We’ve Made Video Production for Video Marketing Easy
To do well in search engine optimization (SEO), you need recent, relevant and interesting content on your small business website and in your social media. How to you get that content? The usual strategy is for your Internet marketer to hire copywriters to research and write articles about your business. The problem with that strategy for content marketing is that these writers don’t know much about your business. They’re not experts in your products and services and they don’t know your customers. Who does know your products and services and customers? You do!
That’s why IX Brand SEO Services uses video to capture your knowledge about your business and then use that video to market your business online. Your video recordings can provide the foundation for an entire content strategy, including new articles for your website and for social media. Plus your videos will promote your business on YouTube, which is the World’s second largest search engine after Google. Mobile devices like phones and tablets are a rapidly growing way to access the Internet. Would you rather read a webpage on your iPhone or watch a video? Most people would rather watch a video, so why not provide one for them.
If you have any questions about using video to boost the effectiveness of your Internet marketing program, please call us at 281-343-3284. We use informal video and photos for blogging and routine content production, and we team with highly professional local videographers to create showpiece marketing videos for your business. You’ll see the difference and your customers will too!
Describing the Video Production Process
Here’s a video describing how to create videos for your local small business.
Here’s a summary of the video.
Howdy folks. My name is Paul Sherland, from IX Brand SEO Services Company in Sugar Land, Texas. And I’m here to talk to you today about how to create videos to be the foundation of your local content strategy.
Now if you run a local business, a small local business especially, you’re time limited. It’s hard to find time to do things like write content for your website and if you work with a digital marketing agency they can hire somebody to write for you, but they’re not gonna have the expertise about your products, the expertise about your services to really do a great job in writing about your business. The best person to write about your business is you, but you don’t have the time to do that. So what’s the solution? The solution can be for you to use video as a way to create content, as a way to create a foundation for your local content strategy for your website.
Now, the first thing you need to do is figure out what topics you want to talk about. And I think the easiest thing to start with is FAQs. You know the questions your customers ask you, why not answer those questions? Just write up 20 or 30 questions that you’ve heard your customers ask and answer them on a video, one question per video. And you’re off to the races, you have 20 or 30 blog posts that you can use with your website. If you want to write product and service descriptions, that’s fine too. You can create cornerstone content for your website with those descriptions. You can also do customer reviews, if you just use your iPhone to take videos, short videos, of your customers talking about your products and services. That works great. You can also do community service videos.
Mary Bowling of Local University talks a lot about building your brand locally by working with community organizations to get links back. Well you can also do videos of community work, high school football games, community theater, things like that, community charities. Do videos for those things and then link back from those videos to your website. Build your brand that way.
Now what kind of equipment do you need? You can start with a smartphone. You can do really nice video with a smartphone and a tripod. So don’t let the equipment hold you back. I recommend that you get a video camera. And I like Cannon cameras, I’ve been using them for a couple years, actually for about six years. And the reason I like a video camera is if you have to zoom, it’s a lot easier to zoom on a video camera than it is on your iPhone or your smartphone. And the video camera also has, the Cannon cameras, allow you take photos while you’re recording. So if you’re shooting a subject you can just press a button on the display screen and take photos of that subject. You can also use a headset, it’s got a headset jack, so no matter what kind of microphone you’re using, you can check for things like wind noise, you can check for interference at the camera by using a headset. And if I’m shooting someone else talking, I always have a headset on. I’m listening for sound quality because sound quality is really important. So that’s why I use a video camera.
Tripod, I recommend you get a tripod. A tripod can be $25 on Amazon. The one I recommend, the one I’ve been using for a year now, is something called the Manfrotto Compact Action Tripod and it’s around 70 bucks on Amazon. Great tripod, very compact, fits in my luggage, and I can carry it anywhere. Fits in my briefcase, so it’s easy to carry to wherever I’m gonna shoot a video. Microphones, there are a lot of options there. You can either use the built in mics if you want to. You can use a handheld. If you’re gonna be shooting video outside, I recommend you use a handheld mic with a foam ball because that works best in high wind, or any kind of wind conditions, it pretty much eliminates wind noise. And it eliminates external noise like traffic noise and it works real well. It’s only $16 from Amazon to get one of those handheld mics with a foam ball. So I recommend one of those. Shotgun mic works great indoors. It kinda focuses the sound to the front of the camera and eliminates interfering sound from the side, if you’re shooting in an event hall or something like that. But it is also susceptible to wind noise, even if it has a sleeve. At least the one’s I’ve used. So that handheld mic works better if you’re only gonna have one talking subject on your video. I also use a wireless lavalier mic, I’m not wearing one right now. But a wireless lav mic is about 120 bucks and it works really well. Mine has two channels, it’s the Audio Technica Pro 88W R35. It’s got two channels so that if I’ve got interference from fluorescent lights or electronic equipment I can switch to another channel and hopefully it will eliminate it. The range is probably 20 or 30 feet-, I’m sorry, 30 to 40 feet. Beyond that I start to pick up interference. So you gotta be pretty close to the camera. Again, use a headset to check your sound.
Lighting, I pretty much rely on ambient lighting. I’ve got some lights but I rarely use them because the Cannon video cameras are so good even in very light situations. So, tripod, you want a stable camera. Lighting, you want decent lighting. And you want decent sound, so use a mic if you can, but check for wind noise and check for electronic interference if you’re using a lav mic or a wireless mic.
For editing, I’m a Mac user, so I use iMovie or Final Cut Print Pro, I use them both. The things to remember there are people don’t like to watch long videos. So try to get your videos down to five minutes or less. People will quit after two or three minutes. So make sure that you have a call to action and your contact information at the start of your video and as well at the end of your video. The other thing is video is storage intensive. So if you’re gonna do a lot of video, don’t try and store all your videos on your computer hard drive, ’cause you’re gonna run out of space really quickly. You have to get an external drive, maybe start with a two terabyte drive. I’ve got a four terabyte drive now, ’cause I filled up my two terabyte drive. But you’re gonna need an external drive. So that’s how to create videos. We’re going to talk about how to use videos next as the foundation for your local content strategy.
IX Brand SEO Services can do all of this for you. We can help you come up with topics, we can record your videos, we can do the video editing and we can use your videos to promote your business online. Call us at 281-343-3284 for more information or send us an email through our contact form.
