Today, people are looking for something that they can actually respond
to in place of the usual ebooks and special reports being provided
across the net. Now, more than ever, there is a challenge for the
internet marketer to come up with a novel way to entice people into
buying a particular product or service.
1. You will find that people respond better to what they can see and hear, rather than what they can just read.
2. People are more stimulated when they watch something that they will enjoy.
3. It is a great way of conveying information more clearly and demonstrating the product more effective using a video rather than with the written word.
4. Using this method you are able to present the information in a clearer, and certainly more often than not, in a concise manner.
5. These are often viewed as being more professional than their counterparts, such as E books.
In fact, for many people today, the video product is easily the better option compared to the more conventional options available. But there is one problem that most internet marketers seem to face when using this medium, in that it seems to be a complicated process to actually create one. However, as long as you have the right knowledge on how to proceed, then this should not be the case. In fact, creating a video product should be as easy as making a cake.
But first of all, we need to take a look at the steps that are essential in order for you to produce a good quality video product.
1. Select a subject. It is best that you choose one with which you are already familiar.
2. Select a particular aspect of the subject that you want to discuss in your video. Remember, it must be both engaging and helpful to all your future customers.
3. Prepare an outline on how you will discuss this part of the subject.
4. Carry out any research you need in order to make sure that you have everything at hand.
5. If you are producing a video on a subject that involves a certain niche, then get yourself a digital camcorder in order to record the appropriate material. You can then decide whether you want to add audio during real time (when actually filming) or during the editing process.
6. If your video involves online affairs, then you need to get yourself a screen capture program. You can download one from many sites, such as camtasia.com. This allows you to capture your computer screen movements in .avi format. Plus, it allows you to record the audio in real time, or you may prepare a different audio file by using Windows Sound Recorder and then synchronizing the two formats later on.
7. You will now need to edit the product using a video editing software program (which we will look at in more detail later on in this book). There are certainly plenty of these software programs available for sale, but Windows XP comes with a movie maker program already.
8. Should you be choosing to offer this product as a download to your customers, you will then need to convert the file into a .wmv format in order to compress its size.
9. However, if you decide to physically deliver this video product to your customers, you will need to burn it on to a CD or DVD and then prepare to ship them.
10. Once all the above stages have been completed, your video product is now ready to be marketed.
In fact, as you can see from the above, there is nothing really complicated about producing your own video product. To be honest, anyone could do it, if they tried. There are plenty of applications around that will help you to achieve your goal of making a good quality video product for the internet.
If you want, you could do the following:-
1. You could add a video component to your sales page in order to increase your response rate.
2. You could offer your customers downloadable video lessons, which will result in a boost in their confidence of your abilities and knowledge on the subject.
3. You can demonstrate what needs to be done with a particular software product that you are offering by producing a series of videos which can be included as part of the package you are offering to your customers.
As you can see, the possibilities of using video products are endless, and the examples shown above are just a few of the great ways for using video products. So if you want to be seen in a more favorable light in the online marketing fields, then consider creating your own video products as soon as you can.
In order to produce good quality video products, you will need to invest in a good quality web camera or digital camera (or both). Remember that the higher the resolution it has, the better the output it provides will be. So if you are looking to present your product/service in the best possible way, you need to get the best.
Sound
If you require sound for your video, then you need a microphone. By recording your voice as a voice over to the video, you are actually providing an additional benefit to your customers. As the sound, as well as the picture, is important when making a video product, you should ensure that the sound effects are as enticing as the video itself.
Lighting
It is important that the area is well lit, and that the entire area that you are going to use for making your video product. The more light you have in the area, the crisper the video pictures will be. You may also decide to use lighting effects in order to add further appeal to your video presentation.
Video Editing Software
This can be any program, but you do need this in order to finalize your work. It can help you to add further sounds, delete some bad angles or help you to insert some still pictures as well. There are some programs available which are user friendly (we will look at these in another chapter) without you having any knowledge with regard to video editing. Even the simplest video editing programs should help you to achieve your goal of producing a good quality video product. It is vital when doing your editing you choose the right background for your video. As the light will effect the video presentation, it is important that you choose a background which will complement the lighting.
