Video blogging isn’t for everyone. You need to have the right equipment, commitment and passion.

The correct equipment means lights, cameras and then its action time and ensuring you get the basics right and avoiding making the basic mistakes.

This is the last article in a three  part series where we look at how to put together a professional looking video on a budget.

So if you missed the first two you can quickly leap to them below.

• Part One: Equipment
• Part Two: Audio and Lighting
• Part Three: Post-production

The Post-production

Now that all the filming is done, we will look at how to compile and package your video so that it is professional and pleasant to watch.

Video blogs need to be set out like an article. It will have a main topic and then subsections within this.

A video blogger needs to be prolific; it can’t take hours to package your video each time so we recommend that you create a series of templates that you can reuse to define your subsections, title background screen and so on. These templates are made up of graphic elements that will give your videos a recognisable style and can include branding and contact details.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Templates

Remember that these backgrounds and templates can only work if you have shot the video with a blue or green screen chroma-key background, which can then be keyed out and replaced with graphic elements.

To begin with you can create your opening title screen backdrop. Remember to keep your introduction short and informative. Then you can add an animated title backdrop that introduces the speaker. This can be used for guest speakers too.

Talking Heads can be Boring

Most video blogs will use the “talking head” style but this can become visually uninteresting so create a series of backgrounds. Obviously they need to be relevant so you can make a neutral one that just has some texture, otherwise you can add pictures, video or a slideshow.

When making a list you can create bullet points next to the speaker, or even cut the speaker out completely and just keep the audio while listing the points. But what the speaker is saying and what you show doesn’t need to always be exactly the same, you could add an infographic, for example, that will enrich your point. Keep in mind the audience’s assimilation rate. This is how long it will take to absorb the information on the screen. You need to find a balance so that the viewer is happy that they have had time to understand what’s on the screen but not so long as to bore the viewer.

6 Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

There are a few simple things that can make all the difference to your video.

Sound is another import thing to focus on. First I want to focus on music and then I’ll just list some tips on how to adjust your audio in post-production. Adding music can give your video a lot of texture and an ambiance that can be very effective. But there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Firstly, be careful to find royalty-free music. It’s illegal to use copywritten music without paying a usually hefty royalty fee.
2. Then you need to consider that the relationship between the subject matter and the speed or style of the music has to match. If I’m being really serious and talking quite slowly having something jaunty and fast in the background isn’t going to work. In the same way, if I’m talking excitedly about a subject I’m passionate about and this slow, poignant music is playing, it changes the whole atmosphere of the piece.
3. If you are putting music behind a voice, you need make sure that it is soft enough so that we can still clearly hear the person speaking — if it’s too loud, the video is really messy. But it also can’t be too soft, which sounds like somebody left the radio on the other room.
4. When there’s a pause in the narration you can push the music up. But also don’t be afraid not to have music. You can have silence when the speaker is on and then just use the music to bridge the sections.
5. Really importantly, you need to make sure that the music corresponds with your subsections. Often people will put a song on, let it run and end and then add another, but it’s really jarring if this happens randomly in the middle of a section. Rather work backwards; put the end of the song at the end of a section and just fade the music in at the beginning, even if you are starting in the middle of the song. This sounds less jarring than ending in the middle.
6. Make sure that your audio levels are consistent; they shouldn’t fade in and out or change at all and if you have picked up some ambient noise, try to soften it in postproduction.

That’s it for our tips for packaging an online video blog professionally. I hope you have got some good ideas out of this. Happy blogging!

About the authors: Francois Karstel is the owner of Sound Idea Digital, a full service digital agency. You can connect with him on Twitter @soundideadma, Robyn Bloch is a digital journalist at Sound Idea Digital. You can connect with her on Twitter @soundidea or visit: Sound Idea Digital

Image by KTVee

Has the formula for a viral video been discovered?

Viral videos have made ordinary people famous and taken brands from obscurity to overnight success when people have shared them on social networks.

It has been assumed for a long time that viral videos are an accident or a fortunate occurrence.

A marketing professor, Brent Coker from the University of Melbourne has come up with a algorithm as to why people will share some videos and ignore others and maybe discovered the “Holy Grail” of marketing.

