“I watched your video before contacting you. It helped me know I needed your services.” Recently I have been happy to hear those phrases from two separate people who found me via the internet. We’ve known for several years that video is the medium a lot of people prefer, yet many of us have been reluctant to embrace video marketing.
Not me! I’ve been collaborating with the fine folks at Mainstream Video Marketing and have been delighted with the results we have achieved. Their awesome team includes Founder Beth Klepper, Freelance Videographer and Owner of Staccato Productions Erica Jaffe, Director of Operations at Mainstream Video Production Caylyn Hood, and Mainstream’s Student Intern Varuna Moore.
Just last week, we finalized my 10-part video series – 10 Ways to Stand Out on LinkedIn. Yay!
You can find it (and my earlier videos) on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2s7fzNl0OaGg1jB4lmse1g/videos
Recommendations for Creating Successful Videos
- Work with a video marketing professional to create the “story boards” for your video. Allow time to let the ideas gel into a logical structure and flow.
- Decide what type of video makes the most sense for you – should you be interviewed or speak directly to the camera? Or would it be better to approach it as a “behind the scenes” view of what you do? Or maybe it should be testimonials from your clients? The options are almost without limit.
- While you are scoping out each video, put together some ideas for the “B roll,” the visuals interspersed between the parts when you’re communicating directly with your audience. For example, if you’re a party planner, some of your B roll might be people having fun at a party.
- Write out the script for each video, and if possible, have a teleprompter to guide you – this can be a piece of equipment provided by your video team or someone holding up cue cards. Or, simply memorize the script.
- For promo videos, keep the length under a minute. Even 30 seconds can be effective.
- For tutorial videos, you can take two to three minutes, sometimes even longer.
- Dress appropriately for the type of video you’re making. Follow the guidance of your producer – that’s part of why you hired her.
- When speaking, remember to pause on a regular basis. This makes it easier for the “ums” and other filler sounds to be edited out later.
- When your video is complete, be sure to watch it several times to be sure everything came out the way you intended. Sometimes you need to reshoot something, or make some changes to the voice-over behind that B roll. And sometimes you need to reshoot the whole thing.
- Work with the professionals you hired to give your video a catchy name and write the short description for YouTube. Remember to include key words so you come up in searches for whatever your video is about.
How About You?
Have you ever created a video to help market your company? What was the process like for both creating and promoting it (or them)? What tips do you have for the business owner just starting to experiment with video marketing?
About Joyce
Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 50 and up, to become more effective using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.
She provides social media tutoring and training to business owners, business development professionals, authors, speakers, coaches, business consultants, job seekers and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.
Joyce – I hope you will give this at a future TLI or D26 Toastmasters Conference. Wonderful tips that we will be sure to integrate into our burgeoning YouTube for Toast of Inverness. What I would really love to know is how to produce a single video to put on the front page of a club (or district!) website and Facebook page that illustrates the club’s unique culture. Your story of how people contacted you after seeing your video is motivating.
Personally, I created five DVDs with Healthy Learning for the American Camp Association on the topics of Cultural Competency, camp staff gossip and preventing relational aggression. What I learned is: 1) Giving a presentation to only the camera man while sitting is challenging to keep interesting; 2) Integrating slides into the presentation is crucial, especially for 1+ hours; 3) The editing process takes longer than the filming; and 4) Going back and forth with the production company and staring at myself for hours eliminated any discomfort I felt about being recorded.
I like the suggestion to have a B-roll! We used still photos but video tells an even better story. It is a video, after all!
It’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone and iMovie on an iPad when you’re on a budget. But nothing replaces having a professional designing, directing and editing your video. It’s not as much about the equipment as the expertise.
Gretchen – thanks for encouraging me present this information at a future TLI or D26 Toastmasters Conference. So glad you found the tips to be helpful. There are many ways to incorporate video into a website – both more professionally produced videos, ones taken by a member on their equipment, and even the new Facebook live option doing a simple video from a smartphone can all serve a purpose. That was interesting to hear about what you learned from your experience with your DVDs. Having a professional do the B-roll and the editing was totally worth the money in my opinion. But then I had budgeted for this and so had the funds available.