Tag Archives: video production

A little encouragement today for a business we shot a short video on last summer. It’s called SpotHero and I was recently excited to see they started posting some how-to / marketing videos on YouTube.

We shot a pilot episode of a TV show highlighting Chicago startups, and SpotHero had a short segment.

ABOUT THEM

If you’re looking for parking options and the ability to reserve a spot and pay online, this is the site for you.  Right now they handle Chicago, Milwaukee and Washington, DC.

The service is AWESOME! I’ve used it a couple of times in the last month and have been very impressed. It’s easy to use and it saved me money… which I always like.

SPOTHERO TV

Anyway, on to their videos. They posted of pair of them last month. Clearly produced in-house, but I like them.

They’re simple and to-the-point. Sure they could use some professional polish, but they’re fun, upbeat and communicate clearly.

I hope they continue to make more.

–Tony Gnau

A fun HR video is a great way to boost employee morale, and I recently came across some good examples. Dillanos Coffee Roasters was recently featured on Chris Locurto’s blog and the EntreLeadership podcast. The company produces a bunch of videos, but its YouTube channel is mostly devoted to making the company’s employees laugh. 

What a great idea for HR departments everywhere.

I’m not going to build-up the videos into something they’re not. The production quality leaves a lot to be desired, but that’s what you get producing things in-house without professional help. Here’s the thing though…

Who cares?

The videos aren’t meant for me or you. They’re meant for the men and women who work there. I didn’t really get any laughs out of the videos I watched, but I’m sure the people who work at Dillanos love them.

IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE

Company leaders are following the first “rule” of video production. Always keep the focus on your audience. They’ve created a culture of fun around Dillanos, and these videos are a flection of it.

When you think about it from that perspective, these videos are winning productions.

–Tony Gnau

Photo: dillanos.com

Chances are you and/or your clients are using email marketing to target prospects, and hopefully some sort of video is being integrated into those newsletters. If so, here’s a simple tip. Be honest about the length of your marketing videos.

I recently received an email campaign and was told to watch a short video. No surprise I clicked on it to watch, but what I got shocked me.

The video was nearly 8-minutes long.

VIDEO TIMES VARY

Okay, I have blogged here over and over again about video times. One of the first questions I get from clients is how long should the video run? Every situation, every audience is unique and you need to base that video on those factors.

Here’s the thing though… don’t promise me in an email or newsletter that the video is short if it isn’t. 1-minute… that’s a short video. Nearly 8-minutes is an eternity for an online video.

Posting a video that’s too long is a shame because it won’t get watched by a large audience. Misleading people about its length is worse because you prove to them you can’t be trusted.

–Tony Gnau

Wrapping up our look at website content this week with a nod to one of my favorite things… the video marketing series.

The idea is simple. Instead of taking a bunch of content and jamming it together into a single video, you break it up into separate videos and make it a series.

GOOD FOR A FEW REASONS

First, producing a series of short videos on various topics puts your audience in control. They can choose to watch the videos that interest them and not sit through information during a longer video that isn’t relevant to their lives.

Second, viewers are more likely to watch a short video than a longer one. If someone sees your video is 5-minutes long, they’ll probably pass. On the other hand, offer them five, 1-minute videos and they’ll start watching.

Finally, a video series is highly sharable. The shorter length works well with e-mail campaigns and social media posts. Even better, you can roll them out over time. Producing one big video means a one-time social blitz. Producing a series means you can release one a week, a month, whenever. It’s fresh content on a regular basis.

There aren’t any hard rules when you produce a series. It can literally be on anything. Produce individual videos on products or services you offer, maybe you highlight different facilities… heck… you could do a series of videos on your office Olympics.

T60 VIDEO SERIES FEATURES CASE STUDIES

When I started the planning process for the new T60 website, one of the first things I developed was a video series. It features some of our clients as case studies, and all we did was ask them a couple of questions.

Why is video a part of your marketing strategy and how are you using it?

The idea was simple. Our clients are pretty amazing. We’re consistently impressed with the ways they use video, so wouldn’t it be great if they could share some ideas with our audience?

We get quality content and they get some publicity.

It’s going to be an ongoing series. While we currently have three clients featured on the website, we plan on adding more as the year progresses.

