Web Video Techniques II: Audience Engagement

Kolleen — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:09:04 +0000

SiteProNews: March 4, 2011 Feature Article

We are inundated with advertising messages from the time we wake to the time we go to bed. Some of these messages are welcomed and some are a source of irritation. The difference between noise and communication boils down to relevance, and relevance is a function of how advertisers deliver three basic ingredients: substance, style, and technique.

Our brains have a built-in spam filter that can filter out much of the irrelevant and absorb the significant. In a room full of people all talking and laughing at once like at a party, your brain is able to recognize your name being spoken while everything else is a cacophonous blur. The goal of advertising is to make your message significant like the sound of your name, significant enough to demand your attention. So, is your marketing communication significant, or is it merely noise?

Most Advertising Is Just Noise

The advertising industry has for the most part failed in making their clients’ messages significant. Instead they turn up the volume and increase the visual pollution in an effort to standout and be heard, but it doesn’t work. It all becomes background noise and confusing clutter easily filtered out by a brain designed to know the difference between significance and irrelevance. Any subliminal effect achieved is offset by the irritation that accompanies junk information.

If you want your audience to listen to you, you first must have something relevant to say, and second you have to know how to say it so that it makes an impression. Substance, style, and technique make a Web video communication significant and therefore worth remembering.

The Substance Every Business Can Deliver

There is a clothing store chain called Syms whose motto is, “An educated consumer is our best customer.” It’s a brilliant tagline and an even better marketing strategy. Educating your audience creates trust and that is one thing lower prices and more features can’t compete with.

It’s one thing to provide information, it’s quite another to provide understanding. How-to-do-stuff is a major industry because people suffer from what Richard Saul Wurman calls, “information anxiety.” So much to know, so little time to learn it. Your audience craves information, but what they really need is understanding.

If you really want to connect to your audience, gain their trust, and build a relationship. You should start by educating them about how to get the most out of what you sell – the real reason why they will continue to do business with you. In a world of copycat products and services, the difference maker is trust and trust begins with clients who understand exactly what you do and how it will improve their lives or businesses.

Everyone in our organization is constantly learning new things. Each of us receive dozens of newsletters on all kinds of subjects, some of which are directly related to what we do, and some help us better understand the world we live in and the needs of our clients. And some of it is just intended to make us think.

Substance Without The Pitch

I recently received an email with a video from the Editor of AE Tuts Plus, Adam Everett Miller. AE Tuts Plus produces a website that specializes in After Effects motion graphics. After Effects is a high-end software program used to create all those fancy motions graphics everyone loves. Most of the information is pretty sophisticated and aimed at a specialized design community but in this case they sent out a video that wasn’t about how to do something but rather why something was the way it was.

Would the video make anyone a better designer – no. Would the video provide its viewers with a technique they could sell their clients – no. The video merely explains to people why Hex Color Values are what they are. There is no sales pitch other than a subliminal message that AE Tuts knows what it’s talking about, is in business to help its audience, and can be trusted to deliver on its promise without always feeling the need to sell something.

Watch the Video – Aetuts Plus Hex Value Quick Tip

Style Enhances Identity

From a branding and marketing point-of-view this video establishes an approachable, friendly style that helps define the AE Tuts brand, and indirectly makes their audience wiser and more informed. It’s interesting, memorable, and entertaining; and it makes viewers a more knowledgeable audience.

The style portrayed is not a random accident. The video uses a number of techniques intended to deliver a carefully thought-out image designed to gain audience acceptance as the industry knowledge leader.

A Casual Non-Pedantic Approach

The Web has changed many things not the least of which is how people expect to be taught. Your standard old fashion no nonsense schoolteacher approach is just so pre-Web and quite frankly turns people off. If you really want to educate an audience you better be approachable and entertaining in your delivery, and that is exactly what Adam has managed to do.

