You are here: Home / Archives for newsletter

June Newsletter

July 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Word of Mouth… Still the Best!

So I have been thinking of the best way to get the word out about our company, what is the best and most effective form of marketing? I think if every company mastered this, than it would obviously be successful. So what is the answer? Well, in my humble opinion, word of mouth is still the best form of marketing.
Now, word of mouth, has obviously been around since people could talk. So with all of the new interactive media and technology, how is word of mouth still the best. Technology is constantly changing, but something that isn’t changing is the fact that people talk. So the better question is…. How are you using the newest technology to create word of mouth marketing for your business?
Video on smart-phones and on the web is a powerful way to create word of mouth. I couldn’t help but notice these things about how people get their news these days, it is:
1. Instant
2. Mobile
3. Interactive
4. Dynamic
With that said, video just happens to be all those things as well. So find ways to integrate video into your business to create that word of mouth that is so powerful to any message. Exit Row Productions is constantly looking at new ways to do this for you. Let us know if we can help.

 

Video of the Month:

Filed Under: Blog, Newsletter Archive Tagged With: , ,

3 ways to use video in your e-mail signiture, training and employee orientation

April 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Over the past 10 years we’ve seen a lot of changes in the video industry. We’ve also seen some amazing ways to utilize video to market, promote, inform, train and distribute in your business. Here are just 3 great ways to use video in your business.

Email Signature Videos:

This is something we have been personally testing over the past 9 months. How many e-mails do you send every day? Why not put a video in your e-mail signature? That way everyone can see it. We put clickable icons, such as Twitter and Youtube, in our e-mail signature. We also put a link to a video. In the few months that we tested, in one of our e-mail signatures saw that around 250 people clicked on our social media links, but just over 2,000 people clicked on our link to the video. That’s about 8x the click throughs on the video link over the social media links! You can see how much more people want to see a video. Imagine if your company has 5-10 employees with the same clickable videos in their e-mail signatures! Multiply that times the amount of e-mails they send every day. It would maximize not only your video’s effectiveness, but it would also drive traffic to your website with every e-mail sent from your company. How many e-mails do you and everyone in your company send every day? Are they also a marketing tool for your business? They could be. Ask us how we can help you incorporate this into your next video with us.

Training Videos:

We’ve had a lot companies call us to film their training sessions. In fact, last month we were asked to film an all day training series which was broadcast live through online streaming. We also edited the videos together and delivered them in DVD and web formats so the company could put the training on their website as well as send out DVDs to all those that couldn’t attend the event. The cost for this was vastly more affordable since the attendees were from all over the world. There were several people watching online in other countries! Can you imagine paying for them to fly into town to attend the one day event? It was much cheaper to have us record the event.

We have also been asked to record live speaking engagements where we edit the videos and break them into 5-10 minute videos. They then perform what is called, “Drip Marketing”, where they release one video every week. It keeps people coming back to the website for more content and is a great way to build traffic to your website.

These are just two ways you can use training videos in your business to save money and generate traffic to your website. How can you use training videos in your business?

Employee Orientation Videos:

How many companies hire someone new, but then have a long and painful training process? Training manuals are boring and long orientation sessions can give a lack of results. Their can even be a lack of consistency in what is presented during the training. But video is the best way to have a consistent message for your new employees. Why not mix up the orientation by having some videos that introduce your company, message and key staff through engaging video segments? You can then use these videos for years and years to come. Are you looking at revamping your employee orientation with videos? We can help.

Video Pick of the Month: Harvard Business Channel

If you like videos that teach new ideas and practical ways to grow your business, than you’ll like this YouTube channel.

“Harvard Business School’s YouTube channel showcases “ideacasts” that focus on “practical insights, tools and resources.” The web-show offers interviews with prominent Harvard professors, authors, and business leaders who speak to issues in markets large and small.”

Web Pick of the Month: PDF converter

How many times have you wanted to convert your Word document to a PDF.  Or, do you need to convert a PDF to a Word document to edit?  I need this functionality every week.  Check out this service that converts these formats.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archive Tagged With: ,

Make Me a Viral Video!

December 16, 2010 By 1 Comment

Make Me a Viral Video!

