Blogging

Have You Tried Videoblogging?

chrisbrogan · April 14, 2017 ·

I blame Jacqueline for my recent re-fascination with videoblogging. Well, her and this research by Jay Baer. But wait. Video? Really?

Video is..UGH! Video? Really?

I know. I know! You’re too something. You’re boring or too fat or too skinny or too old or you have bad acne or whatever you have. I know. Where will you shoot? How do you do it? It’s too hard! Blogging’s easier. I know.

People aren’t reading. YOU might be reading, but “people” aren’t. And it’s bad. Like 19 minutes a day bad.

Meanwhile those people (who aren’t you) are consuming 1 BILLION (giant B) hours of video EVERY DAY on YouTube.

Wait. Isn’t YouTube a bunch of cat videos? Yes. AND.

Disney is launching a new animated Star Wars series straight to YouTube. This is huge. This is “holy cats a huge corporation that really loves money is saying, “we’ll go put this on a super powerful distribution channel.”

Want to See a Few of My Videos?

I started videoblogging again. I’ll give you some to check out. If you can’t see the videos, click here to go to the page. Again, I blame my fiance Jacq for this. And Jay Baer. And facts.

Not too tricky, right? I’ll tell you in another post what I used and how I do it. But it’s not too hard. Promise.

You’re Going to Have to Try Videoblogging

You have a smartphone and/or a laptop with a camera in the lid. Try snapping a few short clips of yourself. Pretend you’re talking to someone you like about something you’re excited about.
Get Steve Garfield’s classic book and Amy Schmittauer’s new one.
But mostly? Start getting comfortable looking at your too-whatever face on screen for a bit. Because it’s going to be more and more important. Your use of video. And you might as well start working on learning this language because it will not go away. As much as I’ve tried to poop on it over the years.
Video. You and me. On video. Yep.
(I’ll share more soon.)

What I Told the Bloggers at Social Media Marketing World

chrisbrogan · March 23, 2017 ·

I wrote this 30,000 feet above the earth. No. I AM WRITING this 30,000 feet up. I just got back from going pee. While I washed my hands, I came up with the first line of my speech for tomorrow.

What I Told the Bloggers at Social Media Marketing World

If I’ve done it right, this post goes live about 15 minutes into my speech. I’m no Christopher Penn, so it’s likely I’ve done it wrong. But I wanted to tell you about the first line of my speech tomorrow. Or my first lines. It’ll go something like this:

I sold cars for a dealership for the entirety of one day. I was 18 and stupid, and they were older and figured they’d give me a shot. They told me to go wander around the used car lot and find someone and sell them a car.

If you were in the room, you’d hear the rest of the story. If not, don’t worry. It’s not an amazing story. I’m mostly using it to tell the corporate bloggers in the room that most companies treat you (the corporate bloggers) like you’re not important. They look at what you do as “lucky magic” and if you land them some business, great. If not, just don’t get in trouble.

I already told you/them the other day that corporate blogs are boring. That’s also true. Other people have been telling bloggers for years not to mess it up and stuff junk content out all over the web or people will stop caring (even more than they already don’t care right now).

But that’s all the misery parts of the speech. What will I say to pick them up again?

Blogging is a Beautiful Opportunity

You can create amazing work. But you can do this with paper. Or a violin. It’s all in how you choose to do it.

Blogging for business is about converting attention to value. You have to earn the attention, and then you have to deliver that attention to a potential opportunity to drive value.

At my speech which I haven’t given, but will be in the middle of giving when you read this (well, actually – who knows when you’ll read this. I’m probably NOT still speaking right now), I’ll tell people about some mechanics. I’ll talk about a blogging frame. I’ll talk about checking for a good call to action. I’ll talk about the absolute importance of writing unique material and not the same old “me too” junk that people seem to want to blog about.

I’ll point them to my own personal patron saint of blogging, and recommend to the non-corporate types a great blogging platform. There’ll be all kinds of technical advice I’ve given a thousand times. No, no comments. Social sharing? Sure, why not?

But really, I think blogging’s at a really weird place.

Blogging As a Tool is in a Shaky Place

I can’t stop quoting this. Americans (that’s where the survey comes from) read for a total of 19 minutes a day. Meanwhile, people (worldwide) consume over 1 billion HOURS of YouTube a day. (See also this gem by Jay Baer.)