How to Choose the Right Web Cam
When looking for a web cam or digital camera in order to produce a good quality video product, you will need one that is USB based or has firewire capabilities (preferred). That is, one which can be connected to your desktop or notebook computer. Then you have the ability to run different software applications that you wish to use, for example, video conferencing, and surveillance monitoring or even just for your own entertainment.
When looking for a good web cam, you may want to take a closer look at those produced by Creative Web Cam or Logitech Quick Cam. These companies offer a variety of different types of cameras, all of which are readily available. They offer low resolution instant messaging ones through higher resolution devices. They start at around $30 and can go up to as much as $150 for those with a pan and tilt control.
However, there are some things which you should consider before you purchase your web cam.
Basic Design
These web cams are specifically designed for use with your desktop or notebook computer. They can either sit on the table or rest on a monitor. There are even some which can clamp on to your portable notebook screen, while others offer an adjustable base so that they can be used with both kinds of cameras.
Image and Resolution
The more simple types of web cam have a resolution of 352 x 288. This is good enough for basic video conferencing. Also, most web cams offer the user basic live video and still image capture at up to VGA resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. But there are some which use 1.3 megapixel image sensors, which offers higher quality and sharpness (this is extremely useful for still image grabs). There are also others which are “software enhanced” in order to provide you with the highest resolution possible. However, most web cams offer full rate video capture at 30 frames per second. So this should be no problem for many computers today which come with a USB 2.0 interface. While there are others which offer you better sensitivity in low light and these are particularly good for video conferencing when sitting in a dark room or for use as a surveillance tool in the evening.
Lens and Focus
There are some web cams which come with fixed focus, while others will offer the user a manual focus ring. These are particularly good for focusing on a person’s face, for video conferencing or to focus on something in the distance. There are others which can offer the user a wider angle lens (around about 76o). This is great if you want to get a large group of people in to the frame or you want to see the full vista of the scenery outside your window.
Audio Capture
There are some web cams which come with a built in microphone (so you will need no other equipment).
USB Interface
In order to produce higher quality video, you will need to purchase a camera which supports the faster USB 2.0 high speed interface. Most web cams and digital cameras today will also support the much slower USB 1.1 interface, but the resolution provided by this is much lower.
Motorized Pan and Tilt
Normally the more expensive types of web cam which cost around $130 come with a motorized pan and tilt.
Digital Zoom
Unfortunately consumer web cams do not have an optical zoom lens, but they do offer digital zoom (up to 4x) in order for you to enlarge an area of the captured frames. This is especially useful for remote viewing. Say, for example, when the video being transmitted over the internet is actually of a lower resolution than the captured video frames.
Web Cam Software
You will often find that most web cams will include a Windows driver that supports the standard Windows video interface. These are compatible with most Windows applications.
But apart from the driver software, these cameras will also be provided with other software bundles. They may well include video monitoring and capture, video instant messaging, video e-mail, video editing, video conferencing and video surveillance.
Creation and Editing Software for a Video Product
Today it is easier than ever for a person to create and edit their own digital video products on their computers using one of the many software products that are available. But in this chapter of the book, we will look more closely at the Adobe products which are readily available. So whether you want your video to inspire, instruct or just entertain your customers, there is an Adobe product which can help you to achieve this.
Adobe Premiere 6.5
This software is the most adaptable DV-editing tool on the market today. With it, you have the sophisticated Adobe Title Designer, MPEG-2 Export facility, DVD authoring as well as powerful audio tools in order for you to create the most extraordinary video products possible.
Adobe After Effects 5.5
This software delivers a comprehensive set of tools in order for you to efficiently produce motion graphics and visual effects for your video production. You can explore unlimited creative possibilities while having precise control over what you are doing. It also allows you to work in either a 2D or 3D composite environment. It also allows unparalleled integration with many of the other Adobe software products that are available.
Adobe Digital Video Collection
Version 8.0 of this includes Photoshop 7.0, Illustrator 10, After Effects 5.5 and Premiere 6.5. By purchasing this complete package, you could be saving yourself money instead of buying each package separately.
