It’s a question I get often and thought I’d answer in this (long) essay, by using a bunch of videos we’ve used in our various projects and businesses.

I’ve broken each down so you can see WHY we chose this style for the outcome desired, WHAT actually is happening in the video itself, and then some quick notes on HOW we actually put it all together.

Example 1. Product Recommendations

The video below is something you probably saw recently. It was shot on my iPhone 4S after I was recommended Jules Watkins’ iVideo Hero program. I was about to invest over $1,200 on a DSLR for face-to-camera stuff, when someone suggested I learn some amazing little hacks on the iPhone camera.  Long story short, I invested the $97 in Jules’ training course, turned the iPhone on, quickly recorded my story, and recommend Jules’ program to the entire Preneur Community…

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
I’ve found that using a face-to-camera stuff is not only super quick and easy, but it’s a great way to pre-sell a recommended product or service (ala affiliate product), as it allows you to set the context and frame for the thing you are recommending to your audience.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
Well, face-to-camera stuff is very easy to do, once you get the confidence to put yourself on screen. It works extremely well if you are trying to relate a personal story and the audience can truly  ‘see’ your expressions.  
It also work well when you are trying to build trust with the viewer, like in a sales letter or testimonial.

HOW do you actually make this happen?
In this case, and as with most of my recent (and future) videos, I’ll be shooting them on the iPhone. Simple as that.
Get yourself a cheap tripod and a iPhone camera mount, and you’re good to go.

Example 2. Product Reviews

The video below is something we do quite regularly for our e-comm projects such as SimplyHeadsets.com.au. They are very simple yet highly effective product reviews, so our online prospects can get as close to a tangible understanding/feel for the products usually only visible in a photograph.

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
If you are selling a product or service that is “tangible” or “tactile”, a video showcasing that is much more impactful than any photo or textual description ever will.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
It’s just me sitting at a desk, talking about the headset infront of me with a few B-roll cutaways to make it a little more ‘active’ visually.

HOW do you actually make this happen?
Again, it’s just a matter of sitting down in front of a camera, having some notes for direction on a whiteboard or butcher paper behind your camera, and away you go.
If you want to have B-roll footage for the cutaways, you might need a second camera. But that’s only really needed if you want to go that extra mile in production.

Example 3. Live Event

The video is a excerpt from one of the various live events I’ve spoken at.  This one is from the first outsroucing workshop Dave Jenyns and I did together a year or so back.

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
Using live events as the source material for videos (and training programs) is a fantastic positive constraint, which I’ve spoken previously on the PreneurCast podcast.  If it wasn’t for the pressure of having people attending a live event, there would be a tonne of content I would have never gotten around to having recorded.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
From a video production standpoint, this is really quite easy as all you need to worry about is speaking and over-delivering to the live audience. As you will see from this excerpt, I completely ignore the camera and focus on the people in the room. (This also means the video viewers will be a little more forgiving of errors and stumbles you may have during your delivery.)

HOW do you actually make this happen?
The hardest part of this type of video is getting bums in the room for the live event. Beyond that, you just need to shell out some coin for the videographers who will record and edit everything up for you.

Example 4. Green-Screen Video

The video is a video from our Going Analogue course. The intros for each section were filmed just outside London while I was there speaking at an live event (which was also recorded). We very rarely use green screen for our videos as I don’t believe they give a great bang-for-buck. But like everything, there is a time and place for them.

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
To be honest, I find it very, very hard to justify the effort and expense of green screen — so unless you have a mate with a studio and some spare time. For the wider Preneur Community, I wouldn’t actually recommend you use this style of video in your business.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
This was a really fun (yet, over-the-top) way of doing intro videos. The way we recorded these was by having me stand in a full green-screen room with a teleprompter. The production team then went about creating the sweet backdrops and slides in post-production.

HOW do you actually make this happen?
I don’t want to get too technical here (for obvious reasons), but you need an extremely well-lit studio with a green screen and some really good software for the editing process.

