.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

Seven tips to attract more clients – A Guide for Freelancers

lief — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:12:15 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Across time, freelancers observed that it is better to have a trustful client, one that is serious and respectable, that is honoring the deadlines than two or three who aren’t reliable. The current conditions of our society don’t assure the climate in order to possibly select the clients, much more, the companies are fighting to maintain the clientele in order to survive. No matter the economic situation, attracting new clients and maintaining the present ones were always permanent challenges, for both companies and freelancers activating in the web design industry. Under these circumstances, marketing became a mandatory part of our lives. Therefore, any worker in the online industry should understand that gaining well-paid projects from the most reliable clients isn’t only the exclusive kudos of the skills and talent, it depends also on other factors as the image created around.

The tips bellow create a solid base for everyone who wants to increase the number of clients, but no one should take it as the perfect recipe, it assures the necessary ingredients, but it isn’t enough to guarantee the success, work and endeavor can’t be replaced by nothing.

1. Offer only qualitative works

Creating a reputation as a good service provider is equivalent of having merely a full schedule. Definitely, the most important factor of being successful is to offer the best services or products on the market. Supposing that someone launched a super attractive advertising campaign that brings a lot of clients, he will have an impressing wave of customers, but once the first ones aren’t content all the efforts are in vain. It’s recognized that a client believes another client more than any cool advertising material.

(Quality Image via Shutterstock)

On the other hand, the quality must be added up with patience; the fame, or the brand how a marketer will say, is growing using the “avalanche effect” pattern, the beginning is difficult, the initial results are poor but, by passing it, the situation is exponentially improved.

2. Expose a stunning portfolio

(Portfolio Image via Shutterstock)

The portfolio is considered the website of a freelancer or agency where previous works or at least the best of them,are exposed. It’s a common misconception to consider the portfolio only the website, but this concept must be upgraded to any collection of various projects exposed online. It’s a portfolio also the profiles on Behance, Dribble or any job boards that allow uploading items. The potential clients who visit a nice exhibition of works are impressed and may or may not hire the owner of these,but in the unwanted case when anyone is visiting a portfolio containing a single decent piece and the rest are quality, surely will remain horrified by the less inspired project. It’s highly recommended to pay attention to the items presented, a single bad decision can ruin a long endeavor.

3. Maintain a strong relationship with the previous clients

(Handshake Image via Shutterstock)

An individual that currently needs web design services is quite probable to need, in the future, other similar solutions, if they were satisfied with the work done;it’s a great chance to hire the precedent service provider again. This logical enhancement has as conclusion that it is better for any freelancer or web design agency to keep barely an informal relationship with the past customers. The discounts or the new services offered may attract them, but also they could recommend to other interested people.

4. Make as many as possible ways of being contacted visible

(Networking Image via Shutterstock)

Another mandatory stage in having an increased number of clients is to facilitate the contact with them. The portfolio must have a contact form to receive any inquiry and all the ways to get in touch with: phone number, Skype/Google Talk/ Yahoo Messenger ids, email addresses, links to profiles on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn even the physical address.

5. Maintain a blog

Having a heavy visited blog is a real boost in getting more clients, but the existence of it requires a huge volume of work. The advantages of maintaining a blog are numerous:

(Blog Image via Shutterstock)

articles describing the manner of work can be posted and the visitors may see the level of professionalism;
it can bring reputation to the owner;
it may be visited by other experts and they could contact the owner for various proposals, maybe collaborations;
it’s forming a community around and some people from them may turn into clients;
the blog may be monetized.

6. Offer freebies and discounts

(Discount Image via Shutterstock)

People who are interested in the services of somebody want to be safe about the investment that is to be made and it’s common to ask for more information. A wise method is to provide them these pieces of information before asking as offering free some samples and to make them more curios and interested, offer from time to time discounts and special offers.

7. Be dynamic, don’t expect for miracles

The ideas presented may work sometimes but it could happen attempts fail. This bad situation shouldn’t mean the end of the world, it’s just a common problem, and the remedy against this undesirable solution is to try again and again. The imagination is also important traits that help anybody in getting more clients; an original approach has more chances of having good results.

(Creative Image via Shutterstock)

The true specialists, that respect the clients and offer the best solutions, don’t need any promotional strategy for getting more clients, the quality of the project finished bring more and more new clients without any effort, therefore is better to focus on making happy the clients and they will bring others.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

Social Media Schwag – Shout-outs, Importance of Networking & Thankful for great friends on the internets

Andy Sowards — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:03:14 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Hey Everyone – I first want to say, that I am completely thankful for all of you, every day. I have such great friends online, and have so much fun with all of you. I am truly blessed to be able to count a lot of you as my friends (You know who you are!). If I was to list you all it would just be a huge endless list – weed through my twitter/facebook/googleplus friends and you’ll find them. I wanted to revisit this topic since its been almost two years (DEAR GOD TIME IS FLYING) since I wrote about a story about social media and friends (it involved king cake).

