Why many users Internet choose online video works for business
Video works because it offers you a chance to show your wares to prospective
customers or clients whether you’re a plumber, a hypnotherapist, or a travel
agent. It works particularly well where there is a visual element to your business
such as video tours of your properties if you are a real estate agent. But most
businesses can find a way to use video successfully. In addition, video will
• Boost your search engine rankings if you include it on your website. Search
engines like websites with rich media content.
• Provide another way for people to find you. People search on YouTube as
well as Google.
• Enhance your brand recognition.
• Encourage people to pass on your marketing message. If your video contains
information of interest to a niche audience, bloggers writing about your
subject area can embed your videos into their posts.
• Put a human face on your business.
• Educate your market, especially if your product or service is complicated to
explain.
• Reduce the amount of time you spend on customer support and queries, by
providing all the instruction your customers need in video tutorials. Useful if
you sell software or other technical products, for example.
• Screen out the wrong type of client for your business. Sometimes, if people
don’t understand your product or service, you can waste time on a
prospective client before either of you realize that what he or she needs and
what you can offer don’t match. Video is one of the clearest ways to
articulate exactly what it is that you do.
Get up to speed with online video
How you go about creating your video content depends on how ambitious you
want to be, the production values you deem necessary, the time you have
available, your level of technical skill, and what sort of video you want to
produce. You don’t need a film school degree to get started with your own
videos. For a small investment you can buy a cheap camera and upload clips
direct to YouTube. In this section, we look at how to:
1. Decide what to produce.
2. Choose your equipment.
3. Film a studio-based interview.
4. Edit and output your video.
5. Share your video.
Decide what to produce
Whether you do it yourself or hire a video production company, the first step is
to decide exactly what sort of video you want to produce. As with any form of
social media marketing, the content you produce must be guided by what your
community of interest will find of value. This can be quite specific and niche
in fact it’s better if it is. You’re not competing with the high-end TV ads of big
brand advertising either. Often a talking head is just fine.
“the content you produce must be guided by what your
community of interest will find of value”
Lord Reith’s mission statement for the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927
to inform, educate and entertain is a good guiding principle for producing
video to support your business. You do, of course, have a fourth goal to sell
but if you think “infotainment” rather than “sales pitch,” your video will be more
engaging, more widely viewed, and more likely to be passed on.
Consider your reasons for wanting to use video. What are your goals? They
might include to generate sales, drive traffic to your website, raise brand
awareness or reduce customer support costs. Here are some options to consider:
• A welcome message on your website shows a human face behind the
business.
• Client testimonials are more engaging and convincing if presented as a
compilation of short video interviews rather than a few lines of text.
• Interviews, discussions or pieces to camera, filmed in “studio” conditions
with professional lighting present a professional image and can convey
useful information about your product, service, or topic.
• Commercials may seem obvious, but they can be the least effective option.
If you have an existing TV ad or promotional video, there’s no harm in
repurposing this for your online marketing. But TV ads rarely work well at
the tiny screen size and limited resolution available to you on most video-
sharing sites. Even though you can maximize the screen, most people don’t,
and you lose valuable detail. Better to have a single close-up of a talking
head or something that works equally well at 480 × 295 pixels.
• Infomercials are more interesting than straight video ads. If you can get
across some useful information that also mentions your product or service,
it’s much more likely to be viewed and shared.
• Product demonstrations work when your product needs explanation or
instructions and can cut down on customer support time. Do you run a
garden center? How about a video showing us how to prune the roses you
sell? You will find plenty of examples of exactly that on YouTube.
• Training videos are a softer sell, yet by providing useful information in your
area of expertise (but with the Web address of your business at the end), they
will draw people on to your site. You might also consider creating longer
tutorials or online courses to sell. Joseph Clough is a hypnosis trainer who
promotes his training and self-development titles with videos about hypnosis
at www.youtube.com/ If you have an area of
expertise, why not show us what you can do?
Choose your equipment
Most forms of online marketing are free. However, like podcasting, in order to
create video content, you will need to spend a bit of cash. The good news is that
you don’t necessarily need to spend a fortune. The minimum hardware you will
require is a video camera and a computer. You will also need some video editing
software.
Camera
You don’t need high-end professional gear. Many video podcasters use the Flip
video camera, a hand-held camera with surprisingly good quality for its size. It is
easy to use, highly portable, and great for filming ad hoc interviews when you’re
visiting clients or attending events, or for filming yourself doing a piece to
camera. It has a pop-out USB connector to plug straight into your computer and
upload your video to your YouTube account, and holds about two hours of video.
The downside is that the audio from the built-in microphone will never be as
good as a soundtrack recorded using external microphones. If you use the Flip,
be sure to be quite close to your subject to get the best possible audio from it.
comes with an external microphone jack, stores ten hours of video, and includes
face tracking software. Both can record in HD.
You can even record and upload video from some smartphones, including the
newer iPhones. This is useful for capturing current events—a growing trend as
video and audio increasingly become part of the real-time web.
For something more substantial, you don’t need a professional level video
camera or something that will produce broadcast standard video (and, if you do,
hire someone to do this for you). Go for a consumer video camera, but as high-
end as you can afford. Key things to look out for include
• The ability to attach external microphones. Don’t rely on the built-in
microphone on your camera. The end result may be too quiet, and sound abit cheap. Use an external microphone, such as a shotgun microphone that is
attached to the top of your camera. Better yet, record a separate soundtrack
using the equipment discussed in the podcasting chapter. There’s really
nothing to beat clip-on tie microphones for quality of sound. You can record
the sound direct on to your Microtrack or laptop and use this in the final edit.
If you do this, ensure you still record sound with the camera itself since this
will help you find your way around the filmed footage in the edit.
• Manual settings, such as the ability to set the “white balance” and use
manual focus.
• A camera that will record directly on to a digital hard drive, rather than on to
mini discs, so that you don’t have to waste time converting these into a
format you can use.
• A camera that can record in “high definition” isn’t essential, but as video
standards improve online, this could be useful.
Lights
If microphones are essential to the quality of your podcast, lighting is essential
for video. If you’re doing quick and informal clips, you may be able to get away
with your Flip camera and use the available light. For something more
professional, particularly for studio-based interviews and pieces to camera, you
will need some “continuous lighting.” This means studio lights that stay on all
the time, as opposed to flash lighting used in still photography. You will need a
minimum of two lights and ideally three.
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