According to the algorithm  (called the BVMP or “Branded Viral Movie Predictor”), the four key elements required for a video to go viral are:

• Congruency
• Emotive strength
• Network involvement
• “Paired meme synergy”

So how can you harness these elements and what is the essence of the formula that can contribute to making a video become viral?

1. Congruency

The themes of a video must be congruent with people’s pre-existing knowledge of the brand it is advertising.

Coker refers to the Harley Davidson brand as an example:

“For example, Harley Davidson for most people is associated with Freedom, Muscle, Tattoos, and Membership, Videos that strengthen that association meet with approval “, but as soon as we witness associations with the brand that are inconsistent with our brand knowledge, we feel tension.” In the latter case, few people will share the video, and it will quickly “go extinct.”

A Harley Davidson “Scooter” is not going to be congruent with the Harley Davidson Brand!

2. Emotive Strength

Creating strong emotions is essential if you want to ensure you are giving your video the best chance of becoming viral and the more extreme the emotions, the better.

Coker says that the strength of the emotion is vital and he categorises these into four categories based on strength.

4 Levels of Emotion

1. Disgust is a one of the strongest forms of emotion and easily recalled or remembered
2. Fear is very powerful and is almost immune to extinction from our memory
3. Sentiment can be equally as powerful but is more dependent on your network attachments and involvements (eg University students)
4. Humour and Happiness are weaker

Happy and funny videos don’t tend to fare as well as scary or disgusting ones. This helps explain why negative headlines can produce more  traffic to a blog or sell more newspapers.

3. Network Involvement

Videos must be relevant to a large network of people and the larger the better, some examples of large networks are college students or office workers.

The ability of a video to go viral is also dependent on 2 key elements

1. Size of the network
2. Relevant to most of the nodes in the network

Transferring between networks is dependent on the closeness of several dimensions of each network. An example is “office workers with degrees” network could be closely associated on several levels with “university students”

4. Paired Meme Synergy

Coker came up with 16 concepts, known on the Internet as “memes” and discovered that videos only go viral if they have the right combinations of these concepts.

According to the research…”When combined, some combinations appear to work better together than others”

Example of a successful combination of three memes:

• Voyeur – which is when a video appears to be someone’s mobile phone footage
• Eyes Surprise — unexpectedness
• Simulation Trigger – which is when the viewer imagines themselves being friends [with the people in the video] and sharing the same ideals

One viral video that used all three of those memes was a 2007 ad by Quiksilver which is a global surf and beach apparel brand.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The grainy footage showed surfers throwing dynamite in a river and surfing on the resulting waves.

What Else is Needed for a Video to go Viral?

According to Brent, classic movie production strategies are also important.

• Keeping the movie short and snappy (The Old Spice videos were often only 20 seconds)
• A link baiting headline (you have to grab people’s attention)
• Initial seeding into large networks (find key influencers and get them to talk about it and share it)
• Key word and key phrase tag strategy (optimise it for search engines)

The complexity and combinations required for a video to become “viral” is not an easy task.

Maybe Professor Coker is closer to the “magic formula” for producing videos that “go viral” !

What do you think?

Have you produced a viral video? Look forward to hearing your stories.

More Reading:

• 50 Awesome YouTube Facts and Figures
• Online Video for Business: Don’t Ignore It Your Competitors Aren’t
• How To Create and Promote Your YouTube Video in 8 Simple Steps
• Who are the Top 5 YouTube Stars
• 32 Lessons for Online Video Social Media Marketing Success
• 9 Secrets of a Successful Online Video Social Media Marketing Strategy

Virus image by Sterin

Harley Davidson image By Brett Jordan

YouTube is a modern phenomena. The social media  platform’s original concept is rumoured to have been inspired by the idea of being a video dating site with the unlikely title of “Tune In Hook Up”. In the end it launched as a simple video sharing site that has helped reinvent the web from a one way static channel to an interactive web eco-system (along with social networking channels such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter) that has enticed and compelled us to engage globally with other internet users using a variety of rich multi-media and social sharing platforms.

