Podcast:

Transcription:

Good morning Internet fans, Ryan Perry here, Simple Biz Support. Today is June 16th. It is a Thursday, therefore it is Internet Marketing Thursday. I have a special guest this week, which is Annette Penney of Inspired By Annette. Good morning.

Annette Penney: Okay. Can you hear me now.

RP: Now you double click on it. There she is.

RP: Good old technical issues, although, I was thinking, is it still morning there? It may be… It could be afternoon.

AP: No. It’s almost one o’clock.

RP: Almost one o’clock. Just if you haven’t caught the accent yet, Annette is from Canada. She’s on the East coast, I’m on the West coast. So we’re in a slightly different time zone. And Annette and I actually connected through Twitter two, three… Two years ago?

AP: Yeah, at least.

RP: It’s been a while, and she has filled in a few times in the past, a digital marketing guru, and a lovely lady with a great personality, which are the type of people that I like to associate with. And so, when I said, “Hey, I’ve got this opening. I need some help.” She said, “Perfect. Would love to,” which I really appreciate. She wanted to talk about video, which I love video. So the fact that we’re talking about video gets me excited about today’s show. And specifically we’re going to kind of take it from the approach of the business owner that maybe has been blogging for a while. They’ve heard all this. There’s a lot of news going around video marketing and how important video marketing is, or should be as far as adding it to your marketing mix. But where do you start as far as content?

AP: That’s a really good question. As with all aspects of marketing, and my area of expertise is online marketing. You always have to have a strategy. But if a small business owner wants to get started with some video content creation, what they can do before they sit down and develop a whole big year long strategy, is they can go to the blog posts that they’ve already created, and look at some of the things that they’ve written about, and then just convert it to, now we’re going to talk about it in some short video clips. I know people get scared, even myself, I don’t personally like sitting in front of a camera, I’d rather somebody else on my team did it, but you know what, the more successful videos are the shorter ones, so 60 seconds. So you know what, it doesn’t take a lot of time, it doesn’t take a lot of editing either. You would know more about that than me, right?

RP: Yeah. And what’s really nice is when I coach my clients to do video blogs is I ask them to do it in one shoot. And even if they mess up, all they need to do is pause and restart the sentence and keep on going. And the reason I do that, one, it makes it easier for editing, but number two, I think it makes it easier on the client also in the sense that you just need to get through one continuous thought, and it doesn’t have to be perfect because in the editing bay we can cut out the bad stuff. You’re allowed to pause and think about what you need to say next. A lot of people use notes, so they look down, and then they’ll keep on talking, all of that stuff can be edited out, so it’s very simple. And I love the idea of actually just taking your current content, because the reality is, any time you start something new, it’s always going to feel uncomfortable to some degree for anybody, simply because the brain isn’t used to doing this. And any time the brain is put in a situation where it’s not used to doing something, it’s going to freak out a little bit. And I always like to start with, let’s just start with some really simple basic stuff, and I love the idea of well, why not take content that you’ve already created.

AP: Yeah. Absolutely. And my degrees are in psychology, so I understand a fair bit of the human behavior. And one of the things that I’ve personally written about in the last year is how disconnected we are from each other, and how disconnected we are even within ourselves. And I think one of the things that video accomplishes is it gets us connected back to our audiences, our current customers, and potential customers, so it’s good that way too. You’re connecting more. You can hide behind a blog post in words and whatever, but if you can just be yourself in front of a camera for 60 seconds, people can relate to that, and we all know in marketing that people will do business with other people that they like, and they know, and they trust. And you can build trust, I think, more effectively with video.

RP: Yeah, totally. And what I tell people is it humanizes the web experience. One of the cliches is when you get a local… And I work personally with local business, and so maybe it’s a dentist as an example, and you go look at a dental website and it’s just all of these stock photos of happy families hugging in the park, and all those type of stuff, and I understand they want to make it fun and pleasant, but you’re a local business. Personally I don’t think you should be using local or excuse me, stock photos of some random people that people can tell are just corporate photos. You lose all the personality in it, and video is a great way to bring your personality in, and the other thing I really love about video and I love that you brought up the personality side, is that you’re going to attract people who like you, and therefore probably going to be kind of in the… Same realm as you, therefore you’re going to attract friendly clients that you enjoy working with.

