Month: July 2014

How to Create a Video Marketing Series

A video marketing series can help your marketing efforts in several ways.

Design with a Video Marketing Series in Mind

Play Computer Key In Blue For Playing Media

When you’re planning your video, consider developing a series of videos to build awareness and to align with the often varying needs of your customers. Here are just a few of the reasons planning a series can really amplify the effects of your video marketing:

  • Keeps your message concise and consistent
  • Aligns your message(s) with different customer needs
  • Brings viewers back to older videos
  • Creates another ‘touchpoint’ with customers
  • Focuses on new features and use-cases
  • Let’s look at these in more detail, starting with your message.

One tip you’ll consistently read in my blog is prepare. Knowing what you’re going to talk about ahead of time can really help your efforts. The more time you spend in pre-production, the less time you’ll spend in post- production. When you start your series, make sure you say what number in the series it is. If it is a predefined length, say “part three of my five part series on…” This will let people know that if they find the middle episode, they may want to go back and start with the first one. Also, they will know if they’re “committing” themselves to a long series. Three to five episodes is a good number.

Optimize Your Tags

Utilize your own tags (keywords) as well as those suggested by YouTube.
Utilize your own tags (keywords) as well as those suggested by YouTube.

Once people find out, and they like it, they’ll look for more in the Related Videos section. If they can digest three or five at once, you’ll have them hooked.

Read more at Marketing Profs

Tags are one of the most powerful tools on YouTube, and I’m convinced that they are often overlooked by newbs. Tag as many relevant keywords as you can think of. Use the “auto suggest” on YouTube, but don’t be afraid to use others. Sometime I find the auto-suggest tags a bit wordy. Here is the power tip for a series: If you want your other videos in the series to be more likely to show up in the related videos sidebar, use a unique – or several unique – tags for your video. I like to use both the name of the series, with and without spaces, as well as any hashtag abbreviation you might want to use in your twitter marketing efforts.

Show Clips from Other Parts of the Series

A video end card with thumbnials of other videos will increase your views and watch time.
A video end card with thumbnials of other videos will increase your views and watch time.

Much like old serialized movies, you want to have a little bit of a “cliffhanger” at the end of your video. I don’t mean to leave a major point of your video unanswered, but tell viewers what to expect in the next episode. In addition, add thumbnail insets of other episodes in the ending of the video. Under these thumbnails, you can put the title and a link. Make sure you don’t skip this next step:

Annotate Your Video

YouTube annotations, to be honest, are a great tool that has even more potential than what it’s currently being used for. For those of you who don’t know, “annotations” are clickable labels and buttons that you can add over the image of your video. If you’ve been on YouTube on your computer, I’m sure you’ve seen these. However, they don’t show up on iOS devices, such as iPhones, iPads, etc. Nor is there any way to create them in your video on those devices – it must be done from a desktop Mac or PC.

Even with all of those caveats, I still strongly encourage you to add them to your video. You can make a frame around the thumbnails that links directly to the video that is being mentioned. You can also add a “subscribe” button so that viewers will receive notification when you post new videos.

Related Links on How to Create a Video Marketing Series

MarginNote Reader for iPad Review

MarginNote for iPad Review

I have been using Margin Note for iPad lately to take notes in eBooks (ePub) and PDFs. This review is very good and highlights many of the features of MarginNote, but there are several features that are REALLY important and powerful that I feel the author left out.

What is MarginNote for iPad?

MarginNote for iPad
MarginNote for iPad makes your book notes simple and organized

Other productivity apps don’t let users see their notes and their main document text at the same time, However, MarginNote Reader is totally different and completely better! Now, users can see their notes and main document text all at once, without having to deal with distracting or annoying pop-ups. It’s a fundamentally more intuitive and productive way to get anything done, whether at school or at work. – MarginNote Website

In a nutshell, I think it is the best solution yet (that I’ve found) to emulate the usefulness of writing in the margins in a “real” book. Better, in fact, since you can write as much as you want in the “margin” and not run out of space. And it can backup your notes to several cloud services.

The publisher is also very responsive to inquiries, which is good because I had a few questions. One question I asked recently was if I could create one outline or mind map from several books. I am researching a single topic with multiple sources, and want to compile them together. He said you can’t exactly, but you can copy notes into other books. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will be very soon.

How Does MarginNote Work?

Margin note can open ePubs and PDF via iTunes, WiFi, Dropbox and the iOS “open in…” command. I used Dropbox primarily to get my books in by putting all the PDFs and ePubs I wanted into a folder together.

In working with the app, and a little experimentation, I am beginning to prefer PDFs over ePubs when I have a choice. MarginNote gives you a few more tools when dealing with PDF documents. When working with PDFs, not only have you do the typical highlight, underline and notes, but you can create a “box highlight” around a section of the book. This is great if you want to make a note in regards to a photo in the book because it “clips” the scribble you make into the Evernote note.

MarginNote Scribble
MarginNote for iPad allows you to “scribble” in PDF files, and the section you marked up syncs to your Evernote Notebook for the book.

MarginNote and Evernote

The biggest reason I wanted to try this particular app is a feature the MakeUseOf article doesn’t even make much mention of: Evernote Sync! This app syncs your highlights and notes to your Evernote account by creating an Evernote Notebook with the filename of the book. It then puts all those notebooks into a Notebook Stack together. I especially like that the notes have a clear “Make your notes below this line” comment, so you know to be careful and note.

Conclusion

While many people will still prefer to take notes in the margin of their bound volumes, I am quickly moving to buying as many of my books in a DRM-free ebook format. (or you can Google DRM removal, if you so choose. I am not responsible for your actions if you do such things.) And I will rest assured that all my notes will be safely synced and backed up on the Evernote Server.

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