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Online Video Marketing Blog Content

DSLR Video – Pros and Cons

DSLR Video – Pros and Cons

The introduction of video in Digital SLR cameras has given camera professionals the look and feel of film like optical quality from a large array of lenses in a relatively cheap piece of hardware. A large amount of the music videos and adverts you see on the TV today are shot with a DSLR. But before you run out and get the latest video capable DSLR here are some things to consider…

Read more “DSLR Video – Pros and Cons” →

Online Video Marketing Blog Content

FCP to PC Share

Video from FCP won’t play on my PC – Solved

We’re told by Apple that sharing between Mac and PC is a straight forward process and that Macs love to play on a windows network. And for the most part this is true..! One question we do get on a regular basis is this…

Why won’t the media exported from Final Cut Pro play or edit on a PC system..?

 

The answer is don’t Export, Share instead.

Read more “FCP to PC Share” →

Online Marketing Blog Content

Social Media is Easy right..?

Social Media management is easy right..?

Anyone and everyone does it so yes it’s easy…

You sign up for an account at Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Linked In or any of the many other emerging social media portals and start posting..!

The fact is, YOU’RE PRODUCING CONTENT!!!

Successful social media campaigns take dedication and awareness…

If your goals for Social Media are to improve your profile and create business opportunities, then the content you produce needs thought and focus if it’s to be productive for your business.

The first job is to clearly define your key objectives for social media by preparing killer branding and content to back up your posts. Have a clear vision of how you want the social media world to think of you. Do you want people to think of you as a provider of high quality, fast turnaround, customer friendly or maybe cutting edge in your field. It’s very important to narrow your branding messages as being all things to all people rarely works.

Why build Social Media connections?

Social media is all about building connections and building connections takes time. Whether in the virtual world or the real world connections are all about trust and providing useful, trustworthy content is the first step. The social media world is constantly changing so be sure to stay abreast of updates to social media functionality such as uploading images, videos and other content, keep an eye out for new portals in your field that can be tapped into and don’t waste time on ones that miss your target audience.

Always measure the results of your work on social media sites. After your social media campaign has been running for a while, determine whether you are making any progress and if so is it meeting your goals.

Be very aware of the numbers… Check the number of people responding to your posts and social media offers, make a note of the number of people who are subscribing to your content and connection lists. Most of all pay particular attention to responses you’re getting to posted content.

Only by doing this will you start to understand what you need to change to improve your online reputation with killer content that really hits the mark…

Online Video Marketing Blog Content

Ten top tips for creating your business video

Ten top tips for creating your business video

Video Camera Lens

With the advent of cheaper and cheaper video cameras many business owners are wondering if it is worth filming their own promotional video. 

If that’s you, then it’s important to realise that despite what the cheaper cameras advertise. filming a video for your businesss is not just about pointing and shooting.

From the importance of telling a story, through understanding some of the technical challenges, to making sure your business video is eyeballed in all the right places, there is plenty to think about.

However, with careful thought, planning and taking time, the results can be very much worth the effort.

To help you to give it a try we’ve put together these ten top tips for planning and making your business video. 

Read more “Ten top tips for creating your business video” →

Online Video Marketing Blog Content

For good video, record good audio

For good video, record good audio

Never underestimate the power of clear audio in your videos…

Video as a visual medium has exploded on to all types of gadgets and devices in recent years. The rise of video has seen a huge increase in video content being created for all different purposes, such as personal memories, events, instruction and promotion to name a few. Videos can be exciting, factual or fun, however one important factor in making a video easy to watch is quality audio.

Veiwers can forgive shaky, badly framed or boring video footage if the sound is clear, crisp and helps to push the video forward, essential if your prime directive is a marketing message.

Here are a few things to consider when recording video with interview or narrated audio…

Always consider how a location sounds as well as how it looks. Find a place with no unwanted noises (traffic, background chatter, buzzing air-conditioning units, etc.). Try listening to a location for a few minutes to pick out any distracting sounds that might come across in your recording. Never rule out the possibility of having to find another location.

Another important considration is good acoustics. Recording audio in a highly reverberant space will cause echoes. These echoes can mix with the intended recording creating a dull, indistinct and difficult to understand soundtrack. Rooms with carpet and soft furnishings usually have better acoustic qualities.

Use an external mic as the mic that’s attached to your camcorder is a compromise designed to pick up as much as possible. That means foreground noise, background noise and everything inbetween. External shotgun mics are designed to be positioned very close to your interviewee or narrator and have a very directional pick up pattern so won’t pick up so much of the surrounding ambient noise.

