Video marketing Archives - Totally PLR - Business PLR

April 17, 2016 by Helen Leave a Comment

How to outsource video production on a budget

One of the biggest barriers to video marketing is the time it all takes. It can take as much as a week or two just to shoot and produce a short video. Longer videos can take longer still. If you’re running a business, how can you possibly find that kind of time to dedicate to a video? Yes, video production is time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be your time. Here’s how to outsource video production with a small budget:

Writing the script

You don’t have to write your own script. You’ll probably still want to edit it so it sounds like your own voice, but you don’t have to spend hours writing your own script from scratch. If you don’t have a member of staff to do it for you, you could easily find a copywriter online. Make sure that person understands both sales and the script you’re writing, though.

For some videos you may not even need a script. Some very successful videos on YouTube are the ones that feel spontaneous. So while you may want some of your videos to be carefully scripted, you could mix them in with others where you have three key points in your mind then just step in front of a video camera.

Video and audio equipment

Don’t spend hours researching the best microphone for your camera – there are many good quality, inexpensive pieces of equipment available now – it’s not a tough decision to make. Setting up up your own lighting and equipment for your office can be time-consuming, though. So don’t be the audio and video technician if you can possibly avoid it. You don’t necessarily need a professional, see if you can train up someone to do the job for you.

By the time you walk into the recording room, everything should be all set up for you.

Recording

Of course, if you are your brand, the only person that can actually appear on camera is you. This part can’t be outsourced. Or can it?

Actually, that’s not true! While you’re almost certainly going to want to appear on camera sometimes you can still outsource some of it. As well as being the owner of Totally PLR, I record voice-overs for marketing videos (for more info, click here). This video didn’t need the business owner to appear in it at all:

(Video by Digital41)

That’s fine for a software company, but what about a business where the owner’s voice and name is a critical part of the brand, say life coaching? Here’s another video which I voiced:

(Video by Purrfectly Animated)

This one went viral on Facebook and had 275,000 views on Facebook and brought in lots of new business as a result.

Editing the videos

Video editing is perhaps the most time-consuming process of all. The editor needs to play, replay and re-replay the videos over and over again as they try to piece together the most compelling version of the video possible.

This part absolutely, positively should be outsourced. You can easily find someone on oDesk or People Per Hour who will do it inexpensively. You can also hire professionals or students in your area.

Graphics and effects

If you want special effects, an animated intro or graphics for your video this can also be done inexpensively by freelancers on sites such as oDesk or People Per Hour.

Finishing Up

Finally, the video needs to be rendered, uploaded to a video hosting site, embedded in your squeeze or sales page and then tested. All of this should also be outsourced. Even embedding and making sure things work can take a lot of time.

Most, if not all, of your video production can be outsourced. If you handle your video production in this way, it won’t be draining at all and it can be a productive and profitable part of your business.

Alternatively, if you’d like to buy some ready-made video tutorials, please take a look at mine here.

April 7, 2016 by Helen 1 Comment

How to make a screencast video the easy way

Making video doesn’t have to be hard! And just to prove that, I’m going to show you how to make a screencast video – you don’t even need a camera.

I made this video with tools you can use for free, although the video will be much better if you pay $15 for a year’s access to Screencast-O-Matic, because this will remove the logo on your video. $15 a year a steal for the features you get with Screencast-O-Matic, too.

Right, let’s start with the video:

The idea behind it was for it was for me to show people how you can turn a blog post into a video. To make it more interesting I used someone else’s blog post (this one by Claire Godwin, with the author’s permission of course!) I liked the image in the post and decided to run with that, which would give me an effect that looks a little like a chalkboard.

I used the content in Claire’s blog post to put together a Google Slides presentation, which is a lot like PowerPoint but free. Click here for the PDF of my slides.

I added animations so that dotted lines, arrows etc popped up as I clicked my mouse. To do this, log on to Google (logging into your Gmail account will be fine) go to Google docs and create a Google slides presentation. Add some text or an image to your slide, click on it to select it, then go to the Insert menu and Animation. An animation pane will appear on the right of the screen and you can choose your animation effect from there. In this pane you can select animation for the object you’ve selected or the slide transition (e.g. you can set the slide to flip or fade into the next if you want to).

Then I went into Present mode (‘present’ button, top right of Google slides screen) and practiced talking through the presentation without recording. I usually write a script, but because this is such a short video and I was very familiar with the content – I’d only just put the slides together from the blog post- I didn’t really need it this time.

Tip: I used the right arrow button to move the slides and animations on as it’s quieter than clicking the mouse.

Then I opened up Screencast-O-Matic, set up my mic and went through the presentation again, this time recording my narrations and screen.

For a video this short it’s probably easiest to record it in one take, but you could also drop it into a free video editor like iMovie or Movie Maker if you do want to trim any part of it out.

For my PLR videos I use a similar process to this, but I use Camtasia and PowerPoint which gives me some extra features and a more professional finish. But for getting started with making screencast videos I found Screencast-O-Matic and Google Slides was a good combination.

So I hope now you can see how easy it is to make a screencast video!

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to buy your videos ready-made, take a look at my PLR video store here.

April 3, 2016 by Helen 2 Comments

Round up of the best video tips here at Totally PLR

You may have noticed that I’ve been furiously blogging away here on the Totally PLR blog as part of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge? 🙂 As this is a new blog I wanted to experiment a bit with my posts so I’ve included a mix of content marketing, blogging, making online courses video marketing and of course some posts about PLR. Just to make things a little easier to find I thought I’d also write ’round up’ post every now and then. So I’d like to introduce this post which take you through the best video tips posts here at Totally PLR.

How to make a promotional video that actually sells

If the thought of making videos is intimidating for many small business owners, then the thought of making a promo video is even worse! After all, most of the video adverts we’ve seen are on TV – they are made by video professionals and cost thousands of dollars (or pounds if you’re a Brit like me!). How can we possibly compete with that? The good news is you don’t have to. As a small business owner it’s easier to connect with your viewers because you’re real. Yes, having a video that looks a little unpolished may actually help you.

Once you’ve got the basics covered (decent lighting, sound and a camera that’s steady), a lot of the success of your promo video will depend on how you describe the customer’s problem and how your product will solve it for them. That’s something you are an expert in. Find out more in my post:

How to make a promotional video that actually sells

How to repurpose video content fast

It may feel like videos are more work than writing but once you’ve made the video, or even just prepared the content, there are many different ways you can repurpose that content and get more bang for your content buck. You can use the PowerPoint presentation and add it to Slideshare (even if the video isn’t based on PowerPoint slides), upload the audio to a variety of audio sharing sites and even use the transcript. In this post I use my own video as a case study and take you through how to distribute the same content on three different platforms.

Case study: How to repurpose video content fast

7 Easy ways to make a video

And if you think that the only way to make a video is to point a video camera and press the record button, then you’re in for a treat! There are now many ways to make a video and I’ll take you through the easiest ones in this post.

Seven easy ways to make a video

I even cheat a little and explain how you can get someone else to make videos for you on a tight budget!

And don’t forget my video tutorials page!

Long before I started the 30 day blogging challenge I put together a page of video tips including how to brand your videos, add intros and outros and how to optimize your YouTube videos. Here it is…

Totally PLR video tutorials

So there you go, time to make yourself a video!

Alternatively, if you need some tutorial videos, you can buy mine ‘off the shelf’. Take a look here…