Example 5. Screen-Capture Training

Hopefully, this style of video isn’t overly new to anyone here in the Preneur Community. It’s something we use a lot in all projects — from demonstrating marketing tools like SendOutCards below, to doing demo and training videos on the software that comes with the phones systems we sell thru Infiniti Telecommunications.

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
This is one of the easiest and most effective style of videos you will ever do.  If you’re trying to document a process to your virtual assistant, train your clients on a tool (see: ScreencastsOnline), or just want to demonstrate a product you’re trying to promote, screen-capture video is the closest thing you’ll ever get to sitting down with them side by side.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
Well not a whole lot technically. I am just using the tool I’m trying to demonstrate and just commentating the process through a headset.

HOW do you actually make this happen?
All you need is a headset (or machine with inbuilt mic), and then some screen-capture software like ScreenFlow or Camtasia.

Example 6. Keynote-Style Video

Boy do we use this style of video A LOT.  Every single one of our podcast episodes get this treatment, plus most of the strategy videos we produce for training programs use this style as well. The example below is a keynote-style video that’s been applied to a PreneurCast podcast episode, where funnily enough, Dom and I talk about all this video marketing.

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
I personally believe this is not only the easiest but the best way to communicate and teach anything that doesn’t need a live demonstration. The ability to support the stuff you are saying with bullets and graphs really helps the understanding and consumption for your audience.

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
Like I mentioned above, the visuals in this style of video is primarily there to support the audio track by emphasizing the key points through graphs, bullet points, and key pieces of text.

HOW do you actually make this happen?
The way we produce this style of videos is probably a little different to what you may have heard before (unless you played along with the Profit Hacks launch), but I find it the most productive for myself personally. The short ‘how to’ is: I record the audiotrack by itself, and then let my team put the slides together after the fact. This way, I am not distracted with choosing fonts, slide transitions, or other non-essential elements so many people get bogged down with.

Example 7. Concept Demonstration / Pre-Education

The video here is another one from our telco business. Like a lot of products and services, the workings of a phone system can be quite complicated and confusing for prospects; so we put together this video to easily break down how a phone system works. By pre-educating our leads, it makes it so much easier for our sales staff to speak with and convert prospects through selling, not basic education.

WHY would you want to use this style of video? 
If you are selling a solution that is even remotely technical, being able to pre-educate and thus pre-qualify prospects online via video, prior to them spending time with your sales team, is a huge ROI increaser.  (You can see one from our headset business here too.)

WHAT’s actually going on in this video?
This was a really fun (and relatively easy) video to put together. We shot it in the video studio we have at the office, with me and my iPad. I am simply talking the viewer through the basics of telephone systems whilst using the graphics to support it visually.

HOW do you actually make this happen?
While we have the face-to-camera side of things recording, we used a really cool app called Reflector to stream my iPad screen to the MacBook, which was getting recorded via ScreenFlow, then just merged the two recordings in post-production.

7 Types of Videos You Can Swipe + Deploy is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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We’ve been testing a whole bunch of stuff recently regarding increasing Opt-Ins, and I wanted to share the results with you here and in a video below.

So here are THREE Recent Opt-In Changes We’ve Implemented + Templates You Can Swipe

Finding #1: Reports Are The Best B.A.I.T.

I won’t go into great detail here (see video below for that), but we are continually finding that short reports are the best opt-in bribes you can be using to encourage subscriber sign-ups across almost all niches and projects.

Here’s the a short acronym breakdown for you:

(B) Benefits Driven - Make sure the offer is benefit driven (What it does, not what it is)

(A) Applicable - The opt-in offer needs to be what your target audience wants (not necessarily what they need)

(I) Immediate - We’ve found newsletters, updates, or 7 part series are just not immediate enough (see tip 2 below)

(T) Tools - The best type of bait we’re finding is little one-page reports on the best tools your prospects can use. (see video below)

—

Finding #2: Use This Opt-In Button Template

This tip we swiped from Ben Settle + Jim Yaghi; and results are showing that it’s an absolute winner.

