Social Media Buttons, Visitors Share Your Posts

Social media icons
social media buttons Multiple social media logos reflected 700 x 400

It is a good idea to have social media buttons at the bottom of every blog post.  Make it easy for visitors to share your blog post with their social media connections.

social media buttons Icons with PinterestThe buttons on the right are from the bottom of this page.  If a visitor clicks on the Twitter logo, they can share a link to this page on Twitter and so on.  Click on the grey icon and they can print the page.  Click on the plus sign and they have access to around 200 different social media.

Free social media buttons

Get the code to have free social media buttons like I have at the bottom of the page.  Go to addthis.com.  Sign up and then click the Get the Code link at the top of the page.

HTML code for social media buttonsCopy the code into your clipboard, go to the bottom of your WordPress post in text view and paste the HTML code to the bottom of the page.

Related pages

6 Tips to Get Your Blog Noticed

The B2K Media Marketing website says

Always have your social media profiles pop up in NEW windows or tabs.  Read much more.

Where to place your social media icons

A Suzanne Perazzini article says

Facebook is getting more and more difficult … since it became a public company and therefore an impersonal business.  Pinterest, is currently the best way to get a good flow of traffic to your blogRead much more.

16 Social Media Icons …

A Clear Edge Marketing post says

Below is a listing of 16 key social media icons — a glossary of icons, if you will — that can serve helpful for those not social media savvy.

Read more.

YouTube video

The video below may help you get a better understanding of exactly how to add social media buttons to your blog post.

Social Media Icons Pinterest

Watch the above SlideShare presentation on the SlideShare website.

 

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Visuals to Enhance Your Message

Grab their attention for a few seconds

Visuals Cliffs from below 400

Website visitors are impatient.  They need visuals to distract them.  If they are not really interested in the first 3 seconds, they will probably leave your page.  So, use images with a “wow” factor to grab their attention.  The special picture should be above the fold if possible.

A picture is worth 1000 words

The brain processes a picture much faster than text — 60,000 times faster.  So, a picture is probably worth much more than 1000 words.

What makes visuals different from text?

  • Visuals are stored directly in the long-term memory
  • Text is stored in the short-term memory
  • Images increase comprehension, recollection and retention to a greater extent than text does
  • So, people are more likely to remember things on your web page if text is accompanied by a picture
  • Pictures enhance emotions more strongly than text.
  • Pictures engage the imagination to a greater extent than text
  • Pictures heighten creative thinking to a greater extent than text
  • The brain processes everything about a picture simultaneously
  • With text, the brain processes it one word at a time

 

Souces of visuals

SVisuals kitch optionsWhen you are explaining things, it often helps if you use a program such as Skitch to grab part of an image to explain a point.  Visuals help us decode text.

Sometimes, or probably usually, visitors will leave your page if you do not grab their attention within the first few seconds.  I often go to Adobe Stock and pay $3 for a photo that will “wow” people long enough to get them to read the page. 

Note that to use Adobe Stock you must pay $30 USD per month for 10 photos. If that is too much, try the nocostimages alternative.

Try going to 8 sources of free stock images.

Reduce the size of some images

Note that these Adobe Stock pictures will be very large and therefore slow down the speed at which your website opens.  So, to avoid losing viewers, use GIMP to reduce the size of an image.

If you have a 3 MB picture and drag a corner to make it smaller, it will still be a 3 MB picture.  So, go to GIMP and use used Image > Scale Image to reduce the size of a picture.

Today I had a 1.3 MB picture that was 700 pixels wide.  I used GIMP to reduce it to 400 pixels wide.  It was only 400 kB.

Social media marketing

Cliffs from below 400

I rarely make a social media post without having a photo that grabs people’s attention.  I’ll take the best picture from a blog post and have an image upload with that same picture in my posts on

  • Twitter
  • Facebook page
  • Google+

Each social media post will link back to the blog post.  The picture with a “wow” factor helps people to stay on my social media post long enough that they end up going to the blog.