Everything from the casual monochromatic attire to the geek-chic glasses and beard are designed to deliver the impression that Adam is just like his audience: just one of the guys with some cool stuff to tell you. The presentation focuses attention on Adam and the accompanying mnemonics by placing everything within a plain white environment, slightly enhanced by a gradient spot to frame Adam, who is placed slightly off center nicely qualifying as a good example of the Rule of Thirds that provides space for the onscreen text and graphics.

The language Adam uses is down-to-earth, delivered in a cadence and rhythm that is just fast enough so the audience doesn’t get bored but slow enough so the information can be absorbed.

Each point is highlighted and emphasized with some onscreen graphic, text, or sound effect. Some of the points are accompanied by a humorous visual and verbal aside that maintains the presentations rhythm while at the same time allowing a small mental respite so the brain can absorb one idea and get ready for the next. And it’s all packaged with a Sesame Street style music score that goes unnoticed but is critical to the overall impression of learning can be enjoyable and doesn’t have to be tedious work.

The Last Word

It takes a lot of knowledge and know-how to make something look easy and this video does a damn good job doing it. Every detail from concept to content was carefully thought-out and the execution was spot-on.

Educational and how-to videos are very popular – there is no great revelation in that, but much of what is on the Web is quite frankly terrible, and that applies to both amateur and professional efforts. In order to benefit from your audience’s desire to learn, enhance your brand, and build confidence and trust in the marketplace with educational Web videos, you first must understand how people process information, and how to present material so that it is both enjoyed and retained.

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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246. ================================================================

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.

The Death of Squeeze Pages… Google Slapped Em Dead

Kolleen — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:21:47 +0000

Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html
The Death of Squeeze Pages… Google Slapped Em Dead
By Duncan Wierman (c) 2010

For years now, the squeeze page has practically been the
lingua franca of the online marketing world. Whether you’re
in real estate (and actually, the real estate industry in
particular has leaned particularly heavily on squeeze
pages), banking, e-commerce or anything else, the
conventional wisdom has been to target tightly focused
groups of consumers through these web pages/marketing tools.

These pages do OK at helping marketers identify which
keywords or keyword phrases do well in terms of attracting
targeted traffic and if they’re well designed, at
gathering email addresses or other contact information from
these visitors. However, there are much better methods of
doing keyword research than creating a separate squeeze
page for each of your keywords. Additionally, building and
maintaining these pages represents an investment of time
and money which isn’t likely to produce a worthwhile return.

The squeeze page is dead – it just doesn’t know it yet and
neither do the marketers who still use this direct
marketing-style methodology in their list building efforts.
I know there’s probably at least a few of you out there
reading this that still use them and are wondering what
exactly is wrong with squeeze pages.

As it happens, the answer is plenty. They’re unappealing to
consumers and increasingly, they’re seen as undesirable
pieces of virtual property by the search engines as well.
When you’re trying to market your business with a tool that
turns off both your target market and the search engines,
it’s clear that the time has come to abandon ship. I’ll
explain in more detail below.

They’re Completely Unappealing To Readers

You’ve seen a squeeze page before – and chances are you’ve
hit the back button on your browser almost immediately.
These pages almost universally feature incredibly
unattractive cookie cutter designs and copy which is
generally nothing but sensational hype. That alone is
enough to turn off most readers, not to mention that
squeeze pages seem all too often to be riddled with
spelling and grammatical errors. Put simply, they don’t
look professional by any stretch of the imagination – but
they do look professional enough to fool many business
people who are new to the medium of the web into using
them at least for a while.

Think of it this way – if you got a flyer in the mail that
looked like one of these pages, would you be in a hurry to
contact the marketer to sign up for their mailing list, let
alone actually do business with them? Probably not.

As a general rule, if it looks too awful to be true, it’s
just what it looks like and squeeze pages are a prime
example of this. They lack any kind of credibility with
your prospective customers, especially when you’re in the
real estate business. These pages make you look like the
online equivalent of a shady used car salesman, not the
kind of person that people want to do a real estate deal
with. There are other things about squeeze pages that turn
off your potential customers, but since there’s some
crossover with this and the SEO shortcomings of the format,
we’ll get back to that a little later on.