Plan Before You Commence Shooting Your Video Product
In order for you to create a good quality video product, you need to have a good solid plan in place. This will not only save you time, but it will also minimize the frustration, and you will end up producing a much better final video product.
So you will need to spend time researching your subject, writing a script (if you need one) and then layout the video production plan before you beginning recording.
When producing any video product, it is best to start at the end. It is important that you know what you are going to do with the video product once it has been produced. Are you just going to use it on your website or are you going to burn it to a CD or DVD for your customers? Or are you going to allow them to download it directly as part of an offer with the product that you are promoting?
If you need to, create a storyboard before you beginning shooting. This will provide you with a good idea of the shoots that you will need.
If you have the chance, clean up the hard drive on your computer. Unfortunately, video takes up huge amounts of space. In fact 1 minute of video can require up to 100mb or more of a computers hard drive (this all depends on several different factors). So therefore, the more room you have, the more flexibility you will have for the actual editing process. If you will be producing either large or multiple projects then it may well be worth considering investing in a FireWire Hard Drive.
So with a good plan to hand, the actual recording of the video should go smoothly and provide you with plenty of material for the editing process.
Remember, the better the quality of the original material produced then the better the quality your final video product will be.
How to Edit Your Video Product
So you have done a good job of planning your video product project and you have also recorded it. Now we get on to the editing part of this book. But ensuring that you have a good computer with lots of hard drive space, as well as a good software editing program will help also.
There are plenty of editing programs available which allow you to name each individual clip, either as you bring it in, or when it is in the clip library.
If you can, be generous as to what you import on to your computer. Remember, you can throw anything away that you do not need, and it is much easier than when you import in the first place.
Remember to keep a fast pace during the production of your video, as it keeps the people looking at it interested. If you need to, make sure that your clips are in the right order and rearrange them as needed. Most of the editing software programs allow the user to click and drag their clips in to the right place.
If you can, adjust the amount of footage that you show at the start, and end, of each clip in order to create a smooth transition between your scenes or instructions. If you want, try inserting some black space between each section, and also use a fade transition.
Titles and Captions
As with special effects, the way in which a person uses titles and captions in their video product can either enhance or ruin it. So use them sparingly, and instead let your video and sound tell the story for you.
However, it is important that you make the text large enough to be seen, and then choose a color which can easily be viewed in the background of your video. Also leave it on the screen long enough in order for your viewers to read it.
Music and Sound
Even silent movies used sound. They were often accompanied by background music, which helps to enhance the mood of the film. So by choosing the right sort of music and providing well placed narration, it will help to make your video product even better.
We will now look more closely at other editing issues, in case you are looking to produce a high quality video product.
1. You can decrease the size of the clip. By reducing the resolution, you are then able to reduce the size of the files that you have on your computer.
2. You can compress the video. Today you will find that most video files allow for some form of compression, and it is not far from the techniques used to compress still images. But if you compress them too much, the picture quality will deteriorate.
3. You may decide that you want to drop the frame rate. This is all well and good, but below 15 fps and then the motion in the video starts to appear jerky.
4. If you want, you can stream your video. This means that, unlike normal video files where you need to download them before they are played, you are able to see the video on demand (it plays as it is being downloaded). So what you will need to do is download part of the video to act as a buffer. Then, once it commences playing the video from the buffer, it will continue to download, topping up the buffer as it carries on downloading. But if you do use this, you may need a special server in order to stream your video products from.
However, most video editing programs are geared to the user making web clips, and will enable the user to do at least 3 tasks. Often many of these programs come with a video capture device or camera.
But now let us have a look at the various video file types that are most commonly used on the web today.
1. .avi
This is short for audio/video interleaved. It can use several compression schemes, and is becoming increasingly more popular with those producing video products on the web. You will also find that most digital video cameras shoot in the .avi format.