Fresh video content… all year-long.

–Tony Gnau

We’re using the new T60 website this week to highlight some ways businesses can use video content to create terrific user experiences for clients and prospects.

Yesterday, I blogged about the importance of the About Us video. Today, it’s another staple that businesses should consider… marketing testimonials.

BRAGGING WITHOUT BRAGGING

This is a great way to brag about yourself without bragging about yourself because your clients do it for you. It’s not you telling the world how great you are, you’re allowing real people who have used your product or service to testify on your behalf. 

We live in a world of reviews. Before making a purchase, one of the things we do is seek them out. You have an opportunity to provide positive reviews through testimonials.

Sure, you could post text quotes. We’ve done that for clients we haven’t been able to get on-camera… yet.

Gini Dietrich has already agreed to go on-camera next time we get together for a Spin Sucks shoot, right Gini? Next time we’re shooting in SoCal, I’ll tie down Jeremy Hogue for an interview at the new Sovereign Healthcare offices. The reason why…

VIDEO IS BETTER THAN TEXT

It’s one thing to read what someone has said, it’s something else to hear it coming from the directly. It adds weight. That person took time out of their busy schedule to shoot an interview and give an endorsement. That says a lot.

It does require some initiative. You have to be comfortable asking your clients to do it. If you work with someone who’s really excited about what you’ve done for them, they’re the one to ask for a testimonial. Then it’s just a matter of hiring a professional storyteller to put it together in a way that will appeal to an audience.

What does your client get out it? Well, you could sweeten the offer by doing another video featuring them… but I’ll save that for tomorrow’s post.

–Tony Gnau

Well… if all is working properly, you’re reading this at our new blog location on the new T60 website. I blogged yesterday about detailing some of the ways we’re using our video content, so today I’d like to focus on the site’s two most prominent videos.

The first one you’ll find on the Home page and it’s a video that will change from week to week. I’ve always believed the work we do for clients is our best sales tool. It was tempting to put our “About T60” video front and center, but I rather give people a taste of what we do for our clients first. It also doesn’t hurt that rotating the video every week freshens the page for both web surfers and Google rankings alike.

GOOD TIP FOR BUSINESSES

This is a great tip for other businesses. The more video content you create, the more flexibility you have in doing things like this. Maybe you have a series of testimonials from clients… rotate those on your home page. Maybe your videos feature different products or services you offer… rotate those. Keep rotating your videos to provide people with a unique experience each time they visit. And did I mention Google likes it too?

ANOTHER GOOD TIP

The other most prominent video on the site is the About T60 video and you’ll find it… duh… on the About page. Quite simply, this is the video every business should have on its website. It tells people who you are and what you’re all about. If you watch ours, I don’t think there’s any doubt what we emphasize at T60.

Look… if you have an About page that’s all text, people may or may not read about the business. If you post a short video, there’s a strong possibility they’ll watch. That means you have an opportunity to talk with prospects and create a good first impression before ever meeting with them. That’s hard to do with just text on a page.

Tomorrow I’ll touch on another terrific video tool for your website toolbox… the testimonial.

–Tony Gnau

Well… this is the week. I’ve been wanting to update T60’s website for a couple of years, and I believe today might be the day it goes live.

I typically try to avoid tooting our own horn here on the blog, but in this case I think there’s something to learn from what we’re doing.

Assuming the launch goes well today, I’ll spend the rest of the week blogging about some of the things we did at the website. Basically, I put our money where our mouth has been the last 5oo blog posts.

A solid About Us video… we have one. A video series featuring our clients… there’s one of those as well. Just a couple of examples of things I’ve been blogging about that we have now incorporated into our own marketing strategy.

I’ll have more on those and other things we’ve done to make our website a rich viewing experience for our clients and prospects, so please join us here the rest of the week.

–Tony Gnau

T60’s last newsletter… summer of 2012. Ugg.

Okay… this week we’ve been celebrating our 500th blog post with a look back, a look forward and today I’m focusing on how we plan to improve upon our content marketing strategy.

