Top End business flexes its online video muscles

The October Business Month’s Lights, Camera, Blog keynote and workshops are over and now the local video output is starting to see the light of day.

First cab off the rank is Ultimate Gym and Fitness.

Vania and Phil from Ultimate Gym attended the October Business Month events and have taken their next steps into the world of using online video.

I say ‘next’ steps because they have already used video in the past but came along to the Lights, Camera, Blog workshops to pick up some extra tips.

You will see they are playing with more of a casual feel and a ‘peep behind the curtain’ approach.

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Lights, Camera, Blog Part 06: Free, easy animation gives you video content without going on camera

Steve Davis OBM Keynote Go Animate character

Steve Davis as marketing lecturer – my rough attempt at animating myself using Go Animate

The great proverbs of the world claim that ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ and the renown poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, claims, ‘there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’

In other words, when disaster strikes, there can often be an upside and this week’s blog is living proof.

Last weekend, I had the misfortune of blacking out, falling, and smacking my head on a hard surface. The result has been a couple of scars that would make pirates jealous (or fearful).

This means that plans I had for shooting another video for this series featuring me turned sour – I didn’t want to force such gruesome imagery onto you.

So I set off exploring ways of making video content through online tools and animation, and discovered Go Animate.

Go Animate has a basic set of free tools that will have you up and running in about 10 minutes, and you can access it directly within your YouTube account.

So why would you bother?

Here are a few thoughts and a sample I whipped up in less than ten minutes.

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Lights, Camera, Blog Part 05: Using scraps to make video

Use video scraps to make short clips

The Jack of All Trades video still

I encourage you, as you practice with your smart phone or video camera around the workplace, out in the field, or even around home, to experiment and hold onto as many clips as you can.

This is because you never know when that little clip you have sitting in the Camera Roll of your iPhone will be just the thing you need to illustrate a point in a short video clip.

This week, I have a real world example from my Camera Roll.

When I was in town last month for my Darwin NBN workshops for small to medium businesses and not for profit organisations, I shot a short clip of Jack Hughes from the Business Enterprise Centre (which is hosting the NBN workshop series over the next to years) putting up the NBN banner.

I did it because I had my iPhone in my hand, we had just arrived ahead of a busy day, and I was mainly shooting him to see how he’d react.

But when I returned to my office a few days later, it occurred to me that this clip could convey a couple of key messages about the workshops in a tongue in cheek manner.

Here’s what I did with these ‘scraps’.

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Lights, Camera, Blog Part 03: Video and blogging give customers a peep behind the curtain

Steve Davis Lights Camera Blog October Business Month Promo 2012

Lights Camera Blog is about creating content that gives prospective clients a ‘peep behind your curtain’. Steve Davis on set for the OBM Keynote promo video shoot.

There is something about ‘the forbidden’ that intrigues human beings.

Whether it is glimpsing things we are not meant to, being first to enter a new fashion store or pushing our bodies to unnatural limits, we are drawn to such things like moths to flames.

The rationale behind Lights Camera Blog, my October Business Month keynote and limited workshop series the following day, is that all of us are interested in taking a peep behind the curtain of products and services we love or are researching.

This would explain why people queue up to visit confectionery plants, biscuit factories, backstage tours, even mines and smelters.

The simple but dedicated acts of producing interesting and helpful content creates an opportunity for someone searching for the products or services we provide to ‘taste and try before they buy’ by reading or seeing our approach to using or providing the products/services, or by approaching the problem they are trying to solve.

With this understanding, we can then decide what to do about it. We can decide:

Whether our targeted consumers/prospects would prefer written content or video

Whether we produce our video content in house or outsource it

Where and how we make the content available to the public

These questions will all be addressed in the lead up to the keynote presentation.

Today, I want to compare a different video example against the SocialCam ‘quickie’ produced last week.

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Donald Trump and Social Media as a negotiation tool

Donald Trump and Social Media for Negotiation (Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)Just saw a blog article entitled Donald Trump’s Use of Social Media Helps Him Negotiate and I think Donald Trump was a very poor example to use.

The basic premise of the article is that by producing video and other Social Media about yourself, you can dominate what your negotiating counterpart gets to see when they Google you to do research ahead of a negotiation.

In the writer’s eyes, Donald Trump is a master of this because his Social Media positioning shows he is good at negotiating and tough at it.

But when I just googled Donald Trump videoes, I found some nutty, half-baked tirades that showed me all of Donald’s weakness.

Let’s look a little deeper and for an example, let’s ponder what The Shire of Halls Creek and the Central Desert Shire could be doing in Social Media to strengthen their case for more funds for Tanami Road improvement.

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Social Media Northern Territory Style

Alf188188 - Sharing the Northern Territory through Social Media

Alf from Nhulunbuy is doing a lot more for selling the Northern Territory experience via Social Media than many tour operators.

He takes his video camera with him and captures the ‘mundane’.

But it is these simple, short, slice-of-life clips of driving around, or simply being in, the Top End that give viewers an authentic taste of what to expect in the Territory.

Take a look at this one: Coming Back from Cape Arnhem in the Land Cruiser.

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Top End Tuesday: The Big Gig / Grind Online

The-BIG-GIG-Poster Grind OnlineEvery Tuesday during August and September 2011, a Top End business or organisation using online social channels for marketing will be profiled. If you would like to suggest a business or organisation for this profile, fill out The RITE Series nomination form.

The aim of this series is to find clues and insights into what techniques work well in the Northern Territory market so that by October Business Month a summary of insights can be presented in a keynote address and then distrubuted through a free eBook for all Territorian businesses/organisations to benefit from.

Today, we focus on a Darwin City Council iniative created through its Youth Advisory Group.

The key tool we are focusing on in this profile is the use of video in online marketing.

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