Politicians have learned to do it. So have companies – from successful entrepreneurial upstarts to established Fortune 500 companies, as well as trade associations and effective communicators of all kinds.

In this case, it is the use of online video.  Businesses are employing online video today to generate sales through customer testimonials, explain shareholder results, and to keep stakeholders informed of key company developments.

A recent study by Cisco Systems found that in four years over 90% of online consumer content will be video-based.  This, after all, is the YouTube age. According to Cisco, all sectors of business will be utilizing online video for both internal and external communications, including for crisis communications, marketing, branding, positioning, advertising, consumer research, personnel training, the dissemination of quarterly earnings and other financial news, issues advocacy, and more.

For business websites, the shift to video will likely be more dramatic, noticeable, and faster than the transition from radio to television in the 1950’s as a major communications medium. While many in corporate America still see video production as a high-cost endeavor requiring the elite skills traditionally found on Madison Avenue, those days are over. Indeed, the plummeting cost of video rivals the once plummeting cost of personal computers.

In the last few years, for example, high definition quality video cameras, which are easy to operate, have dramatically fallen in price, sometimes by as much as 60% percent. Files are simple to transfer and displaying your content on a website or through e-mail distribution is easily accomplished.

A dynamic industry of online video platform companies has emerged in the past five years, including VOPED, that provides companies with turnkey solutions to convert, store, catalog, publish, and monetize video content online at a low-cost of entry. Pay-Per-View will now allow online publishers to do what cable TV has done for decades.

The upshot of all this is that a creative, emerging company can appear more sophisticated and successful through its online work than a much larger and more established competitor. How?

First, assess how online video can work in tandem with existing marketing or social media programs, or in lieu of initiatives that have been ineffective.

Second, gauge what both competitors and industry peers are doing in this regard, as well as industry associations. There may practices that you want to emulate, or an opportunity to stand above the crowd by launching your own creative and defined project.

Third, keep thinking, monitoring, and tinkering. Online video is not like the old days of printing a brochure and hoping that it will stay current for months or even years. It requires management, updating, new ideas, and creativity – the characteristics customers are looking for in this tough economy.

For many companies, it is now a question of when and not if they will employ and continually improve online video. Whether it is to kick start sales and growth in these trying economic times or to keep-up with competitors as they move forward with online video, the time for many companies to act is now.

Continue the conversation on Facebook: facebook.com/ProactiveCommunications and Twitter: @ProActiveComm @MarkVSerrano

Photo Credit: PixelLogo

If you consider that most CEO’s are aged between their 50’s and early 60’s, then you can assume that most of them have very modest technical skills and virtually no social media skills. This can be a real challenge for digital media leaders in companies across the landscape who have to demonstrate that new media solutions deliver bottom-line value.

When we turn away from challenges, or we feel that we don’t have any challenges to face, it’s a plateau. Some people are satisfied on a plateau. Others get restless because they aren’t being challenged – they need the hills. In a recent blog post, Godin notes that selecting the right hills is as important as finding the hills in the first place.

But the concept can be further distilled, and cycling makes a great example. The greatest challenge in cycling is not the hills, not the flats, not trying to hang on to the wheel of the rider in front of you, but getting out the door and on the bike. I have ridden in horrible weather – freezing cold, snow, sleet, pouring rain that left the road barely visible, and wind that nearly knocks you right off the bike. I have been dusted by senior citizens with a million miles on their legs, who just look back over their shoulder like Lance Armstrong did to demoralize Jan Ullrich in his famous attack up l’Alpe D’Huez in the 2001 Tour de France. But on the return home, cold and tired as I may be, I never regret my decision to get out the door.

This same rule applies to life and career – half of the challenge is getting out the door so you can find, and attack, the hills. This may mean making a cold call. It may be jumping at the opportunity to take on a project that you’ve never done before, simply because of the experience you’ll gain in the process. It may mean voicing your desire to take on a new role within a business or organization.

As communications professionals we are fortunate that opportunities to get out the door and climb some hills are frequent. This is especially true with the notable changes that digital communications present: the ability to self publish content, the rise of video as a communications tool, and in the growth of mobile device users who share and receive information in real-time, to name a few.

