3 Types Of Business Videos *and how to use them

Hello everyone, and I want to welcome you to Create Great Business Videos. This is a series of live webcasts that will show you everything you need to know about how to create effective videos that attract clients and customers to your business. We want to create a series that's filled with insightful content, is interactive, and most of all is respectful of your time. So our programs will typically be half an hour, also including time at the end for questions. So if you have a question, please feel free to type it into the chat box to the right of your screen. Let's get started with today's program. All right, all right, so we're all here. I'm Jason Reed along with Cheryl Plouffe. Hi. And our producer, Corita St. Clair. Hello. So we want to thank you guys for joining us. Apologies again for the little technical glitch at the beginning, but we're all here and we're all ready to go. So Cheryl, why don't you tell folks what we've got in store for them for the next half hour?

Yeah, you know what, this is actually gonna be a lot of fun, and we are going to be mindful of your time. And we had a little technical thing there, but suffice to say, we really want to be as give you actionable tips and tricks and strategies that are really going to help you to move the needle. That's really what we're doing to today and really in the whole series of webcasts that we're going to be putting together for you. So how this is really going to work is that Karina is our producer. Karina is going to be in charge of keeping us on track. So Karina is going to be watching the clock for us and keeping us on track, which is great. We are also going to have a full Q&A at the end of today's episode so that we can be of service and value to you and really answer those deep questions that you have and the challenges that you have with regard to video, which is my specialty, and storytelling, which of course is Jason's specialty. Karina, of course, is really— and we're going to introduce ourselves a little bit more in a second, but you'll see just what kind of experience we all bring to the table. We really want to help you with growing your business. There's no such thing as a dumb question. I put in the chat box to let me know what you're— you know, let us know what your biggest challenge is with video. Just as a way to start things off, but please feel free to ask any question in there. We also want you to look for the common denominator among the video examples and types of business videos that we're going to talk about today. Look for the common denominator. It's a bit of a challenge for you, and we want you to identify what that is, and we'll ask you about that at the end. We also would love for you to share this with your friends. If you send them to greatbusinessvideos.com and they can sign up and subscribe, we hope to grow this into something over the next many months that's really going to help to move the needle. Like I said, you are going to get a replay, but we'd love to have you here live, and that's really where we're going to start things off. So today's episode, 3 types of business videos and how to use them. So first of all, I'm just going to share my screen so you guys can see where we're going to talk about 3 types of business videos and how to use them today. I hope you guys can all see my screen now. My name is Sheryl Plouffe. I'll just— we'll do a brief introduction of all 3 of us. I'm a video marketing marketing strategist, but I come from a long background of broadcasting, more than 25 years, giving away my age, that's okay. 25 years experience as a broadcaster. I've done thousands of hours of live television. I've done commercials. I've been a trainer, a college professor even, and also even a news director at one point in my career. So you'll have a very wide and varied sort of experience that I'm bringing to the table, but it doesn't just stop there. Jason, of course, has a great resume too.

Yes, of course. For the past 5 years, you've known me as a Speak to Sell expert. I've been a professional speaker for a number of years. And like Cheryl, I've got an extensive television background, more than 25 years of experience as a news writer, producer, storytelling trainer, news director. I've also won some international awards for writing and story editing, written some screenplays and some comedy. So I've got the writing communication and storytelling background for you. So let's now look at our producer, Karina Sinclair. And I've known Karina, I think, pretty much since she, uh, graduated, uh, broadcast school many years ago. And since then, she's really proven herself as, as a wonderful video producer, a great editor. She's worked behind the scenes in television and documentary production since the age of 13. I've worked with Karina for a number of years, and she is fantastic. We're so glad we got her on the show.

Yeah, well, and the reason we really want to introduce you guys is, you know, us to you rather, is just to kind of let you know you're in the right place. You know, we come with a combined experience of probably over a century, really, you know what I mean? Maybe close, I don't know. But in any case, that's kind of our experience, and we really want to help you to grow your business. And, and I doubt that there's any other combination of, of people who can really bring this type of value to you. So we're excited to have you here. The reason why we want to talk about video and why it's so effective— now go through these real quick. You probably already are convinced that video is the thing to do, but just in case you're on the fence, video will be making up over 75% of the world's mobile data traffic by 2020, which is not that far away. 75% of the entire world's mobile data traffic. That's a lot. That goes to show you that video is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a must-have necessity to market yourself today. Video posts, video posts on Facebook have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts. Nothing wrong with photo posts, but if you want more engagement and more reach, then you've got to start incorporating video in the mix. And social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. That's astronomical. So that's really why we're joining forces to teach you about video And particularly storytelling. Jason, just so you know, John has asked here about are we going to be covering storytelling at some point. Yes, I answered. Storytelling, of course, and video combined is really kind of why we're doing this entire series.