2. .mov (Quicktime)
These files are based on the Quicktime system. Although it was initially designed for the Mac Platform, it can now be used with most other operating systems via a plug in and helper application. The standard Quicktime player can be downloaded from Apple for free, and it will also provide you with access to many other resources as well. It has some great compression schemes, which often make these files smaller without them losing any of their quality.
3. .mpeg
This format has taken its name for the group which developed it, namely Motion Pictures Expert Group. This remains one of the most important web video files around today because of the range of compression that can be applied to it. Also, unlike .avi and .mov (Quicktime), it has not been developed for any particular operating system.
4. .wmv (Windows Media Video)
This is part of the Microsoft Windows Media Format and is comparatively new. It is an all singing, all dancing media format, but comes with the added bonus of having Microsoft resources backing it up. Not only does it provide better compression technology, but these files can either be downloaded or streamed. There are plenty of other Microsoft resources to go with it, many of which can be downloaded for free.
How to Create a Video Tutorial for Your Customers
Often, creating a video product can be labor intensive. But in this chapter, we will look at way you can produce a video product fast in order to have it ready for the market almost immediately; it is known as a video tutorial.
A video tutorial can be created in a very short amount of time (it can take as little as an hour to do). It can also be done on any topic you want. Not only are they are easy to make, but they can be fun as well.
Below, we provide you with a number of steps that you should follow in order to make a video tutorial product.
1. Define Your Topic
What you should first do is decide on what your video tutorial is going to be about. Say, for example, you want to show people how to use Microsoft Word. This is likely to be a very long tutorial. So the first thing you should do before making the whole tutorial is break it up into smaller tasks. So if you happen to be producing a more comprehensive product for your customers, you can provide them with lessons that then build on one another, until the whole topic has been covered.
You may decide that the first tutorial will be on the “Basic terminology of Word”, then you might do one on “How to Format a Paragraph” and a third one can be on “Insertion of Tables”.
So what you need to do next is outline each step, in detail, that you are going to work on through out each tutorial. But what you must remember is that the key to an effective tutorial is the detail contained within. So it’s important that you create your video tutorial with every little step in place, and never assume that your students (customers) know anything. By creating a clear step by step outline, this will keep you on track and will also help you avoid those steps which might be unclear.
2. Get the Software
Now you need to download a good software program that you can use for recording. One such program is Camtasia.
This allows you to create a film with audio and video of a section on your computer. This then allows you to make the video in to either a Flash video, mpeg or streaming video available from your website.
3. Now to record the Tutorial
What you need to do now is turn off the phone (unplug it if you have to), go into a quiet room, or if not, tell everyone that you need quiet and need to be left alone. Then all you need to do is follow the instructions provided by your video recording software program (Camtasia) on your computer. Then all you need to do is record your video product and save it.
4. Do not forget any supporting material
This unfortunately is an important part of any video product and is often overlooked. By having good quality written material to support your video product will change it from being a mediocre one to a great one instead.
How to Go About Putting the Finished Video Product on Your Website
So you have now made your video, but just how do you go about putting it on to your website? For many people, they have now found that using an eye catching video on their website has increased the chances that they will capture the interest of those that are visiting their site. Also, if you include video products within your web pages, then search engines will love it also. This will often result in your site being pushed up their search engine results.
There are number of ways in which you can use videos on your website, and below we discuss just some basic issues.
There are 2 options that are available to you when you are considering putting a video product on to your website. You can either let your visitors wait for the video to download completely before viewing, or you can use streaming techniques instead. The benefit to be had from using streaming techniques is that they video can be viewed while it is still downloading. In fact, streaming video products are becoming more and more popular on the internet today.
Although many of us think that the process of creating, editing and then uploading a video product to a website is difficult. If the truth be told, it does not take much time to do, and it is not that complicated at all.
But when making a video product you should pay attention to your bandwidth usage. The problem with making a video product is that they will eat up your bandwidth. Also, there are problems which can arise of a legal nature if you use video files which do not belong to you.
So when you are deciding about putting a video on to your website you should first think about if the value of the video will justify the time that you spend on preparing and then implementing it to your website. You will need to ask yourself the following questions.
