Are you using video to market your small business? If not, why not?
Do you think it’s too expensive for your limited budget?
Do you think you don’t have the skills or equipment to produce a professional-looking effort yourself?
Or are you just holding back because you’re lacking inspiration, or the confidence to put yourself and your business in front of the camera?
Would it surprise you to learn that web video advertising is now more affordable and accessible than ever before? Today, you really don’t need to be a technical whizz or hire a production company to create a great marketing video that will resonate with your audience. You’ll find plenty of ideas and inspiration online and, as for the nerves, well…there’s only one way to get rid of them… and that’s to JUST DO IT.
There’s a multitude of brilliant tools to help you make awesome videos to communicate your message without much expense or effort.
Here are my top 5 to get you started…
1. Photo Booth for the Mac
For Mac users, Photo Booth is a super-easy to use, free and highly effective choice if you want to pre-record face to camera videos. You’ll find it in your applications and it will give you the choice of a number of effects and backgrounds. It will count you down to go live and it’s a simple click of the button to get recording. It’s worth doing a warm-up video to get the hang of it before launching in to your main recording.
2. Animoto
Animoto allows you to take your photos, text, and video clips, add music from its library, and quickly create beautifully orchestrated videos, which you can then post to your company website, social media sites, and email. It offers a number of customisable video templates, and hosting is available. You might want to play around with it a bit first to get right, but you’ll be impressed with the professional results.
3. Google Hangouts on Air
Google Hangouts on Air takes Google Hangouts’ video capability to the next level by giving you a platform to broadcast live in HD to Google, Google Plus, YouTube, and your company website. A huge benefit of streaming a live event on YouTube is that your event is recorded and you can edit and share a copy of the broadcast afterwards.
Hangouts on Air takes a fair bit of experimentation to perfect its use, so run a few private test broadcasts before going live.
4. Screencast-o-matic
Screencast-o-matic is a handy tool for recording screenshots and sharing them with your audience for a number of different purposes. It doesn’t require any downloading or installing and is ideal for demonstrations, tutorials, walk-throughs etc. With just a few clicks, you can start recording your screen, and once you’re satisfied with your video, you can share it on Screencast-O-Matic.com, YouTube, or save to a video file.
5. Voila
Voila is a fabulously simple-to-use screen recording app for Mac with tons of custom options for taking screenshots. It allows you to include video and audio from external components too and, for hassle-free sharing, it supports several one-click publishing options such as YouTube, Flickr, Evernote, Tumblr, FTP, and more.
There’s no doubt that video is becoming an essential marketing tool for small businesses. It’s a great way to tell your story, show the human side of your business and communicate highly complex ideas in a compelling and straightforward way.
If you want to put some personality into your business marketing and let your audience get to know you a little better, video is the way to go. So say goodbye to hiding behind the curtains, put your business centre stage and supercharge your online relationships with compelling, engaging and awesome videos!