Exactly. And you know, you've done a great job, Cheryl, in talking about why from a numbers perspective video is important. So, let's look at the psychology now. The sales psychology about the strength of video. So, you know, if you are an entrepreneur, obviously people need to know who you are before they buy your products or services. People like to do business with people that they know. They want to be able to see your face and hear your voice. There's also what was— what's called the like factor. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to sort of be out there and hope everybody likes you and sort of be milquetoast, that sort of thing. But what you want to do is show people that if they are your ideal client that they will like working with you. And then finally, the other big thing is trust, because people don't want to work with entrepreneurs who are fly-by-night, right? So if you're out there, if you're in front of them, if you're showing off your expertise, people will gradually get around to trusting you.

Yeah, I agree with everything you just said there, Jason. And I think that, you know, that, that know, like, and trust factor, it's something from a marketing perspective we've heard so many times, but yet You know, when it comes to video, I can't— I mean, there really isn't any other format that can bang those out as quickly as video.

Yes, certainly. You know, other than actually being in front of a bunch of people in person, you're absolutely right. Video is the top if you're dealing in the online space or if you're trying to get your message out to the world. So obviously, we talked about demonstrating your expertise, and we'll show you a great example of that in a moment with a a hypnotist client of mine. But there's other reasons why we want to do video as well. A video, especially if we tell stories via video or we connect with people on an emotional level, this gets people closer to wanting to work with us or wanting to buy with us. Buying is an emotional decision. So that's one of the reasons why video is important. And video will also help transport the viewers. And maybe you can talk about that, Cheryl.

Yeah, it does. I mean, video is the thing that really gets people out of, um, it gets it out of their own head, you know what I mean? Like, it transports viewers to a new place, whatever that place may be and whatever niche that you're in. So demonstrating expertise, really important. Emotion and video, especially when it comes to authenticity, you know, just being real and unscripted, which we're going to talk about today, can really evoke emotion. And it transports viewers to an entirely new place and whatever that thing may be. So when we talk about the different types of video, let's get into the, to the different types that we want to present to you today. We've put them into 3 different categories. We've got personality videos, we've got promotional videos, and signature videos. We're going to show you examples of the actual videos that we've curated today to show you what we mean. So To start things off with the personality video, what is a personality video? A personality video can be— obviously it does have personality in it, but it can be in length anywhere from 15 seconds, like an Instagram video, for example, could be 15 seconds long. It can be 2 minutes long. Now, some exceptions to this. If you're doing live streaming, you can go longer because a live stream broadcast can be anywhere from— and they recommend actually on Facebook Live, you go for about 10 minutes minimum. In order for the algorithms of Facebook to find you an audience. So there's exceptions to that, but in general terms, 15 seconds to 2 minutes long for a personality video. These typically are unscripted. They are typically videos that you would do yourself. This is, this is really my specialty, you know, like personality videos, unscripted, doing it yourself and also in the moment. So recognizing opportunities around you to be able to tell effective stories and be able to add value through video, but including a call to action. So including that call to action is really crucial to the conversion of your videos. So that, in essence, is what a personality video is. We're gonna show you an example. It could be an Instagram video, it could be Facebook, it could be just direct messaging through Twitter using the video functionality in Twitter to send a private message. Could be in a newsletter or an email list. Using personality videos in practically any facet of your content marketing is something that is very doable. A personality video can also be a live broadcast, as I mentioned, be it Facebook Live. It could be on YouTube Live. It could be an Instagram Stories video or Periscope, which is really Twitter Live now. So lots of different opportunities to be able to create personality videos. We want to show you actually an example of this. I believe, Karina, if you can cue up the Instagram video of mine as an example, we can run it right now and just sort of give people a sense of what we're talking about.

So we're going to move to the second video because we have the first one all queued up.

Okay, Jason, do you want to tee up the number one?

Uh, well, why don't we do— yeah, I mean, the number 1 video is, uh, Cheryl, so why don't we, why don't we play that and then we can do number 2?