AP: I attract people who like the color purple.

RP: Totally. I can totally understand that. There’s another example of a guy who was asked, he was doing… I’m going to go off a quick tangent here, was working with a business consultant, and the business consultant said, “Look I want you to go through all your former houses that you’ve sold and I want you to find consistencies there. Maybe everybody drove a station wagon or everybody drove a truck.” What he discovered is the high percentage of houses he sold were related with pools. He loved pools, his family loved pools, he loved having barbecues around pools. He knew everything about pools, so he got excited educating people on how to buy houses with pools and he ended up becoming the Pool Real Estate, that’s how he kind of niched himself, and not only was he the guy that people went to when they wanted to buy a house with a pool because he was the expert in it, but he really enjoyed his business more because he was able to talk about something he was passionate about all the time.

AP: Right. Right. I think that’s key in any business. If you do what you’re passionate about you’re going to be naturally good at it. Really.

RP: Right. We got off on a little bit of tangent, I want to get back to talking about, “Okay, I’m thinking about doing video,” 60 seconds, great, I will even say go up to 2 minutes, is fine, I know there’s SEO reasons and Google statistic reasons, why not. If you’re providing good quality information then it’s not an issue. So how do we take a blog post and turn it into video? Am I just going to read the blog post verbatim?

AP: No, well I’ll give you an example. So one of my clients, it’s funny that you brought up Real Estate, one of my clients is a realtor. I’ll just go to one of his blog posts to show you that. Okay, so here we go. Okay, can you see that?

RP: I do. Watch out for the Top Ten something.

AP: Top 10 Most Common Buying And Selling Mistakes. So one of the things about… The reason why I chose this particular article was, blog post article what ever you want to call it, is because there’s 10 most common buying and selling mistakes. So right there is 10 videos, right? Now, so the first two items are hiring the first sales person you meet, not making your expectations clear with your real estate professional. I really liked failing to read and understand forms and contracts too, that’s a good one. So, you take the first point, hiring the first sales person you meet, and then you just expand on it because, look Ryan, if you go back through your blog post content, let’s say once it’s about six months old, you’re naturally going to have some updates to it. So you can take it and update it and expand on it. So I would take the points, the individual points or if you don’t have points you’re going to have themes in a blog post, take those themes and make them topics or subtopics of the main topic of you’re blog post and then just create video content around that.

AP: So hiring the first sales person you meet as a realtor, I could have my client and I will… I am actually in the process of having this particular client create some video content and I’m going to sit him down for whole days at a time and we’re going to just go for a day at a time and I’ll get some content from there, but he could talk about why you wouldn’t want to hire the first sales person you meet and talk about, are there advantages and disadvantages to that? And then end off with why they would, a person wanting to sell their house would want to meet with him. You know what I mean, and not make it too sales-y but just kind of, talk about himself and make it personable.

RP: Correct and the big thing for me with any blog content, especially video blog, is that blog content should be strictly educational. So one of the things I do with my clients is I do not recommend that at the end of the video they go, “Hey. Call me.” Instead, if it’s real estate, “Talk to your local professional realtor in your area.” Because… And the other reason why you want to do that is because somebody in New York or Afghanistan or South America could be watching your video and if that’s the case you don’t want them calling. You want the couple in Florida, who goes, “Oh! That’s great information. Thank you very much.” You want them to call their local realtor and of course when somebody in your community watches your video, they’re not going to go, “Gee, that’s a great idea. Let me go find another realtor.” They’re going to go, “Oh, this person, I’ve got to know them. I love the way they were talking. I can connect with them, I’m going to give them a call.” You don’t have to ask for that sale.

RP: And what I really like about the example that you brought with the blog post with the 10 tips, is that the other thing is that a lot of times people like to talk about their entire business. And if you spend an hour talking about your entire business and that goes back to making really short videos, you’re going to bore people to death so you want to be really focused and on point. So if you were to take that blog post and talk about all 10 things, it’d probably be at least a 20-minute video.