The fold

The fold is the position on a web page where the majority of browsers viewing the page will begin to scroll.

Megabytes & kilobytes

A Mb is approximately 1000 times larger than a kB.  Specifically,

  • 1 byte = 8 bits
  • 1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes
  • 1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes

 

bit.ly/nocostimages

The Bitly address, bit.ly/nocostimages is an easy-to-remember web address for the Dreamstime website. Dreamstime has a collection of tens of millions of photos, illustrations, video snippets, etc. The lower quality images are free. The higher quality ones cost money. Dreamstime can be a very good source of free images.

In the above screenshot, someone searched All Content for pictures that represented designing websites.  What if your designing websites picture must match the blue colour in your header. Then you would add the word blue to your search term.

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Combine Social Media for a Multiplying Effect

Eight social media

Snowball pushed by boyIf you combine 8 different social media, your marketing efforts can snowball.  A SlideShare post can send people to a YouTube video.  That YouTube  video can send people to a blog.  And so on.

YouTube

This page has been summarized in the YouTube video below.

Start with a blog

Note for NewbiesI always start with a blog.  I decide upon the message I want to get across.  Before I start creating content, I use Google Trends to find one or more keywords that closely relate to that content.  I might use Hashtagify to find closely related Twitter hashtags.

The above exercise will help me create a title.  It will also give me some keywords that I will likely try to combine within the article.  (Careful: In order to get high rankings with the Google search engine, all of the ideas in each paragraph should flow naturally.)


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

SEO your blog

I always use WordPress for my blogs.

There is a reason why a quarter of the websites in the world use WordPress.  One reason is because they provide so many free plugins such as SEO by Yoast.

From the beginning I start search engine optimizing (SEO) my blog.  I go down to my SEO by Yoast and decide upon a focus keyword.  That will be a keyword I got by using Google Trends and/or Hashtagify.  As I write the blog post, I make sure the points in SEO by Yoast are covered.

Starting the blog

I write out the idea I wanted to get across.  If it is less than 300 words, I use CurationSoft to get summaries of articles related to my topic.

Learn about blogging with consistent quality content.

Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus

For my social media marketing I always use a blog followed by Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus.  If I feel so inclined, I will also add Pinterest, YouTube, SlideShare and LinkedIn.

It is quick & simple to use Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus to promote your blog.  You are increasing the probability that the search engines will find your blog.

Same picture 3 social mediaTo the right is a sample of Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus all promoting the same blog post.  They all use more or less the same high-quality stock image.

However, note that the wording of the text is different in each one.  That is to make sure that the search engines to not penalize me for having duplicate content.

The “social” in social media

2 people having coffeeWith social media we are socializing with people.  We are not blatantly trying to sell them something.

If you want to sell people something, do it in a convoluted way so that they feel like they are socializing with you.

Subtle theme

Scam in Red Keyboard Magnifying GlassEven the theme of your posts may be expressed subtly.  I was recently a victim of credit card fraud.  I want to let people know about that but I don’t want to overdue it.

So, I made a blog post and a YouTube video about finding high quality stock photos.  It subtly linked to the blog post about credit card fraud.

YouTube

Watch the YouTube video I mentioned above.  Read this page.  Pay special attention to the idea of 30 videos in 30 days.

Read the post about video marketing and getting started with YouTube.

SlideShare

Click the white arrows on the SlideShare presentation below.

Properly-made SlideShare presentations are powerful.  Your organic searches can be larger than your Facebook and Twitter searches combined.  Besides that, starting at slide #4 you can have multiple links to your web pages.

LinkedIn

Read this article I wrote on LinkedIn.  It also subtly promotes credit card fraud.

Pinterest

Credit Card Fraud pinHere is the  Pinterest pin I created using that magnifying glass graphic.  See this Pinterest pin in the Pinterest website.

Note that as the months or even years go by, a Pinterest pin can become more popular.  This is opposed to Facebook or Twitter where your posts rarely get shared after the day they were first posted.