I don’t mean for this to be a huge post or anything but just a quick update on some things and my thoughts on Social Media and why its important to Network & spend time having fun with your internet friends – while producing valuable content and helping others. Just want to give you guys a peek into my daily life, since this is also my personal blog, I don’t usually get a chance to say much outside of the normal posting schedule, I figure this will spice things up if I do it randomly – so enjoy (or ignore. lol)

Social Media Friends & Relationships

While that cartoon is fairly true (and funny) for the majority – Over the years I have met some AWESOME people via social media. I have also generated a good portion of my business contacts from social media (mostly twitter). I can honestly say without social media, I’d not have had nearly as good and fulfilling past couple of years. I am very thankful for everything (and everyone) it has brought my way.

I have had a lot of fun with everyone, and learned so much from everyone. One thing that I never even thought of when I started getting involved in the social media scene was getting anything from anyone for free – but it happens, a lot. in social media. Some weeks I am very reminded of this fact, the past couple of weeks have definitely reminded me of this. I try to write a shoutout and thanks to my cool friends that send me stuff, but I am always so busy it (with many other things, all the time) fall by the wayside and I never get a chance to do it! So I am going to try to shoutout to everyone in this post that has sent me stuff in the past year or so.

I’ve gotten t-shirts from a few awesome people – I need to get some pics of the older ones, but I got an awesome AllTop t-shirt from the awesome Guy Kawasaki. If you don’t know that guy, definitely check him out – truly an inspirational person. Nice guy too!

My Bro and Twitter Master Extraordinaire Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudios) has hooked me up with a few awesome things over the years so a big shoutout to him – if your on twitter and not following him (what is wrong with you!?) go do it – He can tell you himself how awesome social networking is, he has had brands like Audi loan him an Audi A8 to test drive!!! (how freaking cool is that!? Just be an awesome and informative, nice guy, on twitter, and you get stuff like that for free. It pays to be kind, and be yourself.)

I also got a t-shirt from obox design from back in the day! They are some awesome a nice dudes – Thanks guys!!

Social Media Schwag

“It is more blessed to give than to receive. Because in giving, although it doesn’t seem so, You Receive.”
-Desmond Tutu

Ok now on to the stuff I got the past few weeks from awesome people & companies (with pics!) (P.S. no one asked me to say anything about this stuff, I just thought I would since it all came from Social Media & the relationships built there. Also it really doesn’t matter that you sometimes get free stuff from social media, it’s just the little things that your friends there do to brighten your day! Selflessness is the best part of Social Media. there are a TON of people on there, that help others for no personal gain. Just goes to show, that when you Give, you truly receive. So be a giver.)

Stay Lovely Shirt

So I got to pick this out from the lovelyjunkie.com store (store link). I won it by leaving a comment on a blog post by @paul_pants.

So what was awesome about this (other than its a nice comfy shirt, fits well, I like it! and I am usually picky about shirts. the actual shirt is made by American Apparel) is the packaging it came in! I was just expecting a t-shirt in a box. But this came in a re-sealable bag – that had even more stuff in it! If you can see it in the picture, the bag has their logo on it, and inside it has a bunch of other stuff with their logo on it, like pins, and business cards – which are super awesome. They EVEN include a garbage pail kids card. I had TOTALLY forgotten about those. but I thought that was awesome, I hadn’t seen one since I was literally like 8 years old. Way to really nail the packaging and even throw in a bit of nostalgia too – I was impressed. So to Paul Pants. I say Thank you!!

Klout Schwag

Ok so I recently got into Klout – took me a while to sign up, but I am glad I did now that I know what its good for – Free stuff! If you haven’t signed up for it yet, you might as well. You can only lose by Not signing up. (just another account to add to the list lol)

Here are just a few things that I got via Klout lately

Axe Spike Hair Gel

so got this from klout for the Axe promo – Axe even talks to you on twitter, which is pretty awesome . Anytime a big brand will joke with you on a social network – that is cool. And good brand management.

