I harp daily over on our social feeds about the importance of videos and video marketing to the overall content strategy of a company and I am serious about it. Mostly because Zac drilled it into my head, and then showed me the crazy results that meaningful and engaging videos can produce. I was sold.

But if your content strategy is in its first stages or you’re just wading into the video world, it can be a little overwhelming trying to figure out the type of videos you should have. So I wanted to help you out a little and give you three types of videos to consider including in your content arsenal.

Informative Videos about your Industry

This one falls into the broad category. In this kind of video, you’re not specifically promoting a service or product that your company sells; instead you’re highlighting statistics, information, interesting events, etc. that are occurring in your specific industry.

They’re valuable because they’re giving viewers information about a topic of industry that they’re interested in, and that you’re an expert in. You want your audience to see you as a subject matter expert for your industry – creating these assets will bring people to you, who want your opinion and trust it.

Product or Service Spots

These videos are specific to you. Whereas the informative videos are industry-specific but not centered around your business, these videos focus solely on your company. Short spots that highlight a new service or exciting product launch are awesome to have in your back pocket. You can post them to your social feeds, send them out in eblasts to your mailing lists and blast them all over Youtube. It’s a great way to present something new in a fun, exciting, easily and quickly digestible way.

(If you haven’t watched any “Will It Blend” videos, you really should. Fair warning: they’ll make you want a BlendTec blender.)

Instead of only giving your audience the option to read about your newest product or service, you’re giving them the chance to watch a quick video as well. These also give you the added bonus of easy shareability (totally not a word, but I’m going with it) across social platforms, emails and more.

Company Culture Video

To be honest with you, I’m of the opinion that these are some of the most important videos you can have. Getting a glimpse at the kind of environment my favorite brands have in their office is awesome.

These are specific videos dealing with your company, but you’re not selling a new service or debuting a new product. You’re selling your company’s culture. I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a trend in the past few years: consumers really like to feel connected to the brands they support, and want to know that there are real people working behind the scenes. Taking the time to craft a video that highlights what makes the people working at your company special is well worth the effort.

You’re giving your fans a chance to get a look behind closed doors, and see how you and your employees interact with each other in a really personal way. It humanizes your brand, and makes you infinitely relatable. Plus, doesn’t that video by Hubspot look like a blast to make? They’re fun for your audience and for your co-workers.

So there you have it! Just a few simple ideas to help get you started. And here at Engaged Video, we help our clients create all of these and more!

What sort of videos will you be incorporating into your content strategy? Let us know in the comments below! In case you haven’t figured it out, we sort of love videos.

The post 3 Must Have Videos for Your Content Arsenal appeared first on Engaged Video.

It’s phenomenal!

The campaign website they set up is chock-full of little calls to the show, while also looking totally legitimate. You can check it out here.

#FU2016 and #HoC (complete with its own show-specific emoji) are all over Twitter and it’s not just Underwood’s fans that are getting in on the action; brands from Mercedes Benz to Arby’s are hopping on the House of Cards hype train in hopes of both attaching their names to the frenzy and showing up in a hot topic trending across the Internet.

We posted about this a few days ago to our social media feeds, but this article gives some great examples of how these brands interact with their followers, who also happen to enjoy political intrigue puppet-mastery.

It’s Got a Name!

This is called Vertical Marketing Integration and is, in a broader sense, a form of news-jacking.

It’s the practice of jumping onto an event that’s happening right now. HubSpot has a great article on news-jacking. It’s a few years old now, but it still stands.

Not Just for the Small Screen

Movies receive the same treatment. This practice was especially evident when

Cereal Promotion for Batman vs. Superman movie

Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered a few months ago. Leading up to the movie’s release, it seemed like literally every single company was comprised of Jedi and they were all controlling the Force to sell something. This article is a great collection of the best examples of brands interjecting Star Wars into their posts. There are some amazing examples here.

Word of Caution

An example of what not to do.

Vertical Marketing Integration and Newsjacking can be HUGE for your brand. You’re jumping onto a trending news story or event in pop culture and getting yourself some free exposure to an active and engaged population.

But you need to make sure you do it right.

Understand the show, movie, story or event that you’re going to be participating in and make sure it makes sense to connect it with your brand.

In the article I linked above about House of Cards, it makes total sense to fans of the show that NVIDIA would post something about the show. The main character, Francis Underwood, is a gamer; in season one, he played Call of Duty religiously. NVIDIA is a manufacturer of video cards and video game accessories for PC gamers.

Give it a Try!

