This exhibit at the Whangarei Art Museum was shot in about an hour and edited in about 3 hours. It was a special cut down price that suited their needs perfectly.

This was a day shoot at a B&B on the Tutukaka coast. It also includes footage we had previously shot on another project and have kept as library footage. This is an example of a custom location shoot.

Here is a good example of a gallery video. This one has no voice over and happens to be a Real Estate example but it works just as well for product catalogues and simple web promotions. This is a bargain product that unlocks the world of online video and YouTube to your business. A snip at only $145 (or $100 for regular real estate promotions).

A web video is becoming more and more important for a strong online presence. Check out this video to see why and take a look at our range of solutions to this problem!

This project involved 3 videos. One as a local area promotion and the others detailing the 2 guest options. I filmed it over a day on site and the other area footage was taken from my library of coastal footage up and down the Tutukaka coast. All three will become part of the website under construction. This is the Overview video.

This is the main promotion for Nebeska Vala. It details the options for the main home stay, complete with all its luxury facilities. As mentioned in tht eoverview promotion this involved a day of filming on site and extra footage from our library of Tutukaka coast footage.

This is the second in the Nebeska Vala series of videos. This one details the Beach Cabin option.

www.whangareiartmuseum.co.nz

Art and religion have been intertwined since the first glimmerings of human history but in New Zealand – somehow despite our missionary colonialist connections, any major survey of the visual arts in this genre has been entirely minimal. Credo and Quest exhibits New Zealand Art on the subject of faith in all its forms.

This sun soaked 4078m² section offers stunning views over Sandy Bay, out to the Poor Knights, Whananaki and beyond. With a gentle slope, all weather access drive and power & phone handy to the boundary this section offers a golden opportunity to design and build your dream home now. Imagine being able to stroll down the drive for a surf or play with the kids on their boogie boards. So handy to other beautiful beaches, scenic walks, boat ramps, cafés, fishing and diving. Now voted one of the top 3 coastlines in the world means the Tutukaka Coast will only grow in value over time. Don’t kick yourself later – get in now!! $920,000 (water views).

Alan Dowsett
licensed real estate agent
mobile: 021 244 5434
a/hrs: 09 434 4413
office: 09 438 8777
email: aland@glenbarry.co.nz

http://www.whangareiartmuseum.co.nz/

Exhibition of paintings by the artist James Nairn and his colleaugues who developed an indigenous, impressionist style of painting at a rustic cottage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

When it comes to video SEO you have two different audiences: the humans and the search engine robots. It’s important to cater for both groups. Aiming just at robots means that even if you appear on a search query, people won’t click on you, or if they do, you may give them a bad or confusing impression and actually do damage with your efforts. Ultimately it’s the human you need to get responding to you. However to aim at a human and ignore the robot makes it a lot harder to even get in front of the human in the first place. Most human use search engines (robots) to seek out the material they are after and it’s vital to appear toward the top of the searches they perform. Below are the ways to use YouTube to optimize your video for both humans and robots!

YouTube’s Title

The YouTube video title is vital. It should be something that makes people want to click on it AND be full of the kind of words people are likely to search for. No simple task! If you upload a video promoting a New Zealand car sales business, for instance, you might title it “Cars for sale at incredible prices across New Zealand” rather than “ABC cars limited video promotional”. That way it registers both keywords as well as with a human browsing YouTube.

YouTube’s description

The next major consideration is the description of the video. This should contain a link from YouTube to where you hope to drive traffic. This could be your website or perhaps a facebook page etc. It’s best to have this in the first line of the description to make it visible even when the description box is collapsed. The rest of the description should be for both humans and robots. Fill it with your chosen keywords/phrase as well as make it a good summary of the video’s content.

YouTube tags

You can add tags to your video when you upload them. This is your chance to simply list your keywords, separated by commas. These are just for the robots to help them catalogue your video.

YouTube closed captions

When you upload a video to YouTube you also have the option of uploading a text file of the audio as closed captions. This allows the hard of hearing (or anyone) to turn on the subtitles. YouTube analyses the text file itself and matches the words as they are spoken. This is far from perfect but it does mean that each word spoken can be read by the robots and so it is vital for them, even more than for the small proportion of humans who like to read them. This feature makes YouTube a really great tool and gives it an advantage over other platforms.

YouTube’s Overlaying links or captions

You can’t link out to other sites but you can link to other YouTube videos. For business purposes I think these overlaying captions and links look a bit tacky but they can help with video seo if you don’t mind them appearing on your video.