YouTube after initially being about viral videos that just entertain is now much more than that, with the “How To” category being the fastest growing segment on the social video sharing channel.  YouTube is even being used as a tool to teach high level mathematics and other academic and tertiary subjects with Salman Khan of khanacademy.org revealing at a recent Ted Talk, how his 2,000 plus YouTube videos are assisting students pass university degrees.

50 YouTube Facts & Figures

1. YouTube was created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005 who were all employees of Paypal
2. YouTube was initially funded by bonuses received following the eBay buy-out of PayPal
3. The founding trio didn’t come up with the YouTube concept straight away. Legend has it that YouTube began life as a video dating site dubbed “Tune In Hook Up,” said to be influenced by HotorNot. The three ultimately decided not to go that route
4. The inspiration for YouTube as we know it today is credited to two different events. The first was Karim’s inability to find footage online of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” and the second when Hurley and Chen were unable to share video footage of a dinner party due to e-mail attachment limitations
5. The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentine’s Day in 2005
6. The domain name caused a huge misunderstanding for Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment. Its company domain, “utube.com,” was overwhelmed with traffic from people that tried to spell the video site’s name phonetically
7. The first video on YouTube is of one of the co-founders Jawed Karim talking about elephant’s trunks titled “Me at the Zoo” shot at the San Diego Zoo.
8. The first video has received over 4.8 million views
9. Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in November 2006
10. Google serves over 6 times more videos than its next closest competitor according to Nielsen
11. Google’s auto speech recognition technology translates 51 languages including captions
12. The longest Video ever on YouTube is 48 hours (2 days!)
13. The ‘how to’ video category is the fastest growing vertical on YouTube
14. YouTube has 490 million users worldwide (unique visitors per month)
15. It generates an estimated 92 billion page views each month.
16. The average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month
17. The average user spends an average of 25 minutes on the site each time they visit.
18. The average user spends 5 hours and 50 minutes per month (not as much as Facebook)
19. Together, we spend 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month. That’s 326,294 years.
20. More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010 and 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute.
21. The amount of video uploaded in 2010 is the equivalent of 150,000+ full-length movies in theaters each week
22. More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years
23. 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
24. YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages
25. YouTube’s demographic is broad: 18-54 years old
26. YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010
27. They have signed over 10,000 advertising partners to date, including Disney, Turner, Univision and Channel 4 and Channel 5
28. Hundreds of partners are making six figures a year
29. There are over 7,000 hours of full-length movies and shows on YouTube
30. YouTube is monetizing over 2 billion video views per week globally
31. 94 of AdAge’s Top 100 advertisers have run campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network
32. The number of advertisers using display ads on YouTube increased by 1,000% in the last year
33. YouTube has more HD content than any other online video site
34. 10% of YouTube’s videos are available in HD
35. Automated Content ID (which detects duplicate content to prevent copyright infringements) scans over 100 years of video every day
36. More than 1000 partners are using Content ID, including every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label
37. Over a third of YouTube’s total monetized views come from Content ID
38. Over 4 million people are connected and auto-sharing to at least one social network
39. An AutoShared Tweet results in 6 new youtube.com sessions
40. Over 5 million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend on YouTube using friend-finding tools
41. Millions of subscriptions happen each day. Subscriptions allow you to connect with someone you’re interested in—whether it’s a friend, or the NBA—and keep up on their activity on the site.
42. Users like Machinima, MysteryGuitarMan, Fred, collegehumor, and UniversalMusicGroup have millions of subscribers
43. More than 50% of videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments from the community
44. Millions of videos are favorited every day
45. YouTube mobile gets over 100 million views a day
46. The YouTube player is embedded across tens of millions of websites
47. YouTube says that on average there are more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link
48. The most watched video (that is not a music video) is “Charlie Bit My Finger” with currently 317 million views
49. The most watched music video is Justin Bieber’s “Baby” which currently has over 536 million views
50. In 2009 the US Congress and President YouTube channels were launched

So how do you use YouTube and how could you creatively apply it to your business or organisation?

