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Posts from the ‘Consulting’ Category

Dec 5

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Testing Out New Equipment – Vermont Video Solutions

Cameras don’t make videos. People do. Well, sort of.

I just recently got my hands on a new Canon XA10 and have outfitted myself with three different microphones, a new tripod and found a used camera bag that will hold all the cords and cables as well. There’s always a learning curve when you upgrade to new equipment and the fastest way up that curve in my experience is to watch tutorials and put the equipment to use in the field. We are now underway!

Tight editing keeps viewers watching.

I generally have three primary deliverables as far as video is concerned:

  1. Marketing driven storytelling that focuses on turning unstaged real life and real people into tightly edited and entertaining videos across your online channels. Any topic.
  2. Business overviews to allow for customers to “press play” on your homepage and learn it all.
  3. Newsy segments from either a journalistic or branded point of view. Read more

Dec 1

Kaylin displays her LEGOS
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Vermont Toddler Officially Enters LEGO Period of Development

FOR SATIRICAL RELEASE

Vermont Toddler Announces LEGOS as Next Phase of Master Development Plan

New strategic direction aimed at establishing market dominance in motor skills, color identification and improving quality of construction

(December 1, 2011) Moretown, Vt. – Further establishing herself as a market leader in the toddler development industry, Kaylin Kaufman, 14 months, of Moretown, Vt. is making official her dedication to LEGO products as part of her Master Development Plan (MDP). This mutually beneficial relationship is slated to continue through at least 2014 with an option to renew based upon the parental purchase of new LEGOS.

Kaylin displays her LEGOS

The next phase of Kaylin's MDP - LEGOS.

Read more

Nov 29

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Naming Your Video For Relevant and Ongoing SEO Results

Pressing record is step one.

You did it. You made a video. You’re going to put it online and the world will be your oyster. Not so much.

Youtube is a search engine of its own and one that holds very high regard in the older brother Google. It’s basically two search engines. Not able to get first page penetration for your site on Google for your desired keywords? You may have better luck getting first page via a video or at least good ranking in video search results. But how?

Name that puppy with a purpose. We’ve all seen “Yellowbus.mp4″ video titles being uploaded and shared by well intentioned marketeers. After the time is spent concepting, shooting, editing, rendering and uploading, missing the final step of dressing up your video with a keyword relevant title, a description with a link to your website and lots of relevant tags, means the overall ROI of your time and effort is being compromised. Don’t compromise yourself. That’s bad. Read more

Nov 26

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10 Email Marketing Tips – Think Like Your Recipient

Send Them An Email They Will Open.

 Regardless of the shnazzy graphics, marketing copy and calls to action you bake into your one time or ongoing email marketing campaigns, your time and effort could all be for not if you are not willing to think like your recipient prior to deployment. Send an email you might open yourself (if you were your audience).

  1. Open rates are low. You want them to be higher. Edit yourself. Be interesting, relevant and brief in the subject line. This is not a spot for repeating the name of your company (it’s in the from field anyway), but rather to make the reader curious and expecting more than an advertisement. Read more

Nov 18

Do Facebook Better

10 Quick and Easy Facebook Fixes For Small Business

Do better.

We’ve all seen them. Brands that could/should have valuable and growing online tribes that are equivalent to third party marketing bullhorns. Sadly, the simple realities of how social media operates is not part of that brand’s delivery in the online space. Offering direct tips to help them can even be seen as threatening, so it just marches on. We’ll talk about obvious fixes for email marketing, twitter, your blog, your video and your website in future posts. Let’s start with Facebook content.

  1. Post less. Once per day max. Twice if you have actual breaking news to fit in. Relevancy drops due to over posting meaning your info is seen by less and less of your fanbase. Read more

Nov 16

Vermont Marketing Solutions

Modern Marketing in VT – Strategy – Delivery – Training

Marketing has changed.

Are you riding the new wave of opportunity effectively and in a resource smart way?

Traditional marketing agencies are great for long term projects like brochure creation/distribution, managing ad buys and re-brandings. What they do less well is help your business evolve into the new relevancy based marketing climate built upon quick thinking and ongoing multimedia communications.