Google Slaps Squeeze Pages

It’s true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as
far as your performance in the search engines is concerned.
Google and other search engines have been working on ways
to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely
the kind of content that users are actually looking for
when they use the keywords which these sites target. It
comes down to what it always comes down to when search
engine rankings are the issue – relevance. A webpage
designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact
information simply isn’t that relevant to many, if any,
actual search engine queries, no matter how much content
you try to cram onto the page.

Speaking of the content, this is something which has
changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years.
Once these pages started being penalized by search engines
for their lack of content (“classic” squeeze pages, after
all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers
started turning them into the online equivalent of the long
form sales letter – in other words, something no one wants
to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing
content has led to a further decline in the ranking of
these pages in search results, making them even worse
marketing tools than they already were.

Squeeze Pages Can Sink Your Main Site

Let’s get back to that subtitle about Google “slapping”
squeeze pages, because this is one of the most important
points I’d like to make here today. If your squeeze pages
either link to or are part of your main site, they’re more
than likely causing a slump in your main site’s search
engine ranking, making you less visible to your market
online. In other words, the exact opposite of what you’d
hoped to accomplish. If these pages link to your site, you
can be penalized for these links from unpopular sites in
what Google considers to be an iffy online neighborhood -
and what are the three most important things in real
estate? Exactly.

Another way that squeeze pages can drag down your online
presence is through having a large percentage of duplicate
content. Many businesses throw up dozens of squeeze pages
which are basically identical other than the targeted
keywords for that particular page. Even if you make an
effort to rewrite the content on these pages, there’s only
so much you can do without putting a disproportionate
amount of time or money into the effort.

So if squeeze pages are out, what are real estate
professionals to do in terms of online marketing? There’s
plenty of options, all of which are better choices than
building a series of squeeze pages. I won’t go into them
all here, but as always on the web, it’s all about good
content which is geared towards readers first and search
engines second. When your market sees you as credible and
reputable, they’ll beat a path to your door and happily
sign up for your email list. And where the market goes, the
search engines will follow; but no one’s flocking to
squeeze pages.
============================================================
Former Software CEO turned Internet Marketer, Duncan
Wierman shows you how to use creative marketing methods to
create a full time income online. Duncan is the original
creator of the software that finds business LEADS and
converts them to income. Get a trial copy at:

http://www.OnlineLeadFinder.com

===========================================================
Copyright ? 2010 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.

Get Your Business Growing!

Kolleen — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:39:18 +0000

It’s a fact that the most cost effective way to get more business is a properly designed and optimized website. For what you are probably paying for your phone book ad each month, you could have a professional website built that will give your business the exposure you need to generate more revenue. The phone book has become obsolete! Most people now go to the internet to find the products and services they need. This is an opportunity for you to let your prospective customers know who you are and why you are the best choice for whatever product or service you have to offer. Think of it a an unlimited online brochure – with limitless possibilities. You have the ability to showcase your talents and give people an unlimited amount of information. People are searching the internet, not just to find someone who can supply the products and services they need, but for information on those products and services. Your website can provide them with the information they are looking for, which will make them more apt to contact you instead of your competition.

Why hire a Website Designer when you can do it Yourself?

Kolleen — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 01:17:48 +0000

Let’s face it, with all of the build it yourself hosting companies out there it seems like nobody should be at the mercy of a webmaster these days. I’ve actually seen some pretty nice looking websites done this way. So why do you need to hire someone to build your website?