YouTube video responses

You can assign your video as a “video response” to other popular YouTube videos. If you can find a video that is related then you can post your video as a video response. You do this by signing in and clicking in the comments box and then select “attach a video”. Each of your videos can only be responding to one other video and the owner of that video has to approve of your video first. But if you do get approval it means you can get traffic from viewers of that video.

YouTube search

Although this isn’t strictly anything to do with your optimizing, it’s important to know how popular YouTube’s own search bar is. It now outranks ask.com, yahoo etc. to climb to the second biggest search engine on the internet. Google automatically catalogues all YouTube videos too!

YouTube’s thumbnail

You don’t get a totally free choice with this. This doesn’t affect the robots but can affect the number of clicks you get from human traffic. You can only select the thumbnail at either 25%, 50% or 75% of the way through the video. If the thumbnail is important make sure the visual at one of those points of the video is compelling.

YouTube optimization conclusion

By following the above guidelines you can make sure you get the most of your videos by maximizing available keywords and exposure on this truly massive internet platform. The more videos you post the more back links, chance of exposure and chance of getting YouTube viewers. If you want to know if YouTube is the right platform for your business video take a look at this blog on video platforms.

Thanks for reading my blog on video SEO for YouTube, please comment or share below!

Broadly speaking you have 3 options for choosing a platform: publish on your own site, publish on a 3rd party site (YouTube, Vimeo etc.) or publish the same video on each platform. A fourth option could be to use a paid video hosting platform such as Viddler but that’s usually only for companies who produce a lot of videos (not our readership ). The 3 options are explored below:

Platform option 1 – Your own website

Here people have to actually visit your site to watch the video. This platform has pros and cons (see below).

Platform Pros

• You get the web traffic
• You can control the user experience
• You can create your own flash player (colours etc.)
• No 3rd party watermark/logo
• No links to other sites (such as YouTube related videos at the end)

Platform cons

• You can’t appear on YouTube (or similar) search results
• You can’t appear on YouTube (or similar) related videos
• You have to host the video on your own server (space and bandwidth considerations)
• You may not have such good statistical reporting on viewership etc.
• You must submit a video sitemap to be picked up
• You need to be able to create your own player (for flash)
• You can’t close caption it (seo boost)
• You can’t pick up comments, likes etc.
• Harder for the video to go viral due to lack of sharing options (unless on a blog post etc.)
• You haven’t got the option to make it possible for others to embed
• Your site will probably not have the “page rank” of YouTube etc. for video searches in Google.

Platform conclusion

Having the video on your own site/platform allows you to have more control, keep people locked into your site and make sure the video is just a part of the overall web experience not a stand alone thing. However that comes at the cost of exposure to your video. If you aim is not primarily to get people to watch the video but to improve the experience of your site this could be the best option. You will sacrifice views of the video for a gain to the website itself (dynamism, information etc.). If this is what you are considering ask yourself this question: “If someone watches the video on another site and doesn’t click the link to visit my website, have I gained anything?” If the answer to this question is “no” then this could well be the option for you. This option is when the video’s primary aim is to help your other online content and not promote itself.

Platform option 2 – A 3rd party website

Platform cons

Video SEO stands for Video search engine optimisation. It is the process of making a video easy for a search engine (such as Google) to pick up and categorise properly for people when they search. The aim of this is to get your video in front of your target audience and to appear as close to the top of the pile as possible to attract the most attention. The second thing is to also make the video appealing to the human eye so that once in the top section of the pile, it gets viewed.

Usually after the video has been viewed the desire is to then drive that traffic to a website (your website). Of course you want your video to add value to your company simply by being watched but you often also want that video to send people to a place where they either learn more about your services or even purchase something direct. Note: Statistics show that online advertising of all kinds does improve online sales BUT it actually has a much bigger impact on sales by other means, like retail stores etc. Don’t just look for an online correlation when judging your seo.

The seo problem with video

The problem with video is that search engine robots can’t “watch” the video. So they don’t know what the content is and therefore can’t index it properly. If the video is on your own site then the robot doesn’t even know it has a video unless you let it know. That means your video won’t show up as video content for things like Google “video results”.

The solution

The solution is video seo

The processes involved in video seo depend on the platform you use to publish it. Read what platform should I publish my video on to help with that decision. I then go into the ways to optimise your video content via one or other platforms in other blog posts: Optimisation via YouTube or Optimisation via your own site. When done right, video is a powerful tool to help seo your site as it unlocks far more places for your website to be found and to send traffic to your site from these places. Also video is a very popular medium for sharing via social platforms and so its viral potential is hugely greater than text based media. There are far more reasons than this on why using video is a must as part of good seo today. See 11 reasons why video is important.

