Finally! Someone puts on a webinar I want to attend, and it's not during dinnertime. Perry Lawrence (aka "Mr. Video") will share some information on how to create a successful Web TV presence to bring you more business and ultimately increase your profits.
Time is 1pm (Eastern) on Tuesday, November 17th. It's free, but you need to sign up for a spot at:
http://webvideodesigner.com/webtv
Once you sign up you will get the connection details. It's gonna be pretty cool, I think.
I've been away from doing strictly video-related work for a little while to test out some other methods of getting visitors to web sites and getting them to take some sort of action.
Of course, with what I've been learning from other people and implementing I've also been putting my own spin on it. That means adding video to the marketing mix and using it as another piece of content.
And this is something that I've learned to emphasize more – video by itself will not generate all the visitors you're looking for. Each video needs to have a specific goal, and certain types of videos are good for certain uses.
It's a lot like article marketing.
In much the same way you can take one article, change it slightly, and use it in many places to get exposure you can take a video, change it slightly, and use it in many places. This kind of video isn't likely to sell a product for you, but it may get someone interested enough to follow and link to learn more, and you can even get links back to your web site from it that count towards your search engine rankings.
I've figured out a little trick with Google video sitemaps that I'll be sharing later on. It's kinda cool and give you more visibility when your pages appear in the SE's.
There's more to share, but I'll save it for later as I don't want this to get too long. But coming up I'll give a review on an HD webcam, solicit some ideas for changing up the video minicourse, and show some popular ways to syndicate your content.
All this will be geared towards getting more people to your web sites and I see video as one component of an overall strategy.
I first came across Silverlight when I was on the Microsoft site, I think it was in a customer service area. I had no idea what it was at the time, but I do trust Microsoft to certain extent not to install anything too harmful on my computer (after all, I already have Vista installed so what else could they do to me?).
So Silverlight has been installed on my computer for some time now, and I dutifully install the updates as they come available – even though I had no bloody idea what the heck it did.
But this webpage finally clued me in.
Silverlight is like Adobe flash – sort of. From what I understand, Silverlight was built from the ground up to specifically handle Web video properly. It turns out that most of the video that we watch, including most of the stuff from YouTube, delivered by flash technology is really just a kludge using flash for something it was never really designed for.
One of the cool things about Silverlight is that you are able to throttle the download speed of the video as you're watching it. If you have a fast Internet connection you can leave it at the max setting and you get great results. If you are on a slower connection you can throttle it back and the software will deliver good quality at a lower bit rate without causing stutters and stops.
Silverlight will also use your graphics card to handle the decoding that flash forces your processor to do. This also results in higher quality video being available.
I'm definitely not a Microsoft fan boy, but I would really like Silverlight or something like it to replace flash as a standard for delivering Web video. It's a much more elegant solution, and much better for the end user.
Normally I do not come down on other people's websites as I know how difficult it can be to get design right. But if you purport to be a Web video expert, then I would expect some attention to detail at least on the Web video part.
Now isn't this something a Web video expert would notice?
No manner of adjusting page width fixes the problem either. It's just too darn big for the spot that they put in. But that's not the only problem space-space you can see other elements on their page that overlap text in several areas.
The reason I even bother mentioning this, is that there are people who detract from the effectiveness of Web video. If they are deploying it like this, then I can see why they would have poor results from it. Instead of looking like a video that is embedded in the page, it looks more like a pop-up that you can't close and that is just annoying for anyone who visits a webpage.
Furthermore the content of the video really doesn't match the content of the post so you're left wondering what the heck this is all about anyway.
So use this as a cautionary tale. If are going to purport to be an expert at something, make sure your own houses in order before making such a proclamation.
For my sons birthday recently, we picked up a pretty cool toy that required some assembly. Turns out assembly was easy part-the hard part was figuring out how to work the excavator portion. It's a pretty ingenious mechanical interlock, but the downside is it only worked a couple of times.
Now, rather than write an e-mail to the vendor to describe the problem I'm going to send them a link to a video that shows the problem. Hopefully, this will short circuit the typical "it must be a user error" that typically starts the exchange with most customer service representatives.
I'll post back here to let everyone know how it goes.
After you have created your video the next thing to think about is what format to save it in. People will often get stuck on this because video editing software can give you a lot of choices and it's not always clear what the differences are.
But there are some rules of thumb you can use when making that choice.
First of all if you are using a high definition (HD) camera or have your project settings on HD, then you can take advantage of the letterbox (16:9) settings on the save/share part of your video software. Otherwise you should look at 4:3 settings.
A great choice for YouTube is to save it as a MOV file. This is actually an Apple standard format but it plays just fine on a PC. The nice thing about the MOV format is that it uses a compression scheme called H.264 which is the latest and greatest method for making video files small while keeping very good quality.
If you only want to place the file on your own site without going through a service like YouTube, you will want to convert it to mp4 or flv. This also requires a bit of technical expertise when you want to deploy the video, as you will also need a "player" file so that you can embed the video. JWPlayer is a popular video player that you can use for your site.