What wins online is targeted listening, ongoing relevancy and speed. It’s noisy out there. Only relevant brands stay top of mind and gain market share.  This requires one of two systems in place.

  • A capable person or team dedicated to and skilled at piloting your content initiatives and building relationships within your customer base and influencers/media.
  • Hiring someone to train your staff and/or do it for you.

Integrating this effort into your overall marketing strategy is modern day marketing and PR. It’s not just posting stuff to your social sites. It’s about building relationships with customers, media and influencers and growing the number of all of them. A bedrock business goal you’ve likely had since day one. It’s worth doing well. Either to catch up to your competition or get ahead of them. Having profiles and posting stuff is better than not, but it is the lowest common denominator. You’re better than that. Let’s get you a purpose and the tailored means to dominate.

I bring 10 years of content marketing and PR experience both as a freelancer and marketing manager for some of the nation’s largest ski areas. I’ll open up my brain for your business for the low cost of lunch. Maybe there will be a reason to work together, maybe not. Let’s find out.

Businesses that I work with typically select one of these services:

  • Half day staff training sessions on various modern marketing topics.
  • Social media development/management. Content, voice, advertising, updates.
  • Web video production.
  • Press release strategy and writing.
  • Marketing budget analysis.
  • SEO guidance and blogging purpose.
  • Crisis communications and change management consulting.
  • Marketing and communications solutions tailored to business.

See the “about” page for contact info and testimonials. Then let’s eat. Your business will thank you.

Aug 12

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Free PR Advice For Ski Racer Sandy Vietze Post Pee

Oops.

If you have yet to read the international coverage of the 18 year old Vermont ski racer who is (was) a member of the US Developmental Ski Team, then this post won’t make a lot of sense until you do. It hurts to read. Clearly a no win situation for the 11 year old girl, the 18 year old youth or any of the families. I do not need to recap what occurred. There are thousands of media outlets covering that. I also do not mean to condone the actions, but they deserve another look from a public relations standpoint.

Right now, the skier is being painted as an unapologetic affluent without a shade of remorse who cares little about where and upon whom he urinates. And sure, there might be lawyers advising against apologizing as it may convey guilt of some kind, but really this is about an 18 year old getting drunk and making a mistake. A mistake that while not pleasant to think about, did very little harm. We all get peed on once in a while by our dog, our baby, our grandparents, ourselves, it’s part of life. Read more

Jul 26

The Great (or maybe odd) Burlington VT Video Equipment Challenge

Sure, I could go out and buy this stuff on my own (to replace my beater setup) and then maybe find time and clients to use it with while also being employed full time, but where’s the fun and/or publicity in that? There was lots of interest in my recent video tips post (based on site traffic), so now seemed like an opportune time.

My goal with this challenge is to educate the curious about the tools needed to undertake video in-house (if you also have the skills/time to produce it) as well as potentially find a local business or organization that wants to have some on message video stories to share across their digital platforms for a very low time/money/brain power commitment. Read more

Jul 18

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A Cheapskate’s Guide to Almost Professional Video

Mediawithak on youtube

If you are like me, then you have found yourself with a need for compelling video to share online either for your company or as a service to provide to a client. Challenges arise. Professional video production can be quite expensive and time consuming. Plus, very few other people in the world can tell the story you want told. It also takes a very adept touch to capture real life stories without getting in the way and making the participants feel like actors. This post is designed to help Marketing Directors and PR Managers operating under budget constraints (and without pro level equipment).

Here’s what you need.

  1. Good soundbites. Get people talking. Capture the sound without lots of wind or white noise and make sure the light is at least acceptable. Do not have them regurgitate your promotional copy. Get them relaxed and telling stories or providing a unique view. Use a microphone.
  2. A tripod. Don’t have a tripod? Use a rock. Use a desk. Use anything. Do not handhold the camera unless you are capturing action.
  3. A camera that has a microphone input. Audio is king.
  4. B-roll. Capture other footage to mix in with the soundbites that illistrates what is being discussed. Directly or indirectly.
  5. Establishing shots. Where is this happening?
  6. A medium and an audience. How will you distribute and who is it aimed to interest. Think about this before. Not after.
  7. Editing experience. If you have never done it, do not expect your first projects to turn out well or be quick.
  8. Editing software. There’s cheap/easy all the way to expensive/advanced. Storytelling can be done with any. Results will vary.
  9. Edit and render soon after you capture. You’ll remember the clips better. Now is news, too.
  10. A primary website that will allow you to feature it where you want to. Not just Youtube or Vimeo.

