Skip to Navigation
Posted by Yelena Kadeykina
Thursday, 17 March 2011

This guest blog is by Bridget Horne, the Director of Communications and Corporate Relations for the Boston chapter of Back on My Feet.

To create any great video, you first have to know how to tell a great story. A great writer once told me that when it comes to telling a company’s story, tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve just told them. In other words, don’t beat around the bush. And no matter what, make sure you’ve made your point in a way the audience is not going to forget. These six tips will help you develop a story worth remembering.

1. Know your voice. Last week I covered how to find your Internet voice. If you’re still not sure where to start, take some time studying some of the greats. Watch a few scenes from your favorite movie. Find what inspires you. Chances are, it’ll hit the hearts and minds of others as well. Who will you be in your video? As I already mentioned, how you’re saying it is just as important as what you’re saying. Project. Speak slowly. Vary your speed and tone. And have fun.

2. Show, don’t tell. Showing is the whole point of video, after all. Suddenly, you have the world at your storytelling disposal. This is your chance to showcase your talent, skills or product. You could talk about how the vacuum cleaner you designed is great at sucking up pet hair, or you could show it. Master plumber? Show me why I should trust you. Professional flame swallower? Light up that screen! 

3. Diversify. Shake things up a bit. Don’t be afraid to switch scenes, bring in props, add characters, and throw in a photo or two. Use whatever it takes to tell your story. Experiment and have fun. This will keep the tempo strong and interest levels high. Don’t be intimidated by the complexities of editing when laying out your storyline. You capture the content and leave the rest of the heavy lifting to us.

4. Be concise. Take a look at some of the most popular videos on YouTube right now. Most of them are under two minutes in length. The opportunity to diversify your storytelling technique also makes it possible to make your point stronger and deliver it more quickly. Don’t waste your time or your audience’s time by describing unnecessary details. Use as few words as possible, and as I mentioned above, just show them.

5. Don’t forget to tell your story. What I mean is, don’t lose sight of the basics by overthinking. Every story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. In other words, set the stage for what you’re about to say by introducing the audience to your business. Have a distinct body. This is where you introduce the conflict. In the case of the vacuum cleaner company, this would be when the muddy dog sheds all over the white couch. Finally, reach to your resolution: the vacuum comes out and voila! Clean couch!

 6. Engage. Think about what will stir the emotions of your intended audience. Get under their skin. A good story will entertain you. A great story will stick with you. It’s okay to make people uncomfortable. Set up a scene that latches on to the minds and hearts of your audience and won’t let go. This can be as simple as muddy dog hair all over a white couch or as complex as a call to aid for the victims of Japan’s earthquake.

With the above tips in mind, finding a story to tell and telling it well will be easier than you may have originally thought.

Posted by Yelena Kadeykina
Monday, 14 March 2011

Video makes us stand out in the crowd and be more effective communicators. While skimming through my LinkedIn updates this morning, I noticed that more people are starting to share links to videos in their activity stream. Are you doing it as well? If you don’t, you should. It is a very simple process – just paste the YouTube links into the update field.

It is surprising that so few of us have actual videos on our companies’ product pages or personal profiles.

Are you ready for your LinkedIn video “challenge”? If so, here is a step-by-step explanation of how you can make your product pages and personal profile shine.

Adding videos to LinkedIn product pages:

1. Go to your company page and open the “Product & Services” tab.

2. If you have not created your company’s product page yet, this is a perfect time to do so. As you are filling it out, you will see an option to add video about your product or service (Step 10).  In this step, you need to add a title that clearly describes your video’s content.

3. Add the YouTube URL for the video your want to feature (Step 11)...

...and your video is added to your LinkedIn Page.

Adding videos to your personal profile:

There are two ways to add videos to your profile but both are by utilizing applications – SlideShare or Google Presentation. I am using the SlideShare application for my LinkedIn profile, so I am going to focus on that option. (If you need instructions on Google Presentation, this is a good post to read.)

