http://budurl.com/vidst

I wish I had known a few years ago what I now know about using video to tell my business story on line and I wish I had taken action then. Not that it’s too late, just that now the world is starting to realise how powerful video marketing is I’m having to catch up fast!

It’s not that I hadn’t seen the statistics, like that there are over 92 billion videos viewed each month on YouTube and that some 80% of people who reach a website with a video on it will watch it and then, of those, about 50% will take some form of suggested action.

But for a combination of reasons I did not take action.

I guess I could sum up my “reasons” as:

• too expensive
• too technical
• too time consuming
• not a good investment of my time
• something I’d would get around to later

In hindsight it’s probably more realistic to say “excuses” than “reasons”.

Eventually I got started, but I was still feeling a bit daunted about getting it all moving smoothly.

The Amazing Brossmans showed me the way

I started to be more determined about taking action once I became aware of how much success my friends Pam and Steve Brossman and their clients were achieving through using video to market their businesses, their products and services.

Then just last month, as part of the SheExperts course I was doing in Sydney with Pam Brossman, I had the benefit of a day working with Steve on video speaker training.  This was a terrific day of experiential learning (the way I like to learn) – fun, invigorating and definitely empowering.

So of course I’m now keen to see others have the experience I had, plus the practical guidance on how to take action and get results in this fast moving field of video marketing.

Australian seminars coming up

For anyone in Australia, especially people on the east coast,  there is an opportunity coming up to experience the fun and excellent learning you can expect from a day with this dynamic (and down to earth) duo, Pam and Steve.

They are holding a one day seminar in Sydney (May 21st) and another in Melbourne (May 14th, where they’ve told me they will be sharing such gems as:

• How to use videos to attract more clients and get them to pay more money
• How to create videos without your having to get in front of the camera

I love the fact that in their no nonsense way they can help you to, in their words, “make videos that get found, get watched and don’t break the bank”.

And if you are one of the many people who are nervous about getting in front of the camera they will help you with that too – painlessly, I can assure you from my own experience!

Des and I were at the Brisbane workshop, and it was content rich

Details for Sydney here

Details for Melbourne here

For many of those of us who are already promoting our products and services online, a burning question is just how do we get together the resources and skills to participate in this new online revolution and reap the rewards.

Certified Life and Business Coach and Online Strategist Dana Dunn has the answer in her new Web TV Workshops program, now in pre-launch mode.

Early Bird Offer

And of course there is a special offer for early birds, as Dana has revealed in a recent interview with Art of Change specialist Suzie Cheel.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8ulNR9Y00A[/youtube]

“Video is the fastest growing advertising medium being used for both online and offline businesses” Dana said. “If you are not yet using the power of video to market your business, then your competitors are going to take your customers and your business!”

The beauty of Dana’s program is you can cut through very quickly to having your own Web TV channel. Unlike the days, quite recently, when you needed the help of a TV production company and thousands of dollars to get you into that game.

Dana’s workshops program is practical, accessible without disrupting your timetable, and economical.

“I am so delighted that Dana has produced this program,” Suzie Cheel said. “Dana is a brilliant coach, practical and creative. She knows how to put together for you a site that will be a powerful marketing engine and she is just such a wonderful person to work with.”

My experiment last week with Xtranormal

Last week I made a short video using the online Xtranormal tool. While it was fun up to a point, I decided it was a tad too beta for me to use right now for any business-related purpose.

Comparing with Animoto

Inevitably, I was comparing it with Animoto, which I first heard about late in 2007 and then posted about here, just over two years ago, with a very basic test video.

The comments on the post last week about the Xtranormal service prompted me to revisit Animoto last night and do yet another quick video, just by grabbing some images from my computer and selecting some music from the clips on offer from the Animoto site.

No Oscar for this production, but what might be of interest to others was how long it took, namely about 30 minutes. But about 20 minutes of that was searching for music – I think there was a *lot* of music there for Valentine’s Day. In the event, I picked something for the sound and ignored the title “A Night in the Park” which was not really spot on for a video featuring daytime beach scenes.

Both my previous experiment in 2008 and this one were done using the 30 second free version. After all this time I am seriously thinking of throwing caution to the winds and taking out a full access for one year subscription for the princely sum of $30.

A few of the things I like about Animoto:

* you can use their music or yours
* uploading images is easy (next I’ll have to try their video upload)
* sharing to YouTube was just a click (also in Xtranormal except it didn’t work there)

I’m thinking of some smart ways I can use Animoto, e.g. to kick off a couple of presentations I’m doing over the next couple of weeks. For that I’ll probably need to make that move sooner rather than later, from cheap (as in, free) to paid.

Why not create your own video slideshow at animoto.com?

This morning I had a direct message (DM) on Twitter with a link to a YouTube video advertising a Superbowl-related service. I clicked through out of curiosity and watched the short video.

If you watch that, you’ll notice the credit that comes up at the end for Xtra Normal, with the intriguing tagline “If you can type, you can make movies”.

I tried it out.

Signup was easy and free.

The interface and the various pre-fabricated scenes, avatars and so on reminded me a bit of Second Life (who ever talks about Second Life these days? Is it still there?) but at a really basic level.

I proceeded to type in a conversation about a topic that has been buzzing along in a forum on LinkedIn, viz. how can you tell if someone is a real social media expert.

Out of a bunch of quite bizarrely attired avatars I chose a couple of conservatively dressed types who looked more like humans than the avatars in the football item above. The result will not will me any prizes. It’s corny, not easy to see or hear, and I am including it here just to illustrate.

No matter what I did I could not get the avatars to the front of the scene as they are in the football item.

So there is a lack of flexibility in being able to mix and match avatars and settings.

No doubt a more skilled user would do something much more interesting and I’m inferring from the text accompanying the exhortation to download the desktop version that it may be possible to be more creative with that. But I looked at the resource specifications and decided I did not need the aggravation of my computer possibly seizing up or slowing to a crawl.

There is a link from the Xtranormal site for uploading to YouTube, but after following the instructions and trying several times, I gave up.

Verdict. Interesting, and I really like the idea of telling stories in novel ways like this, but at this stage Xtranormal is not a good use of my time.

We went shopping in Las Vegas, after a long day visiting the Valley of Fire, and bought the sleek black Flip ultra at Circuit City for $140

This is the first video Des made. Very impressive, easy to use and very easy to make the movie and simple to edit from within the Flip software provided with the camcorder. I then processed in imovie and exported as a M4V file. The original file is AVI and you can upload this directly to YouTube.

I can see that I will be using this to make my videos from now on. The gorilla tripod we bought last year at the MOMA shop will make simple quick videos a breeze.