Here’s what you don’t need.

  1. Zoom. Do whatever you can to not use it. You can create pans and zooms in editing that are smoother. Use sparingly.
  2. 1080p. If you are shooting with a consumer camera and distributing online, 1080p is overkill. 720p is plenty. Your hardrive will thank you.
  3. Fancy graphics. They only look good when done by people who do them for a living.
  4. A Mac. Yes, FCP is the pro standard editing software, but some of us are stuck in situations with other operating systems.
    • Note – If someone wants to buy me a Canon 5D or 7D and a Mac – I’ll make you some videos.
  5. More than 2 types of transitions. Use sparingly.
  6. Hours of raw footage. Make editing easy. Shoot with a purpose.
  7. A script. Those are for Hollywood. Low budget video that is scripted, stinks. Have a communications goal. Edit to taste.
  8. 1GB files. Making 3 minute video? You can keep it high res and less than 250 mbs.
  9. Lengthy and deep approval processes. If you have that, then you should be willing to spend the money to go high-end professional.
  10. Long shots or long videos. Quick cuts and videos less than 3 minutes are winners.

Sony Vegas Platinum

Video is the most powerful communications method in existence. Just because anyone can press record does not mean anyone can create quality video for business. That said, it’s also not rocket science. Telling a story just like the TV news does is cake. Want to add it to your marketing mix or want to stop paying through the nose for simple stuff? Happy to help you do either. See some of the recent videos completed for New England Culinary Institute or those produced on my recent 3 month RV trip.

Jun 13

Vermont Facebook Advertising – Tweak Non-Stop For Best ROI

Maximize Your VT Facebook Results.

 

Yes, that’s a brutally obvious search term in the headline. If you are in Vermont and are either currently advertising on Facebook or thinking about it, then it served it’s purpose. Everyday I am served ads on Facebook for local products and services, which is great! The problem is that these ads are clearly not being optimized by the administrators. They are set up, launched and then hope becomes the strategy. I am currently overseeing a monthly spend for an employer and I spend some time each day checking in on our current ad renditions to make sure we are not needlessly burning budget on expensive cpc ads. Each day I create a few more versions tweaking the target audience, copy, bid, graphic, geography and more. In one day I had an ad deliver high fan conversion at a cpc of .37 and one deliver low fan conversion at a cpc of 1.10. Thankfully I shut off the 1.10 version after its first click. Had I let it run even a few more hours, it would be taking clicks away from my other lower priced ads.

Which ad do you want to shut off ASAP?

If you are spending say, $25 a day and paying $1 for them that’s 25 clicks. If you are paying .30 for them, that’s over 75 clicks. Think about that on a larger budget scale. Holy cow! If this is not something you can or are willing to do, hire someone, or hire me – the simple marketing solution to otherwise complex challenges. It helps if you are within a 45 minute drive of Waterbury, Vt. We’ll hang out.

The times when this is most important is right before you go to bed and right when you wake up. Why? Because that decreases the amount of hours that your campaigns are running unchecked. You don’t want to burn half your daily budget on bad ads because you didn’t shut them off do you? Facebook can be one of the most effective ways to target your local audience, but only if you have the know how and desire to properly manage and optimize your campaigns. That starts with a clear goal, continues with ongoing attention to detail in pursuit of that goal, and ends with a beer celebrating such targeted and verifiable results. It feels good to know you got the most for your money.

Maybe you’re asking well why don’t you just only buy the low-priced cpc performing ad groups? The answer is that Facebook determines cpc price based on a never-ending auction. You only control your bid price and the cpc is determined after it is running and being clicked on. Thus the need to watch and act quickly. You may want to run up to 30 different renditions of an ad group over the course of a few weeks. Most of them will be shut off quickly, the highest performers will take you to victory. Victory being the highest possible amount of targeted visitors or fans for the budget you have set. $100 can net you 100 visitors unmanaged, or 350 if you pay attention.

Contact info and testimonials. Let’s get lunch.

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