Tag Archives: engagement object

‘Run ‘n Gun Videography’ — Amazon reviews

February 5, 2015 By in D) Reviews, Run 'N Gun Videography Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 19 Comments

Run 'n Gun Videography

 

Some newsy stuff.

The video review of the Sony PXW X70 completed its journey from page 26 on a Google search to the number 1 video spot in just under 2 1/2 months. Still annoyed by the couple of sound faults in that video but strangely in just under 17,000 views to date, no one has complained. That’s good because that was a 26 hour upload on a tenuous internet connection.

Run ‘n Gun Videography–The Lone Shooter’s Survival Guide has now been out 5 weeks, with 125 copies sold. New territory for me. Not sure how that rates. Here are the reviews so far:

 

This book is an amazing find! It is one of those rare gems … 5 Feb. 2015

By WisePurchaser – Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

This book is an amazing find! It is one of those rare gems that occasionally crosses one’s path, if at all. I say this because the author has distilled a wide assortment of complex issues related to videography into one easy-to-understand source. The author, Joe Caneen, is a veteran videographer with years of industry experience – 30 years and counting, in fact. Yet, unlike many seasoned authorities of this caliber who usually get locked into trade convention or spout out-of-reach techno jargon, Mr. Caneen is refreshingly unpretentious and accessible. So, if you are a beginner videographer who values a didactic approach that fuses intellect with common-sense, that balances artistic technique with practicality, then the good spirits of fate have led you to the right place. Read this text! Learn the many nuggets of wisdom contained within! And you will most assuredly thank me later.

By Kenneth Mullinge

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

I’ve just finished reading Joe’s book and I have to say I found it very enjoyable and easy to read. He points out a number of things that I found very useful, the single main point which he makes (and I will not describe here) was more than worth the cost of the book alone. Definitely buy this book if you are interested in becoming a better videographer.

Kenny M

5.0 out of 5 stars

A no-nonsense book stuffed full of very good advice and tips 16 Jan. 2015

By J. J. Robertson

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

A no-nonsense book stuffed full of very good advice and tips. Joe Caneen really knows his trade and gets straight to the point with his writing. I wish I’d read this book years ago instead of learning the hard way by making lots of mistakes!

5.0 out of 5 stars

The most inspiring video teacher I have found! 6 Jan. 2015

By Justin Opinion – Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

I have waited patiently… oh who am I kidding, I’ve never been patient about anything! But I’ve waited for this book to be finished because – well, because I had no choice. But Joe (The Video Whisperer) was kind enough to share snippets of the text on his blog site during the process, and that helped.

Let me preface (what, preface has to be at the top?), okay then let me just say that I have not read the full finished work as yet and am reviewing it anyway. I don’t normally do that – but want to give full disclosure to it. I do feel qualified to offer you my opinion now because I have read so much of it already, and am familiar with the work of this expert craftsman. Joe, from what I’ve learned over time, has spent a career behind the camera in many types of productions. The kind of work where you get one chance to get it right, and that’s it. And even if you can take a second try at it – it comes at a high cost. You don’t have a long and rewarding career if you don’t excel at meeting those objectives.

Good quality cameras are readily available now on nearly every budget level. But if you want to get beyond “point it that way and hit the red button” skill level, you need advice and insight. And The Video Whisperer is the best I’ve found. In part, I freely admit, because I just like him. His personality and easy communication style are very relaxing and familiar. And I find that with that relaxed feeling, my mind is much more receptive to the information being given.

I make videos on YouTube – mostly about the shooting sports and guns in general, so I was not only not offended by the many gun references, I enjoy them. If you are of a different opinion on that topic, don’t fret – the book really is about cameras and how to use them. The analogies are just too easy, and I think quite entertaining. I mention that I make videos because my point is that I fumble at it, and I struggle with it. The improvements I have made have come largely from the inspiration and information from The Video Whisperer – whom I discovered accidentally by watching his review of a Sony camera (that I ultimately purchased and use). The quality of his work in that review left my jaw on the table, and I’ve been hooked since.

If you have a passion, just an interest, or simply a need to learn more and improve your skills with video cameras, I can’t recommend this book enough. What I think you will receive from it above all is INSPIRATION!

5.0 out of 5 stars

This Should be a Required Text for Video and Film Students!! 18 Jan. 2015

By M. Raja – Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

I am not a videographer or a photographer, but do need some help in taking nice pictures of my orchids. Years ago, Joe had given me some basic suggestions about photography and, having internalized them, I have often found myself using those basic techniques even when taking pictures with my iPhone camera. This book, thus, provides a whole wealth of practical and conceptual explanations that would be useful for all those who enjoy filming or hope to launch a professional career as cameramen/women or as film-makers.