Of course I tried it out, I like it – I even still have some left (unlike spike master @mayhemstudios lol jk, he asked Axe for more, and they even gave it to him!). Although I don’t usually “Spike” my hair, it works well for that or just regular ole hair gel

I tried it out on me and one of my little munchkins – We look totally rad! (he does anyway haha)

Business Cards from Moo

So those are my moo mini cards (designed by yours truly)! I picked them up from the klout perk of free moo mini cards – had to pay $6 or so for shipping, but small price to pay to get something for free. Especially something that is custom designed! So I was impressed with how the cards looked, but what impressed me more, was again, the awesome packaging! It was so nice I hardly wanted to open it, and yes I still keep my cards in that sweet little white box. (and no I didn’t have fun picking them all up after I dumped them lol. These are actually my first business cards ever, since I have NO LOCAL CLIENTS at all – It really is more of a novelty. All of my clients are out of state, mostly in California and New York (and the UK) but mostly all over the world. So I will mostly just hand these out to friends, family and anyone I meet.

Well that about does it for this post, was much longer than I anticipated it to be lol.

Hope everyone enjoyed it! And I hope it inspired you to get serious about Social Media if you are a business, a brand, or just someone trying to get a job. Social media can open up all sorts of doors if you let it. So let it do its thing! while you be yourself and do what you love.

Oh – and of course, if you want to send me some schwag, feel free (email me for my address if you really want to lol)

As always – I Appreciate you all.

- Andy Sowards Signing Off

Oh and if you wanna check out that post I did two years ago on the similar subject definitely check out….

What is king cake? A Story About Friends & Social Media

Oh and finally if YOU guys have a story about social media that you would like to share, could be whatever you want – we would LOVE to hear about it below in the comments! Thanks everyone!

You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @andysowards and like us on facebook @andysowardsfan! We are also on that new fangled G+ doohikey.

If you like this, You’ll love These.

UCreative: The New Social Network (for Designers, Artists & Creative Professionals)

Andy Sowards — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:27:12 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

I know what your thinking, there need to be more quality design focused social networks that don’t require an invitation and let you share your ideas and ask questions with like minded individuals like yourself.

Well our friends at UCreative were reading your mind.

What is UCreative?

This is UPrinting’s inspiration behind the re-launch of UCreative network. Here is how they describe it:

At UCreative, we believe in the power of community. We also believe that you, designers and artists, deserve to have your own support group, your own personal space online and an easy way to grasp new knowledge. So we thought, why not put all those things together in one network?

The network has been designed in the hope to bring more artists and designers together. Whatever area of expertise you’re in, we’ll make sure that you find the right group of people with whom you can share your ideas, ask for help or give advice, or simply share your thoughts and showcase your craft.

First Impressions

So I signed up for an account and played around with it, and was very satisfied with what was there. I was able to quickly signup, login and set everything up within a few minutes. When you login you are greeted with a Dashboard that instantly showcases some of the inspirational work of your peers that they have recently shared.

Also you see the latest updates, and blog posts of the network, so you can see how easily it is to get your work in front of others eyes for critique or praise. If you need help, or are feeling generous and want to help someone out, you can checkout the latest forum posts from there as well, This will surely be a highly trafficked area of the site. There is also a section for Jobs – so if you need some work, or want to hire someone, check that out as well!

Personalize, Be Heard, Be Informed, Get Help & Show Off!

A Social Network Isn’t a social network without your own profile page! So of course this is a big part of UCreative – you can promote yourself, upload your portfolio, share your knowledge and get exposure. Tell everyone who you are and what you do on your page, and in the Forum. If you get stuck on a project feel free to reach out to the community in the forum with a question or request they critique your latest work.

You can do a lot of awesome stuff on your profile page. You can Customize Your Page by adding different applications. Poke friends, comment on other profiles (ala facebook’s wall), you can even update your friends by leaving a 140-character status message. Make sure to add the app for chatting with everybody else!

So basically its a great and well rounded Network to be a part of with a great community, help someone out, get helped, show off your work, sounds like a pretty win-win. Also you don’t have to just be a designer to be a helpful part of the community, there are lots of other types there such as: Developers, Photographers, Bloggers, Illustrators and Painters, Interior and Furniture Designers, Performing Artists (Dancers, musicians, actors, etc), Fashion Enthusiasts, Layout Artists.

To be able to enjoy all these things, be sure to create your own account on the site! Visit and join UCreative now and meet more creative professionals, showcase your own craft and learn from fellow designers!

Oh and after you sign up, don’t forget to add me as a friend so we can connect on UCreative!

You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @andysowards and like us on facebook @andysowardsfan!

Google Plus is Shiny and New! Do you have it?
I Do. I loves it.
Follow me on G+ at https://plus.google.com/107906093846039182490/posts