Please comment below and thanks for reading my blog on video seo!

Video gets remembered (point 8)

Why online video is important

When a person searches online they operate in a very different way to a customer who walks in from the street. An online browser usually has a specific thing that they are looking for and they search for it. They want to get relevant information as quickly as possible. Their attention span is very short and they can click away in an instant. The reasoning for this is obvious. You are one of probably thousands of sites that could help them. If you don’t do what they want quickly they can move on at the click of a button and look at the next search result. They have no loyalty to you and time is of the essence. Video is an important tool in the battle for people’s precious online attention.

Here are a few of the reasons why online video is important

1. Search engines

Video is important with optimising your website for search engines like Google. There are lots of ways video helps with this. I go into greater details about this in my other blog posts.

2. YouTube and similar sites

YouTube is now the second largest search engine behind Google – an important fact to remember! If you don’t have a video you can’t be on YouTube and you can’t reach any of the people who are searching on this huge website.

3. External links

By having video on other sites you can link traffic back to your site by using external links.

4. Useful keywords

The keyword “video” outranks nearly any other keyword you can think of. For an example run this test. Go to http://www.google.com/insights/search/ and type “video” into the top spot. See how many words you can find that have a larger global search rate. Post answers in the comments. PS when I tried it, “video” even outranked “porn” and “sex” although after some searching we found “lyrics” a tiny bit higher. For website keywords “youtube” and “facebook” are pretty much neck and neck.

5. Social media/viral marketing

Social media often thrives with video. It is easy to share a video and a well created video has a lot of potential to go viral – more than a blog post and far more than a website! Videos can be shared via Facebook, Youtube or even good old email!

6. User preference

Many people prefer to watch video than read text. It is a quick way of getting media rich information about what they want to know. They may turn off from a text/image only site.

7. Video is emotional

Video material can often pull on people emotionally more effectively than text or even a photograph. Music, expression, tone of voice… all these things connect with us. Emotion is an important marketing force.

8. Video gets remembered

By combining sight and sound video reaches us on multiple levels and as a result “sticks” better. Scientists have found the more senses that information engages the more of it is retained (see graph). It’s important people not only view but remember your content!

9. Video can be the most appropriate medium

Some things just work better as a video. Things like testimonials from clients. It’s one thing to have a printed paragraph of someone singing your praises but to see and hear a normal person enthusiastically ooze about your brand… that’s an entirely different thing!

10. With video you can be a star and build connection

If you can appear on a video and a viewer hears you speak, sees your body language and senses your passion, she will feel connected to you. We invest energy into celebrities and personalities because we feel that we somehow know them. Simply by being viewed online you will be building a connection with the individual and earning some important loyalty from them, even if they are unaware of it!

11. Video can create an interactive world

Video is more and more commonplace online. People are familiar with it and consume a LOT of it. It can be hard to compete without an equal footing. Text and images will always be the mainstay of a website but in all likelihood you have that already. By not utilising video as well you are probably missing out on a lot of searches and clients you might otherwise have reached with your marketing efforts.

WARNING

I do however feel it’s important to give you a warning. A video, like anything else you post online, represents you. Make sure it sends out the right message. It must harmonise with your other online marketing effort and be of a high quality. Video doesn’t need to be expensive to be high quality but it does require a simple approach if the budget is small. In today’s world video is vital, but fortunately it’s also affordable! InSite media can create online video content from as little as $145. Click here to see our products.

If you want to keep in touch with video and other online changes pertinent to business then please join our facebook page or subscribe to our email list. Discussion and sharing of ideas are most welcome!

Thanks for reading about why video is important!

http://www.barfoote.com

The Barfoote Group, (a collection of companies: Barfoote Construction, Northland Structural Steel and Northland Precast Concrete), are experts in all forms of building: agricultural, commercial, residential as well as iconic structures like public toilets, railway bridges and swimming pools. Based in Whangarei, Northland they have completed projects not only in New Zealand, but around the world. Contact these building experts for your project!

“We bought amalgamated three farms 3 years ago, and we started thinking about our systems and how we needed to centralise things, that we needed to bring the whole system together so we started thinking we might need a new cow shed.

Except that all changed on the 16th June last year when, at 9.30 at night our cow shed burnt down.