1. Will the video that I am producing be of help to visitors to my website?
2. What technique will I want to use when it actually comes to implementing the video on to my website?
So, for example, if a person has a slow internet connection, then normally a 1mb video file will take approximately 5 minutes for them to download. So is the value of the information provided in your video product of a quality that a visitor to your site with a slow internet connection will be happy to wait for the product to download?
When ever you put a video on to your website, ensure that it is of the highest quality possible. It is important that it will not only add real value to your site, but also to those who will be looking at it also.
A Video Product Can Help Boost Traffic and Sales to Your Website
There are many reasons why, today, the savvier internet marketers around you claim that video is the next big thing without being told either by YouTube or Time Magazine. They have already been using and benefiting from online videos well before either Time Magazine or others had noticed that both video, and self generated content, would be having a profound impact on people’s daily lives.
You will find that, for many years, online marketers have been using videos as a way to promote and sell their products. Often, they mainly use the video as a marketing tool, as it is both cost effective and a simple way to market. In fact, the video is one marketing trend that should not be ignored by any online marketer. Not only are they playing a huge role in online marketing now, but they will be playing an even bigger role in the future.
Today, more and more well known internet marketers are now using videos in order to not just promote and sell their products, but also to create a buzz in the market place.
Many online marketers are now beginning to exploit the immediate connection and effectiveness of using video products for marketing purposes. They can not only be used to inform potential customers regarding different products or services, but they can also be used for promoting offers. Many internet marketers know that building a solid relationship with their customers is the main way to boost their sales. So by using a video product, they can have an effective but simple way of making this connection with their customers.
In fact, today you will find that most internet marketers are also using blogs in order to update and contact any potential customers. Both Blog and RSS feeds are now becoming the most important marketing tools around, which gives any video products a marketer produces unlimited potential for them to earn more traffic and sales to their sites. Plus, with the introduction of the RSS empowered Microsoft Windows program “Vista”, we should expect to see Blogs and RSS playing an even greater role in the internet marketing field. So as you can see, video products have truly arrived in the world of online marketing.
Most likely what will happen is that we will see many websites on the internet becoming their own broadcasting system. Sites will soon have their own television channel, which will cater to a specific niche or a broader subject, depending on what the subject matter is that is covered by a particular site.
But the best thing about this is that you do not need to be a big player in order to get involved in this form of marketing. No matter how big or small a marketer you are, you can use and benefit from creating and producing your own video products.
So when a visitor is delivered to your site by one of the many search engines or some other link, then they will be looking for the information that they require instantly. By providing them with a good video demo, you are able to save them time in having to trawl through the site in order to find the information that they want, or worse still, they decide to go somewhere else to get the information that they require.
So why is using a video product the best way to go? To put it simply, the average attention span of a web user is measured in seconds. So after a visitor has been brought to your site by either a search engine or through a recommendation link, they will only use a limited amount of time to see if the site can offer them what they are looking for. So if you are able to engage their interest right there, then you have captured them. So by offering them a highly visual and fast way to get your information across they will be more willing to stay.
So by following the steps below, you can soon be using video products as an effective marketing tool for your site.
1. It is important that you introduce both yourself and your product to any potential customers who are looking at your video.
2. It can be used as a way of creating some buzz when you are first launching a new product on to your site.
3. Why not build a list of customers by offering them free videos? For example, a tutorial on how to use a particular product or service. This can be a lead in to your main video product…and a good way to qualify your customers before purchase.
4. By creating video you are enriching the content of your site, which will not only make visitors more interested. But it will also make search engines more interested in it also.
5. It allows you to build a more personal relationship with those that subscribe to your site.
6. It allows you to keep in contact with your customers.
7. Use it as a way of creating a sales letter/pitch in order to sell your product or service more effectively.
As you will soon see, nothing beats the personal and direct connection that video will provide for you with potential customers and any follow up leads.
But perhaps the most important thing that can be had from using video products is that they make it easier for you to sell your products and services to a much wider audience. So this should be one more tool that you have in your marketing arsenal. As many people already know, the use of video products is the future of online marketing, so why not start taking full advantage of it today, and start making your own video products!
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