What Are Web Videos?

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WEB VIDEO

The quickest, easiest and cheapest way to dominate.

Ben: Hi guys, my name is Quentin Tarantino.

I’ll be your web video guy for today. I’m

going to start by telling you a story. There is

this guy I know, and if you guys had met

him you’d probably call him Fraser but I call

him Dad. You know Dads are very hard to

shop for. Buying a present for a Dad is

pretty much the hardest thing: socks, ties, golf tees whatever. So I had this Dad and he was

turning seventy and I was thinking what do you get for your Dad for his seventieth

birthday?

He’s got a car, he’s got a nice place to live, he’s got gadgets, he plays the piano, so he’s got

a piano and keyboards and all that kind of thing. I though, what am I going to do for this

guy? I want to show him that I love him and that he’s been a big influence in my life. So I

thought, the one thing I could do is make a documentary about him, about his life, so I did.

The Man Who Had Everything

That’s my Dad there. I went and

interviewed about twenty people from his

life in Melbourne and Sydney, I’m from

Sydney. I went up there, I drove around like

crazy. I turned up with a little Handycam, a

little lapel mike, I had a bunch of questions

I was going to ask all these people, and I just interviewed all these people, from his past,

from his present, people he’d either taught or known.

I got to meet all these amazing people and learn about them and learn about my Dad

through them. You guys know Solomon Lew, one of the richest men in Australia. I

interviewed him in his top floor office in the middle of Collins Street. I walked in there with

a little Handycam and a little lapel mike and did an interview with that guy as well. I pieced

it all together and then on my Dad’s seventieth birthday I presented him with this video

and he had no idea that it was happening.


For the first time in my life I saw him stumped, he didn’t have anything to say. He didn’t

really realize what was going on. It was at that moment that I realized how powerful a

video could be. The reason I tell you this story, that’s how I started out with my production

company. I thought, I’ve got a feel for this work, I like this, I like doing this. Hence the light

bulb moment, the frenzy which was going and interviewing all these people. What

happened next, all these people came up to me and said, you should be doing this for a

living. I said, yes, I should be doing this for a living.

The lab Was Born

That’s now what I do for a living. I make

videos, I’ve got a video production

company. I work with Dave. It’s called

Storylab and thus the lab was born. It

started out as a home business. I was

working at home on my little MacBook

and editing videos in iMovie and then I

just figured it out along the way. Prior to that, I’m a trained actor as well, I did three years

of acting school. So I’ve had a lot of experience on the other side of the camera as well and

on stage and things like that.

I had a feel for it, I’ve been involved in shows and theatre productions and radio shows and

things like that. So I knew what was going on in front of the camera but I’ve become more

passionate about what’s going on behind the camera. So today I’m going to be talking to

you all about that, about making videos either for yourself, your business, to promote

yourself, to promote others. As you can see we’ve got the showroom here, we’re going to

go through a whole bunch of tools and fortunately you’re going to have a bit of fun, so I

hope you’re prepared for that.

I’ll just show you quickly what I’ve been up to. This is what I’ve been doing over the past

two years or so. There’s the first lesson, what can go wrong, will go wrong. We’re going to

be talking about MacGyver a lot today, about using things like cable ties to hold a focus

thing together or a paper clip to build a light. It all happens.

[Ben McEwing, Director, Showreel 2010 video]


The reason I showed you that is there are

a whole lot of things in there, tools and

techniques that I’ve picked up along the

way that I want to share with you today.

They are things that you can do,

resources that you can use to help you

make your videos go from that very

YouTube look, that about eighty percent of them are, to something that is professional and

something that you can be proud of as well, that will obviously net you sales and promote

you and give you credibility. That’s really what it’s about.

Welcome to the Future

First I just want to talk about video in

general. TV and web are becoming one,

there’s no doubt about it. You can buy

televisions now that are web ready,

screens on computers are getting bigger,

everything is converging, so it’s a great

time to be getting into making videos. YouTube as we know is the king, fourth biggest site

on the internet, second biggest search engine after Google and the largest video site on

the web.

David: Further to the merging of TV and the web. You know how Google TV has come out

now and there have been a whole lot of announcements from Sony and Dell bringing out

televisions with Google TV integrated into it. We already saw Blockbuster go bust just over

in the States recently because they’re old school. When you compare that to a new school

business like Netflix which is all done online and people are downloading the video, that’s

the way things are going. I think it’s only a matter of time before it’s one and the same.