So long as you take the time to craft your message and make sure that it makes sense for your company to be posting about whatever movie, event, etc.  that you’re choosing to talk about, Vertical Marketing Integration and news-jacking can seriously pay off. You’ll be showing your followers a different side to your brand and interacting with them on a different and, often times, more personal level. So, give it a go!

Let Us Know

Have you tried this tactic out? Did it work for you? Let us know in the comments!

The post Exploring: Vertical Marketing Integration appeared first on Engaged Video.

Pictured: Everyone in February, basically.

Anyway, to combat the slow crawl toward Spring I thought I could bring some DIY to the blog. We’ve done a few DIY posts in the past, but I wanted to expand that particular category for us a bit more and actually do some projects.

The DIY Calling

A bit about me: when I’m not Blabbing with Zac or making blog headers, I tend to be prowling thrift stores to find my next project. I’m a die-hard DIY-er at heart. So that’s why, when Zac sent me this video I knew I had to share it with you guys. And, of course, document our attempt.

The Video:

This video, by youtuber vinvin121 shows an incredibly simple and cost effective way to create your own teleprompter at home. The video and sound quality of the tutorial aren’t the best, but his instructions are clear and easy to follow and the end product that he creates is really great.

A Little About Teleprompters

Teleprompters, for those that aren’t sure, are devices used in video production that scroll through a script so the person on-screen can focus less on memorizing their lines and more on being comfortable.

They’re a huge help when you’re creating videos because it takes a bit of the burden off of the person you’re filming and gives you the ability to make sure you’re including all the dialogue you want included.

Unfortunately, they can also be pretty expensive. Generally, they range anywhere from $150 and upwards to $500 or more.

That’s why this video is so great! With a little bit of time, effort and patience you have a totally usable teleprompter that’s going to make creating scripted videos in-house so much easier.

The Challenge

Zac is actually going to be tackling this DIY project for us, and reporting back in with his results next week.

Check back Wednesday, February 17th to see the finished product! And let us know in the comments if you’re trying this out with us!

Have any Projects We Should Try?

Have you tried and DIY video projects? Let us know and we’ll give it a try!

The post DIY of the Week: Teleprompter appeared first on Engaged Video.

What is it?

You may have heard of Hootsuite before. It was created in 2008 and quickly gained popularity. Besides having an adorable logo (I won’t lie, I’m a total sucker for owls), Hootsuite is a social media management tool that makes my social media management life incredibly simple.

Why I Use It

Hootsuite allows you to integrate all of your social media platforms and manage them from one place. It organizes feeds like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others in a dashboard format with tabs for each. By connecting your feeds to Hootsuite, you can quickly see what your new followers are tweeting about or new mentions, read messages sent to your company’s Facebook page and more.

But the best part? Hootsuite enables you to schedule updates days ahead to keep your posting consistent. Obviously, the biggest part of “social media” is the “social” part, so I don’t just schedule posts and ignore our pages for the week. But having the ability to find meaningful content that will matter to our audience and take a few minutes to schedule a week’s worth of posts frees me up to actively engage with our followers.

It also allows you to set up custom hashtag and keyword searches for powerful social media monitoring to key into trending topics that are important to your brand without having to do tons of independent searches. Once you set up your keyword search, for instance, it stays on your dashboard for you to check as often as you need.

Oh, and did I mention? Hootsuite is free. There are some features, such as really in-depth analytics that require a monthly subscription but the core features like drafting and scheduling posts and social media monitoring is included in the free version.

How to Use It

Creating an account is as simple as entering your email and password and you’re ready to start connecting your feeds.

Just click to add a social network and follow the prompts.

Once you have all your social feeds connected your dashboard will start to look something like this:

You can see that I’ve got posts scheduled out for the rest of the week, our new followers are being tracked and any mentions that may come our way are there as well. In the bottom right hand corner, you’ll see the green square with the plus in the middle. You use this to add feed-specific streams to your dashboard. Using Twitter as an example, here are your options:

You have many different options for the kind of engagement you want to monitor, and that’s what I love about it. Everything is all in one place, and you can choose the most effective way to monitor your feeds that will work best for you and your organization.

So there you have it! I recommend Hootsuite to everyone. It’s simple to use and makes it so easy to consistently post to your social channels. And you can’t argue with a cute owl. I think it’s against the law.

What about you?

Are there any tools that you use daily that you think we should check out? Leave a comment below and let us know! We’ll give it a look and feature it here on the blog.

The post Tools of the Trade: Hootsuite appeared first on Engaged Video.

First Up? A nifty little tool called Canva.

What is It?