That statement in and of itself is controversial. Not only can you not make a viral video, you might not be able to make a video viral. It seems as though everyone wants to have a “viral video” these days. That is well and good, however you cannot create a “viral video”. Wikipedia defines a viral video as one “that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites and email.” Now let me explain how you can do this. You must first make a video that is full of great content. Whether that content is funny, interesting, educational, or just crazy is up to you. Once a video is created than you can attempt to make the video viral. The key word there is “attempt”. The bottom line is that if no one wants to watch your video, than it will not go viral.
There are some things to consider when attempting to make a video that can go viral. As a business you must first consider what the goal of your video is. There are several questions to ask yourself:

- Who do you want to watch your video?
- What kind of people do you want watching your video?
- How many people do you want watching your video?

It is important to answer these questions before you go producing a video. If you do not care who sees your video, and you just want as many views as possible than your content could be wide open. If you want to market the video to your industry than the content will need to be slanted towards that particular industry. So while there is no way to make a “viral video” there is a way to make a video that has a good chance of going viral.
The key to producing a video that has the best chance of going viral is, like I mentioned before, great content and also a distribution strategy after the video has been produced. The video must be a video that people will be inclined to watch. It is critical for someone who specializes in video to create a video that they know people will watch. Ideas sound good in a board room, but we are talking about internet viewers here. People are impatient and very critical of online content. There is so much out there, so you must find a way for yours to stand out. Also, it is extremely important for someone who is knowledgeable of social media to spread your idea. Once the video is online, it must spread, and one of the best ways to do that is by using a company who understands how social media works. Exit Row Productions are specialists in both content creation and video distribution online. We would love to help you create videos that go viral.

Videos of the Month:

Web Pick of the Month:

Letter Me Later


Merry Christmas!

Filed Under: Blog, Newsletter Archive Tagged With: , ,

3 ways to use video for your testimonials, presentations, and case studies

June 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

When people find out that we provide video, media and web services, they usually only have a small idea of what we do.  Yes, we strive to “bridge the gap between the corporate and creative mindsets” by making interesting and creative videos but we hate boring and outdated looking videos too!  Below are 3 ways your company can easily use video to market, promote, inform and advertise.  These will help you broaden the way you are able to communicate, market, promote and inform your clients and perspective clients.  The more you can help them, the more they will keep coming back…and video is a great way to accomplish that.

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.


Filed Under: Blog, Newsletter Archive Tagged With: ,

Have you seen that YouTube video?

November 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Have you seen that YouTube video? How many times have you heard that lately? I’m guessing most of those videos had little to no business application. But, have you seen the Youtube video from Sweden where a team decided to take on a project of motivating people to take the stairs instead of using the adjacent escalator? Think about it…using the escalator is easy, efficient and is less work. Why would someone use the stairs these days. Which is why this team decided to see what they could do to to entice people away from the easy choice (the escalator) and have people use the stairs.

To see what happens, watch the video below.

Is there a competitor that your customers are going to because it’s easier or cheaper? Maybe your competitor is the easy choice for people but your product is better in the long run (isn’t exercise on the stairs better in the long run, then a short term convenience of an escalator?). What can you do to make people aware of your products or services? Can you make the process interesting, fun, or memorable? Yes, this will take some thought, but isn’t it worth it? Imagine getting more customers just because you provide something different (think of what they did to the stairs in the video).

In an interview Siskel & Ebert said that since they watched about 5-10 movies per week, they could always tell when a good movie came around. But, in order for that to happen, it had to really stand out. All the bad and average movies mushed together in an unmemorable glump (is that a word?). But, when a really good movie came out, it was different than all the average movies. Seth Godin, calls this a Purple Cow. Wouldn’t you tell everyone you know if you saw a purple cow? It stands out and is very different from all the other cows you’ve ever seen. Is your business, product or service a purple cow? Aren’t you impressed when a company shows some personality, or they make things fun and interesting instead of being mushed together in an unmemorable glump. Which is your company, product or service?

So what are you doing that’s superior to the status quo? What stands out? What are you doing to make your product or service fun, interesting or a “purple cow”? Perhaps spicing up your website that separates it from your competitors will make you stand out. Would new creative business cards that look different and stand out from everyone else? Or maybe creating a video that isn’t a typical boring sleeper, but something people will be sharing with everyone on YouTube? I bet we know a company that can help you out!

Filed Under: Newsletter Archive Tagged With: