Youtube is expanding the time limits from 10 minutes to 15 minutes!  Since YouTube is one of the top search engines (behind their parent company Google), it’s important to show your product, service, brand and company through this online video giant. Originally YouTube only allowed 10 minute videos to curb the amount of illegal postings of television shows and movies.  But the have advanced their technology to stamp out illegal video postings…which is good news for us since we now can post up to 15 minutes.

Having an extra 5 minutes enables you to post a presentation, interview, product demo or anything else that might have been constrained by 10 minutes.

Read more about this topic here:  http://bit.ly/brlXrH

In other news:

ComSccore released their report for online viewing in June 2010 and the numbers keep increasing.  Google and it’s websites (YouTube) account for a high majority of online video viewing.

Here is what the report stated on Google and it’s sites:

“Looking at the Google number it seems that YouTube pulls far more visitors that the search engine and other services combined. The Video Metrix showed that Google Sites had 144.5M unique visitors or roughly 80.8% of visitors to Google Sites.”

Read more about this article here: http://bit.ly/9jx6Bj

In more online video related news:

Video in e-commerce is definitely growing. According to report Forrester Research released in November last year, for the top 50 U.S. Internet Retail websites, the adoption online video grew by almost 400 percent last year alone.

What online video means for your business:

What all of these numbers mean is that you need to have video online.  Put it on your website, on YouTube, on the countless other video sharing websites.  It not only helps sell your product but it also helps you gain trust with your customers.  Since they can see you, your company and what you provide, they can see that you are a real company with real people.

Exit Row Productions can help guide you and your online video needs by creating a high quality video geared directly with the online community in mind.  We can also create a website for you to showcase your videos.  Give us a call today for more info:  937-673-8450

Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer and head of Google’s web spam team recently spoke at a conference about this vary issue and said that Google is stepping up its efforts to index and show video content.

What does this mean for the average business?  Since the world is going online, and people would much rather watch a video than read text, you should probably have video on your website.  Also, you should talk to your web designer to see if you have a video sitemap on your website.  If your site is static or if you don’t have a blog attached to  your website, then you aren’t harassing the power of what Google like (fresh and relevant content).  Exit Row Productions can make a website for your business so you can post relevant content whenever you want, add your own audio or videos, embed videos (like we do here) and get noticed by Google, the world and your potential clients.  Go to the “Contact Us” page and drop us a line….we’d love to help!

1)  Customer Testimonials
We’ve all heard for years that it’s important to get customer testimonials for our website and literature.  But have you thought about getting those same happy customers on video?  Many people overlook this key way for other people to brag about you and your company.  No one likes to hear you go on and on about your company, but it will do wonders if someone that has used your product or services can say those great things on a short video.  You can put this on your website, Youtube, business card DVDs, and more.  Make it once and reuse it throughout your marketing campaigns.

A)  Here is a television commercial we shot that highlighted happy customers of the Dayton YMCA.  Your video could be 2 minutes per person so they can each tell their story…or it could look something like this.

B)  This is more traditional customer testimonial:

2)  Presentations
We have found great success in giving presentations at various networking and industry meetings.  It’s a great way to inform others on the trends in media (let us know if you need someone to speak at your meeting). Over the last few presentations we’ve recorded and combined it with our Powerpoint slides.  Now we can put it on our website, Youtube and countless other websites.  Go ahead, go to our website and see what we’ve done.  It has been a great way to send people back to our site. I’ve told people who were interested in video, Twitter, web SEO, etc to, “go to our website and watch the presentations we’ve done to learn more”.  Another great reason to put your presentations into video format is to help with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization. aka getting ranked higher in Google).  Since Google loves fresh, new, relevant content and puts a huge priority on video, then having your presentations put to video will greatly help others find your company website…which means they now know who you are, what you provide and how you can help them.  This has been incredibly valuable for us.
See some examples here:  Click here to see some presentations we’ve recently done.

3)  Video Case Studies
I’m sure that you have success stories about how you and your company saved the day with your product, service or customer service.  Why not create a video case study that walks someone through your processes?  We’ve all seen this done on paper and it is an effective way to help a potential customer see what you provide, but having it on video will only enhance who you are and what you do.  It will allow you to shine through and stand out from your competition.
This is a GREAT video that not only shows you a simple case study but it also shows the power of the combination of video and YouTube. 

You may haven’t thought of using video in these 3 ways.  There are countless other ways you can use video in your business.  Exit Row Productions strives to be creative by staying on the forefront of video and how you can utilize it in your business.  Let us know how we can help.

Website of the month: Zoho.com

Zoho is all you need as a small business owner. It is email, hosting, reports, invoicing, planning, sharing all done on a cloud. So it is all hosted online, and can be streamlined for your business. You can use many of the services for free with less than 3 people.

Here are the details
Where:
We continue in our NEW LOCATION– Champps Restaurant
7880 Washington Village Drive
Centerville, OH, 45459
When:
Thursday, May 20, 2010
7:30AM to 8:30AM

I hope you can attend this seminar. The information you’ll hear is both free and practical. Come and join us as we learn how to laugh at this recession, and explore how to operate our businesses more effectively and profitably.

Please note our NEW LOCATION— Champps Restaurant, 7880 Washington Village Drive in Centerville.

We’ve all seen people stranded on the side of the road. I’ve stopped to help a few but there are always time where I’d like to do more. What if a company made it their mission to help these people that are in trouble. Imagine, a company with vehicles that had their name plastered on the side of the van, that helped people on a regular basis? Wouldn’t that put a huge positive impression on both the person that was helped and all the passers by? Now, I know that this company couldn’t help everyone and maybe they started off just helping one person per week. Perhaps the owner would even get involved and pay the employee that stopped to help someone in need. I’m not talking a lot of money but enough to make it worth the employees time.

So, you have a boss who wants to help people and you have someone stranded that needs help. And even more, you have hundreds of passers by that notice the company van helping people.  By helping that person change a tire or take them to get gas, you will instill in people’s mind that you are there to help. And who do you think people will call when they need your service?  Would it be the company that helps people in their most vulnerable time, or a company that is selected at random from the phone book or online?

What a great way to help people while softly marketing to the masses.  It’s crazy but it just might work.

We’ve been telling people for a while now that they need to have a website that has: rss feeds, social media integration, blogs, video content and visitor participation.  Having a “Web 2.0″ website is all about interacting with the visitors to your site.  This helps by getting people involved on your site and it also helps with your Google rankings.
We are proud to announce our new website that offers all of the features that we advise people to have on their site.  So why are these aspects necessary?
RSS
By having rss (Really Simple Syndcation), people can “subscribe” to your website and be alerted every time something new is posted.  This means that people don’t have to magically know when you have new content on your site.  No longer can a business survive by pasting their outdated brochure onto their website.  People don’t want to have to go to your site every day and rss lets them stay in touch with you as needed.
Social Media
Social Media is booming and isn’t going away.  Without getting into all the facts and details, we can just let you know that it’s important to have this integrated into your website.  Your website, blog and social media should be seamless and all be directed back to your site…so you can make money…which is why all of this is important.
Blogs
Many people think of 17 year old girls writing out their latest drama on their blog.  This thinking has changed drastically as most large corporations have blogs directly from their CEO.  Since people want to be involved with you by writing comments to your blog posts.  The most transparent and real you can be, the more people can trust you as a person.  As you know, people do business with people they know and trust.
Video
Video content is important to you for several reasons.  First, people like to watch a video about the services and products you offer rather than reading about it.  Whether you like it or not, people’s attention span is only getting shorter.  Secondly, having videos on your site helps your Google rankings.  Google loves video…which is why they bought YouTube a few years ago.  By having videos on YouTube AND your website will help tremendously in people finding your company.
Interaction
Making sure your website is “web 2.0″ compatible means that people can interact with you on your site.  People expect interaction and want to communicate with you through leaving comments, seeing your posts on social media outlets or reading your newsletter.  It’s the best way to build a community around your business.  Remember, people don’t want to be sold to every time you communicate with them.  Feel free to let them know you’re a normal person that loves what they do and that has a life outside work (you do have a life outside of your job, right?).

Having our new website let’s us easily integrate all of the aspects above, which lets us move on to other important things like: doing our jobs, creating incredible videos for our clients, and enjoying the life we each have outside of our fun, little video production company called, Exit Row Productions.  If you would like to learn more about getting a new website that has all of the features above, or if you want to create a video to put on your website and YouTube, then give us a call.  We’d love to help.

Video pick of the month:

We will be speaking on, “5 free resources to help you get more done…faster”.

To RSVP, e-mail: rpatel@fiveseasonssportsclub.com or call 937-848-9200

Our clients include the following organizations above and our videos have been seen on nationally broadcast television and internet channels.  We have done videos locally and nationally and can handle projects of any size.

Script and Editing by: David Hansen.

PicsMatch is a facial recognition software that wanted to market itself in a new way. In stead of putting their money into print and television, they decided to let people make videos promoting the product. One of the guidelines was to make the videos in a low tech way without lighting, multiple cameras and paid actors. This project let us use our creativity without having to spend a lot of money. The contest was held on Youtube for 2 months. The top 10 videos with the most views were determined the winners. Our videos were the top 3 videos with the most views in the entire contest. Exit Row Productions was honored at the Film Dayton event on May, 15th. This was a lot of fun and we are excited to use the software to help tag, edit and publish our pictures.