On our Talkabout Productions Facebook page, I posted the 12 Awesome Reasons Why You Need Professional Video on Your Website. There’s actually more than 12 awesome reasons but these 12 are the most awesome!

• Drives more people to your site because folks like video!
• Folks spend more time on your site because it creates a connection.
• Video enhances the user experience and makes them want to know more!
• Converts “looky loos” into real clients or customers.
• Provides access to “you” – 24 hours, 7 days/wk.
• Puts you light years ahead of your competition.
• Enhances the possibility of viral marketing.
• Increases online awareness of your company.
• Harnesses the power of online exposure!
• Makes your company LOOK AND FEEL leading edge!
• Helps you capitalize on the emergence of new media!
• Attracts the clients who want to work with you!

When I look at this list, the word experience comes to mind and an experience is a particular instance of personally encountering a person or thing. That’s what we’re getting at, how people experience you.

So how do you want people to experience you? Do you want them to read pages of words with some images that might not capture the essence of you and your business or do you want them to see your excitement, passion and authenticity? Video does the latter and that’s where the spark of connection happens.

Over the next few weeks, I will take a more in-depth look at these 12 reasons and you’ll see what I mean about awesome!

Now that you have chosen the videos for your video marketing plan and you have chosen the web hosting sites that will complement your own website, it’s time to optimize your videos. Opti-what? Optimize. I’m sure you’ve heard of Search Engine Optimization, right? OK good. However, it sounds like we need to get a little more clarity on what it means to optimize your plan.

Let’s start with the definition of the word optimize. According to dictionary.com, the word optimize means to make as effective, perfect, or useful as possible. Sounds good, right? Now let’s take that definition and place it over your video marketing plan and see what happens. An optimized video marketing plan becomes an effective and streamlined plan that easily accomplishes your marketing goals. Basically, you have taken your video marketing plan and turned it into a fine-tuned and well-oiled marketing machine that makes it easy for your customers and potential customers to find you.

Now that you know what optimization means, what does it take to optimize your videos? Here are a few great ideas that I read in a great article http://mz.cm/bSA4Ky.

Video

• Showcase your brand in the video
• Use descriptive filenames
• Add a call to action at the end of the video
• Make your audio clear
• Think about the duration of your video
• Add text titles, textual graphics and other text in your video
• Create interesting content

Metadata

• Fill out all the information fields
• Use descriptive and catchy titles
• Take the time create a profile, channel, etc
• Choose a good thumbnail
• Put meaningful content around the video
• Create a transcript
• Create a video sitemap to Google
• Take advantage of mRSS and HTML 5

By implementing some of these great tips, you will create videos that work for you not the other way around.

You’re still with me, great! Now that you’ve weighed the pros and cons of using a third-party platform like YouTube and hosting video on your own website, what do you think? A little bit of both? Yes! Let’s look at few ideas for what a hybrid plan can look like.

Mini Me

This can be done a couple of ways. First, you can create smaller videos for YouTube and let them act as a teaser to encourage people to visit your website in order to view the longer videos. Second, if you offer different video packages as part of your products and services, you can use the first video in the series as an introduction and direct people to your website where they can view the remaining videos or purchase the whole series. Either way, you are driving traffic to your website with one extra step!

Support Your Video

Post videos to your YouTube channel and offer resources with further information on your website. You can share articles, your blog, interviews and any other resources that support your video. What does this do for you? It gives your customers and potential customers a reason to go to your website. That’s right, more traffic! Just be sure to mention in your video and description that people can find out more information on your website.

Mirror Image

Use the same video on YouTube and your website. Before you call this the lazy plan, hear me out. This plan is great for people who have a new business or a limited marketing budget. You get to leverage the distribution channel of a site like YouTube with no extra cost. All you have to do is create your YouTube channel, upload your videos and let your customers find you. You’re reaching more people without any extra work or money.

Here’s one tip if you decide to post identical videos on YouTube and similar sites as well as your own website. Be sure to use different titles and descriptions. If you don’t, they can be considered duplicate content which may not be good for your SEO.

Speaking of SEO, we’re going to look at how to optimize your video marketing for optimum results. See you next time!

How’s it going with getting clear about what to do with your video? Need a little help with that clarity? No worries, we’re here to help you along this journey.

To host or not to host?

Do you want to host your video yourself or enlist the help of a third party? Generally hosting video yourself is not recommended unless you have lots of technical resources at your disposal (there are lots of moving parts to a video hosting project including: hosting the files, serving up video and the resulting bandwidth costs, selecting and customizing a player, collecting metrics and analytics, etc). In the past, this was the best option, but that is no longer the case. For most people, choosing a third party video platform is a better solution because they will offer better bandwidth costs, provide you lots of tools to manage your video and help you create a compelling user experience.

Third party here I come!

For most of you, choosing a third party platform will be the best option. It will free your time and budget and allow your video marketing to do what you want, expand your business, but let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages to third party hosting sites like YouTube, MetaCafe or DailyMotion.

Advantages:

•    Easy to upload video
•    No bandwidth costs
•    Lots of traffic
•    Easy to share (embed, email to friends, rss feeds, etc)

Disadvantages:

•    Videos are watched on their site, not yours!