Another option for interviews is a quality lavalier mic (clip on mic/tiepin mic). These types of mic are attached to your interviewee in close proximity to their mouth, all but ensuring crisp audio.

Always watch audio levels closely. This is a critical part of the process and should always be done with headphones. Many videographers set the levels based on what they see in the levels indicator on the camcorder screen. Only by using headphones will you be certain that the sound being indicated is the sound you want to record and not a background noise.

Turn off your camcorder’s Auto Gain Control (AGC) and set audio levels manually… The AGC will compensate for level changes by trying to match a constant volume of the recording to the sound being recorded. This sounds great, however AGC will introduce increased background noise in quiet portions of the recording.

By remembering these basic points when recording sound you will have an increased chance of consistently capturing better quality audio time after time…

Online Marketing Blog Content

Working for your customers can be bad for business

Working for your customers can be bad for business

This is an odd one but stick with it…

Customers can be a real pain can’t they?

Our best advice is that you should never work for another customer again.

We never work for any.

It really isn’t a good thing to do and your business would do a lot better if you did the same!

So, that’s a joke – right? Well a little tonge in cheak let’s say…

Working for customers is extremely bad for your business. But before you go off and tell others that Cracking Media are Crack Pots – wait a moment… It is true that customers can be a real pain – we have all had customers like that.

It is also true that you should never work for any customer, BUT we do wholeheartedly recommend that you should work with your customers.

So not for but with!

The difference in the two statements above is a subtle but important one. You will have heard people say of a sales person that he/she could sell snow to the Eskimos. It’s as if we should be impressed at how brilliant the person is at sales. But did anyone ask the Eskimo if he needed any snow?

The fact is, he didn’t! But that’s the same thing that happens when you are so obsessed with the things you can do for a customer – because selling a solution is really the focus of your attention – that you fail to understand the problem your customer needs solving. Many companies have great products or services, but are really poor at listening to their customer.

Rather than taking the time to fully understand the problem their customer needs solving, they impose a solution on them. This often results in the customer spending lots of money and the company they employ solving very little. In fact, in some cases, the solution has solved nothing and ended up costing the customer even more.

They were sold snow but didn’t need any! Finding the right solution for your customer comes about when there is a marriage of expertise. Your customer is an expert at what they do and so will understand their business better than you do. You are of course an expert at what you do – your customer wouldn’t expect anything less – but the key to providing a successful solution for your customer is to work with them not for them.

  • That means listening to your customer – the expert on their business.
  • That means taking time to understand the problems they need solving.
  • That means working with your customer to work out how you can best help them.

It sounds simple, but many businesses fail their customers because they get carried away with finding and imposing a solution without ever really understanding the problem. That doesn’t mean you should be passive in your relationship with your customer. Listening and understanding the problems your customer needs solving is an active role but it is only part of your role.

As an expert in the products or services you provide you must also be an educator. It is your responsibility to give your customer advice and direction whilst remembering that although the customer isn’t always right, they are always the customer. So, if you want to be successful at solving problems for your customers then start working with them.

And if you are a customer looking for a business to solve your problem, make sure you find a business that will listen to you and work with you, not for you.

Online Video Marketing Blog Content

Settle an argument in 1 second

Settle an argument in 1 second

Prior to the late 19th century, most pictures of galloping horses showed the horse with both of their front legs extended forward and both their hind legs extended to the rear. To our eyes today those pictures look old-fashioned, but to most of the people of the day, that was how they thought a horse galloped. They didn’t know any better. That was until a man called Eadweard Muybridge proved otherwise.

Muybridge, born Edward James Muggeridge on 9th April 1830 (whose 182nd birthday was celebrated recently on Google’s home page with an animation of a horse galloping), was an English photographer known for his pioneering work showing how animals run by using multiple cameras to capture motion. He famously invented the Zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that predated perforated film strip still used in cinematography.

It seems that Muybridge had a bit of an identity crisis as he changed his names several times in his career only settling on the name Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s when he became more widely known for his work with Leland Stanford, an American businessman and race-horse owner. Stanford asserted that all four of a horse’s hooves are off the ground at the same time during the trot and took it upon himself, with Muybridge’s help, to prove it scientifically.

Muybridge arranged a series of large glass-plated cameras in a line, each one connected to a thread stretched across the path a horse would run through. As each thread was passed by the horse’s front legs, it triggered the camera’s shutter and took a photograph. The photos were copied onto a disc as silhouettes and viewed in Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope. Later, in another series of photographs taken called The Horse in Motion, Muybridge showed how a horse gallops and is airborne, not with fore and hind legs off of the ground and fully extended as illustrated in the day, but rather when all the hooves are tucked under the horse as it switches between pulling with the front legs to pushing with the back legs.