Okay, here we go. Cheryl here, how are you? I'm so sorry I'm late. I know I said I was going to come live at 4:15, but I was on a call with some wonderful people and, um, and so talking about business and entrepreneurship and all of this. So lots of great conversations had there. So I want to talk today to you guys about how to get stuff done. Are you guys struggling with getting stuff done? I think it's a common experience, especially when you're growing a business. It can be really hard because we've got so many things that we want to do, right? We've got these long, long lists of things and we all do to-do lists and then somehow at the end of the day we look and it's like, ah, nothing's done. So I want to give you guys actually 3 specific things today that are going to help you guys to get stuff done. So this is around the world of, you know, productivity and business tips. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're struggling, let me know in the comments section if this is something you struggle with. And let me know, do you actually create to-do lists? Is this something that you actively do? So proven strategies for getting stuff done. Do you guys know of Brian Tracy. Alright, hi Gordon, how are you? Brian Tracy has a book— There we go, great.

Okay, we are back.

So basically that's an example of a Facebook Live video that I did from my living room. And the idea there again, depending on where you want to broadcast, It shows some personality. It's in that case, it's a live video. Like I said before, it can go longer. That video does go longer. We cut out from it at that point because we don't have time to show you the entire video, but it's unscripted. It's— I'm doing it myself. It is in the moment. I am adding value and I'm also including a call to action at the end of that video.

Okay, and we're gonna head over to video number 2 and I'm gonna set this up here. I have a client by the name of David Fairweather who is a hypnotherapist. And obviously, as part of hypnotherapy, he's a great hypnotist as well. So if you go on his YouTube channel, there are a number of videos about how to deal with stress and anxiety and sort of all that heavy stuff with— that comes with the therapist part of being hypnotherapist. But he also wanted to put in a video that just sort of showed off his personality and also demonstrated his ability to hypnotize people. And like I said, he wanted to be fun and light, and I think it came across really well. So let's roll that, Karina.

Sorry, it seems to be taking the wrong video.

Here we Hi, I'm here on the boardwalk with one of my favorite hypnotist colleagues, David Fairweather, and we're gonna see if he can do some really cool stuff on the boardwalk with some people today.

Let's go find out, Cindy. Do you know anything about hypnosis at all? Take a deep breath all the way down. When that hand touches your head, you can just drop down into a profound state of trance. I'm gonna say, "One, two, eyes open." You'll come back and you won't know where your name is. What's your name? What was your name? What was your name? That's interesting. Sleep all the way down, drifting all the way down inside. You have a powerful unconscious mind and it can do some amazing things. It can make you really excel at your job. You can just amaze yourself and amaze the people around you. When I say, "One, two, eyes open," of course you can walk, take really long strides. You just kind of bound everywhere. You want your eyes open, you come back here. And whereabouts on the beach are you going today?

Um, we're actually just walking around.

Can you walk? Yeah, you just take nice really long strides. Does she normally walk like that?

No, she takes small steps.

She takes small steps normally. And every time I shake your hand, your eyes just get a little heavier.

So yeah, again, we didn't have time to show you the entire video, but you know, you really get the sense of David's personality, that he's fun, and also you get the sense that he's obviously a fantastic hypnotist. So those are the personality videos. As Cheryl said, you know, a lot of these are do-it-yourself videos. You can do these fairly frequently if you want. You can do them weekly or even daily if you're doing Facebook Lives. So let's look now at the next type of video, which is the promotional video. And Cheryl, if we can get the slides back, if that's possible.

Oh, I'm not seeing it. No, no, we're not. All right, all right.

So obviously with promotional videos, the whole idea is that there's something specific that you are promoting. It could be an event, it could be a program, it could be a product. Now generally, you know, we're looking at 1 to 3 minutes long. It could be longer. I've done promotional videos that are a little bit longer because I've had testimonials in the middle of the video, which makes them run longer. But you really want to try and keep it to 3 minutes or under if you can, just to make sure you've got people's attention. And you have to remember again with the promotional video, this is a sale, a sales message. So you know, you want to kind of get right to the point about what people are going to get and what problem you're going to solve if they respond to the call to action. And having a call to action obviously is hugely important in a promotional video. It is kind That's kind of the entire point of it. Sometimes promotional videos can be done professionally. Sometimes you can also use them as a sort of do-it-yourself videos. A lot of this depends on how big the product, program, or event it is. If this is an event that you do once a year and it's a really huge thing, well, maybe you want to invest on having a professional help you out with that and include music and graphics in the video. And here's how you want to use them. So obviously, if you've got an event page, if you're putting on some sort of workshop or an event, you're going to want this promotional video on that page. Obviously, you can also repurpose that video and put it on social media. So if you have a social media event page, you can put it on that, or you can share it along with, uh, a post to let people know what's coming up. Another thing you can do is if you have an email campaign, which you likely will if you're doing an event or selling a program or product, you can include, uh, the video in that email campaign, and of course on your blog or website. So what we're going to do now is look at an example of a promotional video. So let me look now. I think, Karina, we're going to go to number 5, Cheryl's promotional video, and if we could load that and play that next, that would be great.

