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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.

One of the most powerful ways to drive targeted traffic to your web site is through the use of video.

As I mentioned in my welcome video, I would be discussing web video in future posts. Well that time is now. One of the first things I do with every single one of my clients is to discuss how we can convert their content into a visual format for video.

The obvious answers are:

• testimonials
• product reviews
• demonstrations
• welcome messages
• call to action ie: subscribe to my mini course or newsletter

The less obvious answers can include the main content that we plan to sell. Most people tend to think in terms of text content like e-books, white papers, and special reports. Customers almost always prefer video content for the following reasons:

• testimonials and product reviews are much more believable
• demonstrations are more easily understood
• welcome messages are more personal
• calls to action become more powerful
• perceived value of content and its quality goes up
• video is more fun to watch
• customer gets a sense of time and urgency

Once I have the basic videos shot and edited, I upload to the web with an awesome FREE video tracking and uploader service call TubeMogul. This service lets you upload your videos once then distributes them to 12 different video hosting services on the web. An added benefit is the powerful tracking feature built in. You can see what kind of results your videos are getting after they are online.

To use TubeMogul, register for a free account and click the upload tab at the top of the page. Here you will find a page with the 12 different video hosting services. You will need to go to each and register for their free accounts before you can load your login and passwords to TubeMogul. I have listed each site’s registration page below for your convenience:

• YouTube
• Yahoo
• MySpace
• MetaCafe
• Google
• Revver
• DailyMotion
• Blip
• Brightcove
• Veoh
• Crackle
• StupidVideos

It takes a few minutes to get signed up on each site but once you have done that and confirmed your accounts on each then you can load your login and password for each into TubeMogul. Then you only have to upload videos once, hit launch and TubeMogul sends it to each video hosting site for you. This saves you TONS of time.

There is a more powerful version of this type of service… if you can afford the fees. It’s called TrafficGeyser. It uses the same concept of upload once and distribute to many. The difference is that TrafficGeyser can send your videos to over 50 different web sites where TubeMogul only goes to 12.

When should you use TrafficGeyser? When you know your landing pages are converting well and the sales you generate will more than cover the costs of the monthly fees. I start my clients off with TubeMogul to test video response and conversion rates then when we start making money, we boost it up to TrafficGeyser.

I’ll cover more on this subject in future posts. I hope that helps get you started.

Well, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks since my last post. So I thought I had better give you an update on what’s been going on.

Pam over at FitClub4.com had to go to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. She was conducting a class when one of her clients who works at the doctor’s office came down to the club and told her, “You need to get to the hospital right away.” Turns out that Pam’s appendix needed to be removed before things got worse.

So, she’s been out for a couple of weeks recovering from surgery. This set-back has put us behind on creating her e-course fitness program. However, she is much better and is able to lift small weights and lead classes again. She still has a few more weeks before she’s allowed to go back to her full workout schedule. You can read more details of her experience on her web site.

The author Geoffrey Zimmerman has been keeping me very busy with updating content on his new site. We finally got all of the first 29 chapters loaded into the auto-responder and set to go out every other day. In case you didn’t know, Geoff is also a screen writer who has had success in the television industry back in the 1980’s writing episodes for the hit show Miami Vice.

He just sent me a copy of a short comedy film he made in the early 1980’s called “Somewhere in Southern California.” It’s 30 minutes long and needs to be broken into chunks so it can be loaded onto Youtube. We’re going to use these video chunks as a tool for driving traffic to his site. I should be done with that this week.

I have been re-packaging George Schaefer’s weekly horse training tips into a mini-course and working on re-writing the sales copy to build the value of the course and increase subscription rates. He’s getting traffic and now I’m working on increasing conversion. This is great because we haven’t even started actively marketing the site yet.

Our next immediate goal is to get at least one basic course on video that will sell for $14.95 as a download complete with the written transcripts.

Last week I met with Matt Lee, owner of The Record Depot. He’s unhappy with his current web service and he’s getting no traffic at all. This means he’s not getting any web based sales, so the site is costing him money because he’s paying the monthly merchant account fees. I’ll see what I can do for him in terms of updating his site, increasing traffic and sales.

I also met with his wife about helping them set-up a non-profit autism support group to help families with children suffering from autism.  Initial research shows that this is a huge market with real potential for growth. The idea would be to help them create valuable information products for free download and for sale.

The free content will help families, doctors and others with the essentials. The for-sale content will be very detailed and valuable in helping families accomplish specific goals regarding autism. The idea is that the sale of content will help run the organization. I like the idea and their mission, so I’m looking forward to getting started on this project.

To wrap things up for today… I spent a very happy Thanksgiving with my wife and kids in Raleigh, N.C. with my wife’s side of the family. Lots of turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, cranberry relish, stuffing, gravy… mmmmmm. I’m feeling hungry and sleepy just thinking about it.  Tomorrow, we do it all over again at my house here in Virginia for my side of the family.

I think I’ll go make a turkey sandwich.

Have yourself a very safe and happy holiday season.

Geoffrey Zimmerman has been busy working on his trilogy called Love Never Dies.

The challenge is to get readers interested in his first book so that we can build a market interested in buying books II and III. The approach that we are going with first is to offer the first few chapters online to draw the readers into the story.

Then we offer the reader the chance to subscribe to the novel in a twice per week e-mail where they continue getting the next 29 chapters as downloadable PDF files.

That’s nearly half of the book.

The first few paragraphs of each chapter are included in the body of each e-mail as a short teaser to draw the reader into the story. Then they can choose to download the entire chapter to finish reading until they get the next installment.

Geoffrey is currently working on gathering photos to include with each chapter as a visual element to enhance the reader’s experience. One photo is to be included at the beginning of each chapter to help set the mood or tone.

A word of caution here. Do NOT include photos in the actual e-mail as this will bog down servers and wreck your deliverability. We are including the photos in the PDF download file and simply e-mailing the link to the download.

The rain was pouring down and had been for two solid days after three months of severe drought.

George called to reschedule the video shoot. We met this past Monday at a beautiful horse ranch in Forest, Virginia to spend the entire day shooting videos for his new web site www.TrainingMyHorse.com.

We managed to get plenty of video for his free “Horsemanship Tip of the Week” subscription content. I have been spending the week editing, formatting and uploading the videos as well as posting his content to the new site. Check out his free samples posted on the front page to get an idea of the type of tips he’s offering for FREE in order to build his subscription list.

Once we get a list going, we’ll poll the subscribers about their most burning questions and work to create a great product for sale.

You might be wondering how we settled on “Training My Horse” as a domain name instead of something like “Natural Horsemanship.” The answer is RESEARCH.

I spent hours looking for available domains that use top searched keywords. Here are the results:

• Natural Horsemanship - 1,328 searches per day… not bad.
• Horse Training - 23,458 searches per day… Much BETTER.

The competition is also much bigger with these two words which means that the most likely combinations are already registered to other owners. We managed to acquire Training My Horse dot com. It’s short, easy to remember, straight to the point, focuses on the mind of the customer, and uses to the two biggest key words. Perfect.