So Eadward Muybridge, despite the change of spelling of his name, proved he was no Mug(geridge)! The series of photos Muybridge captured and displayed in his Zoopraxiscope are one of the earliest forms of videography. Muybridge’s moving images settled the argument about how a horse gallops in just 11 images displayed in a sequence which took less than one second to capture. A single still image can tell a story, but a series of still images, displayed in a sequence, can tell you more of the story.

Muybridge’s series of still images explained to the people of the day and told the true story about how a horse gallops. Today’s video cameras capture 25 still images per second (or 30 if you are in the USA). Video is the perfect method for telling a story and is being used increasingly by businesses today to tell true stories about their products or services. It works especially well when that story is difficult to explain or understand (as with Muybridge’s, The Horse in Motion), or when people want to see in action what you can do for them rather than have it told to them in words or single pictures.

You can see some examples below. Muybridge helped to settle the argument about how a horse gallops in less than one second – although it took him several years to perfect his invention to do it.

Today, using video, you have the opportunity to tell the story about your business’s products and services and demonstrate what you do in a clear and concise way too. You will need more than a second of video to do so, but between 30 seconds and 2 minutes should be ideal

It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. But how many more is a video worth?

Online Marketing Blog Content

Graphic Design and Print

Graphic Design Counts

The correct design is an important part of successful communication and user experience (UX). Graphic design implemented through high quality print or website can help you to maximise the power of your marketing collateral, brochures and marketing literature. Our service includes optimisation of existing copy, also content creation and design of new exciting releases… 

Print and Graphic Design

We are honest and uncomplicated when it comes to graphic design. We have years of experience and won’t blind you with jargon, we don’t sell you more than you really need, so whether you are looking for a glossy brochure, office stationary, flyers or website redesign we always aim to give you great value and great quality.

You know how to run your business, and our graphic design can help you to do that by giving you the materials you need to present your business with an air of authority and professionalism.

Contact us today for a no obligation chat…

 

Online Video Marketing Blog Content

What’s your #purplecow?

What’s your #purplecow?

Web Video Marketing for your Business

Imagine going out into the countryside with family or friends and you drive past a field of cows. You might comment, “Oh, look! There’s some cows over there”, but then you’ll drive on by. The cows were interesting for a moment, but they were soon forgotten.

Imagine though that this day, you drive past the field of cows and you notice that in the middle of the herd of brown cows was a purple cow**. This day you wouldn’t drive on by. Instead, you would stop the car, everyone would get out and start tweeting, facebooking and +1ing, they would take photos and post them online. Before long #purplecow would be trending worldwide.

The problem is wherever you go in business today there are plenty of fields of brown cows. Just like the story of the first car journey as you browse online you will see some ‘interesting for a moment’ things, but you’ve soon forgotten them.

For your own business you know that marketing is important, particularly online, but how can you be distinctive? How you can stop being seen as just another brown cow? Is it possible that you have a purple cow in your business just waiting to be discovered?

A couple of weeks ago a purple cow ran past our front door. It wasn’t there for long, blink and you would have missed it, but it was so remarkable that thousands of people stood outside with us and watched and cheered as an aluminium alloy stick with a flame on top was carried past.

The Olympic Torch Relay has captured attention in the UK for the last two months as millions of people across the nation have come out to line the streets to see it go by. The truth though is that the people didn’t come out to see a stick, they had come to witness a story and watch mostly ordinary people being part of it.

Everybody loves a good story and a story told well goes beyond communicating facts to engaging and influencing us at an emotional level. But whilst you may feel that what your business does is pretty unremarkable just like that field of brown cows, the truth is we all have a purple cow story we can tell.

You may have a particular product that solves a problem in a unique way. Or maybe you run a service-based business that provides extra special service. I’m sure if you think about it for a while there are all manner of things that you do that you can turn from being brown to purple, but how can you do that effectively?

You need to tell a story. In today’s busy and competitive online world, video is perfect for story-telling and is one of the best investments you can make for marketing your business.