As mentioned above in Tip 1, people are impatient with overloaded inboxes. So offering something that is going to be spread out over the next (x) amount of weeks like a newsletter subscription or 7-Part eCourse just isn’t appealing.

So taking this to the extreme, you need to incorporate this into the language on your opt-in pages and submit buttons.

(Now I just spent about 20mins trying to articulate the psychology behind this, to set the context, but failed miserably … so rather wait for one of our writers to work on this, I am just going to jump into a whole bunch of examples, OK ?)

Basically, stop using words and langue that suggest things will happen in the future, such as: “we’ll email you the report” or  “to get the report…”

Rather, create a picture of what will happen AS SOON AS the prospect clicks the button on the opt-in form.

The language we are preferring in our projects that you are free to swipe is:  [Click To Load The Report] 

It’s implies instant not delayed (and just make sure you fulfil the promise and instantly load the report on the thank-you page)

—

Finding  #3: Forget Their First Name

In a recent blog post & video Clay Collins reported some really interesting split-test results from Juan Martitegui of Mindvalley Hispano.

Juan was testing the results of only asking for an email address (vs email and first name) and found a relative increase of 5.25% with the email only option.

Now 5.25% doesn’t sound like a massive jump, but in fact it is pretty cool given the ease of implementation, as that’s half way to that 10% goal we want if working within the 7 Levers Framework.

So combine that with a new study executed by Prof. Sunil Wattal at the Fox School of Business; which found that  95% of customers respond negatively when an email starts off with a greeting that includes their name; you’re bound to get some significant bottom line results!

(The 95% stat personally blew me away, but it’s hard to argue with research that drew from 10 million marketing emails sent to 600,000 customers.)

—

NOW … Putting It All Together In Under 3mins

To make it easy for everyone, I’ve actually created a short video showing how you can use these exact tactics in your business …. by using a couple of my very own businesses and projects as case studies.

Now be warned, I did this entire video myself, so it’s not as polished as you usually get around here when Dom get’s his hands on stuff… but none the less, the content is amazing (even if I do say so myself!)

In this jam packed little video you’ll discover:

- The exact bribe we are using in our telco business

- The tool we’re using, that creates all this in under 3min

- Where to get stock photos and background images for no charge

- How to start doing this yourself today without coding, graphic design or outsourcers.

Personal Help With Your Opt-In Bribes

Now, over the next two weeks inside out high end platinum mastermind group, we’re going to be discussing Opt-Ins … so if you do invest in Lead Pages using our affiliate link, I’d love to invite you onto these two calls (as a bonus) so we can work on your offers and opt-in pages together.

Just email your LeadPages receipt to Florence via support [at] preneurgroup.com and she’ll hook you up with the dates and time of these next two private calls.

THREE Opt-In Changes We’ve Implemented + Templates You Can Swipe is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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>>> Click here to find out more about Jules program <<<

How I Saved $1204 Yesterday Thanks To iVideoHero is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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It’s about 50 minutes long, so I thought I’d condense the main tips into an article.

Yes, some of it is a little on the geeky side, but I’m reliably informed that geeky is the new sexy.

That might be a misquote.

Anyway, let’s get into it.

Swapping Applications

I’m starting with an obvious one, but there will be some people who haven’t come across this shortcut before.

Basically, you hold down the “Alt” key (“Command” key if you’re using a Mac), tap the “Tab” key, and a list of all the running applications will appear in the middle of the screen. Keep tapping “Tab” (while still holding down the “Alt” or “Command” key), and you can scroll through the open applications until you get to the one you want.

Bonus Tip: If you’re using the latest version of Windows, trying using the “Windows” key instead of the “Alt” key for a flashier version of the same technique.