I’m told by grown ups who read stats that 1500-2000 words is the new ideal length of blog posts. I’ve been telling people 300-500. I still FEEL like I’m right, but stats say otherwise. However, what I don’t know is whether the stats count things like SALES or just “hey, someone says they read this post.” See?

We all say we’re too busy. Some lady told me today that she wanted to take advantage of all the stuff I sold but that she was too busy to use any of it. I told her to not buy anything. (For the record, I’m not too busy.)

So if we’re busy BUT people are saying blog super long 1000+ word posts, who’s reading those? And are they making business happen? I say probably not, but maybe.

And more important, are you using even the most basic details of Google Analytics? No? Then why blog at all? (Oh, unless you’re just blogging for love.)

Should You STOP Blogging?

I say no. I thought about it. I liked the idea of the controversial perspective. But no. Blogging can and does deliver magical opportunities that don’t come about in any other medium. And you should blog on your own website.
But you might start experimenting. More pictures. More video. Podcasts. Live video. Mixed media. New “conversational” opportunities. Bots. Curation.
If you’re still phoning it in? Oh, then quit. Stop now. It’s over. Fake blogging is dead. Was never alive. But even the vague little bit of Google juice you USED to get is gone. It’s garbage. Go give it to the SEO wizards or something. Buy some kale with it.
Real bloggers? Bloggers with souls? Tell more stories. Quit if they keep you in the used car lot. And look for ways to make it all worth it.

A Splintered Web Gets Even More Fragmented

chrisbrogan · March 22, 2017 ·

This morning, after Jacq left for the gym, I spoke to two different bots on my phone. Poncho gave me the weather forecast and a little weird joke. Joy asked me how I was feeling because she wants to help me keep track of my mood and mental health. These are called chatbots and they’re part of one of the new splinters of what used to be called the web.

A Splintered Web Gets Even More Fragmented

My buddy Martin is all into virtual reality. He met a girl he loves and now they’re going to marry in VR. There are lots of people in Martin’s tribe of “VR will take over the world.” Facebook purchased VR platform company Oculus Rift for 2 Billion dollars. Many people are exploring VR as a new and very important medium for entertainment and communication.

I’m excited by voice applications, for one. I’m interested in Amazon’s Echo/Alexa. It’s another angle on the chatbots I mentioned above. Adrian Zumbrunnen turned his main website into a chatbot. It mostly shows off his skills, but the interface is intriguing because it’s NOT the typical web.

In places like China, apps like WeChat have taken over the wide open web. This one’s weird/interesting to me because it feels almost like a step back. Let me explain:
In the old days, there were BBS platforms (bulletin board services). Then came AOL. Then, for some, The Well. Then, for all of us, “The Internet” for nerds. Then, the “Web,” which is the pretty face of the Internet.
WeChat acts kind of like AOL. It’s a self-contained entity. And people in China love it. Because it handles a lot of their needs without having to go searching all over the place for whatever they want.
There were chatrooms, too. I used to be a big fan of IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Then came Twitter. Later Facebook. Then Instagram if you didn’t feel like sharing a post and a picture would do. Snapchat shows up to give us vanishing proof. My son uses none of these because he’s a gamer. He uses Discord. Haven’t heard of it? It’s okay. It’s not meant for you.
YouTube: one billion hours of video consumed daily.
Podcasts: on the rise and then some.
Netflix/Hulu/CrunchyRoll/Plex servers… and on and on and on.

