With coronavirus health concerns going on around the globe, there’s no better time than right now to learn what the benefits of live streaming are and how you can use it.
Live streaming is taking off. Houses of worship are streaming their services because congregants can’t worship together. Schools across the country are closed forcing teachers to use distance and remote learning. And local governments are streaming video to communicate with the public. My personal trainer is offering video and one on one consultation to his older clients who aren’t leaving their homes right now.
Seeing live video of your teacher, your mayor, boss, family, or pastor is incredibly reassuring in times of uncertainty. And the technology is already here and commonly used for business on apps like Facetime, GotToMeeting, Zoom, and Google Hangouts. And if your standards aren’t too high, then you already have all you need on your smart phone.
Check out any of these links for detailed instructions on how to do it yourself on an iPhone or Android mobile device.
Businesses have been video conferencing for years with strong engagement and employee adoption to actually INCREASE productivitiy. According to Lifesize:
89% of remote employees say video calling helps them feel more connected to their colleagues.
76% percent of people use video collaboration to work remotely and, of those, 75% experience increased productivity and an improved work-life balance.
82% of video users are less likely to multi-task on a video call than an audio one.
89% agree that video calling reduces time to complete projects or tasks.
90% say video makes it easier to get their point across.
98% state that video calls help with relationship building both inside and outside the company.
So it’s clear live video is strong in business, but do you need higher quality live video streaming for events you’re inviting others to see in real time?
For bigger productions such as a keynote presentation, special event, etc. you can always hire Braly Image Group to do this for you and we will make it look really slick by using multiple, high-end cameras while also including your slide deck or power point or graphics and other videos. These kinds of productions are happening right now for special events, meetings, and weddings, allowing attendees to fully experience the event from the comfort of their own home. It costs a little more, but without having to cater to the attendees that you normally would, you may break even.
If you’re considering investing thousands of dollars to acquire all the professional gear necessary to it yourself. That’s a viable option if you’re planning to do this repeatedly. But when you get right down to it, all you really need to livestream cheaply is a phone, tablet or just laptop with a built-in camera and an account on your chosen platform such as Facebook Live.As long as “production quality” isn’t important, this will always be good enough for an informal business meeting or saying hello to neighbors or family. I would never recommend an iPhone video stream for your daughter’s wedding, or your church or synagogue’s worship service, and so on.
Whether your organization needs top quality live video, or if your smart phone will suffice is up to you, but live steaming HAS really ramped up in 2020 and it’s not going away.
One last note: are crew is very careful to abide by the federally advised social distancing measures, with full adherence to sanitary measures and ensuring we maintain a small footprint and that no one on the small crew is showing any symptoms of sickness before arriving for essential work related productions.
Our entire crew is concerned about this pandemic and our prayers go out to everyone impacted by the virus. Both to those who are working on the front lines of this crisis, to those who are sick, we wish you a full and speedy recovery and peace of mind for your loved ones. We will get through this. Please let me know if you need any help or have any questions.
Whether you’re a large or small company, you’re constantly trying to spend your budget wisely, while still doing all you can to stay relevant and attract new clients. And one of the best things you can do to get great results with minimal investment is to recycle and repurpose your existing video content.
You may think you don’t need to bother with it because you have plenty of fresh stuff, but eventually the following could happen:
• you will eventually run out of refreshing ideas
• OR your marketing budget could tighten up
• OR your video content just gets old and needs updating
So when you reach that point, you too should consider repurposing content. And I’m gonna share with you several ways you can approach this.
For those who don’t know, repurposing content simply means finding new ways to recycle your existing content, and it has a number of benefits.
Reach a New Audience
Some users prefer visual infographics over text statistics. Some choose podcasts over ebooks. Reformatting your content for different mediums means appealing to more audiences and extending your reach.
Dust Off the Forgotten Tales
We all have that movie or book that’s an old favorite, and when you eventually come across it, you might think to yourself “Hey, I should really dig into that again. I loved it.” It might be months or even years before you stumble on that old treasure. Repurposing your old content can put an old favorite up front and center, ensuring that great content is never forgotten.
Make the Most of Your Efforts
When you put a ton of effort into a piece of content, you’re immensely proud. But quality and pride aren’t all that’s required for success. There are all kinds of unseen factors that affect how well a content piece performs. Repurposing content ensures that users who missed your epic video the first time around have another chance at seeing it. It’s a second chance at content promotion.
Important!
Only repurpose content that’s evergreen in nature, and by “evergreen”, I mean content that continues to be valuable and relevant many months or even years later. Refreshing some forgotten content can help you stay relevant and I recommend only considering your most popular videos to ensure better traffic and engagement.
Another thing to consider, videos are not limited to Youtube and Vimeo. There’s Instagram, IGTV, LinkedIn, Facebook, Brightcove, Vidyard, and many more. These videos can also be edited by an experienced video editor, formatted for different diameters if you wish, or even repurposed into different formats such as podcasts for more solid branding.
Remember that not every video can be recycled and repurposed. You need to ask yourself about your target audience and what you hope to accomplish before you begin revamping your video content.