File Organisation

Filing documents on your hard drive properly is a challenge. Even if you start out on a new machine with good intentions, creating lots of tidy folders and grouping files together in a logical order, it’s not long before the sheer volume of data makes finding something again almost impossible.

This is because most people neglect the most important aspect of file organisation…

The name that you give to the individual files.

You might, for example, think you’re pretty smart in creating a folder for receipts for online purchases, but how are you going to find the receipt for that kettle you bought last year when every file looks like this…

Unless you can remember the exact date that you made the purchase, you’re going to struggle.

What you should have done, was to save each file using a name that properly describes the contents.  If, for example, you’d called the filename of the receipt for your kettle:

amazon_kettle_June2011…

Do you think that might make it easier to find?

Along the same lines, a simple trick is to create three-letter codes that represent different projects, and then include that code in every file that is related to that project, whatever type of file it is. Not only does that help your overall organisation, it also makes the files easy to find, even years later, by simply entering the three-letter code into your computer’s “search” facility.

You can come up with your own system for creating logical filenames, but it’s a really good habit to get into that most people never figure out.

This is evidenced by the number of CVs that employers receive called… you guessed it…

CV.doc

What they should be receiving is a document called…

PeteWilliams_CV_May2012.doc

Once you realise the sense in creating descriptive filenames and you start to put it into practice, you’ll wonder why you didn’t begin sooner.

Email Organisation

I discussed email management in a previous article (see “Managing Your Inbox” article), so I’m not going to rehash it here, except to follow on from the previous section by pointing out that you can also include your three-letter codes in the subject lines of your emails, to make filing and sorting that much easier.

Teach your team of employees and outsourcers to use the three-letter codes in their correspondence to you and then use your email software filters to automatically place emails into the correct folders.

Backup Everything

It doesn’t matter how smart you think you are, no one is immune to the danger of accidentally damaging or deleting content (see www.wimp.com/storydeleted, for a really scary example).

If you’re not backing up your hard drive on a regular, preferably daily basis, you’re basically collecting petrol in cans under your office and wandering around with a lit cigarette.

Sooner or later, your business is going to go up in smoke.

The funny thing (and it’s not really funny) is that you’ll never fully appreciate how much you take for granted the software, data and settings that you have on your computer, until the day you lose them all.

Better not to find out the hard way, so back up everything to an external drive, or use an online service.

You can buy a 2-terabyte hard drive from Amazon for about $100, or take a look at services such as Mozy (www.mozy.com), Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) or Amazon S3 (http://aws.amazon.com/s3/).

Use What You’ve Got

One of the quickest ways to get more out of your computer is to learn how to use the software you already own.

I can guarantee that the software you already have installed boasts some incredible features that you don’t realise exist and that you would use every day if you took the time to discover them.

Try Googling “tips on using <software name>” and the chances are good you’ll find a whole bunch of articles that will help you become a power user of everything you own.

If you own an Apple product, make sure you check out http://www.screencastsonline.com/. They post weekly videos that show you how to get the most out of your Mac, iPad or iPhone. If you purchase an annual plan, it works out about $3 a month, and you get access to the archive of existing videos.

Well worth it, in my opinion.

Typing Shortcuts

TextExpander (http://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/) is a tool for Mac users that lets you store specific blocks of text and recall them when you enter a sequence of keystrokes.

For example, anytime I want to enter my email address somewhere, I simply type the @ symbol twice in a row, and the software removes the two @ symbols and replaces them with my full email address.

Depending on the kind of work you do, there are lots of different ways to use this software, from inserting signature text, to saving email templates.

And you may be pleased to read that there is a PC version of this software called Phrase Express (www.phraseexpress.com).

Just Read It Already

I heard this quote years ago that went along the lines of:

I’ve got a huge library of books. I was smart enough to buy them, now I want to see how smart I’ll be if I actually read them.