Canva is a fairly new application for the creation of basically any kind of graphic you could possibly hope for. Think of it as a kind of Photoshop Lite. And it’s free to use!

Why I Use It

Don’t get me wrong, I know my way around Photoshop and spend much of my day CRTL+T-ing everything from onset photographs to vectors. But sometimes, I just don’t want to deal with it – it’s an incredibly powerful tool but there are times when I wish it was easier.

Enter: Canva

It includes tons of templates set to the correct dimensions for things like Facebook posts and ads, blog titles, infographics and more. Setting up an account is incredibly simple and, best of all, free. Included in your account is access to literally thousands of free icons, stock photographs, shapes, charts and graphs. You name it, Canva probably has it.

How to Use It

First, you’ll go through the short sign up process which takes probably 5 minutes at most. Once you’ve logged in, you’re ready to go. You’ll be met with this page:

Along the top, you are given a few options for templates to choose from but if you click on the
More + option, you’re greeted with even more to choose from.

Once you’ve chosen the template you want to work with, you’re taken to the editing screen which gives you choices from already created layouts that you can work off of or you can start from scratch. You can even upload your own images (like your logo, etc.) and incorporate them into your project:

Keep in Mind

While using Canva is free, there are some aspects of their designs that do come with a fee. Their selection of over 1 million stock photographs includes both free and paid choices. The images you have to pay to use, however, only cost $1 and they have a huge selection (seriously. 1 million is pretty insane). You’ll know which images you’ll need to pay for as free images are indicated with a “FREE” marker in the bottom right corner.

The Cool Part!

Canva offers business accounts (Canva for Work) that come with a whole host of upgraded features and toolkits for a price. Within Canva for Work, there’s an amazing feature called Canva for Non-Profits. If you’re a non-profit organization that wants to utilize the more robust paid tools Canva offers you and your organization can apply for a COMPLETELY FREE Canva for Work account. That’s probably the coolest thing ever.

Also, you’ll get access to a vast array of helpful articles from the Canva Design School, including lessons, design inspiration and more. But be warned, you may get lost reading everything they have to offer.

So that’s it for this first installment of Tools of the Trade! We’ll be bringing these to you in the weeks to come. And if there’s an awesome tool you use that you think we should check out, let us know in the comments! I love to try new stuff.

The post Tools of the Trade: Canva appeared first on Engaged Video.

Micro Impressions

We saw a bit of this over the past year, and it’s only going to become more prevalent. Small bits of advertising and content that are quick and easily digestible are going to be a staple of 2016. Mediums like Vine, with a tiny timestamp of only 7 seconds, and SnapChat will become the battleground of the brands. It’s already happening! We see Vines cropping up starring so-called Vine stars with the words “#sponsored” in the description; companies are giving these top content creators products to try out, sample or simply feature in the background of their short videos. SnapChat is also entering the fray. Brands and celebrities have SnapChat accounts that they’re using to interact with their fans or debut a new product. Large companies are reaching out to star SnapChatters to work with them to curate stories and content, like Taco Bell has done as linked above.

Additionally, as Zac points out, there’s a new feature rolling out on Facebook that gives you the ability to have a short video or slideshow of pictures as your profile picture as opposed to just one static image. While that’s a great opportunity for me to showcase my dogs in adorable scarves, it also provides companies with an incredibly unique opportunity to present a series of images in addition to their logo that are important to their brand – and it will be constant. If someone is following your company, they’re going to see that little slideshow every time you post something to your Facebook feed.

Live Streaming Engagement

This is a topic I’m very excited about. It’s provides such an interesting, untapped vein of engagement for companies. Plus, it’s incredibly humanizing. It’s live, and live broadcasts are hard to script so viewers get to see people as they really are.

Sure, Zac and I had a list of questions I was going to ask him and we had topics we wanted to address, but then people started joining our channel and interacting with us. They asked us questions, they gave us “props” (Blab’s version of likes) and they proved to be an actual captive audience interested in the things we were talking about. Livestreaming platforms like Blab, Periscope, Meerkat and even Facebook Live are going to hit in a huge way in 2016. From product demonstrations, to a behind the scenes look at how something is made or produced, companies are already embracing livestreaming. And there’s a huge variety of content to choose from that will only increase in the New Year. I watched a Blab the other day about social media marketing and presenting yourself online and then was able to quickly click over to one about taste-testing craft beers with well-known foodie bloggers and Facebook frequently sends me notifications when companies I follow go live using Facebook’s live feature.

Note: Blab is an awesome new platform, that we’re not affiliated with in any way. I found this great guide to using it and navigating potentially dicey situations – click here to check it out on Social Media Examiner!

