Trendwatch: Online Video Marketing

Sigh, reading is soooo boooooring. If you make it to the second paragraph of this article, congratulations, you have a higher attention span than most of the Twitter-verse.

But does your audience? In the age of YouTube, how do you harness the power (and traffic) of video to market yourself, your project, your company? Web video as marketing tool is spreading faster than you can say Vimeo and you can’t afford to ignore it.

So take these tips from a few of my particularly video-savvy clients and creative contacts on the why, what & how of video marketing:

I’m particularly impressed with the creative publicity idea currently being executed by Chasten Harmon of Space on White. In order to get the word out about her gorgeous new Tribeca rehearsal & performance studios in Manhattan, she just launched a video contest open to any theatre, dance, artistic company, that asks them to submit a video answering the question “what would you do with Space on White as your blank canvas?” The prize: 80 hours of free space – a $1500 value.

So what’s in it for Space on White? Creative engagement of their target audience, traffic to their website, and positive artistic association with the space.  The potential rentals from creative companies are worth the investment to Chasten.  She’s even taken it a step further and organized a finale event on April 1 inviting all entrants to the space for an industry trend panel with Broadway producer Andy Sandburg, Fractured Atlas man-about-town Adam Natale, and yours truly. It’s a win all around.

The most common type of video you’ll want to create, however, will be to capture a more general audience’s attention. This is where content and quality must come into play.

Re content: keep it relevant, keep it brief, keep it captivating. The biggest problem I run into with clients is that what they’re proud of is not necessarily what is going to turn on an audience. That your play spent a year in development may not resonate with a non-theatre person, but that you traveled to Nigeria to research the subject probably will. Tell a story, but think anecdote, not novel.

Most of what I’ve learned about video quality has been from Brad Holbrook, founder of ActorIntro and AuthorIntro. With 20+ years of experience in TV journalism and an Emmy to show for it, he took his expertise in video and creating captivating interviews to create a suite of video services to help artists market themselves, like personalized interviews and project promos.

Brad’s least-favorite FAQ is “why can’t I just do it myself?” Ugh. Every piece of marketing is an indication of the level of quality of the product. So if your video is amateur, guess what that tells the viewer? The online audience has seen enough video to know the difference between webcam and High-Def. If your video is to introduce yourself to arts/entertainment industry, quality video, audio, and editing become that much more vital.

Web series producer Thom Woodley of Dinosaur Diorama offers this advice:

“I think the two most common mistakes people make when making internet video both have to do with production quality. One mistake people make is assuming that because you’re making content for the (very) small screen, you don’t have to pay attention to necessary things like lighting, sound, etc. It’s just like regular filmmaking, you make as good as humanly possible, so that one day it can outlive its website. Of course, people are going in the other direction too, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they need to, to give it a slick ‘feature film’ look. And more often than not, it’s unnecessary. You have to match the look to your story.”

Get started with these do’s and don’ts of video marketing:

1. Don’t be intimidated by video
2. Do be true to your personality and product
3. Do use the best quality video and sound possible for your project
4. Don’t use a flipcam or webcam unless it fits the story you’re telling
5. Do engage your audience
6. Do repost your video on social media sites once it’s live
7. Don’t assume your video closes when your production does
8. Do keep it brief
9. Don’t include internal details unless they’re widely captivating
10. Do stay on top of online marketing trends to stay ahead of the game.

(Got great video? Post a link in the comments section here.)