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Okay — we accept that getting your ‘brand’ out there is a good thing.
The nice thing about iTunes and vidblogging / vlogging / video podcasting / vodcasting… whatever you want to call it… is that the playing field is again levelled.
Just as YouTube has allowed the ‘small player’ to compete with (and beat) the multi-national for ‘eyeball exposure’, so too does iTunes allow the SME (small to medium sized enterprise) to compete for eyes or ears against massively well-funded corporates.
The beauty of Web2.0 is that “content is king” once more (praise the Lord!) — a multi-million dollar advert is a joy to behold (very often), but equally a $5 video shot with passion and authenticity can compete and very often win. In the online world, ‘slick’ is considered ‘hype’ whereas ‘amateur’ is considered ‘real’. Not in all cases (witness the Dove YouTube ad that I rave about, and if you haven’t watched it yet WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!?!?!), but in many cases the ‘law’ holds true.
Hence my determination to prove to you that getting a video out so that the iTunes audience can watch and be entertained is another medium that you NEED to pay attention to, if for no other reason than your 15-30 year old audience demographic is already there and you need to be there too. If you are not constantly in their minds why should they pay attention to you — especially if you only run ‘print’ ads in the boring ol’ MSM (mainstream media), which most 15-30s are avoiding because the MSM lacks any ‘authenticity’ and credibility.
If you want to stick to the way things have gone for the last decade (print ads in newspapers and trade journals, radio ads) then fine. Great. Go for it. Prepare for an early retirement.
Your ‘next generation’ that will keep your business afloat is not paying attention to print ads in in newspapers and trade journals, radio ads and the like. They are listening to their peers, using MySpace to create their online network of peers, and parties to create their offline network of peers. They use mobile phones like we used to use the television — their phones are never off (they keep them on silent, even in church and at the cinema), they txt (aka ‘sms’) everything, they are digital natives. Tap into them in the way they expect to be tapped into, or else languish and end up selling only to those who refuse to try anything new.
HOWEVER…
If you want to ‘tell your story’ to a new generation in the way THEY expect to receive it, then Social Media (aka blogs) and iTunes are the way to do it:
- you blog
- you podcast
- you vidblog
You do all three with authenticity, without corporate ‘spin’, without the lawyers fine-tuning every last word out of legal threat.
Pop Quiz: how do you kill the ‘authenticity’ that today’s 15-30s so crave?
A: you get your lawyers to ‘vet’ your blog, your podcast, your vidblog, your Press Release…
Lawyers are like your bean counters — there to protect you and stop you from taking ANY risks. Without risk there is no business growth. Your choice.
Okay, rant over. Up next, the ‘how to’…
To get your easy-to-create video into people’s iPods can be a convoluted process if you are not prepared to pay $$$$ for a video studio to do it for you (and forget Zune and Creative and all the other players out there — iPod HAS the market sown up and all the others are ‘wannabes’; if it works in iTunes it will work in Zune or Creative or any other video player). But for those of you willing to try (and I believe you should, or else call me and I’ll do it for you…) the ‘how to’ is below.
The whole point of me creating my videoblog is NOT to foist more of Lee Hopkins on the world (there is already enough sickness and madness in the world, no point adding to it) but to prove to you that creating something that iPod owners (who are the ‘movers, shakers and deal makers’ of the next generation) will download and watch is not hard.
Note: I am assuming you are a business that uses Windows XP — if not, I apologise but the vast majority of my clients are, so I work from that base.
- Use your camcorder, mobile phone or a webcam (which is what I use – create a 320×240 video) to record your vidcast. Figure out in advance roughly what you are going to talk about then stick roughly to the script but have fun and improvise — let your true passion shine through!
