I’ve recently blogged at length about how to target new customers with your video marketing and if you haven’t read all that, don’t worry (but go and look at it all, seriously) but now I want to give you the 3 rules of Video Marketing. These rules are based upon a simple precept. In our society of plenty, there are only two things of any value; time and human creativity. Everything we buy, and everything we sell, that is not a necessity for survival (and most that are), is a function of one, or both, of these resources. As a rule of thumb, if your business sells a service then you are selling time. If your business sells a product you are selling creativity. Actually you’re pretty much always selling a combination of both. Almost all service provision is based upon creative ways of saving time for the client by supplying expertise. Almost all products are invented tools or consumables for saving time by making tasks easier. Some products or services are functions of creativity used to enhance time, art and entertainments for example. Thinking like this helps to reduce the complexities of economics and business to a human level. That’s important because my 3 rules for video marketing are the same 3 rules for getting the best from all human communication.
[bctt tweet=”The best way to build your online profile – be genuinely human. Find out more secrets here”]
1 Give More Than You Receive
Imagine you had a friend, and that friend asked you for something every single time you spoke. Every. Single. Time. Without exception. And when they had finished asking the conversation ended and they walked away or hung up. That’s not much of a friendship and it wouldn’t take long for you to start ignoring them. You’d avoid them. You’d hide if you saw them coming down the street. You may even stop going to certain parts of town in case you bump into them. Well here’s the thing. This is how advertisers treat viewers. Why do you skip the advert at the beginning of YouTube videos? Because you think you’ve seen it all before and, anyway, its only an ad and they only want you to buy something. So 3, 2, 1 – skip.
Now as advertisers, let’s think a little differently than normal. Instead of using every video post to ask your customers to buy, why not start posting something else. Why not share something fun, something you like, something other than adverts. Why not share some of the stuff your viewing on-line. This is about building a relationship. Give some fun, give some interest, give something meaningful and then you can ask for something. The next question is what do you give?
2 Context Counts
What you give, what you post depends on what platform you’re using. Social networks aren’t just distribution outlets. User behaviour changes depending upon where they are on-line. This is pretty obvious if you think about it. You are always the same person but your behaviour changes depending on where you are and who you are with. You don’t talk to your mother the way you talk with your friends.
This is true for all humans. We adapt to the group dynamic. So how do you adapt your behaviour on-line? Look at what kinds of content are popular on differing networks, look at what interests the people using those networks. Facebook is a general network for all kinds of content, Pinterest is an aspirational place where people are searching for and making lists of the things they want to buy and to create. So you need to share boards of what you want to buy and create and include some of your own services or products. Instagram is about trying to be popular so cool short video clips are good, and Tumblr is the place for animated gifs rather than traditional video content. Twitter is basically a self constructed news channel so tweets can contain links and images but should be topical, look for what’s trending then join the conversation. Build a reputation and a following by getting involved. Tweet something of your own business no more than once in every ten tweets. What do you put in your tweets, posts, boards?
3 Tell A Good Story
I’ve written before about creating a story that plays to your customers needs in your videos. You should also consider the story you are telling about yourself. When building a relationship with potential customers across social media channels you need to build that relationship by showing your human side. Branding is good, genuine human interaction is better. It’s where small businesses always have the advantage over large businesses. Small business owners know this instinctively, so almost never try to compete on a price basis. Small businesses don’t have the economies of scale to allow them to compete on price. So instead customer service, the personal touch, genuine expertise become the calling cards for small business. The same applies on-line. The personal touch, the genuinely human interaction will put you ahead of any tailored, sanitized corporate output. Alongside your video (that your videographer worked long and hard to create for you) share clips that you think are funny, share quick clips you take on your phone of happy customers or of you and your team having fun at work or of the little bunny rabbits you saw on the way to work. Show your human side. People like that kind of thing.
Just a final word to say, don’t worry too much about the dark arts of SEO. SEO has always been about getting your website text, tweets, posts, whatever to contain elements which allow machines to select them in their search process. But, search engines change their algorithms all of the time. They are trying to get the best sets of results to their users. To do this they are trying to emulate the way humans think. So maybe the best way to build your on-line profile is not to stuff your content with machine friendly meta-data, but to be genuinely human. Show something of yourself.