So get out the door and find some hills. Ideally hills that you can make it over, but as Godin points out – just barely.

Continue the conversation on Facebook: facebook.com/ProactiveCommunications and Twitter: @ProActiveComm @mattwbennett

Thanks for the help:

Seth Godin: “An endless series of difficult but achievable hills”

Traction Bikes: 10 Most Memorable Moments of Lance’s 7 Tour Wins

What is your primary way of communicating?  Most people would probably say email.  Teenagers would say texting.  Email is a unique medium, lacking all the nonverbal clues we receive by communicating face-to-face or even by phone. Studies have shown that a substantial amount of communications is nonverbal - facial expressions, body language, tone, nuance, intonation and sarcastic wit.  Using technology to communicate propagates misinterpretation in many cases, and frankly, we are not careful enough to avoid these misinterpretations because email feels so instant, so easy and accessible.

Have you or someone you know ever hit the “send” button, only to regret it later? Have you misinterpreted someone’s email or post because you did not fully understand their intentions or the background? Napoleon said “An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.” I would paraphrase that to say “What can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.” This is a good thing to keep in mind when choosing your vehicle for communication.

With all the new tools and technology at our fingertips, we must revisit how we operate to account for the benefits as well as the pitfalls. It’s easy to rely on email for client communication, but it doesn’t always serve you well. E-mail is good for facts, quick broadcast of information to large audiences, and overcoming long distances. Face-to-face meetings work best, the phone is usually an acceptable substitute, and Skype-type conferencing calls are gaining favor.

Bottom line, perception as a result of our words or actions is important. As communications professionals, we are challenged to get to the point and be clear in what we want our target audiences to do or think. As we all move more and more into the constant stream of information in abbreviated form via social media and mobile technology, it only adds to the necessity to be clear in our communications in both the professional and personal setting. Don’t let what you want to communicate get “lost in translation.”

Image Credit: Core Integrated Technologies

The most recent example of this in consumer relations came at the height of the holiday season when an understandably disappointed customer of FedEx posted security video showing a courier dropping a computer monitor over a gate at the customer’s home. The monitor broke and the video went global.

FedEx could have responded in any number of bad ways. They could have gone insular and issued a terse statement that they would handle the incident as a private, personnel matter. Instead the company used the same medium that reported their PR problem to deal with it directly. While the nearly two–minute response video (see: FedEx PR Response) still comes off as corporate-speak, it was posted just two days after the delivery incident and four days before Christmas.

While the original delivery video totals 8 million views and the response from FedEx has earned a half million, and the damage was already done through shock headlines, FedEx proved that video communications can quickly stifle a PR crisis.

Though it seems that the poor economy has slowed the embrace of online video as a communications platform for many sectors, there are simple steps to leverage the medium for visibility and richer communications with both internal and external audiences. The following are just a few initial steps that organizations can take to catch up:

1 – Invest in Technology

A small investment in a video camera and a proper logo screen is all you need to get started. For larger organizations, investing in a “micro-studio”, which includes an HD camera, studio lighting, a green screen, iPad teleprompter and microphone has never been more affordable.

2 – Assign Ownership

Staff responsibility for visual and social media requires only modest training to produce professional video messaging and post online with a quick turn-around. More advanced productions require state-of-the-art video editing software such as Final Cut Pro or after-effects software such as After Effects. This is best trusted to professionals, but you can still keep the cost reasonable by producing the raw video in your own micro-studio and then providing it to a video firm for post-production.

3 – Tell Your Story

Script development may be the most important part of producing your video to deliver the right impact, particularly where the stakes are high. At the same time, and especially if you are trying to appeal to the X or Y generations, sometimes it is best to be candid and unscripted. This might be accomplished with capturing video footage of a public event or conducting an interview with your organization’s messenger – in which case you want the message to be delivered as conversationally as possible. Tell it like it is. The more retrained you may be from concerns about legal liability, or the more you focus on what matters to you versus the concerns of your customers or stakeholders, the less candid it may appear.