Another thing before we dive in, you may have some videos that are much longer than today’s viewer wants to watch. It’s unlikely you’ll keep someone’s attention for all 5 minutes or more of those videos, especially if you’re promoting them on social media. Can you break down your longer videos into several short videos (30-60 seconds each)? Then you can promote and distribute each video short as a series and include a CTA that leads viewers back to your YouTube channel or website to catch the full-length version.
I’m also going to include several links throughout the remainder of this blog post, so if I mention something relative that’s underlined, click the text and a new tab should open up that will give you some guidance on how to accomplish that.
1. Turn the Video Into a Blog or infographic
Create a blog post based on the video’s transcript. The greatest advantage of doing this is that you have a lot more room to explain the information in depth. You can transcribe it yourself, or hire an intern or outsource that task to someone.
Take a look at your most popular 2-minute videos, then build a 2,500 word blog post and discuss the subject in greater detail using stats, facts, figures or trends that you didn’t have enough time to cover in the video.
Or, you could turn your video into an infographic and re-share it with your audience. 65% of people are visual learners so using infographics or videos will reinforce the knowledge and help people memorize your message faster and longer.
2. Recycle a webinar or other live presentation
If you hosted an awesome webinar that had a lot of attendees, a few people still didn’t get to see it. And, months after the event, you’ll have new site visitors and leads who don’t even know what they missed out on in the first place.
3. Turn a Video Into a Podcast
More and more people are listening to podcasts every year. According to a recent study, 50% of all US homes are podcast fans, and according to Nielsen, 144 million people in the US has listened to a podcast, that’s 20 million more than in 2018. And also, according to Nielsen’s latest polling 16 million people in the US are “avid podcast fans”. With a podcast, you can reach a larger audience. People consume podcasts while driving, jogging, running, working out, eating, even sleeping or showering!
Not every video is going to be perfect for a podcast, in fact, many won’t, but interviews, presentations, and several other types of videos will easily transition to a listening audience.
So if you have any informative, interviews, or educational videos, turn them into an iTunes podcast. The content can either be of the same length or altered to fit the new format.
Pro tips: Everything benefits from a bit of an edit. A podcast exists to tell a story or convey an idea. Unlike radio or TV, it doesn’t have to be any specific duration to fit a schedule. But the average is between 30 minutes and an hour. Remember this before you just automatically convert your videos. Another thing to remember; editing can be boring and dull; but it’s important to do, because your number one job is to delight and inform your listeners. If you don’t, they’ll go away and won’t return. Be prepared to delete the fluff and the things that don’t really matter, no matter if its 20 minutes long or 3 hours long. Tell the story and get out of there.
4. Add Closed Captions & Multilingual Subtitles
Nearly 5% of the world’s population are deaf and hard of hearing. So there are many YouTube users who are often prevented from fully experiencing videos because of a lack of captioning. Facebook reported that captioned videos also see an increase of 12% in view time, compared to non-captioned ones.
And even though English is considered the business language for most markets, a whopping 60% of Youtube audience is from non-English countries. So personalizing your audience’s experience with multilingual subtitles can be a great technique to increase traffic.
By translating your video content into the languages that your audience speaks, you’re able to boost the number of views, increase retention, watch time and even search engine rankings.
Pro tips: To increase engagement with your audience, consider turning on the “community contribution” feature when you upload your video to Youtube. You can also get captions added automatically on Youtube and edit them for corrections after the process is done. You can also grab that captions file and use it on other platforms or have it translated. If you need to convert the SBC file to an SRT file for Facebook, there’s a way to do that too.
Another way to refresh videos while you’re captioning is to create teasers from your ‘hero’ videos. Consider cutting some parts from the video and throw them into a clip of 10 to 30 seconds. Use these to tease your new product, latest feature update, and so on, sharing these on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
You can also use open captions which are always visible and eliminate the need to even have the sound up to get your message. This will take a bit more work, but you never know when some potential customer may just scroll right past your important video if there aren’t any captions on their social media.
5. Show Your Bloopers!
Most people put their behind the scenes and #epicfail moments at the end of their sales meeting videos, but nowadays, behind-the-scenes (bts) clips are a fun way to humanize your brand and a great way to engage with your audience, and remember to use hashtags like #bloopers in the video description for better branding on social media. People do search for those keywords and could easily get hooked with your brand after seeing your bloopers!
BONUS
Now, you may be saying to yourself that you don’t have ANY videos to repurpose, or all the ones you have are not evergreen and can’t work in any of the above scenarios. Well here are a couple of additional ideas that might give you some content to repurpose without having to use your video library.
Remember that exceptional PowerPoint or Keynote presentation you prepared at the last big meeting? The presentation may be over, but why let it go to waste? These can often be repurposed into a video by simply exporting the video from within PowerPoint (PC or Mac). Or if you’re on a Mac, you could simply import your slides into that software. Just edit your slides for a consumer audience, then if you have a microphone built in to your system, consider adding some voiceover narration and upload it. You can easily convert a Keynote presentation to a video also, and even add your own narration (or hiring a professional to do this). Or you might just want to convert it to a slide deck with the help of SlideShare, and embed the presentation in one of your web pages. Now you have a new piece of content you barely had to work for.!
