Is she awesome or what!?  PR pro… blogging maestro… and easily wooed by a latte. Gini and I have been e-friends for a short while, and we finally managed to get together for coffee this week. A few days later, she honors me with a #FollowFriday on spinsucks.com. Totally cool!

For those of you joining us here for the first time… welcome. Friday’s are typically my day off from blogging, but there’s usually something new every Monday through Thursday.

Speaking of lattes, I actually just saw a Starbucks video I’m going to blog about on Monday, so please come back for that! In the meantime, feel free to look back at our previous posts.

Anyway, thanks for coming… hope to hear from you in the future… please feel free to share your Gini Dietrich stories. :-)

–Tony Gnau

Here we go. It’s August 2011, but the presidential campaigning for November 2012 is already here.

Wait! Don’t go away. This post doesn’t have anything to do with politics. Instead, it has everything to do with promoting you and your business.

Subscribe to any of the candidates’ YouTube channels, and you’re going to start getting their videos on a regular basis. They put a lot of time and effort into creating videos they think will appeal to you, and there’s a good reason they produce so many.

The more video you watch, the more you feel like you know them. The more you feel like you know them, the more likely you’ll be to vote for them.

Same thing applies to businesses. That’s why I encourage clients to produce a series of short videos released over a given period of time instead of one long video. We’re trying to capture that same feeling with audiences that politicians covet.

Want to see how it’s done? Check out this Mitt Romney video. It’s not an attack ad or a long internet video. It’s a short look at Romney, and I’m sure one of many to come… from the GOP… as well as the President.

–Tony Gnau

It sounds strange, but the more video content you produce, the more money you can save in the long run.

That’s because you start to build a raw video library. In many cases, the more raw video you accumulate, the less you need to shoot. The less you need to shoot, the lower your production cost.

For example, Lincoln Park Zoo is one of our regular clients, and we’ve shot a lot of video there. When zoo leaders decided they wanted to have a year-in-review video produced for their annual meeting, they asked us if we could use existing video and some photos they’d provide to create something?

No problem. Not having to go to the zoo to shoot all sorts of new video saved them big bucks, and they still got a great video. I was at the meeting and it received a huge round of applause.

Not to mention they then had a video they could share in an email campaign and via their social media.

The more video you produce, the less expensive it can get.

–Tony Gnau

VIDEO: Lincoln Park Zoo Year-In-Review

We’re embarking on something new today… T60 is editing its first 30-second television commercial for a client. The experience has been an education.

We thought it was simply going to be like creating a 30-second web video, but it definitely is not the same. No big road blocks to report. The spot is shaping up nicely. There’s just a different mentality to producing a commercial and it has me watching them in a whole new way.

It’s still storytelling, but it’s high-octane storytelling.

We have a new respect for production companies specializing in TV commercials.

–Tony Gnau

I’m a big Pete Carroll fan, as a coach and as a motivator. I’ve been fortunate to have met him and you can’t help but walk away from the experience feeling good.

He’s a forward thinking guy, so it should come as no surprise he’s onboard the social media train and that includes using video. It’s a big part of his Win Forever series, and I love what his team did with this “About Us” video.

If you’ve read this blog before, you know I’m big on keeping web videos short. The Win Forever video isn’t short. It’s over 7-minutes long… pushing 8-minutes.

The reason why it works is thanks to a smart little trick. They break it into two segments. The first 1:20 is a basic introduction video. If you stop watching at that point, you at least got their core message. If you continue watching the next 6:00+, you get an extended look at the program.

Doing this satisfies the casual viewer, as well as the person who’s especially interested.

Great idea! How great? Don’t be surprised if you see some future T60 videos done this way.

–Tony Gnau

Yesterday, I blogged about moving beyond the “About Us” video. Today, it’s one way to do it.

The first thing companies need to do is change their mindset. Focus your company videos on the audience, not your company. The idea is to address issues facing potential clients, as opposed to simply tooting your own horn.