Ben: Further to that, big companies like the National Australia Bank are taking all their

documentation, all their training manuals, everything and making videos with them.

They’ve got an in house team, that’s all they‘re doing. So everything is becoming more

easily accessed through video. So again, it’s a fantastic time to be involved with it.


Welcome to the Future – Part 2

Just some more material about YouTube.

It’s great to get an idea of the numbers.

Twenty hours of content every minute are

uploaded to YouTube. If you’ve been to

one of our other workshops, that equates

to, if Hollywood were to create feature

films, put out feature films, they’d have to

be putting out 86,000 of them every week, that’s how much content is coming out of there.

A billion videos served every day, twelve billion videos every month just in the US and 82%

of internet users are looking for video online. So really, to be totally honest, there is no

excuse not to be making videos, because people are going to watch them.

Again, Dave and I will go into great detail about how to get them up there and get people

to see them. It’s one thing to make them and then if no one’s looking at them, then it’s a

bit of a waste of time.

But Wait, There’s More

But wait there’s more. Now YouTube,

everyone knows about YouTube and you

might know about some other sites like

Vimeo or Viddler and so on. But there are

seventy plus video sites and there are

more and more that are hosting content.

Some of them are very specific.

You might have gone onto howto.com, where you can get tutorials on things. There are

ones that are just about comedy, there are ones that are just about promoting your

business as well. For people like yourselves who have your own businesses, who want to

promote yourselves, there are specific areas that you can go and put your material on, not

just YouTube. We’ll mainly be focusing on YouTube because that’s what everyone knows,

that’s the lowest common denominator. There are ways to get all this material out there

and distribute it in ways that you might not have imagined. Why video for business, Dave

is going to step up on this one.


Why Video for Business?

David: I’ll just talk a little bit about why

video for business. Firstly, what’s the

biggest hurdle people have with doing any

sort of business with a business online? It’s

believing what it is that they are saying is

correct. If you make a purchase from

somebody’s website, you’re worried that

they’re going to take your money and run away with it or they’re not going to deliver on

the promises that they make. So I think the biggest hurdle that people have to overcome is

believing what it is that you have to say. That’s why, with all of my work, I try to be as open

and honest and transparent as I can, so that way that really comes across.

I feel like video is perhaps one of the best ways to do that because you can connect with

people at a new level. It enables you to become the salesman in front of their eyes, rather

than them reading text. It’s a fantastic way, you can get across that personality.

I have clients who call me from Melbourne SEO Services and before I even chat with them

on the phone, they tell me that they feel like they already know me. I’ve already answered

their frequently asked questions before I even pick up the phone and it saves a lot of time

for me. It positions me as the expert. All they have to do is look on my YouTube channel.

It’s almost like having written a book. You know when someone writes a book, you don’t

have to be an expert to write a book, but once you write a book it’s like you become

instantaneously credible because you have a book. Similarly online, by doing web video, it

positions you as the expert. If you’re making video, you’re the expert.

The other thing as well, it is the lowest hanging fruit online. I’m doing more and more

video, I’m trying to do as much video as I can. This is from Forrester Research, there’s a

research company and they talked about this in 2009. You’ve got a fifty percent better

chance of appearing on the first page of the results using video when compared to others.

All it is, is the amount of competition you’re going up against. If you think about all of the

pages that are in the Google index, you’re competing against billions and billions of pages,

whereas when it’s on video, it’s a lot less.


They’re a lot less educated because it’s a newer technology, it hasn’t advanced and it’s not

as competitive. People don’t necessarily build back links back to their videos, they don’t do

appropriate on page optimization or keyword research, so it really is the lowest hanging

fruit out there. So if you’re going to do anything online, video needs to be a core part of

that strategy.

Dave's Story

As far as me, how I got started in video and

even marketing online, I created a product

called the Metastock Programming Study

Guide with another friend, a colleague in a

trading education space and we had a really

good product. What we found is, you can

have an excellent product but unless people

know that product exists, the product isn’t going to sell. So it’s all about trying to get your

message and your good product in front of as many people as possible. That’s why I

started to lean towards YouTube.

I got on YouTube about three or four years ago, I put my first video up. That’s the screen

shot right there of my first video. I’m sitting in my bedroom, there is a Bruce Lee picture

over to the right and on the top left that’s my little dresser and there’s a little money thing

up there and then I had my computer. I had my office, it was my home office which was

my bedroom office. A small tip as well, when you can get to a point where you can move

your office outside of your bedroom, that’s a good thing because it means you don’t feel

like you’re always working. That’s one thing, by having your office in your bedroom, you

can never switch off. That’s another little side thing.

