Using URLs in Your YouTube Description

Social media, which includes a wide range of publishing and communication applications and resources, is a continuously evolving set of practices and technologies. While some aspects are quite technical and beyond the understanding of most who use social media, others aspects are quite simple and obvious once they are pointed out. This post is about something that fits the latter description.

http://www.marketingovercoffee.com/ is an excellent podcast run by a pair of online marketing veterans who regularly hand out simple and effective advice for enhancing anyone's online marketing strategy. One recent tip for YouTube videos where they suggested placing an appropriate URl at the beginning of the description section of a video. YouTube automatically turns a plain URL into an active link, which can then point back to a blog, web site, or other online resource related to the video.

AirSafe.com has had a combination audio and video podcast for several years, with the videos uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing sites. Most of the videos are associated with a particular page on the main web site, and I usually put a URL at the end of the video and the very end of the description. It was a simple matter to log into the account and add that same URL at the beginning of the description.

Before I made this very minor change, only those viewers who went out of their way to open the entire description, or who had the desire to watch the entire video would find the link. Now, even a casual visitor to one of AirSafe.com's YouTube videos will know where to go for more information. Time will tell if this leads to as significantly greater traffic on the web site.

Is Your Google App Down? - Get an Update

If you rely on Gmail, Google Docs, or some other online Google application to get through the day, when it stops working your online life can come to a halt. One thing you can do if this happens is to figure out if it is a local problem on your computer or with your ISP, or if it is a larger problem. One place to go for rumor and speculation is Twitter Search at http://search.twitter.com. If it is a system-wide problem, there will be many Tweets.

To go straight to the Google source, check out Google's Apps Status Dashboard at http://www.google.com/appsstatus. You can get a general overview of the status of the more popular applications. If you see a service disruption or service outage icon, click on it to get updated information.