Keep the “Content King” on his “Throne”

The Iranian-American psychologist Albert Mehrabian said, “words account for only 7% of whether a communicator is likeable and the rest is determined by tone of voice, intonation, and body language” – all of which is experienced by watching a video.

Videos convey messages in a powerful way. We know that, you know that – but we tend to think we don’t have the competence, time or the resources.

Attempting something new can be a scary process. No matter how confident we are, most of us have a certain amount of nervousness when doing something we have never done before. Recording, editing and publishing a company video is no exception. You are not only trying to create by using a medium that is totally new to you, but you are even potentially going to share the result with everyone!

If you are anything like us when you first have an idea and want to bring it to life – you want it to happen “yesterday”. You want to know all about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do and the best way of doing it – to get an amazing result.

The “you-can-buy-new-technical-gear”card was too tempting!

In my wife’s attempt to convince me that we should make a video, Leah pulled out the «you can buy new technical gear card» and it worked!

But I do feel the need to defend my reluctance. My desire to create videos was there but felt I didn’t have the time or expertise to produce videos our customers deserve. The video process needed to be two-folded. Create videos for our own website but do it in a way that could encourage our customers to create and publish videos on their own digital platforms. So we needed to do some research about which equipment was the most economical with the best result, the do’s and don’ts of producing a video, etc. Our goal was to create a great videos using as little money and time as possible – by researching and preparing well.

For our first video we wanted to see how far we could get using an iPhone 10x as our camera. We found a good deal online for a tripod, extra lighting and a microphone set. We are lovers of online shopping but in this case, we went online to Japan Photo and just created a pick up list. We were so glad we didn’t buy all of it online! Because when we went to the store to pick it up, and talked to a video expert, we realized this wasn’t what we needed, and they helped us choose better, more economical equipment. It made the whole process so much easier when we could discuss with them what we needed and physically see the products.

I then wrote a manuscript for the first video – The Packaging Workshop. We set up all the equipment and staged the area where we wanted to record. We had to change the lighting, the level of the camera and the best place to stand, several times before we felt it looked right.

Leah’s job was to just to pay attention to what I was doing while recording and give me feedback.

Feedback I found both annoying and helpful.

“Smile more Oscar» «It looks strange when you tilt your head like that” “Relax more Oscar” “Your gestures look like you are attacking the camera”.

Why could I stand and talk in front of a large audience and usually be confident and relaxed, but be so intimidated by a little camera? Being used to Skype meetings, I thought this was going to be a breeze but quickly realized that this is totally different and new , and would take a while before I could relax and get used to talking to a camera.

These were definitely not our finest hours as a couple, but video-making was new to both of us. After several hours, we were happy with the result – and still friends:)

Editing. We didn’t want to pay someone to edit this video or any future ones, so we googled to find editing possibilities we could do ourselves. We found Adobe Premiere Pro CC and there were many good reviews about this product, so we bought it. It isn’t expensive, but the learning process can be somewhat heavy. I have some technical and editing knowledge, so that came in handy. We used several hours, editing, adding music, color, subtitles, etc. and in the end, we were happy with the result and published it on our website.

The importance of Facebook groups

After publishing we posted a copy of it into the Facebook groups Impact Elite hosted by Impact Inbound in Hartford and CMA hosted by the Content Marketing Academy in Scotland , just to see if we could get some feedback. That was the smartest thing we ever did and what we should have done in the first place! We are truly grateful that so many took the time to give us so much useful feedback.

This is some of the feedback we got: Using YouTube means getting a lot of strange videos recommended at the end of the viewing, so it could be wise to think about using another platform. The English pages linked to the video needed to be finished. Some felt 3 minutes was too long. One said the lighting in the ceiling that changed colors was disturbing. Others felt that maybe the setting was a little too personal. Col Gray (Pixelsink.com) gave us the advice to have a teaser first and then a cooler logo reveal.

After all this feedback we understood we need to do more research, so we joined another group on Facebook that is hosted by IMPACT. It’s called Film School for Marketers. Zachary Basner is the administrator and we watched one of his videos on how to make a good video great. He had a list of 6 points:

Teaser
Logo reveal
Intro
Segments
Call to action
Outro

After watching this video, we were convinced we had to redo our first video and forget about all its “blood, sweat and tears”. You can read here about how we followed The Video 6 in addition to some of the feedback we got.

The advice avalanche

In looking for information about creating videos, you will probably search the internet with words like, “Video creating” or “what are the most effective company videos” or “best equipment when making and editing a video” . That is a great start, and by all means, we don’t want to discourage you from doing those searches. But you need to know… the amount of answers that pop up can be quite discouraging. The advice you find is like this huge avalanche of information and you can end up not knowing where to start – or not starting at all.

Keep in mind that you want to create a video that reaches your listeners in your space – differentiating your company in your industry. You don’t want to do or say what everyone else is, you want to create something that humanizes your company and has your brand written on it. To do this, take some and not all of the advice . You know your customers in your space and you know what they are interested in. If not – then that is your starting point.

In our attempt to make this a little easier on you, we have created a list of the most important things to think about when you and your company start talking about creating a video. You can then decide on how much more “digging” you want to do, in means of details, to get your company started.

Choose 2-3 customers and create a customer profile based on what you know they primarily are interested in, need help with etc.
Pick a purpose, product or service and find stories that help you to focus on that
Make a reasonable video plan (start date, how many, how often, etc)
Find stories that will tell your story but will also engage and interest your audience
The video doesn’t need to look like a Hollywood movie but invest in research and preparation
Buy the equipment you need somewhere where you can talk to someone and see the equipment itself.
Depending on the subject – try to keep the video short. Ours started out at 3 minutes and we shortened it to 2 minutes. When it comes to a video on LinkedIn, the recommended length is about 1 minute.
Try to vary the setting.
Use graphics, pictures or animation to vary what the viewer is seeing, but when you start out keep it simple
Make the video, mobile user friendly
Try to use an outline instead of a manuskript, or preferrably just talk from your heart about the subject you have prepared
Use The Video 6 as a guideline
Get your video out there!

Bill Gates once said, “Content is King” and one of the ways we are going to keep that “King” on his “throne” is by producing more company videos in 2019!

// Oscar

KOGGER | #BTCT!