Also note that it is very important to have compelling photos.

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Impactful Facebook Posts

Human cells

human cell impactfulThe human body has tens of trillions of body cells. I once told a microbiologist that I had heard that the inside of a body cell had a infrastructure as complicated as the infrastructure of London or New York.

He replied saying that it was at least that complicated. He did not accept the fairy tale of evolution. He was a professor. People tried to get him fired because he did not believe in the fairy tale. Watch this video about the inside of a body cell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzcTgrxMzZk.

 

Facebook Marketing Tricks

9 Different Facebook Marketing Strategies

Below are nine different Facebook marketing tricks to get more engagement from your Facebook audience.

1. Create a Facebook page

♦ Below are the steps required to make a Facebook page

  1. Go to facebook.com/pages/create.
  2. Click to choose a Page category.
  3. Select a more specific category from the dropdown menu and fill out the required information.
  4. Click Get Started and follow the on-screen instructions.

♦ See a sample Facebook page.

2. Use photo albums

Facebook page postsHaving Facebook Pages posts with photos is an important Facebook marketing strategy. Photos get more engagement than:

♦ Links,
♦ Videos or
♦ Text-based updates.

Other points to remember:

♦ Self-explanatory photos seem to work best.
♦ Photo posts get 120% more engagement than the average post.
♦ Photo albums get 180% more engagement.
♦ Better off to publish a number of photos in an album rather than have them posted separately.

(Percentages came from a Wishpond data study)

3. Write shorter posts

When people are on the Internet, the want their information quickly. That would explain why self-explanatory photos work better than other types. Note these statistics:

♦ Posts under 250 characters get 60% more engagement.
♦ 66% more engagement if fewer than 80 characters.

4. Most important posts on Thursday & Friday

Facebook marketingAs you can read in the FastCompany graphic to the right, Thursday and Friday posts have more engagement than those from earlier on in the week.

5. Use emoticons

Compare Facebook posts with and without emoticons:

♦ 33% more comments,
♦ Shared 33% more often and
♦ Get “liked” 57% more often.

Go to the Secret Emoticons website and click on the symbol in the Code column. When the space turns green, it has been copied into your clipboard. After that it is simply a matter of using Cmd V to paste it into your post.

More info. on Twitter Emoticon page.

6. Ask questions if you want comments

If you feel comments would get people more involved with your company, ask questions. These should mainly be the “should”, “would”, “which” and “who” type of questions.

7. Have contests

A report showed that 35% of Facebook fans liked a page so that they could compete in contests. A caption-this-photo type of contest brought 5.5 more comments than regular posts.

Contest-related words like winner, win, entry, contest, enter and promotions were more likely to engage users.

8. Give discounts and coupons

People like coupons. Facebook fans are 42% more likely to “like” a page if it can get them a discount or a coupon.

9. Write interesting, topical posts

  1. Decide upon general topic
  2. Use Google Trends to find long-tail keyword relating to topic

 

For more information, check out the posts below

Top Five Facebook Updates and Marketing Tips: The Social …

I’ll write up my story more fully one day soon, thanks to the encouragement of my Facebook family! :). Cheers! Mari Social Media Marketing World 2015. P.S. Will I see you in California on March 25th to 27th? I sure hope so.

Read more …

How Content Marketing Can Save Your Facebook Page | SEJ

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

I don’t need to tell you how powerful images are on social media – but I’ll tell you anyway! There’s tons of data showing how crazy people go over visual content. Recent studies have shown that Facebook photo posts get …

Read more …

 


YouTube Videos, Linking to Them

Linking to YouTube videos

YouTube videosIt is simple to hyperlink from one of your YouTube videos to another.  Linking to your website is more complex and will be discussed in the related links below.

 

 

4 steps to adding your hyperlink

  1. Go to your YouTube video and click on Channel settings.
  2. Click the video manager
  3. Choose video and click edit > annotations
  4. Click Add annotation

Everything else you need to know is explained in the image below.