I mentioned mp4 first as it also uses H.264 standard for compression, but is a version that supports "progressive download" which most people refer to as "streaming" video. If your player does not support mp4, then flv is your next best bet.
The video quality will likely not be as good, and the file size will probably be larger, but it is currently the most widely deployed format on the web.
When a person (or family) gets ready to take a major vacation – one that involves plane travel to somewhere they haven't been before – there is a bit of trepidation about whether the reality will match the expectations set up by the travel brochures. In fact there can be enough fear there that the family will not make that kind of trip at all and instead stay closer to familiar stomping grounds.
This is where video can help build the trust factor.
Video marketing applied to resorts isn't just about getting the name of your business out there. You need to show how people enjoying themselves, receiving quality service, and having a chance to relax.
Your potential guests need to know that it's going to be worth packing up for a week, dragging the family through the terrible airport experience, and braving the travel snafu's that can happen to reach your resort.
Create a video that shows the resort, yes, but also people enjoying the resort. Have your videographer follow a family on the way to their room and get their first reaction. With an ocean resort, show the family going to the beach, enjoying the beach services, and relaxing.
Remove all the possible fear that they could have about your ocean resort. Show that the beaches are clean, you have friendly staff, well maintained rooms, and other recreational options.
In thier minds, people need to see themselves at your resort before they actually get there. You can help them do that with a well produced marketing video that both shows off your property and removes their fears.
Resorts get a lot of business through positive word-of-mouth experiences of their guests. Since Twitter is the ultimate word-of-mouth tool online, those who do the marketing for resorts would be wise to learn how to use it effectively.
This approach will have two main foci. The first will be to encourage your guests to post their experiences on twitter and the other is to sign up for a twitter account yourself (for your business) to broadcast current information about your resorts or even to publicize specials and package deals.
More people join twitter every day, so it becomes increasingly likely that your guests will be using twitter already. They can even post links to photos that they take while on vacation so not only do you get the word-of-mouth effect but some real-life photos of your guests having a good time.
By adding your own account for your business on twitter, you'll be able to keep track of what people are saying about you. Hopefully it will be mostly positive, but if somebody does have an issue with your business it gives you a chance to respond immediately and directly.
How you deal with any potentially bad experiences can give you an excellent boost in the opinion of anyone viewing the exchange.
Of course before doing all this, you'll want to make sure that your resort truly does provide great service and memorable experience (in a positive way). Otherwise word-of-mouth can go very badly.
With challenges in the economy more businesses are starting to get creative with their marketing. Many local businesses have started using online marketing methods to get the word out about their products and services, but resorts seem to be a little slower in this regard.
While many online businesses from car dealers to flower shops have started using the Internet to let the world know about their stuff, resorts still seem to stick to their marketing efforts of using flyers and word-of-mouth.
While these may still be effective, they're missing out on an entire audience.
However, there are some that are starting to use online marketing tools and getting involved in some creative ways to let the world know about the resorts and their uniqueness.
An employee at a Park City resort in Utah has a blog where he discusses not only his own resort's amenities and services, but he comments on the industry in general. This makes his blog not only a resource for his employer, but a resource people will go to even if they do not intend to go to Park City. This is valuable on the word-of-mouth aspect because someone always knows someone who's looking to go on a vacation.
Another resort, the Searchmont Resort, uses rich media on their website to show very cool experiences that visitors will get when they visit. In this example, they use photos in a slideshow to show what a good time people had at a recent race.
This is really just the tip of the iceberg. On a personal level, I hope that more resorts use rich media like this, and become more engaged with their potential visitors, so that you can have a better idea if a resort will match what you're looking for in a vacation.
With the advent of the Internet and online commerce, local businesses had some fear about competing with other businesses from all over the world. However, now more local businesses are realizing that they can bring in more local customers by leveraging the power of the Internet.
One of the ways a local brick-and-mortar business can set itself apart from online only businesses, is to use video to show their personality and their physical location.
Now that the newness of online shopping has worn down, people seem to be desiring a more intimate connection with the people they shop from.
There are easy ways to do this, and are more involved ways to do this. The easy way is to take some photographs of your business and the products you offer, compose them into a slideshow, add some music and text, and you're done!
In fact, there is one business that specializes in this called Jivox.
They will take all the materials mentioned above, along with some stock video and photos if you need more, and help you create a video from that that points back to your website, your physical address, and you can even enter phone number.
The creation and hosting of your videos free, but they do charge for any additional advertising you want to do with it. For example, they will publish it to other websites if you want to spend a little extra money to get more exposure and visibility.
The more expensive route is to hire a videographer to come to your business, shoot video and do an interview with you. This can let a bit more of your personality shine through, but is also going to be much more expensive. Something like this generally runs in the range of a few thousand dollars. And that's not including any additional marketing that you want to do with this video.
Local businesses really should look at adding video to their marketing mix. Whether it's simple and inexpensive slideshow type of video with a service like Jivox, or a full-blown video production with the professional videographer, you're destined to get more traffic and more sales you make this more intimate connection with your customers.
