Do It Yourself Video for Small Business?

There is no doubt, we are in a communications revolution. At the hands of anyone with average computing skills is the ability to shoot, edit and post video online, a realm once dominated only by tv stations. So why not make your own videos for your company, or pass the task on to a relative who has a video camera?

Indeed, this might be a good strategy for cost-effective communication internally within your company, such as staff training and messages from management to employees. For external messages, especially messages for your customers, it's important to consider the value of a well crafted video.

You likely wouldn't be reading this blog if you didn't believe that some kind of video will help your business move forward. However, of the millions of videos to be seen online, yours needs to stand out if you want to capture the eyeballs of your ideal customer. It's not as hard as you might think. There's a horrific number of really bad videos online and a small investment in professional video can easily help you make a great first impression on viewers.

A good video production company will be able to direct you to superior results with:

1. Technical Quality


2. Storytelling skills


3. Marketing message (or hook)

Technical Quality - A good video production company will advise you of the right tools for the job, and won't use a meat cleaver when they really should be using a scalpel. The Canadian Liberal Party lost a federal election in 2008 and bad video didn't help them. The party used a web cam for their leader's address and delivered delivered the video to the public and national press. Click here for the video. It's really important to not turn your audience off with poor sound, and fuzzy, poorly framed pictures. A professional camera in the hands of a skilled videographer will make your video stand well above all of the user generated content on the web.

Storytelling - people love stories. What's your success story? What is unique about what you do? What stories do your customers tell about you? Creating a story idea is really the easy part, delivering it to the right audience takes a bit more skill. You might have enough ideas to make an 30 minute documentary, and that's good, but not if the audience won't sit for two minutes to watch it. A good scriptwriter will sort and condense the information you provide to make your message entertaining, engaging, and relevant for the audience for which it's intended. Technical staff like camera crews and editors have a great deal of influence in the storytelling process by creating a feel or tone of the video and by shooting and editing in a way that creates a logical or stylistic sequence of images. Consider them to be fluent in a "visual language".

Marketing Message - If the question "what will this commercial do for my business" has not been answered, then you're missing the fundamental reason for creating the commercial in the first place. The story that's created for your commercial needs to address the concrete needs of the business. It may be that you want to get more people into your store, or that you want to demonstrate something that can't be explained in print. In working with a video production company, you'll want to ensure that the needs of the business are addressed by the way in which the story is told or presented.

When you are ready to create an external video message for your company it's worth taking the time to analyze the cost of doing it yourself versus hiring a professional, especially in light of the potential returns of either course of action. You might find after costing our your time and resources it's not as expensive as you think to hire a pro.

See you in the pictures!

Neil Scott
President, Orange Internet Video Inc.

Web Video Commercials: When less is more

Why does Orange only make web commercials? The answer is simple really. Less is more.

A video is most effective when it delivers a concise message that elicits an emotional response and/or a call to action. Detailed information such as historical or technical information is best left in the print or text realm such as: websites, social networking, blogs and brochures. It's important to consider your video as a tool to quickly create interest and curiosity, so the visitor wants to visit you online or offline for more information.

I have been in the video production business for over 25 years and also run a company call The Edge - Video for Business and Broadcast (www.edgecine.com). The main focus of The Edge is in making targeted internal and external communications videos for large corporations.

The work we do at The Edge is custom video production work on videos of any length. Invariably, the target length of most of the videos we work on tends to be extended, as our customers think of more information to stuff into their video. At The Edge, the video production we do is what the industry calls "broadcast quality", meaning our staff are educated and experienced professionals, and our equipment is top professional quality and modern.

We were getting many phone calls from small business owners, looking for a clear idea of pricing for video concepts that often had far too much information in them. Generally speaking, the length of a video plays a large part in the price and once we created estimates for them, most found that they couldn't afford our services. So, it got me to thinking....what if I could offer small business owners a service like this:

• a video production service with the same quality and reliability of the service we provide at The Edge
• Assist our customers in clarifying what they are selling and who they are selling to
• Create a process that helps our customers sort out and refine their message
• Leverage the growing power of video on the web
• Simplify everything by providing a fixed offering at a reasonable fixed price

That's why Orange Internet Video was created. I decided to take the business model of the television commercial and modify it slightly to help small business owners promote their business on the web. In August 2009, 161 million US users watched online video in that month, the largest audience ever recorded. Online video reached another all time high in August with more than 25 billion videos viewed during the month.

The popularity of online video is growing at an exponential rate and that means a great promotional opportunity for those marketing with video, but it also means your message better be more interesting and captivating than your competitor's to stand out.

A great number of online videos are being abandoned by their viewers before the video has finished, and the number or viewers that abandon a web video increases if it is a promotional message. Because of this, we recommend a maximum length of 90 seconds for any promotional message.

Here are a few points to consider when planning your first commercial:

• Be very clear about who your preferred audience is and create phrases and language that speaks directly to them
• Promote the benefits of your products or services in an educational and informative manner
• It's important to articulate what makes your business different from your competitor's
• Give your customer a reason to buy from you right now by promoting a unique product or service, running an in-store promotion, or having a time limited sale.
• Testimonials from your best customers can be very powerful.

Our goal at Orange Internet Video is to support you in creating effective web commercials for your small business, that help you find more perspective customers and generate more consumer interest in your product or services. Let us put our expertise to work for you!

Re-visit our blog, and check out our Facebook and Twitter pages for more information about Orange Internet Video and the latest tips and info on web video. See you in the pictures!

Neil Scott

President, Orange Internet Video Inc.