YouTube videos

If the above information is not enough, read another blog post about hyperlinking from a YouTube video.

Related links

Hyperlink from YouTube video to your website

All of the links below have something to do with linking from your YouTube video to your own web pages.

The Root ID website says: Adding links, or annotations, to your YouTube video will drive traffic to your website. Want more donations, newsletter sign-ups and supporter engagement for your organization?   More

This older Speed of Creativity web page is from 2012.  It says Sometimes you also want to provide additional information, like a hyperlink, for viewers of your video. In these cases, consider adding “annotations” to your YouTube video. The YouTube Help page, “Getting Started with …   More


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.
This SalesForce page is from 2013.  It says Annotations allow you to add a custom interactive layer of navigation to
your uploaded content. They work similarly to the overlay ads you
sometimes see on YouTube videos. But they enable publishers to use
creativity to place, promote, and entice viewers to click.
   More

The 522 Productions website says Annotations give producers the opportunity to create an in-video call to
action such as sharing a video with their friends. In fact, videos have
a higher chance of going viral if viewers are specifically asked to
share. Annotations also expose viewers to your other videos and even
allow them to subscribe to your content on YouTube.
  More

 

 

SlideShare presentation

 

YouTube videos

Links to YouTube blog pages

Hyperlink from a YouTube video

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

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Online Video Ad Creation


Creating a Facebook video ad

Believe it or not, a study showed that people are more apt to watch an online video if it is less than 21 seconds long.  So, I made sure that the main message came across in less than 21 seconds.

Also, read about why it pays to have amazing graphics plus important text in the first THREE seconds.

Before creating a video

Target audience

I didn’t want to waste my advertising dollars by targeting the wrong people.  I wanted to target people who are enthusiastic about photo editing software.

So, I asked Google who uses Photoshop.  They named these four occupations:

♦ Photographers,
♦ Web designers,
♦ Graphic designers and
♦ Advertisers.

So, those are the people I targeted, both in my text and on the online video ad-creation page.   I created a script targeting those people.  Using the data from above, I aimed at writing for a 21 second video.  So, I could have only 3 or 4 sentences.

 

 

 

Creating an online video ad in 29 steps

If you have trouble following these 29 steps, perhaps you should look through the YouTube video tutorial on this website.

1. online videoMy first step after the steps above was to make an audio recording of the script.  (My script is represented by the italics text in the above section.)

2. Saved the audio recording as an MP3 file and dragged it onto a new ScreenFlow screen.

3. How to Make a Facebook Video Ad PinSplit the audio recording into the appropriate segments.  (See the green wave forms.) I arranged them in the proper order on the ScreenFlow timeline.

4. Using full screen mode, recorded the tiny segments of video that I wanted to be part of the video ad.

5. Added those segments of video above the corresponding audio segment.  (Note that the audio segments should have spaces between them and the video segments should never have spaces between them.)

6. For each video clip, clicked on the gear icon in the lower left-hand corner.  Clicked on show clip inspector and dragged the right-hand end of the clip so that it was a bit beyond the audio clip.  (See the above screen shot.)

7. After this had been done for all clips, clicked on file > duplicate.

8. Deleted all clips except for one video clip.

9. Changed that single clip into an MP4 file.

10. Repeated that pattern for each video snippet.

11. Dragged each MP4 file from my desktop to a Keynote slide.online video

12. Typed matching text from my script below or beside the MP4 file and also created the CTA (call to action) text for the end.  Gave a Bitly address for the blog post promoting PhotoEditorX.

13. After all slides were finished, turned a screen recording program  (ScreenFlow) on and clicked the Keynote play button.