The answer is simple. There is lot more to an effective website than text and pictures. An effective website requires effective, keyword rich content, good navigation, proper search engine optimization like the Google, Yahoo and Bing verification in the code in the home page html. It should have a properly constructed sitemap.xml file, appropriate robots.txt files, descriptive alt tags and a multitude of other things that the build it yourself companies forget to mention to you. If you don’t know what these things are, your website won’t do what you think it should – generate revenue for your business

My job is to guide you along the path of building a website that adds true value to your company by way of people actually finding your website and even better, contacting you for your product or service. You can save money by building your own website or you can actually make money by hiring someone who can help you generate actual customers.

The bottom line is – if you just want a website address to put on your business cards, the build it yourself websites will work just fine. If you want a website that actually generates customers (and money), you need to leave it to the experts!

YouTube Blog Video

Kolleen — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:15:29 +0000

Have you ever wondered what Blogging is all about? This video simplifies the Blog in plain English!

Blogs in Plain English

Blogging For Website Traffic by: Richard Legg

Kolleen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:50:27 +0000

Nowadays, it seems that everyone and his cousin have taken to blogging. This form of online self-expression has slowly but steadily taken over the World Wide Web to become somewhat of a phenomenon in recent years. Some people use blogs as their personal journals, some may see them as an outlet for their creative work, and others may just want their own personal place in cyberspace to share thoughts and ideas.

Now, a quick question for the Internet businessman. If you have a blog, can you use it to boost your site’s exposure and drive more traffic to it? A blog is great for sharing ideas and posting about things you like or don’t like, but can a blog help your online business succeed?

The answer is a definite YES. Your blog can do wonders for your website, but it all depends on the way you utilize its potential power. I’m going to teach you a tried and proven method that has been effective for other website owners, and this method is applicable for any type of blog. You will just need a lot of creativity and some time to make it work.

First thing you have to keep in mind is that most blogs on the Web have a community feel to them. You may think that your blog is your own, since you’re the one who installed and developed it. And you may be right. But your blog is also connected to other blogs on the same site. You may also be connected to other blogs that are using the same blogging software as you. This situation guarantees that sooner or later, a person will land on your blog and be able to see all that you have to say. This can also mean that your blog is now getting free advertising within the blogging community. I don’t think you need me to tell you how beneficial this can be for your site’s traffic.

However, you do have to keep in mind what you’re posting as your blog’s content. If all you’re doing is making posts that promote your products or your business, then you’re dead. Believe me, that is not the recommended way to use your blog. Have you seen the Internet lately? It’s already overflowing with loads of advertisements for products and services. Be different. Your visitors need a good reason to keep coming back to your blog. Use it to give expert and knowledgeable information about your line of work to your readers. If you’re selling a product on your site, talk about it on your blog, and don’t just post a measly advertising blurb.

Let’s say you’re selling power tools on your website. You can write reviews and other useful posts about the kinds of tools you have on your site. What you’re doing is providing some insight for your potential customers about the tools you’re selling. These blog posts will then be able to generate confidence in your readers and encourage them to actually buy the products.

Another advantage of having a blog is that it makes it easier for interested buyers to get access to the seller (that’s you). Usually, readers of a particular blog post are allowed to leave comments on what they’ve just read. For example, you’ve just finished a review for the new Ajax power drill. Whenever a reader comes across it and has a question regarding that product, he or she can easily leave a comment. You can then see the questions and post your answers. See? You can now connect with your readers and potential customers personally. This make you much more approachable, as compared to the faceless entity behind the impersonal commercial website.

In addition, your readers will also have the option of subscribing to your blog feeds via RSS or to your newsletters, so they can be immediately notified about any new posts you make. If you have established a reputable standing in your niche, a long list of eager readers will soon be waiting for your next post, and lots more will be coming to your website.

About The Author

Richard Legg is a web traffic expert and generates over 1.5 Million visitors a year to his websites. Discover how you can instantly increase website traffic for free at http://www.MyInstantTraffic.com.

Welcome to Power-site Blog

Kolleen — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:45:15 +0000

Writing a blog can help your website in search engine results. Make sure to link your blog to your website and use plenty of keywords. Adding comments to other blogs and including your website address is also a good way to help your search engine rankings.