- Record, have fun, save to disk (your pc);
- Open up Windows Movie Maker (free with WinXP both in the Pro and Home versions);
- Edit, cut bits out, add visual effects between shots, add sound effects if you have them (there are plenty of sound effects on the web — google them) and create a masterpiece (or a mess, it REALLY doesn’t matter as long as your passion for your subject shines through);
- Save the final masterpiece/mess as a file you can play on your pc (let the Movie Maker software sort out the best deal – stick with the recommendations);
- You will find that you have saved a .wmv file — bloody useless to the web world except for fellow Windows users who might want to download your masterpiece (unlikely)
- Download the free STOIK video converter, unzip and install; (and thanks to Jake for pointing me to it)
- Convert your masterpiece from wmv to avi (quite a quick process):
- Wander over to your local Apple website (e.g. in US it is Apple.com, in Australia it is Apple.com.au) and purchase a copy of QuickTimePro (US$29 / AUD$45) to be able to convert from avi to m4v (which is the iPod-preferred format);
- Use QuickTimePro to convert your avi file to m4v (which takes a mind-numbingly long time — go out and buy a nice big cappucchino from your local coffee shop while you wait, because you don’t want to be tying up your computer and slowing down the conversion process by attempting to do any PC work while the conversion is taking place);
- Once it is converted, double-check the file in your QuickTime player to ensure that your sparkling wit and dashing good looks are still there;
- Wander over to the iTunes store — check your country for the local offering; in Australia try iTunes.com.au
- Download iTunes to your own PC — honestly, you won’t regret it (you used to, but Apple have really paid attention to the local community and made it far less ‘crashy’ and ‘trashy’ than before); install and open up iTunes on your PC
- Find the ‘podcast’ section on the menu;
- Scroll down the page to the bottom and check out the ‘technical specifications’ bit to give you some peace of mind that I’m not leading you astray; (see also Apple’s tutorial)
- Have your designers (or some design-savvy consultant… ahem, me perhaps) create a suitable 300×300 pixel logo (examples: CommsCafe podcast logo / my vidblog logo) for use on your iTunes page (my iTunes page for my vidblog)
- Just above the ‘Tech specs’ link in your iTunes software is a link called ‘Submit a podcast’ — enter the link to your video podcast’s RSS feed (okay, that is a whole other story about getting an RSS feed for your podcast, and that’s why people pay me to sort it out for them; let’s assume you have a tech-savvy young gun on your payroll who does understand and can set an RSS feed up); yes, you will have to create an iTunes account if you don’t already have one; no, it is not a laborious process; yes, you should do it;
- Wait a couple of days;
- Once you receive confirmation that your vidblog has been accepted and approved, notify your clients that you are now on iTunes (they will think you are incredibly cool, because they have no idea how to do what you have just done but they also know they should be thinking about doing it);
- If you also want your video ‘playable’ on the web via Click.TV (and I suggest you do) then you need to convert your wmv file to flv — which you can do either with the free Riva FLV encoder or if your webdesigners or graphic studio have installed Macromedia Studio 8 they will have a copy of Flash 8 Video Encoder. You can use either to convert your file from .wmv to .flv which Click.TV needs (but again, go out for a cappucchino because its a s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w process — my 7 minute video took around 80 minutes to convert;
- Follow the instructions on Click.TV to set up your video player on your blog or website (if you have a WordPress blog you need to read my previous post);
- VOILA! You are now a certified member of the digital literati — well done!
Don’t stop now – keep creating new videos and build your audience. Remember, what they want to see/hear is very often not what you think they want (your smiling mug); instead they want content that will amuse, entertain, enlighten and educate. No, you don’t have to be drop-dead gorgeous to be a ‘talking head’ on a video podcast (after all, I’m no Heidi Miller), but you DO have to let your passion for your subject shine through! Remember what I always say:
communicate with PASSION!
Think about what sort of information you could convey via video…
- updates on new staff members (of interest to your clients, for sure)
- interviews YOU have with key industry players (good for your credibility)
- interviews with key clients (great for further cementing that relationship, plus if you do it well it doesn’t come across as sickeningly ‘sucky’ but adds credibility to you — your credibility and reputation are strongly based on who you do business with!)
- interviews with staff — a ‘day in the life of…’ stories are great (think local inspectors, people who deal with people, people who deal with animals)
Remember: your video doesn’t have to look like it’s got a multi-million dollar production budget behind it — in fact, that would work against you in the iPod world. Check out the Rumor Girls — they don’t have a big budget (you can tell) but they have one heck of an audience!
Even if you are a business who sells services to other businesses, do not believe for one moment that your clients wouldn’t be interested in knowing what is going on ‘behind the scenes’ in your world. Don’t forget, the decision makers of the future already own iPods and they download video podcasts; if you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors you need to get into their iPods. Creating compelling, interesting, information-led, honest, passionate video podcasts about your industry and your company is the way to do it!
If you want to see my video podcast (or vlog, or vodcast, or whatever else it is called this week), go to the iTunes store, pick up a copy of iTunes for your computer and subscribe to my video podcast. It will download and play in your iTunes software. If you have a video iPod, then it will sync with it and you can watch me (or even better, YOU!) whilst walking the dog. And so can your clients and prospects!
Donna Papacosta, in a trans-global hookup with Allan Jenkins and I for one of his clients, hit the nail on the head when asked ‘why do it if your audience size is so small [compared to the readership of mainstream media]?’; Donna replied that it was because of ‘who’ her audience (her listeners to her podcast, the readers of her blog) were: they were influencers in her market, they were decision-makers, they were people as passionate about communication as she is. I can’t agree more — don’t worry that you don’t have thousands of people downloading your masterpiece!
An audience of 10 is a powerful audience if they are exactly the niche people you want to reach and influence!
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