Ready to go.

Hi there, it's Sheryl. How would you like to reach more people through online video? A video very much like this one. Nothing fancy here, but it works. How would you like to get more exposure, more visibility, and more engagement on your social media posts by using video? It's absolutely possible, and you You don't have to write long video scripts or memorize reams and reams of text or do retake after retake. And in fact, you don't even have to use a teleprompter the way that I'm going to teach you how to do video. It's a free masterclass. I invite you to join me so that you can learn the secrets to building your personal brand, to building your audience, and ultimately to building your business with video. Look for the link on this page, and I can't wait to see you there.

So that, of course, is an example of a promotional video. So if there's— again, if there's anything that you are selling or anything that you're promoting, this is the type of video that you want to put together. So that takes us to our third video, and this is Um, kind of the crème de la crème of the video. This is the one that you really want to make sure that you get right, and that is the signature video. So this is a video, it could be 1 to 10 minutes. Again, the shorter the better, most often. And this is a video that really has your core message. So think about your website. This is something that would be on your home page or your about page. And this is really sort of a big picture look at what you do. Now we've got down here that it's evergreen, meaning it's something that, you know, hopefully you, you do and you can keep for a year or two because it encapsulates all the stuff that you do in your business. Ideally, it is professionally shot because it is going to likely be going on a prominent page on your website. You want it to be on brand. You want it looking really good. Often it will include a call to action, but usually for the signature video, the call to action is something like signing up for a free strategy session if you're a coach, or maybe the call to action is a free digital product or something to get on people's newsletter. And as we see here, you know, it may include music and graphics, and a lot of time it does. And also, um, you want it to be, if you can, branded. So you're going to want sort of your colors and your logo on it. And as I said, in terms of where you're going to do this, you want to put it on your website. You can also repurpose it on social media, so you could use it on your Facebook page as an introduction to who you are and what you do. Another excellent but somewhat different way of using it is as an email signature link. So some of you may know how to do this. So when you have, you know, your email signature at the bottom of your, uh, your work emails, there is a way that you can actually put a video down in there as well. So if you are sending somebody something for the first time and they're curious about what you do, they can actually play that video. And sometimes you can also use the signature video on a sales page as well. So why don't we now look at an example of a signature video? And what I'm going to do, this is going to be, um, Karina number 6 that we're going to play here in a moment. And just let you know, this video was shot many years ago when I was a business coach, before I started doing my storytelling and speaking to sell. And it was shot in a studio in the United States, so it was professionally shot. It's not bad, but looking back, there's some things that I would probably change about it. And getting a good video shot, a good signature video shot, can be a challenge because not all videographers really understand what needs to be in that signature video, how you want it to look, and how you want it to come across. So why don't we, Karina, play that right now, and we can come back and talk about it. Hi, I'm Jason Reed, the Rechargeable Entrepreneur. Does your business sometimes make you feel bombarded, burnt out, or Just plain blah? Well, sometimes even the best of us lose our way. We stop growing, or we work ourselves to the point of exhaustion. Now, if any of this is familiar, listen up. You've got something important to share with the world, and you need to be your best self to get your message out there. You need to wake up every day confident in your ability to make money, and you also need to be healthy, excited, and energized. I want I think we've actually cut out of our video prematurely.

