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.

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.

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.

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.

How do you help a new author get his first book published and in the hands of readers around the world?

Geoffrey Zimmerman is an experienced world traveler and writer. He’s written for television, including the hit show Miami Vice. He’s a poet, novelist, and self-described romantic. He’s also trying to break into the publishing world with his first book… a romantic adventure set in Europe and New York.

He explained to me that he has been floating the transcript around to agents but no takers so far. So, he has been looking into self-publishing his book but wasn’t sure how to begin and he didn’t want to pay a ton of money to get a few hundred copies printed.

I recommended that he consider e-publishing and offer sample chapters to subscribers. Since his new book is part one of a trilogy, he has ample opportunity to build a fan base to whom he can sell his future books.

Since this was a new market niche for me, I had to do some research to see if this was an area worth getting into. Why do I sound so picky? Because if I get bogged down in an unproductive niche market, then I can’t be working with clients who are in highly productive and profitable niches. So, I have to research the potential before I invest my time and resources as a joint venture partner.

I have decided to take on this new challenge with Geoff and have started his web site with www.geoffreyzimmerman.com.

This case has some unique challenges.

• Fiction is a luxury so there are few pain points to drive customer response
• Geoff is located in another city far from my location, so video / photography must be sub-contracted
• We are starting totally from scratch which means we need to get some reader testimonials
• We’re exploring how to tap the power of video for a book / text based niche product

These are the biggest challenges at the moment. There are others but we’ll address those as we come to them.

For now, I am in the process of editing and loading his content and waiting on his new photos so that I can customize his site. Our plan is to load chapters from his book into the iContact auto-responder so when visitors subscribe, they immediately begin getting his book. Every couple of days they will get new chapter. Along the way, we will include updates on the development of book two in the series.

Also, visitors will have the chance to read some of his other works like short stories and poems that Geoff has written. The graphic elements of the site will include photos Geoff has taken during some of his travels and story research trips.

But what about the video? Good question. We are planning to load short video clips of Geoff telling about how came up with the story idea, what inspired him, various scenes in the book, the history behind the story and so on. Geoff also knows a professional reader whom we are hoping to get to read some of the book as an mp3 audio file listeners can download.

We’ll keep you posted on the progress of this interesting case study as it develops.