Recycling and repurposing video content is a great way to breathe new life into your old content, save your money, drive more traffic and engage your audience. So bookmark this page and keep these tips in mind and give your future video content a new lease on life with minimal fuss and get the most value out of your content efforts. Do you have any other methods you’d like to share for repurposing content? Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments!
So humbled by last night’s results of the annual Chattanooga Times Free Press BEST OF THE BEST People’s Choice Awards! My company, Braly Image Group Studios, was selected as the best videography service provider in the Tennessee Valley!
So proud of the team and the work we’ve been doing, making every effort to treat every client as a BIG deal. We’ll strive to continue to keep giving our very best, every time.
Today’s BIG Idea is basically a list of the first 5 things that I often recommend to all my clients do before they produce their first or their next video.
Now you may have done videos in the past that were great, or maybe they only got lackluster results that you weren’t satisfied with. Either way, if you consider what I’m about to share with you, I promise it will make your next video profoundly powerful and have a higher probability of getting results – plus a bonus tip on how to save big bucks if you outsource your video production.
Now the first tip is simply this – BE DIRECT.
What I mean by that is if you start your video by showing your logo and playing music, try to limit it to 5 seconds or less. Nobody clicked your video to watch a 15 second animated logo. So if you do it, do it quickly and get to the point.
My second tip is to ANSWER QUESTIONS.
Find out what questions your potential customers have before they decide to purchase and then answer them in your video as quickly and as simply as possible.
Tip number three is SHOW, DON’T TELL.
It’s far more effective to demonstrate something than to try and explain it. If you’re marketing a revolutionary new product, what do you think’s gonna be more convincing? Someone saying to the camera “this is really fantastic” or someone using the product with unbelievable ease? Show your product in action, don’t just tell us about it.
Fourth on the list is BE CONCISE.
It’s tempting to try to say everything in your video, but don’t. Your objective is to make customers want to take the next step, which is to contact you to learn more. Concentrate on the essentials and aim for a length of 1 to 2 minutes.
And my fifth tips is SET A SUFFICIENT BUDGET.
This goes for time and / or money. You don’t need to spend a fortune, but be sure the quality of your content matches your brand. What I mean by this is that if you’re a local bar targeting college students you might can get away with something a bit amateurish, but that’s far less likely to work for a 5 star hotel, and of course I recognize there are exceptions to this rule. But, I think your best approach is to match your brand’s image.
And that’s my top 5 tips before you produce your next video. I haven’t forgotten, I have one BIG bonus tip on the blog that will save you BIG bucks when you produce your next video –
My bonus tip is MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TIME.
When you decide you’re going so start making videos, it’s tempting to just narrow your focus on just one.
If you’re not outsourcing the production work, it takes a bit of effort and planning to do it yourself. Setting up lights, mic, camera, and setting aside a space to do interviews is time consuming. So, if you’re going to the trouble of getting all the equipment prepped and set-up, why not get some company culture testimonials from satisfied employees or other additional footage on the same day while you’re shooting? Maybe set-up several product or service demos on the same day.
Or maybe you’ve booked a production company for a half-day or a full day shoot at your business, but you only plan to interview one or two people.
Instead of limiting yourself, try to think of how many interviews you could knock out in a full day. It’s cheaper to have a production crew only come once, than make several trips. Don’t rush into making that first video when you could potentially save hundreds or even thousands of dollars getting interviews on video on the same day, even if the footage won’t be used in the same video. Also, have the crew get lots of b-roll as well, because you can potentially have that footage for later video content.
Discuss all of these ideas with your video provider in a pre-production meeting and reputable, professional video companies will make a reasonable effort to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.
The bottom line is, maximize your productivity by making the most of your decision to have some video shot. Try to get two, three, or more additional items on video that you can use later if it makes sense. That’s for you to decide.
I hope you can make the most of one or more of these tips to consider before you make your next video.
I’ve decided to launch a video blog series (an ongoing vlog) I’m calling the BIG Idea. My mission is to educate my clients about how they can get the most bang for their buck when it comes to video marketing.
I hope that it will help not only my clients, but any business owner get the most out of their digital marketing and video production, even when they’re exploiting videos that they may already have in their library. I want to help them increase the productivity and profitability of their business without spending more than they have to.
Be sure to subscribe and turn on the notifications for updates for lots of free and helpful instruction on ways you can use video, with a professional company, or by doing it yourself, in several different ways to advance and promote your company.
Wow! My video studio was just been nominated for a “Best of the Best” People’s Choice Award – and today is the FINAL DAY OF VOTING! Sorry I didn’t tell everyone sooner. Will you click the link below and give us your vote? I’ve been told that one lucky voter (maybe you?) will win $500!
Thanks for your support! I will definitely report back if we become a finalist.
Braly Image Group Studios (BIG Studios) was recently honored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), Chattanooga Chapter, with two bronze ADDY awards at the annual American Advertising Awards which took place at The Edney in downtown Chattanooga.
The ADDYs, which honor excellence in advertising, recognized BIG Studios for their online video produced for the Market City Center titled “City Living”, which was produced in the fall of 2018. The piece won two awards in multiple categories.