  1. Check that you have the SlideShare application added to your LinkedIn account
  2. Choose a presentation (slide) on your SlideShare account that will include the video you want to feature
  3. Insert a YouTube link for the video in this presentation (slide)
  4. Publish this presentation on your LinkedIn profile

Remember that LinkedIn does not offer video hosting -- all videos need to be hosted elsewhere. YouTube seems to be the preferred place and the only option in most cases. As you might have guessed by now, adding videos to your LinkedIn page can not be automated. First, you need to have all the videos you want to feature on LinkedIn published on your YouTube channel. That should not create much additional work for you though, right? Let me know if you have any questions or recommendations on best practices.

Posted by Yelena Kadeykina
Thursday, 10 March 2011

 

One of the keys to any engaging piece of work – be it a video, blog post or story – is to create an engaging narrative voice. Your video’s voice sets the tone for the entire scene. It will create the style you are attempting to convey. You’ve already determined the message you want in your video; equally important is how you say it.

In order to help you discover your own voice, let’s deconstruct an example of a video I used in a recent post, The Old Spice Man Your Man Could Smell Like.

This video is an example of first person narration. The narrator is the character. Former NFL wide receiver Isaiah Mustafa employs a voice that is perfectly polished with a near-perfect sense of comedic timing. He is dramatic, yet utterly deadpan. Mustafa demands your attention. And he gets it. The washboard abs also don’t hurt. Neither does the fact that he had copywriters at the legendary Wieden + Kennedy ad agency behind those words. So without the perfect abs and team of award-winning copywriters, how can you achieve the perfect voice?

1. Determine the most attractive persona for your brand. Whoever is standing in front of the camera talking about your product – whether it’s you, an employee, or an actor – is representing your company and your brand. This character should be engaging and inspire interaction. In the above example, Mustafa hits that perfect synergy that appeals to both women (again, the abs) and men (the humorous insult to be a “manlier” man).

2. Determine which tone you want to set. If you decide you want your video to be funny, tread carefully. Humor is a tricky beast to tame, and it’s often difficult to sustain. But, of course, the correctly executed humorous commercial is almost impossible to beat. There are plenty of other options that may be more appropriate for your video’s purposes that can effectively display your knowledge, sincerity, advocacy or product. Your narrator can be serious (but not dry), edgy (but not obnoxious) or gripping (but not cheesy) to attain the same successful results. The key word is engagement. Keep your viewers interested in your message.

3. Be yourself. Chances are, if you are behind the wheel of a small company, it will also be you in front of the camera. In this case, always remember the best character is always … you. (Or, a version of you.) If you aren’t putting on an act, there’s nothing to get nervous about. Stand up and tell your viewers what you know. Make them see why you’re the expert in your field. You don’t have to be loud (think used car salesmen) or overly-enthusiastic (think family-owned furniture store). Just be you. Your confidence will shine through and in the end, you’ll have a more credible video. 

Posted by Yelena Kadeykina
Tuesday, 08 March 2011

This guest blog is by Erin Hayes. Erin is a writer and television producer. She is currently the New Media Director of MediaBoss Television, a broadcast production studio in Boston.

What was the last movie or television program you watched that really inspired you? What was it about the film or program that caught your eye?

Harness your passion for Samurai flicks and draw from that which inspires you. It is a simple way to get a very different look for your next corporate video.

Here’s an example: Last fall, one of our clients came to us and asked us to produce a video to announce and promote the worldwide launch of their newest product. Making a statement for this launch was critical. Our client wanted a video that would make people stop, watch and start a conversation about their product.

As a company, we loved the trailer for “The Social Network.” Inspired by the effect achieved by the storytelling, the quick cuts, the provocative dialogue and the dramatic choral twist on Radiohead’s “Creep,” we decided to produce a spoof of David Fincher’s Oscar-winning film for the product launch with our own original soundtrack.

The familiar, but unexpected, quality that borrowing from “The Social Network” gave the video made it a success. It caught our client’s potential customers and customers off guard and made them think.

Next time you’re surfing YouTube or watching television, pay attention to what it is that compels you to watch an entire video or stop channel surfing. Write it down and, the next time you’re up to produce a video, do what you can to incorporate that aspect into your work.

We’re in the midst of shooting a “scenic” video to highlight our facilities (I highly recommend adding this to your video arsenal, particularly if your business is service oriented), and the way we are shooting it, the way we are lighting it, is directly inspired by an indie film our creative director caught on TV.

