Minnesota Online Video
Looking into the World of Online Videos for Marketing & Recruiting…and other stuff.
I am pretty active on Facebook. I have a lot of friends focused primarily around on my interests…the major interest in my personal life being nondual philosophy (as in Zen, Advaita, Taoism, Jnana Yoga, etc.). I have a bit over 1,000 Facebook friends. Now, a function of Facebook is to create events and invite friends. I have used it myself. I sometimes will put together a local event and invite the 30 to 50 friends that are local and within the interest group that I think would make them interested in the event. I have extensive experience with Facebooks Events.
Recently, I have had to ‘unfriend’ several people because of their blatant spam. Just yesterday, I received four invites for four Theta Healing workshops in California by one of my Facebook friends. This is not only NOT an area of interest to me…I am not local and so how would I get to it if I wanted to? She didn’t just invite me, but ALL her 1400 friends to this event. Does the venue have room for even a 1/10 of this number? Probably not.
This is pure mass broadcasted spam using social media. DON’T DO THIS! Whether personal or professional, this kind of thing alienates your friends and many will simply remove you as a friend. It was not personal in any way…she sent all four invites to all 1400 of her friends. There was no selectivity. It ticked me off. I reported all four invites to Facebook as spam and removed her as a friend. I posted the incident on my wall, so my 1,000 friends know about this. In hours, I had a dozen comments about how some of my friends receive ‘Event Invite’ spam as well and hate it.
Furthermore, these spammers don’t track what is going on. They don’t care. Another event…another invite blast to all friends. When I create an invite, as I said I invited the 50 local people I thought might really be interested in attending. A number of them have rejected the invite every time. Guess what, I stop sending them invites. I was wrong…it does not interest them. I created a special ‘Friend List’ of just people I would invite to my event. After a few rejections, I remove them from this list so they don’t keep getting invites to something they obviously have no interest in. Currently, I invite around 30 people…my venue could hold 1/2 that number. Over time, I will have a list of only those that are truly interested…and many will accept the invites regularly.
Micro-segmentation and hyper-relevance is what is needed on social media…not mass broadcast spam. If your friends unfriend you because of spam, they no longer see your wall posts…and their friends no longer see your wall posts. For the want of an easy and short-sighted method (spam), you would be destroying your long term value of having these relationships. Yes, it takes more time to segment your friends into lists of interest and local for your invites and messages…but the long term benefits of not destroying the relationship is worth it.
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- Tags: don'ts, mistakes, relevance, social media, spam
I see this question periodically posted on LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers, and other places people post questions. For some reason, people think that if the duration of the video is given…that is all the information that is needed for a price estimate. I am not selling by the length, like a hardware stores sells rope.
There are many variables that determine the real cost: how much footage needs to be shot, how many different sites will the footage be shot, how many people are in the video, do we need to buy additional stock footage, do we need to buy background music, do we need to look for voice-over talent, etc.
The largest variable and determinate of how much I will charge to produce a video is how much editing time will be involved. How many people and how many different sites will affect how much footage needs to be shot. How much footage needs to be shot affects how long it will take to edit the final video. Buying stock footage lessens the amount of filming and editing needed.
I disagree with the industry norm of charging by the length of the video. I don’t know how many sites I have looked at that says a 30 second video is X dollars, a 1 minutes is Y dollars, etc. Unfortunately, you don’t know what is happening…and that is you are paying much more because the video producer has to take the “worse case” scenario to judge the cost. In 30 seconds, I could be filming hours in multiple locations and multiple people. I will need so many hours to edit it all. You see where this is going…a much higher cost to you.
That is why when the question of cost is asked to the public on LinkedIn or something, the answer is that it depends. It could cost you $300 to $30,000…depending on what you are asking for. For example, the Cheesecake Factory did a 4 minute recruiting video once for $30,000 (Monster.com produced the video for them). That is just 4 minutes. However, I once produced a simple 2 minute client testimonial video for $300. The length of the video is not so much a determinator as how much editing time is needed.
Usually, that requires an in-depth discussion about the video project you have in mind…or I offer packages with preset levels of committed editing time and such.
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- Tags: peekproductions
Had enough fireworks yet? Best show to come!
In: General
13 Jul 2010![[Fireworks]](http://spiritofthelakes.com/graphics/content/home/fireworks.gif)
This year the Fourth of July landed on a Sunday. Much to my 9-year-old step-daughter’s disappointment, we did not go out to see the fireworks. I had to work Monday (on contract) and I didn’t want to be up late. You know that when you go, the show doesn’t start until it is really dark (usually 10 pm) and then after a 1/2 hour show, you have to brave the mass exodus and drive home. I live out in Mound, so I knew I would not get home until after 11pm (or even midnight)…and so I didn’t go out.