Yeah, I think so. Okay, in any case, it definitely shows that example, um, Jason. You know what I really liked about what you said too, about the, um, the email signature link? I think that's an underutilized tactic, um, for using the signature video. If you're going to going to go through the process of actually professionally creating a signature video, use it everywhere you possibly can.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And you notice in that example, like, everything was branded. It was my— my logo was in it and it was all my logo colors and there was some music in it. And it really moved. There was a whole idea of of movement. So you don't want your signature video just to be something that kind of sits there and stagnates. You want people to be, um, really connected to it and, you know, really noticing that, um, it's something that's, you know, a bit more exciting or a bit more different than sort of the average business video they're going to watch. So let's finish now by another version of the signature video And this is only really used for people who are also speakers. So whether you're a professional speaker or maybe you are an entrepreneur that speaks a lot and you want to get bookings at high-profile conferences and events, it's probably good to have a speaker reel. Now the reel itself should be about 1 to 3 minutes long. The tendency now is, is to make these videos shorter and shorter, so I wouldn't go beyond 3 minutes. It's almost always recorded live at an event where you're speaking to a group of people. It's always best if it's professionally shot. It's very hard to shoot yourself when you're on stage. And while that can be done, what you will find is if the light's not perfect, it may be difficult. So as you're going to see in this example, the light when I was speaking was coming in through the window. So if I had shot this myself, I would have just been a silhouette.. But as it was, because I had a professional videographer, you can actually see me and hear me and everything came across pretty, pretty well. So we're gonna play this in a moment, Karina. This will be the last one, number 7. So one of the things I want you guys to watch for is there's also, there's a little bit of music, there's some graphics, and you know, you've got production values, it looks professional. And again, this is an older speaker reel of mine from my previous business. And let's have a look at it. Being an entrepreneur, it's awesome because you're your own boss, right? You have flexibility in when you work, how you work, even for many of us, where we work. I'm here to tell you about the 4 ways that you can get that richer life because you know what? You don't need to go bankrupt, you don't need to limp along, and you can build a better, stronger business. We have to be clear in life about a lot of things. Especially in business, there are 3 key areas that we have to be crystal clear about. What does a rich life mean to you? And if you build a rich business, how does that rich business affect your life in a positive way? I was at a conference in Las Vegas in April, and I still have people calling me and emailing me from that conference saying, "Hey Rich, how are you?" That's what they think my name is. And at first And again, we didn't have time to show you that whole video. It's just under 3 minutes long, but you sort of get the flavor of it, right? You know, again, with the speaker reel, it's you speaking to an audience, and hopefully it's a relatively decent-sized audience, and hopefully also that, you know, you're at an event where your background is nice, it looks professional, it's professionally shot. And, you know, if you want to get a lot of great speaking gigs, having a speaker reel is obviously one of the things you want to have.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, definitely with the signature video, that's something that you don't really want to DIY, right? You want to maybe look at, you know, getting that professionally shot, whereas the other two types that we presented today, the personality and the promotional videos, you can DIY those if you wanted to. So it's more of a choice. But I hope that that gives you guys some ideas, you know, of the three different sort of buckets, if you will, or types of videos that you could create. The other thing I wanted to mention is that there can be a little bit of overlap. You know, there can be overlap. In other words, you can have a personality video that's got maybe a little bit of more promotion in it. You know, it can be sort of a hybrid, if you will. You can kind of look at that. We just wanted to at least present you guys with some ideas of levels, if you will, in different types. So right now, um, it's time for some questions. So let's see. Actually, you know what, John had a really good question in here too already. John asked, um, where do educational non-selling videos fit in? Um, I've responded, I think personality videos are, are great for the educational type videos. What do you think, Jason?

Absolutely. Um, because we're not using them to promote anything specific, and they're not sort of a big picture thing that we're going to have necessarily right on our homepage, they really do fit into personality videos. And again, if we look back to the hypnotist video that we talked about, that's something that really sort of shows off David's expertise. And for you, John, if you're doing some sort of educational video, that really shows off your expertise. So yeah, I definitely fit that into the, into the personality category.

Yeah, and educational videos, you know, again, I said I call it value, but I think that's kind of where you're going with it, John, is looking at how do I provide value, and that can be through motivating, inspiring, educating people in whatever niche that you're in. I'd be interested to know what you're into, John, because that would be helpful. But Marnie has another good question here as well. Karina, do you want to fire through these questions? I'm taking over. I'm taking over. I shouldn't be.

But no, we have a number of really interesting ideas popping up in the chat. Marnie is asking, how do you create video within an email? So I'm guessing this is coming back to that signature, the email signature. How are you actually embedding that?

