Joint Venture Lightning

I love shooting testimonial videos.

They’re great for building your self-esteem and confidence. They’re also great for building your prospects trust in your capabilities before they risk contacting you for more details.

I like to shoot testimonials for my clients within the first week or two of starting a new project so that I can get their clients’ perspective on how they do business, what differentiates them in the market, etc. This info helps me focus the sales message and content for the marketing and website.

I like to shoot my own testimonial videos for Joint Venture Lightning after about a month so that my clients have had a chance to work with me and see results.

You can see these new testimonial videos here:

• George Schaefer with TrainingMyHorse.com
• Geoffrey Zimmerman, Author of “Love Never Dies”

If you have ANY happy clients at all then you absolutely MUST get them on video singing your praises.

I use a simple interview techniques so that my clients don’t have to prepare ahead of time by trying to remember some script. I want their comments to be completely open, honest and spontaneous.

You can either leave your interview questions in the video, the way I did with Geoffrey Zimmerman or you can cut them out and just leave the clients comments the way I did with George Schaefer. How do you know when to do either technique?

Simple. If they answer your questions in complete sentences by re-stating the premise of the question in their answer then you can cut out your side of the interview. If they only answer the questions then it makes more sense to leave your comments in the video.

Good luck and Happy New Year. May your 2008 and beyond be prosperous and peaceful.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, web video is POWERFUL.

If you aren’t using it then you are missing out on one of the most powerful forms of media available. Imagine having your own global broadcast network. That is the power of web video. And best of all it’s free.

I have been working on an interesting project with a prolific writer named Geoffrey Zimmerman. He pours out his emotions with the written word in the form of novels, poetry, short stories, and screen plays. The challenge is how do you promote a text medium with video?

Can It Be So by Geoffrey Zimmerman from JointVentureLightning on Vimeo.

Here are several tactics that we are currently using on his site www.GeoffreyZimmerman.com:

• Interviews with the author revealing the background that inspired his work.
• Video chats where the author invites readers to comment and join in collaboration or contests.
• Behind the scenes videos on his creative process
• Converting some of his old films into video for web distribution

There are other tactics in the plans for later on when we kick promotion into high gear with press releases and begin offering interviews with the media.

A key component of the video strategy is to get each video well titled and tagged then distributed to the major video hosting providers to help drive targeted traffic to the site where readers are given the opportunity to subscribe to his romantic adventure novel “Love Never Dies.”

Getting subscribers is the primary purpose of the website. The secondary purpose is the showcase his work and third is to establish his online presence and brand. This will help him build credibility with publishers and the media so that one day he can get a major publishing contract.

Here is a secret marketing tip that you might not have thought of recently… try adding a beautiful photo gallery and slide show to your website.

TrainingMyHorse.com

How does this help you close more sales?

FitClub4.com

Simple. It helps the customer or prospect believe in you as a professional.

If your site is heavy on text then you really need actual photos depicting the work you do. Don’t be shy, either. Go ahead and show yourself actually working with your clients and doing your job.

This helps the prospect to imagine themselves working with you on their own projects. It also gives you the chance to visually SELL your services in a subtle but convincing way where text only sales messages or messages that use clip art or stock photos scream SALES BROCHURE or ADVERTISEMENT.

The human mind has a way of filtering this type of hype-filled “salesy” content from your prospects conscious thought.

Actual photos seem more “real” and therefore are more believable. Be sure to add captions to give your prospects a clearer understanding of what they are seeing in each photo.

You can see several examples of this at work in my client Photo Gallery section of this website.

Here’s another tip… be sure to use a high-end camera that will give you plenty of resolution. I recommend having a professional spend a day with you and some of your best clients to get really good images that can be used in print materials as well as on the web. This will help you maintain consistency in your marketing materials and brand identity.

Trust me. You do NOT want to skimp on the photography. It’s worth it get the good stuff.

We include professional level photography in our joint venture / strategic alliance work. The photos you see in these galleries were all taken with a Nikon D40-X digital camera with 10.6 megapixel resolution.

The camcorder you see me holding in some of the photos is a Sony DVD cam that shoots direct to mini DVD’s. The resolution for video on the web doesn’t need to be nearly as high quality as the photography because the video is being compressed for faster download speeds.

If you plan on doing broadcasting of your video work then you will need to use professional level video equipment as well.

Enjoy.

Have you ever noticed the logo in the corner of every single video on YouTube?

It’s called a watermark and is used to brand the content of the video. We’re seeing this more and more as businesses catch on to the power of using video in their online marketing.

We have started using custom watermarks on ALL of our clients’ videos to help build their brands. How do you put a watermark on a video?

Good question. You need a cool piece of software called Camtasia Studio. At the moment they are offering an older version as a FREE download. Keep in mind that this powerful software package retails for over $300, so go grab it quick before it’s gone. You’ll also need a key code to open the full version… this is not a 30 day demo but the whole deal of version 3.0. Here is the link to get your key code.

You can either create your videos in Camtasia or import your existing video files. Then on the left side of the screen under Tasks… scroll down to Produce and click the link that says Produce Video as… A window will pop-up giving you file formats to choose. I like to convert my video to Flash so that it’s streaming and not a download that others can take and then reproduce.

Once you choose the file format, there will be several steps along the way and one of them gives you the option to insert a watermark logo. Select this feature and upload your logo graphic. Set opacity to about 40%, adjust the size, choose which corner you want your logo to appear in, etc. You can even have it embossed or flat. Once you like your watermark, click next. Camtasia does the rest… converting the file to Flash and adding the watermark logo throughout. Then all you need to do is upload the files to your website where it can be viewed.

Matt Lee is the owner of The Record Depot located in Roanoke, Virginia.

He’s been the owner for over a year and specializes in Bluegrass, folk, Americana, Old-time, Blues, Jazz and Indy music distribution to retailers across the country. He serves an interesting niche market in the music industry and should have better results with his web sites… his retail site is www.TracksOfMusic.com.

He hired me to come in and help him update his web sites. Since I wasn’t sure what I would be up against when gaining access to his content management system, I took my business partner and tech consultant Keith with me to help trouble shoot any road blocks.

What we found was that Matt has limited admin access to his sites. This means that he can add new product to the inventory database but he can’t change other content… like getting rid of the former owner’s name and updating contact info. Until he gets higher level access, he won’t even be able to add album cover images to the shopping section of the site.

Matt’s idea is to create a web presence where retailers can get news and updates on new releases in the various genres he covers. He wants to be able to quickly and easily post weekly updates like his personal reviews and comments in an informal but professional setting. He also wants a way for retailers to more easily communicate with him about the music he has in stock, orders, back-orders, etc.

I offered to create a solution that would allow Matt to achieve these goals. First, we decided on keywords that his target audience would use to search. Bluegrass was the biggie according to Overture’s keyword tool. So then it came down to finding an available domain with this keyword. We could have used TheRecordDepotBlog.com to tie in with his wholesale site but since he wants to boost traffic I recommended that we go with: www.BluegrassMusicDepot.com.

His blog is set-up with some content already loaded. I’ll be customizing the look and feel to more closely match his other sites over the next few days. I also need to build a front page so that I can tie the blog and the forum together under the primary domain.