This is the second installment in a three-part series about creating decent video for your social marketing effort. My point isn’t to turn you into a master videographer. Rather, I hope to encourage you to improve your product. If your viewers aren’t thinking about the production quality of your video messages, they’re more likely to focus on the messages in your videos.

While Recording Video

In part one of this series, I posted seven things to fix before you start shooting video. In this post, we look at seven things to do—or not to do—while you’re recording:

Fill the frame. The subject of your video should be front-and-center. If you’re teaching about planting herbs in pots, make sure your viewers can see the herbs and the pots. I’ve seen video demonstrations in which the presenter filled the frame, but the items the presenter was demonstrating were too small to discern clearly. If you are the most important thing in your video, then place the camera appropriately. However, if you’re demonstrating something, arrange the camera so your demonstration is easy to see in the video. If your video camera won’t focus at close range, use a digital camera to capture detail and include the digital stills within your finished video.

Record multiple takes from several angles. For videos that feature a person talking, a single take from one camera angle works well. And, for many demonstrations, a single camera angle is adequate. Doing multiple takes from multiple camera angles increases the chance of capturing detail that’s relevant to your demonstration. Sometimes your hands interfere with a shot as you demonstrate a procedure simply because you didn’t anticipate the full range of motion you’d employ. Do the demo twice and move the camera between takes; this will probably result in sequences you can edit together to tell your story well.

Put the camera down. This may be the most important point in my discussion about making good video: Don’t hold the camera while you’re recording. Get a tripod and learn to use it. Even if you’re following a moving subject, mount the camera on a tripod and limit the camera’s movement to horizontal or vertical pans. Please, please, please don’t hold the camera and walk while you’re recording unless there is no other way to get the shot you need.

An amateur videographer once asked me what equipment I used to make videos—we had created videos at the same venue. Before answering, I watched his recording; it was very shaky and hard to follow… though the image quality seemed quite good. I could see that his video camera would have made a great video if he’d mounted the camera on a tripod.

Pan slowly and rarely. Panning means moving the camera across a scene. There’s a lot of crummy panning in Youtube videos: people swing this way and that to follow action, and they leave viewers feeling dizzy. Try to record videos from a stationary camera. If you must pan, pan slowly… and if you think you’re panning slowly enough, pan a little slower still. If you really must pan quickly, it should be to follow a moving subject… and keep the subject in the frame so viewers have a decent place to focus while the rest of the scene is a blur.

Don’t one-hand the camera at your face. Seriously. This is so cheesy. Get a tripod or a friend.

Zoom in and out only if you must. If a scene requires a long shot followed by a tight shot or vice-versa, do viewers a favor and cut the two views together. Watching a scene zoom rarely increases understanding of the subject matter the scene presents.

Pause often and long if you’re narrating as your record a scene. Why would I suggest this? When you play back a recording, it’s likely you’ll spot bits that you ought to leave out of the finished video. But, if the original recording contains an endless stream of narration, it’s tricky to cut without creating awkward transitions. If stream-of-concsiousness is the best delivery mechanism for your massage, go for it. If you want to present a clear, understandable message, pace yourself and pause often so your video will be easier to edit.

Technorati Tags: marketing video, video, video quality

The use of social media is growing exponentially. Companies that incorporate social media into their marketing programs have a dramatic advantage over competitors. Many companies in central Pennsylvania choose to block access to social media even for employees who can benefit from it the most. Worse: managers and policy-makers often dismiss social media as frivolous; they don’t see themselves using it, so they don’t see how important these new technologies are to business.

Before Social Marketing Strategies comes Understanding

I do a presentation that stuns listeners with insights into the growing Internet-based economy, and that explains fundamentals of social media and the advantages it brings to a business. I’m offering this presentation at no charge to Pennsylvania companies wanting to learn more about social media. My hope is that PA companies will adopt social media to reduce costs by streamlining market research, marketing, customer support, and collaboration.

Companies that don’t adopt social media lose against their competitors. More disturbing: they lose attractiveness to a technology-savvy workforce that has never known a time without personal computers and cell phones. These are the young college graduates who leave Pennsylvania for jobs in companies that keep abreast of trends that are changing the way people do business.

Please help me get the word out about social media. If your Pennsylvania company is ready to learn about social media, drop me a note at this address: daniel@cityslipper.com. If you know a company that might be ready to explore social media, please send them a link to this post. Until further notice I charge nothing to present this seminar within Pennsylvania, but for travel beyond 75 miles from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, I request a stipend to cover my travel expenses.

I’m pleased to offer this seminar as well to non-Pennsylvania companies at my standard training rate.

Technorati Tags: free social marketing seminar, free social media seminar, social media, social media seminar, training

One of the conundrums of delivering technological solutions to business process problems is that the very “best fit” products—even custom-built products—sometimes fail miserably. The reason, quite often, is corporate culture.

Internal Uses of Social Media

In ten minutes of brainstorming, your managers could probably think up three dozen ways your company could benefit from using social media internally: Wikis could store customer-support solutions, maintenance procedures, manufacturing techniques, and design histories. Discussion forums could track planning, design, conflict-resolution, progress, and more. Blogs managed by various functional areas of the company could replace the internal corporate newsletter and keep employees better informed about the company’s activities.