Lead the conversation and turn your company into the experts. Do it on a regular basis and the benefits will follow.

Once a week, once a month, once a quarter… whatever time frame you choose stick with and keep it up. One of the best parts of video is the more people see, the more credible you become.

People turn to experts to help solve their problems, so be a leader… be that expert.

–Tony Gnau

I attended an interesting PRSA Chicago luncheon yesterday. Author John Leavy talked about some of the ideas behind his book Outcome-Based Marketing, and a lot of what he touched on really got me thinking.

I know I’ve written before about businesses pushing their video boundaries. Going beyond the “About Us” video and producing videos that will really appeal to clients, but now I’m more convinced than ever.

If you’re a business leader, act like one. Lead the conversation. Use well-produced videos to tell stories about the issues facing your industry.

Don’t worry so much about promoting yourself. Your expertise will speak for itself. When people view you as an expert in your field, their business will follow.

Any good examples out there?

–Tony Gnau

Posting video on YouTube isn’t enough. Facebook, Twitter… all social media need to be in play. Businesses have to share their videos using these tools if they really want some benefit in the end.

There’s even new research to prove it. ReelSEO reports that videos shared through social media outperform those that don’t. One of the key reasons is allowing others to share your videos gives them more credibility.

People trust their friends. If someone you know posts a video, you’re more likely to watch it than if a business sends you the link.

Getting your videos out into the social web could turn a fun marketing project into a profitable investment.

–Tony Gnau

While the social media world is all a-buzz about Google+, I’ve been focused on something else… Netflix.

The DVD and streaming video giant changed its subscription structure and raised prices, outraging many loyal customers. I wasn’t exactly outraged, but it did cause me to start looking at alternative services and it really got me thinking about corporate video.

The rise of online streaming services means yet another way to deliver video into people’s homes. Only now you can bypass computers and send it straight to their televisions.

AppleTV, Roku, Playstation, many Blu-Ray players… these are all devices incorporating online video streaming capabilities and allowing people to received countless “channels” featuring tons of videos, movies, and TV shows.

While the world wonders about business applications for Google+, they’re easy to see in this area. People following a company through social media may soon find those feeds delivering videos to their TVs. There’s already a Facebook channel on my Roku player where I can watch video. Vimeo has a channel as well. Sooner or later someone’s going to develop software to consolidate channels into a single feed making them even easier to browse.

Yet another way for a company to deliver its message.

–Tony Gnau

Earlier this week I blogged about a recent video Hyatt posted on Facebook. The theme of the post was about how Hyatt understands the power of social media video content, but I also mentioned that I would have done some things differently.

I didn’t get into what I would have done differently, but since then I’ve received a few questions about that so I thought I’d dive-in now.

FINDING THE VIDEO: to see the Hyatt video, visit their Facebook page, scroll down the Wall a bit and look for the video entitled, “Hyatt Thrive.”

First and foremost, I’m not here to rip other video producers. I mentioned in the previous post that the video is a solid effort. Most of the things I would have done differently revolve around style, so I’m not even going to get into those. Every producer has their own artistic style, and as far as I’m concerned it’s not a subject up for criticism.

My main complaint with the video is its length… 4-minutes. It’s way too long. I’m a big believer that if you’re producing something for social media, it better be short and sweet… 2-minutes or less for sure. In this particular case, I would have recommended to my client to aim for 1-minute, maybe 1-minute 30-seconds.

Web video is all about attention spans, which aren’t very long. Especially when the audience has the ability to simply point-and-click to leave. That’s something clients need to know going in to the project. It’s a delicate balance. Finding a way to provide information in an effient and entertaining way.

Now, it’s entirely possible the video was produced for a different purpose, and then shared on the web as well. If that’s the case, then no big deal. We produce videos meant for captive corporate audiences all the time that are then also shared via social media. Might as well, right?

However, if your main intent is to produce something for the web, especially your social media, keep it short and to the point.

–Tony Gnau