4 – Use Visuals

The Senior Vice President at FedEx did well delivering a scripted message, but he could have done better by showing us the faces of some of the thousands of FedEx couriers who follow the rules and deliver value to their customers every day instead of telling us about them. Viewers might have accepted the message more if they were reminded of the image most of us see every day – couriers who hustle and bustle with a positive demeanor and do not toss fragile items over fences to check-off a line on their list.

5 – Connect and Follow-Through

Whether you are dealing with an internal or external audience, establishing a dialogue with them can lead to greater understanding and better business plans. While all organizations should establish a YouTube page as an element of their social media portfolio, large organizations should not settle for the embeddable video platform (EVP) from YouTube which watermarks all of your content with the YouTube watermark. Instead you should consider a subscription-based EVP account like those provided by our tech affiliate, VOPED – video platform solutions, which puts control of your content in your hands. When you post video messages, make sure you place complementary posts on all of your social media platforms and encourage all of your staff to do the same with their accounts. Blog postings can reinforce your message in text to complement the video as well and provides a very important method of allowing stakeholders to voice their concerns and for you to follow-up with more reinforcing messaging.

As recent studies have shown, consumer web content is increasingly video-based. Despite the struggling economy, there are great and affordable ways to embrace online video as a communications platform, and it is better to get your organization to catch up and embrace the medium now before a crisis hits.

Continue the conversation on Facebook: facebook.com/ProactiveCommunications and Twitter: @ProActiveComm @markvserrano

A weak or inconsistent brand will get lost in the overcrowded digital marketplace, whereas a strong brand will stand apart – instilling confidence, establishing industry leadership, building trust, while distinguishing itself from its competitors. Think Apple. (Brand Value = over $153 billion according to 2011 Millward Brown report on global power brands)

As the digital space becomes more and more influential, the dynamics are continually changing with regards to how organizations build their brands online.  For example, the rise of social media has shifted the power from the organization to the customer, and while some organizations are anxious about this dynamic change, others are optimistic about the enormous opportunity to quickly and efficiently develop potential brand loyalists and ambassadors.

Organizations have reason to be optimistic, as the digital media space brings unprecedented opportunities for building brands online due to the instant access organizations have to customers 24 hours a day as well as and the ability to engage interactively with these customers in a two-way conversation. It’s an exciting time to be involved in digital communications, and the potential for brand building online appears to be limitless.

Below are a few tips for building your brand online:

Be Strategic

Develop a clear brand building strategy and stick to it. Not every new digital tool will help you achieve your objectives. Remember: Who is my target audience? What do I want them to do?

Be Clear

No matter how complex your product, the messaging of who you are should always be simple and clear.

Be Consistent

Your message should be the same whether it’s your website, your Facebook page or your company LinkedIn profile.

Be Customer-Centric

Remember, the customer is in control of your online brand. Engage them and ask them for feedback on your brand.

Be Genuine

Customers can spot a phony and may be sensitive to over-promotion.

Be Social

Social media is meant to be a two-way conversation. Remember, you are building a relationship.

Continue the conversation on Facebook: facebook.com/ProactiveCommunications and Twitter: @ProActiveComm @davidneilarnold

Image Credit: Mobot

But there still seems to be a divide on the style and quality of video. In most cases this is the norm: think talking dog. And often, it’s appropriate for the story and audience. Beyond that, it seem there’s big-shot broadcast and million-dollar news. But there’s actually a lot of room in between.

Regardless of the medium, the value and importance of the written message is king. But in today’s visual world of the Internet, the delivery is also important. In scanning across the billions of video offerings, first impressions really can make a difference.

The problem is most people are intimidated by video and believe that anything beyond their smart phone is really not affordable or even feasible. While it does require some initial investment and planning, there is a growing number of companies and sites that can guide you in a simple and attractive setup that will continually pay you back in the months and years ahead.

So don’t hesitate… Be a trendsetter in your industry and jump into a medium that’s highly effective, attractive, and here to stay.

