Most of the so-called video I see on internet sites are actually Camtasia screen captures of Power Point slides with voice over. Lately, authors of these videos are totally leaving off the video control bar at the bottom so its impossible to pause, advance, or otherwise control the video. I don’t mind when the control bar is hidden until you mouse over it but when I’m left with no control other than leaving the page thats not a good thing in my book.
You need to have a really great opening and a smooth delivery if you’re going to use this technique to promote your product. What got me thinking about this was that I’ve been looking for a Health and Fitness program (unfortunately, I need to lose about 20lbs). When I turned on my compter this morning, Windows Live Messenger popped up with a featured fitness ad that got my attention. Clicking this, lead to a page and a video as described above…. It seems to me that if you’re selling something like a fitness product that it would be a good thing to show a picture of the product author, or product users, right upfront in your video… some sort of social proof that it works. So…. what do you think?
Marketing expert and “Mass Customization” author Joseph Pine pulls back the curtain on what consumers are really searching for and by extension, what you can do to improve your marketing videos, products, and presentations. This video includes several examples that can be adapted to all most every business situation.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html
The 2009 TED series is just over and new video’s are being posted quickly at the TED.com site. Over 200 new video’s in fact. Whats TED about?
“TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from the TED archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.”
You owe it to yourself to visit the site and check the broad scope of topics and speakers. I’ll be reviewing a number of TED videos that relate in one way or another to video production, internet video, or internet marketing
This site has been up for almost 3 years using static web pages. For most of that time, its been the home of the eLearning course – 9 Quick and Easy Steps to Produce a Top Quality Internet Video. Several thousand people from over 50 countries have taken the free version of the course - which is currently being rewritten and updated for the web 2.0 world. We’ve also got a number of “How To” reports and video product reviews that will be added to the mix in short order. I’m hopeful that the blog format will bring more information on video production for the web to more people. So thanks for stopping by – bookmark the site and stop back to see the changes as we roll out new features in the next few days.
Best Wishes for the Holidays
Steve