That’s how I got started and that was a good few years ago. Now on my core business sites,

we’ve got over four hundred and fifty videos on YouTube. We’ve had over a million views

on the different channels that we’ve got. It started in my bedroom. The other thing to keep

in mind, the first video that you do, it is going to be clumsy, it is going to be awkward. It

takes time and practice. The first video that you do will be the worst video you ever do and

then everything else will get better from there.


I know sometimes I’ve had clients, and we’re working with a particular client at the

moment, who, he watches some of my videos and then he’s thinking, oh, how easy it looks,

I’m going to go ahead and replicate this in my business. He’s gone and spent $5000,

purchased all the fantastic equipment and set himself up with teleprompter cues and all

that type of thing and it’s just not flowing as well. I say, be patient, just getting started and

then you’ll improve over time. Really when it comes to web video, you just need to get

started.

That’s why Ben was talking at the start about why there’s such an opportunity here for

video and YouTube being the second biggest search engine, it’s to hook you guys, to make

you realize, this is something where I need to be focusing my attention. It needs to be a

core strategy. For those of you who have seen some of the other things that I do in

outsourcing, you want to build systems around creating web video. It’s all about systems

to pump it out as quickly as you can.

For me, I figure the more videos I’ve got on YouTube, the more tickets in that search

engine lottery I’ve got. It’s a John Reese line, he talks about the idea that every piece of

content that you create is another ticket in the search engine lottery and you’ve got a

greater chance of winning that search engine lottery.

So I started far from being perfect, it was just about getting started. Now I use video in

everything I do. Then along came Ben and Ben is a shining example of an A player, an

absolute star in my business. He’s brought so much to the team and doesn’t realize how

much I appreciate what it is that he does.

If you look at my videos when I started and you look at where they are now, they’re worlds

apart. He’s got me wearing different coloured t-shirts that match the colour of my logo so

I’m branded right. He’s got me doing a whole lot of things that I just hadn’t thought about.

Along comes Ben and then I’ll handball back to you.


Quality Vs. Quantity

Ben: That’s the thing, Dave and I have

had lots of discussions about quality

versus quantity because Dave is so

prolific, he’s got so many things going on.

He’s making so many videos and wants

to get them out, get them out, which I

absolutely agree with. The thing is

though, you do need to find that balance with the quality of it. If you’re presenting yourself

and this is your business and you are the face of that business in any way, even if you’re

selling a product but you’re going to use yourself to promote it, how you come across,

people will make a judgment within the first thirty seconds.

I’ve stood up here and you’ve already decided some things about me, you can’t help it, it’s

just the way we’re wired. So that’s what I’ve really been working with Dave on, is about

balancing, yes, let’s get out ten videos at a time but it doesn’t take too long to set it up

nicely and get the lighting right and get good audio and things like that. People will

appreciate it more and they won’t switch off as quickly. I’m just going to play you some

very quick examples. This first one is an example of one Dave has done.

[Video]

Now have a look at the views. Good content, it says 36,000 views. He’s created some great

content there that people obviously come to see. The only thing is it looks like it’s done in

a bedroom. That’s ok if that’s the level you’re starting at, then that’s ok but there are things

you can do just to tweak it a little bit. We want to make the most of it. Look at this guy’s

face, we’ve got to make the most of this guy.

Here’s where I came in and when I started working with Dave he had lights and things like

that, so I just set them up and showed him what they’re about, why you use them and how

you use them. It’s exactly what we’re going to do today. If you see here, we’ve changed it

and I’ll go into this in more detail. It’s framed differently, it’s more like what you’d see on TV

or on films and things like that. We’ve got a nice lower third there so it’s starting to brand

him already. He’s lit differently so he looks a lot brighter. I just want to go back one. There’s

that.

[Video]


Then this one.

[Video]

So what’s happening? You can already see

there’s a certain kind of strength, credibility and

confidence as well that comes across. That’s

really important when presenting a video. You

want to be confident, you want people to say,

yes, I trust this person.

This next one has just got a bit of a longer intro, it’s a similar set up. We’ll just watch this

one. Now do you want to find out what those answers are? Yes. Now we had a bit more of

a budget there, we went into space, we shot some footage, which was pretty good, just

direct link to the Hubble telescope. No but

again, that was an intro that we bought, a

stock intro that we put in. We set it up

differently, we created a thirst for what this was

going to be about. These are things you can do,

you’ll know how to do them by the end of

today.