14.  Played the entire slide show several times until satisfied with the timing, etc.

15. Saved my new ScreenFlow video with a descriptive name.

16. Detached the audio and then deleted parts of video that would not use.

17. Changed the aspect ratio to 1280 x 720 pixels.

18. Centred my video properly on the screen and saved again.

19. Copied the video into clipboard (Cmd  C).

20. Went into the ScreenFlow production that has all of the audio.

21. Deleted the video from that production.

22. Pasted the video from my clipboard.

23. Found the end of the section that matches my first audio clip.

24. Split the clip to isolate it.

25. Clicked on the clip inspector icon on the lower left-hand corner.

26. Changed the length of the video clip to align with the beginning of the second audio clip.online video

27. Using the same procedure, aligned each video segment with the proper audio clip.

28. After checking the video over several times I saved it and then exported it to the desktop as an MP4 file.

29.  Going into my Facebook timeline, clicked on Ads Manager > Green create ad button > Send people to your website.  Then created the online video ad.  (If making a Facebook video ad is not intuitive enough at this point, click the help button in the upper right-hand corner.)

 

 


Facebook Video Ads

More places than ever to play Facebook video ads

Talking about Facebook video ads, the LA Times website says

Facebook Inc. is delving even more deeply into the advertising world by giving brands greater access to play their video ads on its collection of third-party mobile apps and sites.

The social media giant said this week that marketers who want to drive “brand awareness and recall” can now use Facebook’s Audience Network to increase their video views. Previously, brand-objective campaigns — that is, ads that promote a brand rather than a specific product or promotion — were limited to Facebook’s News Feed.  Read more.

10 creative ways to use Facebook video

The Jon Loomer website says

Facebook videos are shared 157% as often as YouTube videos. This presents a huge opportunity for your business to boost its engagement and grab the attention of your fans.

That is why in this post we are going to take a look at 10 creative ways you can use Facebook video to boost your overall engagement and leadsRead more.

People watching Facebook video ads with no volume

The TubeFilter website says

A report in Digiday surmises that 85% of Facebook video views today take place without the volume turned on. (Facebook videos autoplay silently within users news feeds, and the company counts a view as just three seconds of watch time.) 

Accordingly, a new breed of video has proliferated across Facebook: text-heavy and visually arresting clips that grabs users’ attention within those ever-crucial first three seconds.  Read more.

Click here to learn more.

Using an MP4 file as a Facebook video

Facebook videoI made a YouTube video and wanted to insert it into Facebook.  I realized that it is simpler to insert it into the Facebook page if I did so as an MP4 file.

After I saved the video in ScreenFlow, I clicked on File > Export.  This automatically saved it to my desktop as an MP4 file.

Uploading the MP4 file

To insert your Facebook video, click on the Add Photos/Video button at the top of your Facebook page.  Find your MP4 file and upload it.

Comment about it so that people will want to watch it.

That’s all there is to inserting an MP4 file as a Facebook video.  It is really quite simple.

MP4 video within a video

The video

Here is that Facebook video as it appeared in YouTube.

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Facebook Smileys to Show Emotional Tone

Pictures of Facebook smileys

facebook smileysMy wife uses 🙂 and 🙁 for Facebook smileys.  I want to surprise her and show her a website where she can find all sorts of pictures of smiley faces and other emoticons.

BTW, “emoticon” stands for “emotion icon”.  It is meant to convey the writer’s feelings or intended tone.  It is meant to help prevent misinterpretation of what was really going on in the writer’s head.

Your list of emoticons for Facebook

I found a list of emoticons online entitled List of Emoticons for Facebook. After you get to that web page, there are two classes of emoticons and Facebook thumbs upemojis.

  1. The ones where you key in a few keystrokes.  For instance, if you key in (y), you will get a Facebook like button.
  2. Heart eyes smileyFor others you have to go to the Emoticon website and hover over the tiny icon below an emoticon you like.  Press Cmd C to copy it into your clipboard and paste it (Cmd V) into your Facebook message.  When you click the post button, the emoji will show up.

Don’t overdo your emoticons

facebook smileys

Don’t overdo those emoticons.  If you do, they will confuse the reader and be rendered useless.

I’d say have a maximum of 2 on any one post.One Two Hashtags

 

Facebook dislike button?