Now You!

What are you looking forward to in 2016? Let us know in the comments! And if there’s anything you’d like to see covered in an upcoming EV blog, drop of a comment below as well.

One Last Thing…

Happy New Year from all of us here at Engaged Video!

Thanks for a great year!

The post Looking Ahead: Video Trends appeared first on Engaged Video.

So, here at Engaged Video, we sat down and picked our favorite lists posts from the list post master – Buzzfeed.

Enjoy (in no particular order)!

1. 24 Things You’ll Only Understand if You’re Slightly Obsessed with Traveling
2. 17 Kitchen Cheat Sheets You Should Know About
3. 13 of Your Favorite Christmas Songs Turned Into Drinking Games
4. 21 Parents Who Made Us Laugh in 2015
5. 19 Truths if Iced Coffee is Your Reason for Being
6. 21 Last Minute Tech Gifts You Can Actually Afford!
7. 31 Last Minute Holiday Projects You Can Make Yourself
8. Here are 4 Borderline Genius Waffles You Need to Try
9. 37 of the most Incredible Photos from Australia From 2015
10. 10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Internet Security

You can’t expect me to have spent time on Buzzed and not have taken a quiz either, dear readers. I didn’t disappoint:

Thanks for keeping it weird, Buzzed. You can take the quiz here! Let me know who you get in the comments.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging next week, promise!

The post Lists Posts appeared first on Engaged Video.

It’s so Dark!

Many of our clients run into the problem of shooting their videos in either low-light rooms that diminish the quality of the finished video or they find themselves filming under stark overhead lightning that creates all kinds of strange shadows. Chances are, if you’re producing video content in your office, you’re facing one of these issues:

• Terrible fluorescent lights
• Offices with windows that let in extremely bright natural light
• Objects obstructing natural light that cast shadows on your subject
• Small out-of-the-way offices that get very little light

As we discussed in the last blog on audio and the problems inherent with extremes, the same issues are true in lighting situations. Dark situations can degrade the quality of your video and too much light can create distracting shadows or wash your subject out.

What to Do?

Turn on the light! It may seem obvious, but the quickest solution to lighting problems is to shoot your videos in a well-lit room. You’ll want to make sure the lighting you use is even. Focus your lighting goals around eliminating shadows. Create a bright, well-balanced amount of light on your subject in order to preserve overall video quality. If you do a Google search for “Effective Lighting for Video” you’re going to get a bunch of great tips from a variety of sources. The recommendations you’ll get on lighting equipment will vary widely from: A $15 desk lamp from IKEA to a $400 LED variable lighting kit and bounce panels. Here’s the simple reduction of all that information: find lights that look good in YOUR camera and in YOUR room. Every space is different so play to your needs by testing.

What to Buy?

If you want to step up your lighting game by getting some affordable quality gear, consider the following recommendations from Engaged Video’s founder and video aficionado, Zacory Boatright:

• Softbox Lighting: Softbox lights are really nice at creating well balanced fill light on a subject in dark rooms. The light passes through a simple diffusing material that limits the amount of shadows on the subject by making the light very uniform and even.
• Light Reflectors: Light reflectors are handy when you are already in a moderately well lit space but one side of your subject isn’t very well lit. Simply use the reflector to catch the natural lighting from the sun or another light source and reflect it onto your subject.
• The Ring Light: These are incredibly popular and look amazing on single subject shoots for talking head or explainer videos. Subjects with glasses will get a halo effect on their lenses and it won’t look very good, but for subjects with contacts or no glasses this system creates a super uniform light source on the subjects face that look amazing in almost any camera. Here’s an example of it being used by Pentatonix in the music video, “Daft Punk” – In the first shot you can see how evenly the subject is lit, and you’ll notice the little halo of light on his eyes.
• The Ice Light: The original Ice Light by Westcott is almost $400. This is a cheaper version that accomplishes a lot of the same things at a quarter the price. These LED light tubes are super portable, battery powered and in pairs are some of the best video lights you can buy for the money if you need a portable light kit.
• Ultra Portable Battery Powered LED Lights: If you need something even more portable look into an affordable portable LED light solution. This unit is less than $40 and can literally light a completely darkened room well enough to record really simple videos. You might also consider getting a cheap light diffuser to make standing in front of such a light more tolerable for your subjects.

That’s a Wrap!

