BusinessBanter has a list of seven online video marketing tips for local businesses. Three that stand out to me are:

1. Track your video marketing. Unlike traditional broadcast television, online video is highly measurable, from the number of  unique viewers to how much of the video viewers consumed. It allows for effective targeting of your video and lets you see which kind of content you’re producing is more consumable and shareable than other content you may be producing.
2. It doesn’t cost a bomb. That’s there term. Never heard it before, personally. But the sentiment is the same as “It doesn’t cost a ton.” Online video has become quite cost effective. You can do it yourself with your smartphone and free editing software or you can hire a production company like viz-bang! if you’re looking for professional production standards and the budget is available. Or you can do a combination of both.
3. Web traffic climbs. Having video on your Website, either hosted on your server or embedded from YouTube, will help with search engine optimization. Also, people spend more time on your Website if you have video.

You can check out the other four tips at BusinessBanter.

With the rise of smartphones and the ability purchase, quality, low-cost consumer video production equipment, many organizations are asking employees to create and produce their own video content. In most cases, these employees are producing this content in addition to their normal responsibilities. Here are three simple tips to help those who are not video professionals improve their video productions.

Ruth Griggs, principal, RC Communications (www.rccomms.com), shares how video played a key role in a recent fundraising campaign for a non-profit organization. “I believe the video played a key role in the campaign,” says Ruth. “The campaign generated 50% more dollars over plan and it generated 150% more funds vs. the same campaign last year.”

A few months ago, Marty and I wrote and produced the opening video for the BusinessWest “40 Under Forty” annual extravaganza, whereby business publication BusinessWest recognized forty people under the age of forty for their outstanding contributions to the business community. All of the movers and shakers were there — about 600 or so this time — so it was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate our creativity as well as contribute to a fantastic event. Normally, that would be the end of it. The event ends. Everyone gets back to their daily routines. But, this year, that was not the case.

As fate would have it, in attendance that night were the president and marketing director for an organization that is celebrating its 100th year in business. As part of their Centennial celebration, the senior leadership was planning to take all of the employees and their significant others to a Mt. Washington resort for a weekend celebration for their significant milestone. As they sat in the “40 Under Forty” event enjoying our opening video, a brilliant idea came to their minds – we need viz-bang! to produce an opening video for our event.

We got the call the next day — could we produce something as funny, if not funnier, than what we did for “40 Under Forty”? After an initial meeting with the president and marketing director, we proposed five concepts — most of them pretty high concept — and they picked the one they felt was best suited for their needs.

They chose the concept about which we were most excited. We knew it would be funny, engage many of the employees and would allow us to work with a talented TV actor from New York City. We shot the video over two days and were pleased when our clients told us we hit it out of the park. They also were kind enough to text us from the event in New Hampshire right after the video played to a packed house. It killed! Since they event, they’ve had requests from numerous people – including the hotel people – for copies of the DVD.

Some factors contributing to the success of the project include:

• A clever script.
• Reasonable budget.
• Wonderful support from the senior leadership at the company.
• Creating a concept that required the participation of many employees. It was good to get their buy-in.
• Including outtakes as the credits rolled.
• A talented production crew.

We believe we can create a niche for producing comedy-centric corporate videos. They’re a great morale booster and a refreshing change of pace from traditional corporate communications. The key – and I think we did a good job on this project – is not to cross the comedy line. We walked up to it during this project, but we didn’t cross it.

 

 

The “40 Under Forty” video that got us the corporate comedy gig.

How many people does it take to makeover a house from top to bottom in a week? A lot. We got to see it first-hand when Extreme Makeover: Home Edition came to Springfield, Massachusetts, to make dreams come true for the Walker family. As part of the local public relations effort created and executed by John Garvey and his team at GCAI, Inc., we produced videos that helped promote the event and recruit volunteers. We also were on site for the door-knocking and other events throughout the week.

The support from the community was awesome. From the more than 6,000 Facebook fans, to the hundreds of volunteers and skilled laborers, the house got built and lives were changed. We’re glad we got to play a small part in it. Here are a few videos and photos from our time that week.