I was not overly disappointed, because I know the Spirit of the Lakes Festival in Mound is this weekend. I’m not sure how they do it (perhaps they buy the leftover fireworks at discount)…but it is one of the best fireworks displays I have seen. The show is on Saturday night.
I usually get there earlier. This year I am going to the following:
- 8:30 pm – Fire Eating and Magic Show
- 9:20 pm – Fire Dancers
- 10:00 (dusk) – Fireworks
The fireworks come with music, so bring you lawn chairs and come on out (and maybe earplugs, if you sit closer to the speakers). I look forward to this show every year. (This is my 3rd time.)
There are things going on all day, so check out their site:
http://spiritofthelakes.com/
What is Your Unique Selling Proposition?
7 Jul 2010
After the last post about an Employee Value Proposition, I thought I would go into more detail about Unique Selling Propositions (USP). This is a key differentiator…of value by the target customer…that basically says why the customer should choose to do business with you instead of your competitor. Now USPs can not make everyone happy…and marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. USPs are targeted.
Here are few well known brands’ USPs – do you know them based on their USP?
• “Fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less – or it’s free”
• “When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight”
• “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand”
Dominoes Pizza does not sell the best pizza you have ever had. Dominoes sells you fast delivery. Of course, if their pizza was really bad no one would buy it, but a passable pizza with fast delivery is something of value to the tired people who want to come home and have food come to them (quickly). FedEx and M&M’s also have very recognizable USPs.
That is another aspect of very successful USP…they are like mottos and they are very short (less than 12 words usually). USPs tend to alleviate an immediate pain (hungry kids, package must get there tomorrow, etc.).
Although redundant to say…it is something unique. At the time when Dominoes made their USP, no one was really delivering very quickly….45 minutes or an hour or more. They were the first to blatantly say they will deliver in a ½ hour or you could keep the pizza for free. FedEx was the first to blatantly say they will get your package to its destination overnight. M&Ms is not the only sugar coated chocolate (the secret of not melting in the hand), but they were the first to advertise this as their distinguishing benefit.
This works for anything being sold…be it a product, service, or an open position. Without the USP, how are you really going to sell what you have to offer and stop them from buying from a competitor?
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- Tags: branding, marketing, USP
About this blog
A blog written by a Minnesota Recruiter and Video Producer about marketing, social media, online video production, recruiting, and some about what I'm doing in life. Professionally, I am very interested in online videos for businesses marketing their products & services, and videos for recruiting for their open positions.
Categories
- Be Your Own Video Producer (1)
- Commentary (1)
- Employer Videos Critique (52)
- General (6)
- Marketing Videos Critique (109)
- Talking About Marketing (1)
- Talking About Recruiting (4)
- Talking About Social Media (4)
- Eric Putkonen: Thank you @AgencyBablylon for mentioning this article, and @Hoffer7 for retweeting it. [...]
- Tweets that mention You can't buy video content by length; it's not a piece of wire or rope -- Topsy.com: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Neal Kielar & hoffer7. hoffer7 said: RT @AgencyBabylon: [...]
- Todd Raphael: I'd differ slightly -- maybe it's just semantics, I don't know. I'd say it's not so much about wheth [...]
- ReloMary: I saw your tweet! Thanks...now following you. This has been a tremendous marketing tool for me and [...]
- Eric Putkonen: Thanks, Catie! I appreciate the feedback! [...]
- Be Relevant…Don’t Mass Broadcast or Spam on Social Media!
- Is this the end of the Apple we know and love?
- What is the Cost to Produce an Online Video 2 – 3 minutes long?
- Had enough fireworks yet? Best show to come!
- What is Your Unique Selling Proposition?
- What is the Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?
- Oops…I fixed the comments function here
- Employee Referral Programs Going Social
- Social Media Revolution 2 (refresh)
- Rehab Care Recruiting Video
Is this the end of the Apple we know and love?
In: Commentary|General
25 Jul 2010As I continued to read, I saw the following:
Now what does Steve Jobs say? Steve Jobs responded in an e-mail: “Just avoid holding it in that way.” Now, I don’t know about you, but the answer is NOT to suggest to stop holding the phone that way…that is the normal way you hold your phone. Doesn’t this sound like something Microsoft would say?
Then last week, I see another article, ‘Apple Shows That Nokia N97 Mini Also Suffers from Death Grip Issue‘. Again, this is not the way to address an issue – by showing others have the same fault. Again, this is something Microsoft would do (and has done I believe). Who cares about Nokia anyways? I hold Apple at a higher standard than Nokia.
I have been really disgusted with Apple the past couple weeks. There has been some very Microsoft-like behavior from Apple. Is this the beginning of the end?