The Pocket-lint website says

Mad smileyYou can use these emoji-like characters to express a range of emotions, including sadness and anger, meaning they can be considered an alternative to a Dislike button, a feature that many Facebook users have requested from the social networkRead more.

The Bible in emoji

Bible emoji tweet

The Digital Spy website says

Saint emoji if The Good Book was getting too much to read in your everyday language, you can now read through the text with the assistance of emojis. Read more.

You can get the Bible in emoji for iPad or iPhone for $2.95.

Ellen talks about emoticons

 

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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Online Advertising with Facebook

Marketing Strategies

This blog post describes the online advertising strategies I was using as I created the Facebook video ad.  You should watch the 30-second video production before you read the rest of this post.

 

Online Advertising Black and white photo laser etched onto granite pet memorial

Purpose of the video production:  To tell people that we can create a granite pet memorial with a permanent black and white photo of their dog.  It would have a quality as good as any black and white photo.

One main message For a video production this short, you should have one main message and have everything somehow relate to that message.

 

Click-to-call buttons in online advertising

Here’s something that my not be in your online advertising arsenal: The Business 2 Community website says

80% of Facebook’s ad revenue is mobile. It’s anticipated Facebook’s social ads will drive more than 12 billion calls to U.S. businesses. If those stats don’t entirely convince you to jump on the bandwagon, here are four more reasons why your campaign should include Facebook ads with call buttons.  Read more.

 

Facebook advertising tips

The Wix.com blog says

With more than a billion people logging into Facebook every single day, there’s no shortage of opportunities to use the channel to drive traffic to your business or website. From the free to big-budget backed, we listed our favorite tips to get the most out of your Facebook advertising.  Read more.

How the Facebook News Feed Works

The Social Media Examiner website says

Are you struggling to remain visible in Facebook’s news feed?  Wondering how Facebook decides what to show in the news feed?  In this article you’ll discover how the Facebook news feed algorithm works.   Read more

Target audience  Online Advertising Target with no arrow

The principle to remember is that if you try to aim at everyone, you will end up aiming at no one.  You should select a specific target audience. Everything in the video (music, pictures, spoken words, etc.) will aim at that audience.

  • Facebook has some excellent tools for aiming at a target audience.
  • I am trying to sell granite pet memorials.
    • So, with Facebook I can target at people who are very interested in dogs.
    • The pet memorials cost over $100.  So, I wanted people who could afford that.  To try and make that happen, I chose an audience between 25 and 64 years old with a college degree.
    • Because of the limitations of Facebook, I actually had two target audiences:
      • People whose dogs had recently died and laser etching photo onto granite pet memorial
      • People who will eventually want a granite pet memorial.  To aim at this latter group, I had to include elements that would help people remember the website address — LaserPhoto.ca.  Including the video machine in action would help them to remember the word Laser.  Emphasizing the high-quality photo would help them remember the word Photo.

photo laser etched into granite pet memorialWho are you?  People must know who we are so that they will be confident enough to buy.  The very first shot told what we do.  Also, the laser machine in action helped.  Also, including a high-quality website that happens to have lots of testimonials helps.   Also, there was more than one example of a granite pet memorial in a garden.

photo laser etched into granite pet memorialCall to action  There has to be a call to action.  My video production had two calls to action:

  • Go to the website for more information and
  • Purchase a memorial.  Note that the “For more information…” box was deleted for the very end of the video.  Because it is a Wistia video, the website domain name will remain as long as the web page is open.

Length of video production A good principle to follow is this:  People are more likely to watch a complete video if it is short.  So, say enough to say what you need to say and say no more.  My goal was to do that in 30 seconds.

Actual video production  For a complete tutorial on how to make videos including YouTube videos and videos like this one, go to the YouTube tutorial.

Video supplemented by

Various social media supplement the paid video advertising.  To see examples, go to blog, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

 

 

SlideShare production of this page

 

Learn how to make SlideShare presentations like the one above.  Notice the online advertising link in the last slide.

 


 

Shortener for Those Long URLs

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

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