Here’s why…

  • A video on your website helps to differentiate what you do from your competitors. It helps to show off your purple cow.
  • Video is more effective at engaging visitors to your website. Web marketers talk about the 8-second rule which is the length of time you have to convince a visitor to stay on your site before they click away. Video helps you to do that as people are more likely to watch a 30-60 second video than spend a few seconds reading and scanning a web page.
  • Video is an excellent way for your customers to get to know you and understand how you can help them. Video helps to give your website and your business personality. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. Online video helps you to show that.
  • Online video when optimised correctly gives you a far higher chance than text of helping your site rank well in search engines. Getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever, but as more of page 1 has been given over to “blended” search results – displaying videos and images towards the top of the page – you have an opportunity using video to be there.
  • After Google, YouTube is now the world’s second largest search engine. The only way to be seen on YouTube is through video.

Video isn’t just a passing trend.Video is here to stay. Video can help you to harness the power of story-telling in your business marketing.

#browncow or #purplecow. Which will you choose?

**Adapted from “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable” by Seth Godin.

Cracking Media work with businesses and organisations to help promote their products and services online through video. You can see some samples here.

If you would like some help finding your purple cow or to discuss ideas for marketing your business using online video, please email info@crackingmedia.com or give us a call on 01202 532522.

Responses to What’s your #purplecow? Web Video Marketing for your Business George Rashbrook says: That’s a great article, Peter. It really illustrates the importance of standing out from the crowd in the competitive business arena. Thanks for sharing it! Reply Peter Lunn says: Thanks for your feedback George. I hope it encourages business owners to look for the purple cow in their business and maybe even find two or three of them – who knows! All the best to you and your business. Reply

Online Website Marketing Blog

Understanding Why Your Website isn’t Working

Why Your Website isn’t Working

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Amanda Ferris

Do you want the visitors that flock to your website to be converted into profitable customers?

Are you disappointed in the lack of response you received from website visitors? Is trying to understand ‘Internet Marketing’ and the options available confusing to you?

understanding-internet-marketing-300x158There are some common misconceptions held by website owners. Changing these ideas and using proven solutions will help you improve your Internet strategy and bring in customers more effectively.

1. You have a brilliant website, but nobody knows about it:

It’s simple; you need to drive people toward your website. The only way to do that is to market your website as part of your ‘Internet Marketing’ strategy. Try not to fall in the trap of thinking the design of your website has a link with how many people visit your site, this is a mistake commonly made with Internet Marketing. The quality of the content on the site and how it helps visitors has far more to do with driving traffic to your site than how it looks.

2. Your website is all about you:

 This is possibly the biggest mistake made by website owners. Unfortunately this is not the case, visitors are only interested in what you can do for them. If your website is worded to focus on solving their problems rather than how good your service is, then it will dramatically change the performance of your site. Many websites are written by sales people and don’t give away any useful information to visitors.

 

If your site is written this way visitors will more likely move on to the next site to find their answers.

3. Getting visits to convert to Enquires/Sales:

You need to think about what you want people to do when they visit your site. Do you need them to buy something from the site or do you focus on getting their contact details, so that you or your sales team can follow up?

A big move in Internet Marketing is the shift from sites that sell products or a business, to sites that want to build ongoing relationships with their customers. This has become known as ‘Permission Marketing’, acquiring a customer’s permission to communicate with them. If you’re using your site to get customers’ contact details, they will need a compelling reason to offer those details. Possibly the best way to do that is to offer something ‘free’ in exchange e.g. a newsletter or free sample of a product, but it needs to have value. Follow that up with a good email campaign and a proportion of those people will convert into customers.

If you are interested in getting sales when potential customers visit your site, then it’s a combination of the written content, images or video that explains and shows the benefits of the product that will possibly guarantee the purchase.

Things to look into:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Being listed in what are called organic search results costs nothing other than the time involved to make sure each page on your website is optimised for search engines. Try to identify what words or phrases people use to search for the products or services you sell and make sure those words/phrases are represented in the pages of your site. If you only market to customers that are local to you then make sure you include the name of your local area when you optimise each page. You can find out more about SEO in our post on Search Engine Optimisation.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Using Google AdWords, you only pay for the visitors that click through to your website making it one of the most cost effective advertising solutions available. Beware though as your ads need to be written clearly and targeted at the correct audience so that costs don’t get out of control.

Video Search

YouTube is now the second most popular search engine in the world and Google also uses video content in its regular search results. Obviously, the only way to be listed in YouTube is by using video, but it is well worth considering as video content is more and more sought after and the cost of producing video has fallen.

Get into the Testing Habit

Don’t forget to test and experiment, find out what works for your website. Always use analytics to measure the results from your different strategies. Google’s own analytics tool is free to use and is being improved all the time. The results may astound you.

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