Now Imagine Trying to Reach And Connect With People

I’ve been blogging since 1998. I started because I wanted to share my ideas with like-minded people. It took a LONG time for people to find these ideas. And then it was even longer before it was easy enough to share them. Back then, blogrolls and curated lists were how we discovered like-minded people. But the blogroll is long gone and many attempts at curation fail (while oddly, others succeed).
It’s harder than ever to happen along and discover our tribe. It’s too scattered. And less and less of it is showing up on a web page somewhere. Think about that. The concept of a “page” is becoming less and less valuable to people. Google search throws up its own cards that are often good enough that people don’t have to click through to the original page.
Or you can talk to a bot.
Or you can surface the information via chat.
Or you can get a virtual tour.
Or…
Or…
This choice is wonderful on the one side. It’s challenging on the other. If you’re a marketer, if you run a business, if you just want to find others doing what you’re interested in doing, where do you look these days?
The answer is unclear.
But I know this for sure: if you stay still, you’ll lose your chance to connect. If you don’t explore these new worlds, at least some of them, you might get left behind like the last keyword holder on AOL. And if you don’t peek outside of the standard “web page,” you’re doomed to lose more and more of your potential opportunity to serve others.
I’m exploring a lot of new avenues for reaching people, for serving people, and for keeping information available in a way that will help others accomplish their goals. It’s upon you to do the same, and to stay tuned to the people who are doing some of the experimenting and exploring for you. Because these shifts have already happened for many, and you and I are in danger of being left behind. Again.

How To Get Started in Videoblogging

chrisbrogan · March 13, 2017 ·

People aren’t reading as much as they were, as it turns out. According to a study from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans are only reading 19 minutes a day. Contrast this with a recent report showing that people are watching over 1 BILLION hours of YouTube video per day. (I know this isn’t apples to apples, but those numbers are both staggering in their own right.) This is one of two reasons why you should consider adding videoblogging to your content marketing plans.

How to Get Started With Videoblogging: The Strategy

Strategically, this is a marketing effort and should be treated as such. The goal of video blogging is to create media that is more personable and that helps your buyers and prospects connect more with you and your company. In a big company, this means the marketing department owns the creation of these kinds of video assets, but if you don’t create video with the employees that people want to actually learn more from, this won’t go far. If you’re a small or solo business, you’re all the departments anyway.
At Owner Media Group, we categorize videoblogging as “connective media,” meaning it’s media you create to better connect your company and brand to the buyer and prospective buyers. You could make the case that some video blogging efforts would be “solution media,” which is where you offer a solution to a challenge a prospective buyer might face. (Hint: this piece of content you’re reading right now is solution media.)
This is “wide end of the sales funnel” activity. You’re not going for a conversion here. You’re building video assets that earn some attention. That attention earns you the right to sell and serve. Make sense? That’s why you’re doing this strategically.

Get Started with Video Blogging: The Tech

I know. This is what you’re most nervous about. It’s actually the easiest part. And I’ll tell you a secret: Most people start small and cheap, get REALLY expensive at some point, and then retreat to kinda cheap midway through realizing that they over-bought. If you save yourself that middle step, it’ll save you a lot of money and a lot of sadness after the fact.
Start: You can start with your smartphone. There’s a video creation button right there. On an iPhone, it’s inside the Photos app. In your Android phone, it’s in the camera. In both cases, you can find the video button reasonably easy. There you have it. Your first videoblogging tool.
The Camera: When you want to step up even just a notch, you might look for a point and shoot camera that has decent video. My fiance Jacq told me to get the Canon G7X Mark II because it’s what Casey Neistat uses (famous videoblogger). She used it for her VeggieMighty videos and I loved the quality so I got one. (Hers isn’t the Mark II, but she got hers right before the new one came out.)
You can buy something bigger or fancier, but what I like about the G7X is that it’s still small enough to stuff in my pocket, and yet powerful enough to shoot really decent high definition footage. Here’s my first videoblog from my project to show you an example:

Can’t see the video? Click HERE
Pretty good quality, right?
Lights: You will want to consider lighting options. Naturally lighting is best. Because of all my work with webinars and digital courses, I had two of these lights. If I didn’t (and maybe I’ll get one of these later), I’d buy one of these Diva Ring lights. It seems to be what all the cool kids are using.
Sound: For now, I’m using the built in camera’s microphone. If you want to get REALLY clever with sound, you can always get something like a Zoom recorder and then edit in the audio to your video. (I do NOT do this but only because it’s a lot of work and I edit my own stuff. Pros often DO do this. Up to you.)
Editing: I’m on a Mac for right now so I use iMovie, which is easy. I’ll say that Final Cut Pro X is easy enough, too, but costs a bit more. When I bought Final Cut Pro X, I ended up thinking that iMovie did all the stuff I needed and that maybe I over-purchased.
If you’re on a PC, there are lots of choices. I can’t seem to get someone to point to what is the closest to iMovie. They mention Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Elements, and a few other options.
For mobile video editing, check out We Video. This works really well.
Whatever the case, pick and learn the basics of something. It’s not as hard as you think.
Hosting: I have been experimenting with WHERE to put my video. I can tell you that I shared links to my YouTube video on Twitter and LinkedIn, and got only a few hundred views. I uploaded and posted a new copy of the video directly to Facebook, and it already has over 600 views and counting. You can also choose to host it via some private platform with built-in software on your website (I don’t recommend this, but you CAN), or on another platform like Vimeo and the like.
My experience so far is that two uploads – one to YouTube and one to Facebook, and then sharing links to that video wherever else you want to promote it, is probably good enough.
NOTE: It depends on your strategy and on your prospective buyer and on the subject matter. We’ll cover this a bit more in the content segment coming up.
Storage: A quick note about storage. Video can take up a lot of space on your hard drive. For the 7 minutes of produced video I made above, it took around 4 gigabytes of space for all the related files. I have two recommendations:
1.) Use a file storage and backup solution like Dropbox.
2.) Buy an external hard drive like this one and store your video files there after you do your editing and upload the final product to YouTube and Facebook. ( This is a 2 terabyte hard drive and it’s only $70 USD!)
Okay, so that’s the basics of the tech. REMEMBER: you can really just do this with your phone, WeVideo, and YouTube. Super easy. Don’t get worried about the tech. Use what works best for you.
Let’s go into the content creation tasks.

Get Started With Videoblogging: Content Creation

What should you create? Remember up at the top of this post when I mentioned that the majority of your videoblog efforts should be what we call “connective media?” That means your goal is to connect with the people you’re hoping will buy what you sell. By connect, give people a sense of who you are and how you are, and what you do when you’re not working with them.
If you’re not even a little bit scared of this whole concept, I think you’re not listening. I’m saying, Be YOU on camera!
If you’re in a big company and the marketing department owns videoblogging, I’m not recommending that you shoot lots of videoblogs from the marketers. We all know those aren’t real people. (I’m kidding! No, I’m not.)
Go find the people doing the work. Sit the boss down for some interviews. Get as much footage of the “behind the scenes” as you possibly can. (But always have a process in place to ensure you’re not accidentally videoblogging company secrets or any other materials that might put you in some kind of legal jeopardy. For Buddha’s sake, don’t just run around and shoot video willy nilly in a big place.)
If you’re in a small or solo company? Shoot whatever you think will endear you to people while still being true to your brand and your business. I included all kinds of shots of my messy desks and work tables. Holy cats, with unfolded laundry on them and everything. Was that smart? I don’t know. Except people wrote back and said, “Wow, I’m messy like you!” See? CONNECTIVE. I connected. (Maybe not for the best reasons, but hey!)
But let’s get into it a bit more.
Narrative Matters!
You can start out by hitting record and rambling. It’s okay. It’s pretty much the starting point of every videoblog (including mine). But eventually, story rules. People don’t want to watch you just for the novelty of watching you.
This post by Susan Moeller over at the Content Marketing Institute has some good insights. For instance, she mentions that a post should have the 5 P’s:

Personal
Professional
Practical
Portray a path for change
Point towards peak experiences

My take is that if you want to create connective media and solutions media, you want to cover a mix of the following:

Random behind the scenes daily moments
Interviews with experts (but very off the cuff and informal interviews)
Process videos showing how something is made or executed
Outside-of-work views of professionals people interact with, like showing off hobbies and such
How-to videos of any kind
Help that guides your potential buyer to success in any form or fashion
“Recipes” that involve not just your product but ideas related to the space you serve.
Origin stories. Everyone loves a “how it came to be” or “the old days” look at a product or service
Thoughts on the future
Conversations and round tables with people inside and outside the organization
“Our Great Customer” interviews where you talk to people about what they’re doing (without pushing too hard about your product)