•    Harder to monetize – if you are pursuing a video ad strategy to monetize your content this will be harder to do on big video sharing sites
•    No link juice if people embed/share your video
•    Limited analytics to understand user engagement, video bounce rate,etc
•    Tend to be lower quality
•    Ads appear on your content
•    Limited length/duration

How about a mixture of both? We’ll look at that next time …

We are actually going to break this topic into two sections: Clarity and Action.

Before you take any action steps with your new video, it’s important to get clear about what you want your video to do for you. Clarity aligns your actions with your goals, keeps your actions focused and helps you save time and money.

If you aren’t sure where to begin, we have a list of questions below to help get you started. It might be a good idea to have your 2012 marketing plan handy as a reference.

•    Do you want increased brand awareness?
•    Are you planning to put ads on your content or charge a premium or pay  per view model for your video?
•    How are you going to get users to come to your site using your video?
•    Are you concerned about bandwidth costs?
•    Do you just want something simple, or is having a full fledged
platform important to your business goals?
•    Do you want to add supplemental entertaining or useful videos that would gain traction and views on a video sharing site?
•    Or is your content very product specific and best used to help your current traffic convert?

Remember, there are no right or wrong answers to these questions and nothing is set in stone. In our next post, we will help you strategize after gaining clarity.

Now that you’ve decided to add video to your 2012 marketing plan, you have another decision to make; should I do it myself or hire a professional to create my video?

Before we answer that question, let’s talk about what that decision means to your business. When you decide to create video marketing, you are making a strong commitment to the success of your business. That’s right! You are making a solemn promise to engage in activities that will give your business the support it needs to soar.

Let’s go back to the question, do it yourself or hire a professional. When you are committed to the success of your business, then it’s an easy question to answer. Hire a professional of course!

A production company gives your video the professionalism, quality and experience that your business deserves. You get the opportunity to work with a team of highly qualified people who will know how to make you shine in front of the camera. Here’s the best part; all you have to do is be yourself. The production team will take care of the details and deliver to you a fabulous video worthy of an Oscar!

See for yourself…

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/O-ea8_gOjq4″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

As 2011 comes to a close, many of us are reviewing our marketing plans for 2012 and asking ourselves, “What can I do differently to stand out from the competition?”

VIDEO!

VIDEO?

Yes, video!

So what can video do for my business? I am so glad that you asked. Video can take your business to the future of marketing. While your competition is mailing out postcards, which will probably end up in the trash anyway, you will be posting video to your website, newsletters and blogs that people can see anytime, anywhere on their smart phones, tablets, computers and TVs.

While video easily brings technology to your marketing, video also brings connection. With the click of a button, people can see you talk about your business in your own words with your own brand of enthusiasm and passion. They connect with you, not some words on a website. They feel your enthusiasm and your passion and that leaves an impression so they will think of you the next time they are looking for the services that you offer.

Video brings your business to life and puts you in front of your clients!

So join us over the next few weeks as we explore the key components to a highly optimized video that makes your 2012 marketing plan POP!

Tonight I watched “This Is It” and I have to tell you, Kenny Ortega has the gift to see people as God sees them and then put it on film for the rest of us to witness ! Both Kenny and Michael Jackson are amazing creators, visionaries, both have such humility and gratitude.

We all have unique and wonderful gifts to offer this life. It’s my gift to help you express yours in a way that only you can. It does us no good to live small, hide our light from the world. In fact, as Marianne Williamson wrote in her book:

“A Return to Love”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~Marianne Williamson

Are you living BIG? Are you living your lives purpose? Are you ready to share it with the world?

Come on, what are you waiting for? The world’s waiting just for you! This is it!

I am grateful and overwhelmed at the out pouring of support for this project. You are all so awesome.
As we all know one of the major problems effecting our Nation and it’s people is unemployment. We want to do our small part to help. Please nominate your friends and loved ones for a free Video Resume! We truly care and would like to help. The future is here and we need every way possible to stand out from the rest. A video resume can do just that.

People often ask us what to wear for their video… filming in HD (high definition) is a little tricky and there are some things to watch out for…large shiny patterns for one, pinstripes for another. They become exaggerated and can make one look like they are melting on screen! The same goes for glossy lip stick or shiny, glittery eye shadow. Melting lips or eyes…not pretty! Matte finish is a must for HD.

We recommend you wear something you would go to work in and it must be something you feel comfortable wearing. One example is my husbands first video, he wore a dress shirt, slacks, and dress shoes. He NEVER dresses that way for work! We shot it anyway and it was a disaster! Lesson learned… we reshot it in jeans and a golf shirt and it was beautiful! I cannot stress comfort enough! Then take me for example…there’s a little DIVA inside me and the kind of clothes I feel comfortable wearing are dresses and heals! Jeans and a golf shirt are never going to happen! I would feel completely out of my element.

Black is always good against a white limbo set. It also keeps the attention on you, what your saying…people get a glimpse of you! Keep it simple…keep the focus on you.
So what’s your style? How do you dress for doing what you love?What do you feel most “yourself” wearing? No stressing…we will walk you through it and your video will be amazingly YOU!