News: Creating Content For Videos

Okay, so what are we going to make our videos about? I've written before about creating articles, and what kind of content we are going to put in our articles. So what are we going to put into our videos? Let me give you a few ideas that I have. These are some things that I would do if I had a service business.

Let's say for instance that I have a print shop, a beauty salon, a little bakery, or a little breakfast place, or something like this. Something where people are coming in and out all of the time: once, twice, or more times every week. The first thing I would do is, I think, I would do videos where I talk to my customers. You probably have plenty of regular customers and you shouldn't have any trouble getting them to just say a few words in front of your camera for you.

Ask them what they like about your store, your service, your employees, whatever. Ask them about the whole experience that they have at your store. Just 5 or 10 seconds is all that you really need. You put 4, 5, or 6 of those together and you have a video. That's a very simple way to do it and very powerful because other people selling your store, your product, or your service is always more powerful than you trying to sell it. We all know this.

Another thing you might want to do is talk to your staff, especially if you have a service business because you can't talk a lot about your product as such. You are producing a service for them. So talk to your staff and ask them, "How do they feel about their jobs? How do they like serving people in the business? How do they look at their job? How do they look upon the whole experience of people coming into the store and waiting on them and whatever?" It maybe doesn't sound like, maybe, something that people are going to want to watch.

But anything to do with people, if you start talking to people and you put people on the screen with their honest emotions or feelings about something, whatever it is, people will watch it. It is more compelling than watching anything that doesn't have people in it. These are little things, but these are easy things to do. There are lots of other ideas, I mean, if you sit down in your store and you think about the products that you have and what you do for service, then you will come up with some things.

There are lots of other little things, if you have anything to do with food. I always go back to restaurants because I worked with restaurants for a long time. But if you have anything to do with food then it is really easy. Let's say you have a restaurant. We have an Italian restaurant. Let's say that we have 50 menu items. Fifty items on the menu, that is 50 videos. Why? Well, let's go back in the kitchen and watch the chef make lasagna or linguine with clams, garlic bread, or pizza. It doesn't matter. Any of your menu items are a potential video.

People love watching cooking videos, and especially if they know the restaurant. You'll be doing a lot of local business and a lot of local customers in your business area. This is mostly what you are going to be doing if you have a small business. You are not going to be drawing people from 100-200 miles away. Let's say that you are in a small town or even in a neighborhood in a larger town or city, and a lot of people know who you are. They are going to love to watch a video about how you cook your food. Their interest level is going to be even higher because they know who you are. This is a really easy thing to do.

And let's say you have any kind of event. This is a great time to do a video. You will need a good little microphone and a digital recorder. There are very cheap and inexpensive things you can use. Even if you are at a noisy, crowded party with lots of people, still you can get good results making interesting videos. I've done some very good stuff at some of these events.

I once did a Fourth of July picnic that had a rock band playing. Then there was an anniversary party for a restaurant and I went around interviewing people and asked what they thought about the place, about the food, and whatever else. It was very easy to do and very effective. So there are a lot of things you can do that are really effective.

Don't be afraid to try something different. If it doesn't work, so what? Keep trying and you'll see that creating videos for promoting your website is not nearly as hard as it seems in the beginning.

Tom Aikins is an SEO consultant and online marketing expert based in Bangkok who presents seminars on these subjects and also offers a complete online marketing training course on his website, http://www.seonorthamerica.com. You can ask questions of him by contacting tom.aikins@gmail.com.