AP: Yeah. Exactly. The studies that have been done on video marketing indicate, and this is recent research, it talks about how there is a higher lead generation and conversion from video as opposed to text on a website, and it increases product sales, and one of the things that video does is it boosts confidence with the customer about your product or your service. And one statistic that I came across was that there’s a 1,200… Where is it? Video is shared 1,200% more than text or links. 1,200%. And what is it we’re trying to do, when we’re doing online marketing, is we want people to share our content. And so doing that on social media or putting the video on your website or putting it on your YouTube channel, you’re just going to increase your lead generation and conversion, so it’s kind of one of these things that you’ve gotta ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t we be doing video marketing?”

RP: Yeah. Totally, and I think the biggest hang-up is just fear, and one of the other things I love to tell my clients is that it’s digital. If you don’t like it, we delete it, and we start over. And also, if you look at famous movie actors and actresses, they’ll go on the Ellen Show or something, and Ellen will bring up, “Oh, this is the very first show you were ever in,” and they’re like, “Oh my God, I was horrible.” And it’s, “No, you just, that was your experience level,” but like anything, as you go through it you get better and better and better.

AP: Yeah. And I like for video to be natural and not overly highly produced. I’ve seen some of the videos that you’ve… Content that you’ve created with… Do you have like a chiropractor or something that you’ve worked with? Or maybe it was a dentist. It was a healthcare professional, and they’re just sitting in their office talking. See, I like that.

RP: Yeah, I…

AP: ‘Cause it doesn’t come across as sales-y when you do it that way. It’s your client being themselves in their own environment, right?

RP: Correct, and part of that is another… I mean that’s a whole another topic as far as the actual video. I’m using a simple webcam right now, so it doesn’t have to be this high expensive production thing. I like what I call “Down-and-dirty” videos. That’s another hesitation that people have is that, “Oh, I’ve got to hire a videographer, I gotta go into a studio, we gotta get lighting, I gotta get my hair and make up done.” You don’t have to do that. Yes, you need to be presentable, and no, you don’t want boxes and garbage and all kinds of junk. I’m just in my office here, and I’m running a simple little webcam. Nothing fancy. I’ve got a window open, and I do have a light here because I’m back lit so much, but you want things to be natural, especially if you’re trying to attract millennials. Millennials do not want to be sold to. They just simply want to be educated, given information, and they want to be entertained. That’s a whole another topic.

AP: Right.

RP: It’s really, all you need to do is just make a down-and-dirty video, and if you are honest and sincere about helping people out or showcasing why a product is so great, they’re naturally going to be interested and either buy or they’re going to give you a call. We’re actually out of time, but can you give me like two or three quick tips on somebody’s thinking about using video and what are the kind of taking that blog post and converting it into video?

AP: First thing I would do, go to your blog posts and your content and look at the ones that got the most hits, likes, shares. So you’re looking for the most popular of your blog posts, and start with those first. Break your blog post down into themes or points. “How-to” blog posts are really great for that because you can do how-to, one-two-three kind of thing. And keep it simple. Sit yourself in front of a camera and just do 60, 90 second videos, not highly produced. Keeping it simple is huge. And be yourself. For the longest time, I was afraid to be myself because I thought, “You know what? Are people really going to take me seriously with purple hair?” No, serious, this was one of my serious considerations in life because I didn’t know should I add purple to my hair or not. And then somebody said to me, “Annette, you gotta be your authentic, genuine self,” and so when I once embrace that everything just flowed afterwards. So people need to just be true to themselves, and if they have a sense of humor or you’re a realtor who loves pools, go with who you are.

RP: Yeah, definitely. All right. I love it. We have so much information to cover that we’re actually going to continue this series next week and have a part two on converting blog content into video. Annette, thank you very much. I’m looking forward to next week’s show. Thank you for your time today.

AP: Thanks for having me. It’s great.

RP: All right everybody. That is it for today’s show. We will see you next week, same time, same computer, and again, it’s going to be part two, so you’ll definitely want to stick around. Take care.