I can answer to that. And there's different ways to do it. You can host— what you really need to do is you take your signature video. And you package it, you have to have it hosted somewhere. So it has to live in a place, and that can be, gosh, it could be Amazon S3, it could be Wistia, it could be on YouTube, although I would not recommend that for this particular type of video. The point being, you have to have it living somewhere. Wistia or, you know, Vimeo or something like that would probably be a good option. Why I would not recommend YouTube is because you're going to get probably some other recommended videos that pop up and different things, so you want it to be nice and clean. But what you do is you, you host it somewhere and you get the link, you get that URL link, Mari, and then that is the thing that you can put into your email signature. And secondarily, if you want to make that URL look pretty, there's different ways you can scramble it by putting it through, say, Bitly or, or Google Scrambler, like a URL scrambler. If you want it to be like a bunch of just random, you know, letters and numbers and that kind of thing. Or you could use a plugin on your WordPress site, and the one that I use called Pretty Link, and you can make it really pretty. So it'd be like CherylPlouffe.com/about or something like that, and then that could go in your email, and then they would click it and it would take them directly to view that video.

What do we got next, Karina?

Well, Kevin has already had some success using video with his business, but he's saying, I still need help crafting a tight 2 to 5 minute video story instead of a 30 or a 10 to 30 minute drone. When there's so much to say, how do you condense it down into something that's maybe a little more concise?

Yes, so this is something that I, I do in large part with my, with my clients. And it's a very common problem because we are so close to what we do. What I find is the people in some ways with the most expertise have the most difficulty producing the shorter, more elegant videos. And because we're up here in terms of our knowledge, up here, what we try and do is we want to make it really advanced and talk about the nuances and the shades of gray. But what we really have to do is look at where our prospective clients are. So look at where their knowledge level is and think about what do they need to get to that next step. So what specific problem are they likely facing now and how can we explain that and give them some insight in the most conversational and simple way possible. And I know that sounds easy, but one of the things we're going to be doing is we're actually going to be tackling how to create that message in our next web series. So stay tuned for that as well.

And that's a great question from Kevin. You know, I think that it's, it's, it's hard, you know, it's hard to mine it down to what Jason said, right? But that is actually something that we all collectively, 3 of us as broadcasters and having worked in television, that's why we are so We're able to do that quite easily because we hear things in soundbites. We hear things in little clips, and it's a skill set, but it's a skill set that anyone can learn.

Yeah, and a really big thing is really, if you can start thinking like your audience, if you know who your audience is and start putting yourself in their position with the questions that they have and the issues that they have, it's going to make your marketing and your videos so much more effective in terms of getting clients.

Those are great answers. And the other thing is, if you've got that much content, that's a great series, you know, start with a piece of information in each video, and then you've got a chance to bring your clients back for more and more, and it's updated, and they're not committing to a whole long time to watch your video, but they'll have all these different nuggets that they can consume in snack sizes. Speaking of size and length of video, John's saying, saying YouTube's encouraging longer videos because they keep the audience viewing. What do you guys think about that?

Cheryl, this is something that we had to deal with a lot when we were, um, we were in television news because, you know, you have this balance that, um, as people's attention spans are shrinking, the tendency obviously is to keep them shorter so that people, um, aren't going to tune out. But then the problem is you also want people to watch for longer because, you know, in the TV world, that's where you get more advertising money. And for us as entrepreneurs, that's where we get, you know, the big raving fans. So you're right, it is a real balance. And here's what I would say: you can do a longer video as long as that video remains compelling, as long as the insight that you provide is something that people are sitting there going, oh my goodness, I needed this. 'Oh my goodness, I needed this.' What I find that too many people do is have a lot of filler in their video, or they aren't really focused. As long as you're focused and giving people what they need, you can indeed make a longer video. Cheryl, do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I do. I mean, I, I think that when we're talking about marketing, we're talking about business videos for marketing, and for that purpose, um, I would encourage to keep it the shorter the better, with the exception of live broadcasting and live streaming, in which case you can and should go a little bit longer because there is interaction. Um, actually, a webinar is another good example of doing sort of video format, but there's interaction, so it warrants going longer because you're having Q&A or you're answering, you're giving value. So long as you're always giving and it's, like you said, Jason, compelling, then the length is warranted and it's valuable and that's fine. But if you're going to be doing a video for business purposes and you really are looking to market yourself, your ideas, and build your thought leadership— and the reason I say that is too because videos, you want people to share those videos. You want there to be not necessarily virality, but like you want those to get shared and shorter videos tend to get shared more.

