A few weeks ago I was asked to prepare a presentation for Barrie Business Week (http://www.barriebizweek.ca). I spoke to business owners about how to get up to date with the latest digital and social media strategies to improve their businesses and brands. I was part of a panel which included Marc Hill of Digital Giants (http://www.bedigitalgiants.com), who spoke on building web presence, Barbara Lowe of Assisting You (http://www.assistingyou.ca), who spoke on establishing social media campaigns, and I obviously spoke on creating effective business videos. Here are a few snippets from my presentation…
Over the last 15 years the internet has, in many ways, leveled the playing field between the small business owners and the corporate Goliath’s. It used to take generations to build a reputable brand or grow a business into anything sizeable, but these days we find that the internet has accelerated this process. Great content and products can spread like wildfire.
Business owners have the opportunity to reach so many people and in turn they also have access to a world of ideas, knowledge and products. With 7.2 billion people on the planet, it’s estimated that over 3 billion are internet users – that’s 46% of the world’s population connected online. (wearesocial.net) But this also presents some challenges. With all this connectivity, the online world has become a very busy place. We are all competing to be heard, and trying to carve out our own little chunk of online real estate. Because of this, the internet has become so noisy that can anybody really hear what YOU are trying to say about your brand?
We are bombarded with content messaging, sales pitches, and pop-up ads. Did you know that 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute? And that the average North American is exposed to 5000+ ad messages in one day? (sjinsights.net) As a result of this over saturation of messaging, the current ‘media-generation’ has evolved to cope with he constant ’noise’. If it smells like a sales pitch or the content is not engaging, we tune right out.
It’s up to business owners to get their brand noticed and heard above the noise. The good news is that there are ways to give your brand a voice that does stand out from the racket. Engaging content will break through the online clutter. Video marketing is the strongest way to engage and communicate with your audience. In order to consistently produce engaging videos, we have adopted our own ‘will anyone care’ checklist that we apply when creating videos for businesses… and it looks something like this:
Story: did we use components of storytelling to engage the viewer emotionally?
Authentic: is this genuine and representative of the business owner, their values, their brand essence?
Useful information: are we providing information that can educate or enlighten the viewers?
Here’s a couple videos from the day We’d like to share with you.