More Reading

• 50 Fascinating Facebook Facts And Figures
• 30 Terrific Twitter Facts And Figures

Sources

• YouTube Press Statistics
• Royal Pingdom.com
• Mashable.com

It was when I was reading a Comscore report on how many online videos that the US consumer was viewing each month that I came to a realization that “being found online” was not just about “textual content” anymore but that video was the new ”teeming hotspot”. The latest generation don’t so much as read but “watch videos”  

I was raised  in the era of books, reading and offline content.. because the Internet was not even on the horizon whenI was growing up .. in fact colour TV was simply “amazing”. .. man had just landed on the moon… Ugg boots were “cool” and “Flares” were still the rage.  The  “Yellow Pages” were the place to be and fax broadcasting was the new frontier of marketing.

So if you want to be found you need to be not only using “Google” but  also “YouTube” as it is the second largest search engine after Google.

So after that completely “non-influential introduction”  Do you think online video is an important strategy in getting found Online? Yes or No

Marketing is going through a lot of changes due to the rise of the Web and the latest technologies, including Social Media where you can easily and efficiently publish and promote your content and get your message out to your customers and potential clients.

The old marketing paradigm consisted of cold calling, mass media (radio, TV and newspaper), fax broadcasting, direct mail and all the other traditional marketing mediums. The ability of these channels to produce effective cost efficient results is waning as new technology such as caller ID, email spamming filters, as well as government regulations being put in place such as do not call registers.This is what you could also call “Push Marketing” or “Interruption Marketing”.

The “New Rules Of Marketing”  is about getting customers to engage with you when it suits them and to start having conversations with them.via blogs, forums, and other types of Social Media” that eventually leads to them being pulled to you as they provide email or RSS subscriptions to your unique and valuable content and information that helps them find solutions to their business problems or “pain points”.

In this video I look at what are the Top 5 Social Media channels and the some of the interesting facts and figures that will give you some insight in to how these platforms can assist you in pulling customers to you by gaining their permission. 

This is the first in a series of videos. In the upcoming videos I will look in more detail about how to apply the “New Rules of Marketing”  to your business to generate more leads and sales as well as to reduce the costs associated in acquiring New customers.

So what “Social Media” Channels are you currently using?

I have recently started to take a closer look at the  increasing impact of   Social Media “Online Video and its importance to getting found online because of the facts and figures emerging that can’t  be  ignored… in fact its hard to get your head around them. Comscore announced in August 2009 that over 25.4 Billion video views ocurred in the USA alone (Yes…. Billions not millions). This is up from 14.3 Billion In December 2008. This is a 78% increase in just 8 months. Google’s sites such as YouTube  had a 39% market share with the closest competitor being Microsoft sites with 2.2%. (Google owns YouTube by the way).

In a Video interview by  ”Reel SEO” with of Ogilvy’s Marketing Director Interactive  Robert Davis,  Robert tells Andy Plesser of Beet.tv that they have seen a tremendous rise in traffic to video content coming from search engines, especially over the past 6 months.

He makes 3 Key insights about the role that online video is having on search and building content on Social Media and websites.

1.Video and Search have really started to gel. … the traffic that we can drive of off search now in some cases is enough for a campaign where they don’t have to have a paid component with it ”There is  tremendous search value from video now”…You can use video content almost as much as you can use a banner or paid search as a drive-to mechanism to your site.” 

2. We know that search “drives traffic” and since the introduction of universal search (you may have noticed that you can search universally as well determine the different types of content when you do a Google search), we know that search can work well for driving traffic to sites with video content.   “What we are focusing on is more of a content strategy with search.  As long as you have good metadata strategies and you are applying the same kinds of search strategies that you would apply to text content, the search engines are out there and waiting.”

3. ”Information Focused video content for B2B lend themselves well to search” and address the “questions” that potential clients would ask. For b2b clients, rather than doing the age old testimonial… it’s the kind of content that answers a search for a “pain point“… not a search for a brand….  Answer the question of the consumer with your video content.”

One phrase that struck me was “pain point” which is an interesting “re-terming” take on a “business problem”. If you can provide content in a video format that answers and provides a solution and removes pain for a person or business your content then is very relevant and valuable.

So are you using  online video on your blog or website ..is it increasing your traffic and helping you get found online?