Somebody had submitted a question earlier about how many videos should they prepare to promote their business. Is there an ideal number of how many they should have on hand?

Um, well, let's just let, let's, let's look at it in terms of the 3 things we've talked about. So signature video, which is sort of the more highly produced and polished video, you're probably going to want one of those because that's really that's your signature, right? So it's like, it's the one thing that sort of sums you up. In terms of promotional video, well, you can have as many promotional videos as you have things to promote. So anytime an event comes up, obviously you can promote it. One of the things that I do if I've got an event that is happening more than once, so if I know I'm doing them every few months, I will do a video to promote that event, but I will not mention the date in the video. And what I will do is put the date at the end of the video, or if it's on a sales page, put the date on the sales page. And why I do that is because I can use that same video again and again and again. And then when it comes to personality videos, well, as many as you want to do. Sheryl, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think that, you know, often we talk about— and I'm really big on YouTube and Facebook in terms of having a presence on both. YouTube predominantly so that you have a place to host your videos. And so people go in to search for your videos, and because Google owns YouTube, we like to try to get that free traffic system going and that sort of thing. So I like to say that on YouTube you should aim for 10 videos just in order to establish a presence there. What I don't love to see is a YouTube channel that has 1 or 2 videos. It just looks You don't look like you're in it, do you know what I mean? It looks like you're kind of dabbling, and, and I don't like that. I would recommend, you know, and let's say it's 9 or 10, around there. I think once you start to reach that, say, number 10 video, it's like it looks robust. It looks like there's some meat on the bone there, uh, on your YouTube channel. It looks like you're, you're actively doing, you know, content creation and putting your thoughts out into the the world. Whereas I think anything less than, you know, 7 and less, kind of in there, it, it tends to look kind of skimpy. And so I would recommend to go for 10, you know, as a number, as a round number at minimum.

Yeah. One thing I would add to that, Cheryl, is, you know, it's very similar to podcasting too. So if you're, if you were starting a podcast, you want to have a bunch of episodes on there at the beginning because if people show up and they like one, they're going to want to see more and more. And we're sort of in a binge culture right now. So, you know, if somebody comes and sees one of your videos and you've got like a dozen more, they're going to be happy. They're going to get more you, right? So I definitely agree with you, Cheryl, that 10 is a good number if you've got a YouTube page.

Yeah, it's always tough when it comes to numbers. I understand the desire to want to have numbers. It's like, how long should the video be? How many should I have? Again, you know, those are ballpark figures, but I think that that's a good guideline to go by. Another just quick thing about that YouTube is like, I think it was back to Kevin's point before about, I have so much to say, I'm a real estate agent, I got so much to say. Create playlists. You can have a playlist and share that playlist individually out and get people to watch one after the other, your whole series. To Karina's point, a series of videos can be one playlist on YouTube.

Absolutely. So team, we are running at 2:15 now. We're a little bit over time. Did you want to have one last question or final statements?

Why don't we talk about what's up next and then talk about where people can contact us? How does that sound?

Okay, so let me bring up my slides again. And Jason, I think you and I can, we can go through these questions again and be sure that we've answered every single one of those questions. Sure. We'll make sure that everyone gets their answers. So we've done the questions. Episode 2 is going to be, as Jason mentioned earlier, about creating short, simple, and effective video content. So this was relating to, I think, what John was talking about, and maybe Kevin too. We're going to be doing that on October October 4th, same time, 1:30 PM Eastern time. And greatbusinessvideos.com, you've already signed up obviously, but we'd love for you to share this with your team, with your colleagues, with your friends and family, anyone who you think could really benefit from understanding better how to leverage video and storytelling together to build their businesses. That's really the intent of this entire web series. So I'm just, um, letting you know that you can contact us if anything here resonated with you. You want to contact Jason at PowerStoryMaster.com or you want to contact me, Cheryl, at CherylPlouffe.com and Karina at Karina@LineByLineStudio.com. We would be happy to answer any questions you have, what have you. But we hope that you really enjoyed, you know, this, this content that we've created created for you today.

Yes, and thank you. I'm looking at the chat box now and all of the thanks that we're getting from Marnie and Garvin and Kevin. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you also for being a part of this with your questions. And, you know, we want you to come back and join us for our continuing series. And this has just been fantastic. I've, again, sorry about a couple of little technical stuff, technical things off the top, but I think, you know, once we got rolling, this is certainly fun for me, and hopefully you got something out of it.