I’d actually go beyond that. If buying a book and reading it are the first two steps, then the next two are…

Trusting the author enough to read the book to the end, instead of getting half-way through and thinking, “Actually, I know more than this expert, so I’m going to go off and do things my own way”.

Taking action and applying the knowledge that the book has provided you. That means, making notes as you go along and, at the end, making an action plan to implement everything you’ve learned.

So, there we go. There’s quite a variety in the last 1000 words, so hopefully you’ve found something in there that’s new and that you can start putting into practice.

Digital Power Tools (Embracing Geekdom) is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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Check it out at www.MySpeedApp.com

Watch Videos Faster with Enounce’s My Speed App is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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Links + References

ScreenFlow
http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/

MySpeed
http://myspeedapp.com

Menubar Countdown
http://capablehands.net/menubarcountdown

Skype
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-computer/macosx/

VMware Fusion
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html

Air Video Server
http://www.inmethod.com/air-video/index.html;jsessionid=6920E4BBC0B0D311BB046C644CBCE1D4

Mozy
http://mozy.com/

Dropbox
http://www.dropbox.com/

TextExpander
http://www.smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/

BusyCal
http://www.busymac.com/

StrongVPN
http://strongvpn.com/

AppleScript
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/AppleScriptX.html

Time Machine
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Spaces
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1624

Bluetooth
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1209

Spotlight
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2531

LaunchBar
http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

Take A Peak At My Mac OSX MenuBar is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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Check Eyercize out over at http://www.eyercize.com/

Speed Reading Online with Eyercize is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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Below is a an update I added to the news feed inside the partners portal, in reference to a post I did about a specific feature/function we are going to add to the apps.

—

In the previous post I referenced a section of one of Trey’s launch videos which was on YouTube, and if you clicked the play button you would have noticed it started playing at the 7min 21 second mark… pretty cool, eh ?

Some of you probably already know how to ‘link to’ a YouTube video and make it start playing a specific time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol8yJ0C462U#t=7m21s

The “#t=7m21s” takes you straight to 7 minutes and 21 seconds in a video.

… but how do you do it on an embedded video ??

Well, we need to use the “start” parameter. Note that start takes seconds as a parameter, not minutes and seconds separately.

For example, to start this embedded video at 7 minutes and 21 seconds into a video, 7*60+21 = 441 seconds, so you would use this code:

<object width=”640″ height=”390″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ol8yJ0C462U&start=441“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ol8yJ0C462U&start=441” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”640″ height=”390″></embed></object>

… and it will play like:

Kinda cool and very handy…

Start an embedded YouTube video at a specific timestamp is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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Links To All The Nominees

Software:
- OmniFocus
- MindNode
- SimplyNote + Notational Velocity
- DropBox
- OptimizePress

RSS Feeds:
- Four Hour Blog
- Google Webmaster
- Texts From Last Night
- You Look Nice Today
- Small Business Big Marketing

Best Resource / Product
- Screencasts Online
- Challenge Plus
- Video Boss
- Michel Thomas Method™

Best Documentary
- Tales from the Script
- Art & Copy: Inside Advertising’s Creative Revolution
- Food, Inc.
- The Social Network

Best Technology
- Apple’s iPad
- Creative Labs Vado HD Pocket Video Camcorder 3rd Generation
- Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone
- Hot Diggity Dogger Hot-Dog Maker

Best Book
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
- Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
- Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

2011 Preneur Marketing Awards is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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For those of you saw my post the other day about ‘My Crazy Idea‘,
you’ll want to check this out as well.

It talks about why software is the most profitable business and why it’s so easy to sell!!
http://www.preneurmarketing.com/SoftwareSystem

Enjoy,
Pete

p.s. I also think I’ve worked out how I’m going to make that ‘crazy idea’ work … I’ll let you know in a day or 3.

p.p.s. In the meantime make sure you check out Trey’s video.

How’s the Timing… is a post from: Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams
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