However you imagine using social media internally, your company needs to come to grips with the question: can your corporate culture handle it? It’s possible but unlikely that when you enable social media, everyone will jump onboard and your company will zoom into overdrive. More likely, you’ll hit dozens of road bumps and, it’s quite possible things will go very badly. You can probably think of at least one company where management is so incompetent that unleashing social media would result in calamity.

Please consider your corporate culture carefully before jumping into social media. This link leads to an article that will help evaluate whether your company is ready to deploy social media for internal use:

Can Your Corporate Culture Handle Social Media?

Technorati Tags: blogs, corporate culture, forums, wikis

I don’t advocate unbridled use of social media throughout a company, nor do I advocate against it. (In my company, we’d find a way to allow social media access to anyone using computers, but that doesn’t make it right for your company.) I do advocate responsible use of social media in your marketing activities. In fact, companies that don’t quickly develop social marketing strategies and put them in action are going to fall behind their competitors.

Who Should use Social Media?

Fine, your company blocks access to social media. But your company must not forbid the use of social media. Consider: your company probably doesn’t encourage employees to read newspapers during business hours. Still, your marketing department may use newspaper advertising as a marketing tactic. Or, more absurdly: your company may use forklifts in the warehouse and shipping areas, but it would be silly and potentially catastrophic to put a forklift in every office and cubicle.

Therein lies the foundation for responsible use of social media in marketing. Put social media in the hands of people who should have it: your marketing department. Get them up to speed on acceptable use, and have them build social marketing strategies that will advance your business.

The social marketing plan that results may (and almost certainly should) require participation from people beyond the marketing department. The marketing plan must define how all participants use social media, and it must lay down rules for what users can and can’t do.

I coach companies to allow no use of Facebook applications without approval from the marketing plan coordinator. I also insist that companies teach about phishing and present users with examples of phishing emails and tweets to inoculate them against giving up login credentials or other potentially damaging information.

As with any business tool, don’t simply hand social media to every person in your company and expect to benefit from it. Rather, create a plan, train the appropriate personnel, and provide access as-needed.

Technorati Tags: marketing plan, planning, social media deployment, social media plan, social media risks, training

HR Recruiter;

You have advertised a marketing position for a continuing care community. You’re looking for someone who is personable, creative, and flexible and who can represent your organization well. You ask for candidates having computer skills so they can produce advertising materials such as brochures, newsletters, and press releases. Wouldn’t you like to do better than that?

While traditional marketing approaches are still important, particularly for reaching a local audience, companies that are not developing on-line social marketing strategies are losing to their competitors. With 418 people joining Facebook every minute, people are getting to know companies through social networking before doing business with them. We’re quickly reaching a time when a company will not be effective at attracting customers if it doesn’t have a strong presence in online social media.

But, you object, people looking for continuing care facilities aren’t so computer-savvy; they’re not shopping on-line for a business like ours. This objection reflects your bias, but it doesn’t reflect reality. According to a recent Pew survey, the fastest-growing segment of Twitter users over a nine-month period was people aged 55 to 64. As you’re already aware, many aging Americans involve their offspring in making major life decisions… and those offspring rely increasingly on the Internet and their social networks for guidance.

From your ad, it seems as though on-line social marketing strategies are not in your thinking. That’s a shame. The continuing care facilities that hire social marketing strategists and get started on-line are going to thrive. Continuing care facilities who do not adopt social marketing strategies will struggle to understand why they can’t compete.

Best of luck!

Daniel Gasteiger

Technorati Tags: facebook, social marketing, social network, twitter

Social media are very rapidly transforming the business world. To appreciate why this matters, consider one dramatic difference between business today and business ten years ago: Google.

Some Useful Information about Google

Ten years ago, when you lacked information on a subject of import, how did you acquire the information? Well… you might have checked Google, but chances are you didn’t find what you wanted; the Internet wasn’t particularly evolved ten year ago. It’s more likely you assigned someone the task of getting the information for you, and they made phone calls or visited the library to consult reference materials.

Today (and by today I mean on the day you read this), Google answered more than 300 million requests for information (I know this because I Googled it). Google has become the default starting point for finding information, and with a little practice nearly anyone can solve problems quickly if they have access to the Internet.

What Google has to do With Social Marketing Strategies

Of the 300 million Google searches requested today, how many of the results led to your company’s name or web site? Here’s where social marketing strategies enter the picture.

A Google search is not a social activity and it does not exploit social media. However, if you leverage social media properly, you’ll increase the frequency that Google searches lead to your company. That alone should matter to anyone wanting to succeed in business.

When you employ social media in a coordinated and responsible fashion, you extend your company’s representation throughout the Internet. Your company emerges as an industry expert, it develops a reputation as a problem-solver, and it encourages customers and prospective customers to become involved with your company’s products and services: to participate in your company’s mission.

Participating in social media may not be enough in itself to increase your visibility on Google. However, when you coordinate your social marketing strategies properly, you encourage Google to boost the ranking of your company web site. If you’re going to compete effectively in a world where Google fields 300 million questions a day, you need to make sure Google knows your company is the answer to some of those questions.

Technorati Tags: social marketing, social media, why use social media