Take some time and play around with different settings on your camera to see if you can mimic a look you saw and really liked. I just bought a Canon S95 that has a miniaturizing effect that’s neat to use. Here’s a link to a video that uses this effect quite nicely. I can’t wait to try this out myself.

If you’re shooting with a simpler camera like a Flip, try shooting from a few different angles or mix up your footage in post with a slow-motion pan or an intentional frame drop.

And if you feel uneasy about borrowing from another’s greatness to give your corporate video an edge, remember that every great idea was inspired by another great idea. For instance, Aaron Sorkin, writer of “The Social Network,” drew from film legend Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” when he sat down to pen the Oscar-winning flick.

Posted by Yelena Kadeykina
Monday, 28 February 2011

 


This guest blog is by Bridget Horne, the Director of Communications and Corporate Relations for the Boston chapter of Back on My Feet.

You just created the perfect video for your business. It’s a full package of pitch-perfect writing, engaging imagery and concise messaging. Your customers are going to love it. Now all that’s left to do is post it online and call it a day. Not so fast. Posting your video on a platform such as YouTube opens the doors for a whole new audience of consumers to discover your company and, hopefully, become new customers. That’s because YouTube—with approximately 2 billion videos viewed every day— is one of the most utilized online search engines in the world, second only to Google.

With this great opportunity comes a great challenge: How can you make your video compete with the seemingly endless sea of other videos? Three words: Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines by strategically employing the use of particular words or phrases likely to come up high on an online search engine. This organic approach to visibility considers the same algorithms that search engines such as Google, or in this case YouTube, use when providing results.

With a good idea of what to put on your YouTube channel and where to put it, you will make your page as easy to find as possible. The following tips will help you through the process.

1. Know your keywords. Start with your title. The title is the best indicator of the video’s content to search engines. The more specific, the better. Say your video is about a new energy-efficient window installation process by a Hyannis, Mass.-based company. You’re going to have much better luck in creating relevance with the words “energy-efficient window installation in Hyannis” in your title than just “window installation.” With a specific description, you are creating a niche that is far more likely to bring relevant viewers to your page. Think to yourself, if you were searching for a window company near you house, which search words would you use?

Once you’ve penned the perfect title, turn your attention to the video’s description. With a bit more room to turn on the creative copywriting juices, the description is where you should explain, as precisely as possible, what your video is trying to convey. Do not fill the description with keywords at random. Create a compelling reason for viewers to click play. It’s a good idea to lead with a link to your organization’s website to draw consumers exactly where you want them.

Finally, don’t forget tags. Pull out your exact keywords here. Again, be specific, but be sure to create tags that you will be repeating in your other videos (you didn’t think you’d just be making one did you?). And don’t forget to include the name of your company!

2. Provide a transcript, if relevant. It’s impossible for search engines to pick up the actual content of videos posted on YouTube. Therefore, providing a transcript, or even part of a transcript, will provide a greater opportunity for a search engine to pick up your YouTube page. Let’s return to the window installation example. There’s only so much you can write in your title, description and tags before becoming redundant. A transcript of what was said by the window specialist as he actually installed windows in the video will be rife with even more of the specific “niche words” viewers might be searching for.

This also provides a great opportunity to link this particular video to your website or blog post, where you can provide even more engaging content. Which leads us to the next tip …

3. Encourage engagement. Every great message includes a call to action. Whether it’s visiting your organization’s website (as noted above), becoming a fan on your company’s Facebook page, or clicking “purchase” on your online shopping page, you can get viewers there by pointing in the right direction. YouTube provides captioning and annotating capabilities that let you include text right on top of the video. While sure to get a viewer’s attention, I encourage you to use these sparingly.

Keep comments open. Monitor incoming comments closely, both for spam and for further engagement from you. Consumers like to know they are heard, and responding to a comment is an easy way to say “you have my attention.”

4. Use your tools. YouTube provides tools to help you get the most out of your usage. Their Help Center provides recommended articles and particular topics to help you learn the ins and outs of YouTube. Additionally, YouTube Insights provides analytics that can help you learn how to improve future videos by learning particular information such as demographics, what held viewers’ attention and what didn’t. By understanding what works, you can be sure to include more of it.

With the right information at your fingertips, you’re positioning yourself for YouTube stardom. Or, at the very least, an effective video campaign for your business.

Syndicate content