Big ball of flames. Absolutely massive. And the whole cow shed was completely destroyed, so I got hold of Trevor Barfoote’s contact number.

I called him at 8 o’clock the next morning. An hour and a half later he was at our farm talking to us, assisting us, talking through different ideas, giving us options, assuring us that they could help.

The information they gave us was just spot on. And then he said, “Look, we can have this done in 5 to 6 weeks”. And when it came down to it from our first cut of the pit down to when our cow shed was up and fully functional in regards to the building construction… 5 weeks! Absolutely amazing. When they say they can be there and they say they can do it… they’ll be there and they’ll do it!”

http://www.prestigerealty.co.nz/shop/Residential/4719.html
Property ID: 4719
Price: Sale by negotiation

Only a minutes walk onto the golden sands of Milford Beach and the Milford shopping mall. This large family home is situated on a prime 1071m2 full site. The original single level residence, built in the 1940′s, was extended with an upper level added in the 1980′s to create the spacious home that it is today. At entry level you find a large kitchen/dining plus formal dining room and a large separate formal lounge, also a generous home office/study/utility room and bathroom. Upstairs are four very large bedrooms, master suite plus main bathroom and another living room adjacent to the master bedroom that could easily be a fifth bedroom. Large double garage plus separate third garage or studio. So much potential for the new owners. C.V $1,950,000.

Prestige Real Estate International Ltd
Agent: Brent Westland

http://www.prestigerealty.co.nz/shop/Residential/4724.html
Property ID: 4724
Price: $1,047,000

You will have to judge for yourself, but we think this apartment on the ground floor of ‘The Georgian’ is one of the best to come to the market in a long time. Originally the developers own apartment it has benefited from many extra features the developer added. Situated on the northern side of the block, every room whether living or bedrooms, opens out onto your own fully fenced exclusive use garden. Imagine you can still feel the grass between your toes any time you like. Beautifully appointed with quality chattels throughout, this apartment will bring out the entertainer in you. Its many features include an upgraded kitchen with granite benches, integrated appliances, loads of cupboards / storage, all designed to bring the enjoyment back into creating great dishes for your friends and family. The open plan living room provides excellent space for all of your furniture, a cosy gas fireplace and special ceiling lighting to set the mood. It flows seamlessly to the formed patio where you will love lighting up the BBQ or just relaxing in the sun. There are three good size bedrooms, one of which has been converted by the current owners to be a formal dining room (Easily converted back as wardrobe still in place) with the master enjoying a well appointed ensuite and walk in wardrobe and of course access to the garden. ‘The Georgian’ is well known in the local area because of its proximity to the beach (about 50 metres) , its impressive concrete construction, the full security it offers , a gym ,an elevator and with this apartment two car parks and a lock up. Mairangi Bay is a great place to live with excellent shops, supermarket, restaurants, cafes, buses and the beach, all a within a flat walk from ‘The Georgian’. As a bonus with the redevelopment of Mairangi Bay Beach and the extending of the reserve, the up coming removal of ‘The White House’ opposite the beach will add privacy, openness, light and to a degree sea views to this already stunning apartment. Come and see for yourself, you be the judge but be quick. Call now for a private viewing.

Prestige Realty Ltd
Agents: Mark and Deborah Finnigan

http://www.prestigerealty.co.nz/shop/Residential/4718.html
Property ID: 4718
Price: Sale by negotiation

You’ll love the location, its just a quick walk to the beach (you can hear the waves), and a leisurely stroll to Mairangi Bay shops and all its cafes. This striking 285sqm home, built in 2008 of rendered brick and weatherboard construction by a reputable local builder, combines cutting-edge architectural design with an excellent layout for family living and a warm and welcoming feel from the moment you step inside. Beautifully proportioned and superbly finished throughout, light-filled, sunny, living spaces flow to outdoor terraces basking in a northerly aspect and sheltered for year-round entertaining. The gourmet kitchen, with quality European appliances, forms the focal point of the spacious living, where entertaining is a pleasure. Features include: On ground level – 2 living areas including open family/dining and a spacious lounge with gas fire; a double bedroom, and bathroom. On the upper level – a 3rd living area; 3 more generous bedrooms, including a sumptuous master suite offering close sea views, a full-sized luxury ensuite bathroom and a walk-through wardrobe, and a 3rd family bathroom. Set in stunning, fully landscaped, low maintenance gardens, with close proximity to excellent schools including Rangitoto College.

Prestige Realty Ltd
Agent: Craig Croswell