You could pick any five TYPES of content above and have plenty to cover. Don’t go crazy trying to invent new content ideas. Just work to deliver as much value as you can by creating stories in the spaces covered above.
A Little Secret: One way to get better at videoblogging is to watch more video blogs and see what others are doing and how they’re doing it. Jot down the flow of things. Look at documentaries. Look at interview shows. Start taking notes for how a story is created.
Here’s something to think about when it comes to editing, for instance. Watch how other shows are put together. Pay attention to some of the technical details such as “how often does the video cut from one image to another? In the 1980s, the average number of cuts per minute (switches between images on a screen) was around 30. On average today, it can be as high as 60 cuts a minute (or yes, one per second). And by the way, our eyes and brains have adapted to look for and anticipate (and want) this faster style of video cutting in our viewing. (That’s why you’ll see lots of cuts in the “better” videobloggers’ work.)

Is Videoblogging Just for Business to Consumer Marketing?

No. Business to business is a powerful setting for videoblogs and this kind of content marketing. Look: a white paper can be very helpful and videoblogging isn’t made to REPLACE something like stats sheets and all that. It’s two different things.
Use video blogs to reach and connect with people on a more conversational level, to give people a sense of who you (and the company are) behind the scenes – and with the top button unbuttoned to boot. You know? Not so stuffy.
You can do great work in B2B and B2C and in super small and giant mega companies. The actual value in a videoblog is in reaching and connecting with people that you hope to serve, and giving them a bigger sense of who you are and what you’re about in and around those things that you create for them.

Where Should I Start?

This is the easiest part. Just hit record. Practice being in front of the camera. Practice making little stories. Even if you don’t PUBLISH them until you feel more and more confident.
Take your smartphone out, find the video setting inside the photos/camera app, and hit record. Look at your weird head for a while. Push stop. Push play. Delete it. Do it again.
That’s what we all do. That’s how we all start.
(Until you get ready to be more strategic about it.)
And then, if you want more help? I’m here for you.
Chris Brogan is a business advisor, author, and CEO of Owner Media Group. He’s only recently started building a regular video blog but has been blogging since 1998, podcasting since 2005, and making video of one sort or another since 2006. Learn more at chrisbrogan.com

Nobody Reads Your Corporate Blog Because It's Boring

chrisbrogan · March 10, 2017 ·

In learning how to build my own news platform, I’ve taken a renewed interest in reading through lots and lots of blog posts every day, searching for trends and interesting perspectives different than mine. In that process, I’ve come to realize something.

Nobody Reads Your Corporate Blog Because It’s Boring

I’m not the first to say this. It’s been said for years. Really smart people have written books around it.
But there’s a NEW challenge afoot. The attempt at a solution for most companies was to either outsource their content creation or to assign the task to someone internally. In both cases, the person usually tasked with creating the material just isn’t all that into the company, the customers, and the space that they’re covering. Meaning, they don’t really talk about anything useful or interesting to the person hoping to learn more and get involved in some way with what the company does or sells.
Plus, they’re writing “me too” and boring content. But let’s just assume that.

Problem One: Junk Content Doesn’t Yield You New Prospects

I went to a company site today. Their business is in the machine learning and big data space. Being somewhat interested in how this will be used by companies while still encouraging improved human interaction, I thought maybe this company’s blog would have some great articles or thought pieces. Maybe they’d give me some material to study, some ideas and serving suggestions for the future.
No.
They had a press release about some funding. The next post was something about why companies need to hire the right kind of people. Then, well, I forget what the next one was because it was boring, too.
I’m their prospective buyer/user. What did *I* want when I showed up? Something that got me even more excited about the world around their product. I wanted something to bite into. I wanted a peek inside their minds.
This problem doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It starts at the roots of it all.

Problem Two: There’s Absolutely No Content Strategy

Someone said “Hey, you need a blog” and someone else said, “Okay, well here you go.” Or maybe the strategy was handed to you by some “guru” who told you that if you write enough posts, people will show up.
Blogs and any kind of content are “attention assets” (we cover that in Earn More Customers). Strategically, you use them for wide funnel lead generation. You’re looking to get someone interested enough to determine if they’re the right buyer for your product or service. (Same in B2B – only usually you’ll need more to convert the sale.)
As such, there are a handful of goals each time you generate a post:

Earn traffic from Google Search efforts on problems you solve for buyers.
Provide “next step” areas in your posts and material so that people who determine they ARE interested know what they might do next.
Create instruction and recipe posts to give existing customers (and some potential new ones) ideas on how better to apply your products and services to their own business or lives.
Help customers compare and differentiate between other solutions without sounding like a sales letter. This helps in the often overlooked area of DISQUALIFYING potential buyers.
Warm potential customers up to the rest of your sales cycle, if what you offer solves their problem.
Engage connectivity of any kind between the potential buyer and the person who can best help them decide what’s next. (And I mean human connectivity of some kind like an email exchange, phone call, etc.)

