Rav: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the official podcast of BNI success link. Today we are going to talk about the top three Mistakes Business Owners Make when creating company videos.
Hello again, everyone, I’m your host, Rav Mendiratta from Sociosquares, and landing leads is where my business leads. Today we are going to talk about the top three Mistakes Business Owners Make when creating company videos. And, of course, I have an expert in the video space with me, Stu Sweetow. Stu, thank you so much for doing this.
Stu: Well, thank you, Rav.
Rav: So I know you are a published author, you have written books about video production, and you run an awesome company. So why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself and your background to our audience?
Stu: All right. Well, Rav, I’ve been fortunate to be able to have a career as a video producer. Pretty much right out of college, I got a job in audio-visual departments and then ran a Learning Resource Center at a university. And most of my experience has been with educational videos and corporate training videos. I love to do documentaries and even business documentaries that help tell the story of the company. And now we’re doing live video streaming and hybrid for conferences.
Rav: Right, that’s awesome! So you’ve seen it all. And you’ve adapted during COVID as well. So there’s a lot to cover. But why don’t we start with? Can you give us an example of a video, a sales video, which converts really well?
Stu: Okay. One of the best examples and I frankly learned this by writing the book, you know, I went to the large corporations to see what are they doing to change people’s minds to be able to make sales, and the testimonial video where you are interviewing an existing customer, so that the customer is talking to a future customer. So testimonial videos are probably one of the most powerful ways to make a business marketing video. And quite frankly, you know, usually the lowest budget too.
Rav: That’s interesting. I never thought of that. Thank you so much for sharing. The next question which comes to mind is that there are a lot of things as business owners we need to think about. But when we are planning a company video, what would you say are the top questions you shouldn’t know? Or ask before even planning a video?
Stu: Sure, One of the most important things is who your audience is because you want to be able to speak, you know, at their level and their demographic. The other is to be really, really clear about what you want the viewers to do after they’ve watched your video. The more clarity you have in terms of your objectives, the better able you are able to, you know, plan your video.
Rav: Interesting yet, those are some very good questions, and I didn’t think of them. So thank you so much for sharing. Now, coming to the subject of this podcast, right?
What are the top three mistakes you would say that business owners make when they’re creating company videos?
Stu:
1. Audio:
I see that you’re using a microphone. I actually have a microphone just outside of camera range, trying to get good quality audio, you know, from a, you know, a webcam or an iPhone usually doesn’t cut it. And especially with business videos, what people say, is really, you know, the most important thing.
2. Production planning:
You know, some people really don’t think about what they want to have in the video and don’t consider the audience.
3. Lack of visual variety:
Just having a single shot of just somebody talking. You know, that may not be as effective as putting in a few photos, especially at the beginning, like even a montage of photos like you do.
Rav: Wow, that’s that. I didn’t think that these would be the top mistakes that people make, especially when it comes to audio. So thank you so much for these insights. And I’m sure our audience can take a lot of things away from it. And I remember one of the insights which you shared on social media. Would you like to share that as our closing thought as well?
Stu: Okay, one of the things that I found is that there was a study of Facebook users, and it studied the level of engagement of different types of Facebook posts. Facebook posts that included video had well over double the amount of engagement. Engagement means that people are going to click on a link. They’re going to share it there, going to like it. So the video really works. And I was amazed myself that, you know, the video on Facebook is going to get you the kind of engagement that you want, meaning that people are going to be doing something, you know, clicking on something, buying a product, sharing it. So that was one of the cool things that I found.
Rav: Absolutely, really cool. And that’s a clue for our audience that to get more than 2x engagement, they got to make more videos. Thank you so much to Thanks for doing this podcast.
Stu: Well, thank you, Rav.