I found it especially refreshing that the author first provides the fundamental and core concepts about larger practices (Read Chapter 2 as a great example of this) and then builds on that: this is what we do in our literary studies classes, where we encourage our students to learn the basics first and after that performing complex tasks becomes easier. It seems Joe has given his audience a kind of how-to-book that explains, beyond technique, the how and why aspects of the craft of videography!

This book will be highly useful to all those studying film or film production at college level and I, for one, am certainly going to recommend it as a possible text to the film department at my university!!!

5.0 out of 5 stars

Concrete advice for solo videographers 22 Jan. 2015

By Matthew – Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

Great read on fundamentals and advanced techniques of a solo videographer’s world. Easy to read and filled with practical info on lots of topics: gear choice, marketing yourself and your videos, interview tips, editing, what to charge for your services…. Written very conversational and witty, this book kinda feels like sitting down with a trusted mentor sharing his wisdom.

5.0 out of 5 stars

Brilliant book from an authentic working professional explaining the concepts and mechanics of invisible camerawork 11 Jan. 2015

By Miklos Nemeth – Published on Amazon.com

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

Absolutely worth every penny. The book has general “life philosophy/wisdom” as well as videography/cinematography/photography (concepts) sections, and specific detailed technical chapters, too. The main advantage of reading a book like this is that it comes from the pen of an authentic/original source, a professional videographer who has been earning his family’s bread for decades on videography. On a couple of videography forums I found a number of excellent comments, but I wanted a book that you can read from page one to the end covering practically every aspects of videography.

4.0 out of 5 stars

Good honest book about videography with tips earnt with experience. 12 Jan. 2015

By cheekysaffer

Format:Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

I am one of those people who watched the Sony NX30 camera reviews on YouTube a while ago looking for a new camera.

The first thing I noticed when watching the video was that Joe seems very sincere and it was obvious that he has years of experience in the video and film industry. I am just starting up my video production company and it was very assuring to hear that you don’t need to have a really expensive camera to be professional. Although I did spend £4k on a second hand one which I wanted….

I visit thevideowhisperer YouTube channel from time to time and this is how I learned that Joe has now written a book on the subject of videography.

I just bought this today and finished it tonight. Its a good honest book that really strips down the whole professional videography subject into core chapters. Its filled with really good advice that you can tell was earned in the field.

As I don’t have any professional paid experience yet, I was looking for this kind of book. Anything that can help me produce better quality videos for my future clients and possibly help to prevent me making silly mistakes is worth the asking price of this book.

As someone who is about to leave an engineering career to do what I always wanted to do, its good to find that extra little inspiration from a real professional in the game.

A good easy read, highly recommended for people who are thinking of going pro.

 

YouTube & SEO

April 7, 2014 By in B) TUTORIALS, F) Resources Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

How to Make a Search Engine Happy

The true story of how one of my videos changed everything.

 Warning: This video is 35 minutes long.  That said, if you are a video producer or business owner with a website, you’ll find the information here informative and useful. And you’ll probably find stuff you never even heard about.

It’s free to watch. There will be no, “but wait, there’s more”, or any other of the usual clues that you’re being lead down a garden path to buy something.

You can google anything I’ve said here (like “Google has been ignoring meta tag key words for years”) or any of the statistics and trends.

This is the story of how one video dramatically increased my Google profile, subscribers to my blog, YouTube channel and Facebook page in the space of one year. And how all that resulted in a dramatic increase in business video commissions on my regular business website.

I didn’t set out to do this deliberately.  Actually it was all sort of a fluke.

But since it did happen, I went back to evaluate the component parts of this success and I’m sharing it with you here.

Nothing mysterious. No assistance from Adwords, or any of the dozens of schemes out there that promise you the moon with their exclusive software.

In fact all I did was please the search engines. And the search engines were pleased because they saw that those searching for the topic of my video were pleased. And the more people that were pleased, the happier the search engines got.

How the search engines achieved this happiness in the midst of the dull drudgery of their daily, often thankless, often disparaged work, is the subject of this talk–which could have been alternatively titled, “How to Make a Search Engine Happy”.

For those businessmen and women who are going to ask, “But how is this going to help me sell widgets?”, the section after the video answers that question and covers a few points not covered in the video. But it won’t make sense if you haven’t seen the video first.

As a note, I more recently did a review of the Sony PXW X70. It was uploaded 3 months after a raft of initial reviews on the camera. It started off on page 26 of Google and in less than 2 1/2 months it reached the number 1 position–despite the fact that it was considerably longer than any other review. Why? Well, the content was considered good as measured by the engagement metrics. If you were to compare it to the other top reviews on that camera, you will see that it got far more comments and likes. Furthermore, the comments were all relevant. None of them were drivel.

 

“So how is this going to help me sell my widgets?”

Fair question.

The Sony video talked about above made it’s way quickly to the top in a very competitive market. That is, there are a lot of sites that review photographic, video, computer equipment and so forth. And generally speaking, it’s a pretty gung-ho and internet switched-on market that they are reaching.

I’ve done many videos for large industrial companies, also in a niche market. They are hoping to close multi-million pound contracts with their products or services.

So who looks at their videos?

Two kinds of people do: 1) Businessmen looking for that specific product or service, and 2) the competition.

In either case, these are not likely going to be the type of people who “share”, “like”, “comment”, etc.  They might share it via email to a colleague or boss, but that’s about it in terms of engagement.

Then how does engagement apply here?

Creating a viral video is one way and many multi-national well-known corporations can actually create a viral video with confidence. Old Spice, BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo, Redbull and many others have done this. But these cost a fortune. A group of some very clever people come up with some very clever ideas and no expense is spared on pulling off each unique concept.

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that kind of approach and budget is out of the question.

So what counts?

The Audience Retention Analytic

There are more metrics at play then mentioned in the video, but one of the more important ones is called “Audience Retention”. You can actually go into the backend of your video on your YouTube analytics page and see exactly minute by minute what percentage of people watched the video. In other words, it starts off at 100%. Maybe 20 seconds in it drops to 60%. You can see the percentages for every minute of the video and the overall average.

It might be disappointing to see that some people don’t watch the whole video.

For example, in that Sony video, the audience retention was 30% for the whole 14 minute video. That means, as of now, about 10,000 people watched the entire video–and that’s pretty good considering its length. Interestingly, the graph pretty much drops to the 30% mark in the first minute or two and then stays consistent right to the end. That’s very unusual. But it does tell me the audience I was actually looking for locked onto it and found it interesting and informative enough to watch all the way through.

There can be a number of reasons people don’t watch it all the way through. The primary one is it wasn’t what they were looking for. They realised early on it wasn’t relevant.  Or perhaps they realised this was about a BMW and they were looking for a Aston Marton.  And finally, here’s the real killer. If it’s a bad video (low quality production, hard to hear, amateur-looking, etc.) most people will turn it off right there–unless they perceive the content to be extremely relevant and important in which case they will grab a scotch, squint up their eyes and persevere the torture of watching the video. But that would be a rare exception.

But here’s the good news.  It isn’t the number of VIEWS that the search engines consider important any more. (they used to, but like in Blackhat SEO, people found ways to “game the system” and inflate their view counts.) Instead what the search engines consider important is the audience retention analytic. And that tells them what percentage of people found the content relevant.

So, if you think about it, your competition is in the same boat in trying to sell their widgets. Their market is not the type of market that is going to do anything more than watch the video to see if it suits their company, their needs, etc. in order to put forward a purchase order or arrange further meetings to obtain the service or product.

So if you both have videos on your respective widgets, who has the advantage?  The advantage goes to the company whose video (or other web page content) appears to be most relevant to the search and that is determined by how long people watch the video or otherwise engage on your site. If, in the case of video, it sees the percentage is 5% or lower (bad video), that’s struck off the list by the search engine. Bad or amateur video not only doesn’t pay, it’s destructive because it gives a poor impression of your company no matter how good your products and services really are.

Occasionally I used to check the views of my clients videos on their sites (not my Youtube channel where they are tagged and titled for my purposes more than theirs). One client had over 6000 views of three different videos featuring multi-million pound industrial installations in the first year of their upload, and one of the three videos at the time had been uploaded only a few months earlier. I’m not able to look further into their analytics for audience retention, etc., but that was an impressive view count for that particular product. Even a small percentage of those 6000 views leading to further contact would have meant a LOT of money for that business.

So the moral is, in terms of video, do everything I said above anyway. And make sure it’s a good, professional video that’s pure relevant content for what it is you’re trying to sell.  And that is what will rank you higher than the competition.

It still stands true that video is the best engagement object out there.

Used correctly, the return on investment will make it one of the most cost effective advertising methods you have ever employed.

 

 

The Video SEO Prediction

November 4, 2010 By in B) TUTORIALS, C) Corporate Videos, F) Resources Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Several months ago it came to my attention that the top web SEO (search engine optimization) experts in the world were talking about the growing importance of video content in websites. So much so that it is postulated that in 2 or 3 years, if your website does not have video content it will NOT rank on page one of a Google search.

The reason is simple.

You have probably noticed for some years now that most Google searches will turn up relevant PHOTOGRAPHS on page one of most searches. You may also notice there are now usually relevant VIDEOS coming up on page one, usually about halfway down, if not near the top.