It’s nice to share

The biggest thing I hope to do is reach out to other bloggers and content creators to share across platforms. I’d love to provide them with content, and I’d enjoy sharing some of theirs. Along those lines, I’m proud to report Gini Dietrich has asked me to write an article for Spin Sucks Pro… thinking I might do a bit more than that. Look out Gini.

come on Tony, get ‘er done

I’d also like to give our newsletters some more attention. You’d think a guy who has churned out 500 blog posts in three and a half years could manage one newsletter a month. I don’t know what my mental block is there, but I’m working on it.

That’s about it. Very proud of the blogging milestone, but it’s onward an upward.

Suggestions?

How about you… any suggestions for me? What sort of video marketing content are you craving that we might be able to help satisfy?

–Tony Gnau

Okay… yesterday we celebrated our 500th blog post and promised some insight into our content marketing strategy moving forward.

We’re happy with the blogging… I mean, 500 posts… that’s a lot of content! Thing is… we need to do better and in one specific way.

Basically, it comes down to walking the walk.

For the last few years, I’ve been blogging a lot about how video can help PR and marketing strategies. While we post our fair share of videos, they typically feature the work we’ve done for clients. We’re still going to do that, but we’re also going to produce more original content of our own.

We dipped our toes into this last year with our video series, “How Video Helps Us.” Each one featured a T60 client talking a little bit about why and how they’re using video… their video strategy. When we produced it, we basically blocked a week and went out to shoot all three in the series. Moving forward, we’re going to talk with clients about including them in the series during the process of producing their video.

I’ve never been hesitant about asking. It just always seems to slip my mind. Not anymore though, I’m going to make it a priority.

Once we start producing those videos, we’ll roll them out using the blog, our social networks and probably through email campaigns.

It’s a great way to show-off our clients and provide viewers with some fresh perspectives on how they can use video.

–Tony Gnau

Well, this is it. Blog post #500. We started blogging in October 2009. No need to do the math, it’s just under three-and-a-half years. It started slowly at first, but for the most part I’ve been blogging four days a week during most of that stretch.

Yesterday, I promised some insights on what I’ve learned about content marketing during that time. Today, I’ll focus on my motivation for starting and how it has changed.

Most people get  into content marketing with a similar mindset. We’ll provide helpful content, over time people will get to know and trust us and that process will eventually lead to added business.

T60’s Motivation for blogging

Yeah… that wasn’t me. While I knew all that going in, none of that really factored into my motivation. For me, it was all about SEO.

Three years ago, I looked at the T60 website and knew it needed a change. I had built it myself, and while I think it looked fine, it needed a professional’s touch and above all else it needed a lot of SEO help.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the cash to upgrade, but once I had enough to move forward I wanted to be ready.

Knowing that the number of pages at a site and frequency of updates factors in to SEO, I thought I’d start writing a blog. I’ve always been a writer, so why not?

Here I am 500 posts later, and the new T60 site is a week or two from going live. We’ll roll the blog into it, so I’m hoping all the hard work will pay off.

Who’s going to read this?

What’s interesting though is the blog has provided me with so much more.

One of the main reasons I wasn’t really into the typical motivation behind content media is that I honestly didn’t know how much interest there would be in my subject matter. Who the heck is going to read a daily blog on video production!?

Well, the simple answer to that is at least 275 people. That’s the current number of followers we have. Not a huge number by any means, but it’s more than I thought we’d have. We don’t get a ton of comments, but we do get a fair share of “likes” everyday. That’s a nice feeling, but it’s only part of our new motivation.

Now… it’s about ‘cred.  Being a consistent blogger has given me/T60 added credibility, and it’s starting to pay-off. I know that’s a big reason why a lot of people get into content marketing, but it has slowly grown on me and I’m here to say it works… only I’ve found it in a different way.

clients love it

I don’t know how much online ‘cred I have, but T60’s clients always seem impressed by the blog. Over the 500 posts, I’ve blogged about a lot of FAQs we get from prospects, so one of the things we now do is occasionally work the blog into our proposals.

For example, if a prospect asks me a question about storytelling, I follow it up with a proposal that includes links to blog posts on that subject… and they eat it up! Not only do they appreciate the actual information, they’re impressed by my commitment to blogging.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you… content marketing works. It isn’t a quick strategy. I’m three-and-a-half years in and it’s just now starting to pay-off, but I’m glad I got into it.

–Tony Gnau