Dec. 2nd 2009 – Social Media Guided Tour (register here)
Dec. 4th 2009 – Explode Your Growth with a Blog (register here)
Dec. 7th 2009 – Broadcast Your Message with Online Video (register here)
Our Victoria instructor is Tim Ayres, a Victoria real estate agent who has extensive expertise in the online marketing world. You can read more about Tim here.
Your website is your store. Even if you don’t sell anything online. It is the place where people make decisions about whether they should work with you or not. How can you improve your customer’s experience on your website.
Below is a quick video about my experience “shopping online” recently. Check it out as I give two tips for ways that you could improve the customer experience on your website.
My two Tips:
1. Add video and as much information as you can about your product or service
2. Add live chat to your website to engage your customers with their questions.
If you have tips or questions, leave a comment below.
Thanks to everyone that attended our Video course last week. We had a great group of Realtors and business owners from around the British Columbia.
Below is a video from the course of some of the participants.
Each time I teach a course, I learn a little bit of something new. What did I take away from this course?
There are basically three hurdles that keep us from posting video on our websites to promote our business
Time. Video seems like it is hard and technically challenging so we don’t think we have Time to do it.
Equipment. What camera do I need? What computer should I use? How do I edit the video
Promoting and Embeding the Video – Now that I have the video – what do I do next?
Along with those hurdles you should also work to answer the question, “Why online video?” Do you want to add video to your website to:
Instruct or Teach your web visitors
Demonstrate or showcase your product
Build Your personal brand
So decide on your strategy and then eliminate the hurdles that prevent you from posting online video. Video is a great way to connect with web visitors and increase conversions on your website.
You can learn more about our video training on our website.
Each month we teach about online video and give all the participants a video camera. Besides that we ask everyone to make a video and submit it to us. Steve Jagger and I choose a winner and the winner of the contest receives $100 Reachd credit. You can use it to take more classes or get some one on one consulting. Below I’ve posted the videos from last months class.
(note: if you are reading this post in your email inbox, you will likely have to click through to the blog to view the videos online as they won’t show in your email.)
Delta Laser Clinic
Patterson Brands
Michael McCarthy
Kathy Stilwell
Kim Armstrong
After deliberation and chatting with Steve, we’ve decided the winner is Rich Patterson. Congrats to Rich! We had several videos that met the criteria which were, (1) Under 2 minutes, (2) Give thought to opening and closing (3) Informative (4) a bit entertaining.
Great job everyone and keep the videos coming! The first video is always the most difficult.
I’ve been meaning to do this for some time but just now getting around to it. First I should let you know that I am NO graphic designer and I assume that you are not a graphic designer either.
So I was looking for a way to update my twitter background easily but also have it look nice.
Here are two options
1. Use Twitbacks. They have various templates that you can choose from to customize and then upload to twitter.
2. Use a Keynote / PowerPoint template which can be found here. This is what I chose to do and will show you how in the video below.
Steps that I went throught to create my Twitter Background
I get a lot of people asking me.. Rodney, does this stuff work? I know it’s easy and I know you can help we setup adwords or add a video blog, but will I get leads from it? Will I make more money because I make videos? A fair question. Rather than listening to me rant about how it has worked for Reachd, I asked Kye Grace, a Vancouver realtor to share how he got two great leads from video blogging. Watch the 2.5 minute video below
Above is a video about a Vancouver realtor who sent me a twitter message about some of the videos that he uploaded about the Onni Blow Out sale on their condos. He uploaded the videos on Jan 15 and on Jan 16th he has 3 top spots on Google for the keyword “onni liquidation sale” and one spot for “onni sale” This is an example of how video and social media can get you high ranks in google quickly. Kye, also told me that he did not “attempt to game the search engines just researched 5 video sites and uploaded the video.”
The key take away from this is to keep creating more and more and more content. Don’t stop pumping out the content – Google is content hungry!
That is what Gary Vanynerchuk told me when I interviewed him in Seattle. Do the math on that statement quickly. 5 episodes per week and almost 150 episodes that is 30 weeks or 7+ months of pumping out video content before Gary tasted his first viral video.
In case you are wondering this post is not about how to make a viral video. The purpose of this short note is to encourage you to keep working, creating, and posting your content online.
Another example of the importance of persistence and growth is Ian Watt.
As of today, Ian has posted 220 videos on his website. Ian talks about real estate topics mostly focused on Vancouver’s Downtown core. His videos are one to two minutes long and presented in a fun, casual, and honest manner. Are all of Ian’s videos a huge success? Has he always had his signature ending which he is now known for around Vancouver? I pulled two of Ian’s videos and posted them below so that you could compare his growth over time. One is from 9 months ago and the other is from one day ago. Watch both videos and compare the style of the two. Notice how Ian’s style has changed and how he has grown more comfortable in front of the camera.
Did you notice the evolution? How did the ending of first video, compare to the ending of the second video?
My point here: Get started. This is the most important and difficult step. Start doing something to promote your business online and keep working in that direction. Ian is at video 220 and now he is going to be speaking at the Inman conference in NY, which is a huge conference for the real estate industry. He also is looked upon as an expert by some of the local media. Why? He made some videos packed with good content. He lets his personality show on the videos and he persists in putting the videos up each and every day.
Thanks Ian for your example and for investing daily in your business online.
I’ll leave you with this question.. How are you investing in growing your business online?
Yep you read that right a gnat. Those annoying little bugs that seem to never sit still buzzing annoyingly around your little ears.
According to Tubemogul Research 10.39% of user click away from a video after only 10 seconds and more than half leave your video at the 1 minute mark. I pasted a graph below from the tubemogul website to better show the point.
Video Attention Span Provided by Tubemogul
What does this mean for you?
The first 10 Seconds are critical. If you are going to promise something in the title of your video, you’d better deliver right away or you viewer might take off.
Keep those videos short. If you are giving a how to or a tip, focus around 1 specific topic. If you find yourself deviating from the topic then make another video. Only 10% of the video viewers made it to the 5 minute mark of the video.
Place your call to action early in the Video. For example, if you video is 2 minutes long, you will likely end with some sort of conclusion or call to action at the end of the video, right? Well if 1/2 of the users are leaving your video after 1 minute, then 1/2 of the people did not hear what you want them to do next. Find a way to get that call to action in early and then repeat it at the end.
I’m going to be teaching about online video next week – Let me know if you’d like to join us and grab somemore video tips.
Tom Everitt of ThinkTom.com invited me to be on his daily video show online. You can watch the video above this post. We talked a bit about Ubertor, Twitter and Linkedin. If you are using linkedin you might have noticed that Linkedin just recently added applications to their site. LinkedIn is an absolute must if you are a B 2 B business. Take some time and setup your LinkedIn profile. You can link with me here
Thanks Tom for having me on the show! I really enjoyed. One tip from my time with Tom. Okay maybe 2 tips
1. Have fun. – Tom is a great example. He has a blast promoting and shooting his videos. No they aren’t perfect (we had one out take today) but he is having a great time. If you are having fun, people will enjoy watching you and will in turn be more likely to share your stuff with others.
2. Secondly – Don’t be afraid to get started. Tom has shot 40 or 50 videos and already he’s had a news story on Broadcast TV here in Vancouver. Why? Because he had an idea, he had some ambition and he took some action on his idea.
What will you do today to make your business better?
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