The reason is that Google found that there is a high degree of INTERACTION with both picture and video content by searchers. Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, Inc., one of the top SEO companies in the world has coined a term for photographs and video that may soon enter the lexicon of the world wide web–“ENGAGEMENT OBJECTS”.

Amongst the links below you will find that Google is apparently working on technology to actually search VIDEO CONTENT for all the videos on the web as part of the process of delivering up your search results in the split second their search engines scour the billions of pages of content across the web for you. The first step is to read actual GRAPHIC CONTENT of videos, but it won’t end there….

Meanwhile just know that Google gives high relevancy to video in search results. So it is important that you correctly TAG your videos (title, keywords). And, if you didn’t know, YouTube automatically creates a transcript of the narrative content of the video. Why? So search engines can “read” what the content of the video is. Related article: YouTube Drops a Bomb

Well, it makes sense. This is an audio/visual age. Most of us would rather watch a video that shows us how to do something or what the features of a product or service are rather than read pages of text.

Meanwhile, it is obvious that it would be a benefit to ANY site to have video content.
Interestingly, on a search of sites in my local area, I found very few sites to have any video content whatsoever. I have no idea what the world-wide percentages are, but I think it’s safe to assume that the percentage of sites with video content are relatively few.

One might assume that the “big guys” can afford video because video is expensive to produce, right?

Wrong.

Well, it can be–if you hire a marketing company who then goes out and hires a crew complete with producer, director, cameramen, lighting crews, script supervisors, grips, sets, props, makeup, transport, editors, CGI personnel….or any portion thereof or additions beyond that. Not to mention renting studios, location fees….well, you get the idea.

Then there are enthusiasts who go out and buy a video camera and some editing software and, voila, schooled in MTV, start selling services as professional videographers. I’ve seen a few of those on websites too. Even so, it’s better than nothing with this one proviso: Your videos (just as each and every one of your photographs) have to be properly tagged with key words to effectively affect your web presence and ranking.

On the other hand, why would you want a video in the first place? (I could just as well ask, “why do you want a website in the first place?”)

You want to SELL your product or service. That’s why.

So if you have a properly tagged video that is interesting and compelling enough to SELL your product or service, you’re at an automatic distinct advantage. And, as mentioned earlier, in the near future it will be VITAL to have video content to be found at all on the web.

VIDEO DOESN’T HAVE TO BE EXPENSIVE

Given that your local videographer is a trained professional; someone who knows how to compose, light and edit (and WHY he is composing, lighting and editing, amongst the myriad of other associated skills in producing an effective video), he can probably produce most types of web videos required by almost any client ALL BY HIMSELF. Now you’re just paying one guy, not an entire troupe.

Now what type of web video are we talking about?

Let’s break that down:

1) “Welcome to my site”. Here’s a simple video that ANY site can benefit from and which would be the least expensive, while immediately giving you video content on your site, YouTube, FaceBook–or any other place you want to put it. The more places cross-referenced back to your site, the merrier. So what does such a video consist of? Hey, it’s just YOU saying “hi, welcome to my site….” and giving a short bit of what it’s about, what you have to offer, how the customer might benefit, etc.
Short, to the point and friendly. And what do you get? –You immediately PERSONALIZE your site. Remember, we’re not talking about hiring some Hollywood actor with a cool voice and slick hand gestures (=HYPE), no, we’re showing your potential customers the real deal. A real person. You. Don’t you think that will positively affect most people compared with related sites that have no such friendly intro, but just the usual text and photos, website gimmickry or whatever?

2) Product or Service Demonstration video. This would be the second type. Let’s say you have a unique product or invention that is not widely known or understood, yet is something many people would find beneficial. Well then you need to show it off in a video and you will certainly increase your sales potential many-fold. Of course this also applies to any product or service, new or not. In this case, you put your best foot forward and show and tell people why they should buy your product or service. Again, compared with similar sites or competition who have no video, who do you think will have a better chance of securing a sale?

3) “How to” videos.  This is a type of video that specifically demonstrates a procedure (such as how to install a wall-mounted TV, how to prune roses, how to bake a brownie, how to…you get the idea. No matter what you sell, such a video makes your site user-friendly as it offers the service of know-how and help. Search engines will find you and people will then find your site–and that’s what you want.

None of these videos have to be expensive. I would say from 150 dollars for the first type from as little as a few hundred dollars for the second two types.

So no, video doesn’t have to be expensive.

And right now, before it’s all the rage, it will be the best investment you will have made in a long time.

This is the video I saw years ago which predicted the trend: http://www.reelseo.com/engagement-objects-seo/

Now if you Google “Video SEO” or related terms, you will find a torrent of information that indicates the realisation of that prediction–even if a few years later than he predicted.

 

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