Continue the conversation on Facebook: facebook.com/ProactiveCommunications and Twitter: @ProActiveComm

Whatever your take on his black turtlenecks, Steve Jobs left a legacy of coolness. I have never considered myself a hard-core Apple enthusiast. But in looking back, I have been undeniably impacted by the products and ideas that continue to make Apple an incredible company. Here are a few:

• The Apple IIe. First contact with a computer, elementary school computer lab. Oregon Trail.
• The Apple II+. Predecessor to the Apple IIe – first home computer. Adventure games in green text, cursor scrolling across the screen with messages like: “You have just reached the end of a hall. Do you turn right or left?”
•  The Apple IIGS, second home computer – color. World Games and Where is Carmen Sandiego.
• The Second Generation iPod. An entire music library in pocket.
• The iPhone 3GS. Best device I have ever owned. Google Maps. Runkeeper. Cleartune. Angry Birds. Pandora, etc.
• iPod Touch. Nearly everything the iPhone can do with wireless. Face to face Skype-ing with our friends and relatives, near and far. My daughter, not yet 2-years old, picks it up and navigates like a pro to her favorite app.
• iTV, iPad, Macbook Air, iPhone 5: Wanted.

This retrospection was spurred by a chance visit the other day to the U.S. Patent Trade Office in Alexandria, Virginia, where there’s a tribute to Steve Jobs: a row of thirty, giant iPhones, each displaying 12 patents filed by Apple for products that Jobs helped create. If you get a chance, check it out.

How have you been impacted or influenced by the coolness of Steve Jobs and Apple?

Related Links:

“There’s a Run on the Steve Jobs Turtleneck” – Gawker

“Steve Jobs tribute exhibit on display at the US Patent Museum” – Digital Trends

ProActive Communications was ranked fourth on the Washington Post’s list of 200 Regional Companies of Importance.

“This selection as number four among the top 200 Regional Companies of Importance by Washington Post readers is a true honor to be shared by all of the professionals on the ProActive team,” said ProActive Communications Founder and President, Mark Serrano. “This year has marked a new pinnacle for the business. We celebrated our 15^th Anniversary of providing expert public affairs, media relations, and strategic and crisis communications services. We also established ProActive Digital, a new practice that formalizes our digital public relations and online communications services, including professional video productions, content development and online advocacy platforms, and new and social media programs, among others.”

To celebrate its 15^th Anniversary in business, ProActive recently launched a new company website featuring a promotional video titled, “Meet ProActive Communications,” which provides a view into the company’s business philosophy, service offerings and professional talent.

Below are quotes from two Washington Post readers who nominated ProActive Communications:

“They deliver the goods quickly and without excuses and baloney.”

“After 15 years in business, ProActive has effectively served the local economy, providing expert businesses development assistance to local companies and creating jobs for local residents.” 

More about the nomination can be found on the Washington Post’s Capital Business website.

Many people believe that your name and title do not create you, you create it. Others disagree and believe the opposite – you are what you’re named. I believe that you create your name (many names have become eras, i.e. Freud became the Freudian era). For instance, I had my son’s name, Jacob, picked out before I had even met him. Now, I look at him and believe that he makes the name.

Upon returning to work in September, I came in needing to work with others to create a nearly brand new role to fit my new job title. It was almost like starting a new job – at my old job. My title at ProActive is Multimedia Associate, but that does not mean that I will not do any other jobs and requests that are needed of me just because they’re not under the category of multimedia. I’m also involved in business development as well as with ProActive’s online video platform affiliate, VOPED. I’m wearing a few different hats and creating my own role and title in the process.

I was named Mom on June 27th, a title that I was not sure how I’d create until I met Jake. Once again, I believe that you create it. Of course, maternal instincts have really helped out, but now I feel I’ve created my role. This name and title have been the most challenging I’ve ever had, but I take every obstacle with knowledge and pride.

What does your name mean? Did you help create the meaning or did you fall into it? What’s your title – is it straightforward or do you branch out into other roles and responsibilities?

Continue the conversation on Facebook at facebook.com/ProActiveCommunications and Twitter at @ProActiveComm.

Photo: Mike Caguin