Later on in this video we had the camera set up, Dave’s camera there. I also did some

filming from another angle with a Flip camera and we moved back and forth between

them which was a nice little technique. It just builds a certain level of credibility as well.

So what does that all mean? It’s all about balance.

You guys, by the end of today, we’re going to

have you get started. We’re not going to actually

shoot any videos with you, but we’re going to

have you start to devise three that you might

want to make. Just to start thinking about the

kind of content you can create. When you do, it’s about getting them out there, but also

presenting yourself in the best light because you have an audience ultimately, that’s who

you’re trying to connect with, potential customers or existing customers and you want to

take them to the next level.


With that, you need to think about what they expect. If you were here yesterday, Dave

talked about finding out who your avatar is. You float out of your own head and go into

your avatar’s body and think about exactly what they want to see. What information do

they want, what’s it going to take for them to trust you and to feel connected to your

brand? That’s about finding that balance.

As well, you might not have considered this but use videos to promote yourself at all levels.

You’ve got a new product coming out, you’ve just done an amazing wedding you want to

talk about. Anything like that, use it. If there’s some great news, you just went traveling,

you’ve just come back and you’ve just found out this amazing piece of information, make a

video about it. It’s a really powerful thing. Dave does it all the time, Pete does it all the time,

it’s a really powerful tool.

David: I’ll jump back in on this one. A couple of things, when it comes to the quantity

versus quality, especially when you’re first getting started, just get out whatever you can.

It’s that hurdle of getting over getting started, you need to start doing more video. As you

can, just start to improve it as you go. Just get started.

What's Your Goal?

As far as the goal of today, I just want to

make sure we pre frame this right,

because if you aim at nothing, you’re

sure to hit. What we’re trying to do right

at the start, we talk about opening your

mind to what it is you can do with video.

We’re going to introduce you to the

different tools, we’re going to introduce you to equipment, show you how to set it up,

show you then how to get that video out there and distributed. At the end of the day,

probably one of the sessions you’ll look forward to most is then, well, how do we take the

knowledge that we learned today and then convert that straight into cash?

So we’ve got that and then the other thing as well, which Ben is really good at, is then

bringing it all back down to, well, let’s create an action plan. So at the end of the day, in

one of the last sessions, we’ll talk about planning out, as he was saying, what videos are

you going to work on, how we’re going to do the scripting. Scripting is an area, I know Ben

is going to go into more detail, that most people just skim over, yet it’s probably the most

important thing when it comes to writing video.


Question: Dave, I was just wondering, what’s your outcome when you’re doing the video. Is it a blend of branding yourself as a person and also selling the services you offer?

What’s your mix of both of those?

David: Good question. It depends on where the video is being distributed. For me, you

need to set up that outcome first and Ben is going to talk all about that in the scripting

area. We’ll talk about some different styles of video. You might have a testimonial video,

you might have a video that’s selling a particular product or service, you might have a

tutorial type video. There is a whole host of videos. Each video is going to have its own

outcome.

Part of it will also be related to where it’s distributed to. If you’re distributing to YouTube,

or you’re distributing to Facebook, Facebook is a completely different kettle of fish. If you

jump into my Facebook account, what are you going to see? You’re going to see photos

and videos of Caz and I on our last holiday. I made a little video of us on our Europe trip

and I put it on there.

The reason I do that is when my clients, I know some people use fan pages. I’m still

building under my own personal profile and accepting everyone. I will shift to the fan page

model, but at the moment I’m accepting everybody in. It’s so the clients can connect with

me and say, Dave’s a real guy, Dave’s out there, my friends call it Brand Dave. It’s the brand

that goes onto Facebook and I put things there which allow people to connect with me at

a different level. So it depends where the video is going.

Ben: I’ll just add to that. One thing to remember is that every single company on earth is

made up of people. It’s people who are running these things. Dave is an entrepreneur, he’s

talking about his products, he’s the brand. Even if you’ve got the driest product, if you’re

selling wheat biscuits or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, if you bring a face to it, then all of

a sudden it changes it, it brings that human connection which ultimately is what you’re

trying to do. Regardless of whether it’s building a personal brand or for the company itself,

being the face of it or the voice behind it or whatever will have a great impact.