No matter where you’re filming your videos, just remember a few things that we’ve talked about in this DIY series:

• Audio: Be mindful of background noise, distortion and pitch issues while recording. If viewers can’t hear or understand the message you’re trying to get across, there’s a good chance they’ll simply stop watching. Some simple additions to your audio arsenal can make for a better quality video.
• Lighting: Make sure to film your videos in a space that isn’t too dark or too bright, as you’ll run the risk of degrading the quality of the video, creating harsh shadows or completely washing out your subject. Try to create even lighting centered on the subject of your video to improve overall quality!

Have a Question?

Have a burning question about video production, social media engagement or building a webpage? Leave a comment below! We’re happy to help and, chances are, we’ll turn it into our next blog.

The post DIY Video Pro Tips: Lighting appeared first on Engaged Video.

If you find yourself on this same path, there are a few things to be aware of before you hit the record button. Today, we’re going to focus on common audio problems you may run into and how to deal with them.

Audio Problems

Background Noise:

Hand-held devices come equipped with microphones that work perfectly well for day-to-day conversations, but when trying to record audio for a video to be posted to your company’s social profiles it can get a little noisy. Specifically, microphones on things like smartphones tend to pick up a lot of background noise that can make your video hard to understand.

Distortion:

Just like they have a hard time cutting out background noise, smartphone microphones always have a hard time handling extremely loud or quiet noises in conversations. The sensitivity of these microphone is easily overwhelmed and extremes in sound volume will cause distortion in your recordings.

Pitch Issues:

Once you’ve addressed background noise and audio distortion, you also have to account for the fact that microphones found in your average smartphone don’t capture either deep and high-pitched voices very well. You’ll notice that they’ll be difficult to understand or some words may even be dropped due to the pitch of the person delivering your message.

What To do

Each of the issues outlined above have simple and often obvious solutions that can be followed to avoid audio issues in your recordings. The reality is that background noise is going to be a problem if you’re in a loud space. The solution to this problem is simply moving your recordings into an alternate location where you can control background noise.

External Audio Recorder

If that isn’t an option for the type of recording you’re doing consider using a secondary device to record audio and mix your video and audio in post-production. Our clients and partners have found a great deal of success in using a TASCAM DR-05 Portable Digital Recorder without any microphone. Simply hit record and hand the device to the subject of your recording and you’ll find that the audio from the Tascam more than makes up for more background noise issues. The same solution can be employed for video recordings that have the potential to be subject to situational audio distortion because of volume or pitch issues. Without any microphones the Tascam recorder is much more flexible at picking up audio in both loud and quiet situations, and has a much more dynamic condenser microphone that is capable of handling extreme audio situations.

Tap The Audio Board

When you’re in a situation that pushes even the limitations of the Tascam’s built in microphones, the unit’s convenient external microphone port will allow you to plug into an audio mixing board at a presentation, conference, concert or other potentially loud event with a lot of background noise. This assumes your recording an event taking place at a venue that utilizes a audio mixing board. In the event that you you can tap in to the board, it will allow you to capture only what is said into the microphones at your event. This will be give you the clearest possible audio with the least amount of work. Many venues will provide audio recording of events at little or no cost if you ask. You can then mix in that audio to your video in post production.

Buy A Microphone

This is the most obvious option and the best solution to solve many audio related problems. Depending on your situation you could purchase an affordable lavalier, boom or shotgun microphone. You should be aware that microphones and their supporting equipment can get very expensive very quickly, but here’s a few affordable options that offer sound quality that is much better than the microphone on your phone.

• Affordable Lavalier Lapel Mic: This affordable option will hook into your smartphone or other camera and provide really decent sound quality and an affordable price. This option is great for individual subject filming when you are setup to record inside the radius of the microphone’s cable reach.
• Affordable On Camera Shotgun Mic: This microphone is designed for use on a camera or other mounting bracket system. There are ways to mount this kind of microphone to a tripod alongside your phone for a more stable recording situation. Feel free to reach out to us for recommendations. Shotgun microphones provide directional audio recording for single subjects and ignore all the background noise. Great for loud environments where you’re doing interviews of single subjects or small groups.
• Better On Camera Shotgun Mic: Same technology as the one listed above except higher quality product. If you’ve got the money to spend, RODE makes some of the best shotgun mics around.
• Affordable Boom Mic: A book mic is simply a shotgun microphone on a pole. With this type of microphone you can position the microphone out of frame and pickup high quality audio from your subject without using a lapel mic. Going this route also requires that you buy a Boom Mic Pole.

What’s Next In The Series?

Next week we’ll continue this discussion by looking at other video quality issues that occur in DIY in house production situations. In the meantime let us know what you think in the comments!

The post DIY Video Pro Tips: Audio appeared first on Engaged Video.

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