Look at your last five posts and ask whether what was posted advances any of these strategic goals. If no, you already know why your efforts with content marketing aren’t paying off.
Match every piece of content to a strategic outcome or it’s not content marketing – it’s typing.

Problem Three: There’s No Spice or Individuality

This one is huge. Content marketers who write me-too content often look around and pick me-too graphics from huge banks of boring photo sites, and write articles using the same language and same approach as everyone else.
Lots of people tend to write as if they’re doing a book report, or will later be presenting this information to a really smart friend that they don’t want to let down. To that end, they create material with lots of big words, complicated sentence structures, and if you’re really unlucky, a bunch of horrendous analogies and metaphors that don’t really help. Oh, and cliches – tons of cliches.
I learned early on that humans are great at pattern recognition, and that this particular excellence makes us MISS things all the time.
If I say “Let’s all try to think ____” , a lot of people will want to fill that blank with “outside of the box.” Some, attempting to be clever will write “Let’s think INSIDE of the box” and they’ll pat themselves on the back for it.
The name of the game is a blend of two approaches:

Create new or different or somewhat jarring language to express yourself.
Sprinkle in enough familiarity and resonance that the person sees herself or himself in what you’ve written.

Holy cats, Chris. You’ve just told us to do two conflicting things.
Yes. Yes I have.
This is how comedy works on some levels. You tell a story that sounds familiar and then you JAR the person with an unexpected turn. Our brains LOVE what happens during comedy. (If you’re sciency, here’s a journal report.)
Our content marketing, our blogging, our media has to do the same: people have to be shaken out of their blah mindset and yet reassured that we know what they’re struggling with.
As it relates to spice and individuality, you have to speak to a really specific person and type of person (David Meerman Scott’s “buyer persona” strategy). If you try to write for “everyone,” you write for no one.
Are you targeting younger people? Are you targeting highly educated people? Are you hoping to connect with decision makers? They all have a perspective and that changes the approach and also what a person goes out searching for on your site.
Write for the person you want reading your stuff. If you’re talking to executives, write about the higher view and the integration of multiple teams and departments. If you’re talking to the front line users of what you sell, talk from their view. You can sprinkle in both for sure, but write to them.

Shake it up. (What do you mean, Chris?)
You’re not writing a book report. You’re sharing a point of view plus information. It must be entertaining. So don’t write sleepy sentences. Just don’t.
Conversational tone like what I use throughout this post is useful in this regard. Pretend you’re going to actually say these words out loud to a real human. That’ll help you improve your tone.

Bonus Advice

Consider getting more visual, but with fewer boring “stock” photos.

You weren’t expecting that. (And some of you are now singing a song – others are wondering what the heck I just did.)
Look at other ways to deliver your material. Video? Audio? A mix? A slide show? You’re not tied to JUST blogging, even if you run a corporate blog platform.
Avoid “hip and cool” chat if you yourself aren’t really all that hip and cool. (I put this in because my 11 year old son loathes anyone who uses emoji in marketing.)
And get damned strategic about creating what you create. Do NOT give this job to your random nephew or some person with really bright socks just because you don’t understand the value. Learn the value because you’re paying for it one way or another. This is losing you sales.
There. Oh wait. Did you JUST NOW wake up on this one?
My last point, way down here, is that if you keep giving content marketing the “someone else has to worry about it” treatment, don’t bother doing it. Because once you rope someone’s attention in, but then deliver them junk, they’re off to find something else that better matches their interests and needs. This isn’t kid stuff. It’s revenue.

Want More Help?

I sell a Content Marketing Plan Builder that can deliver a step by step walkthrough of the path to delivering better content marketing and earning more customers. It’s delivered in video format with downloadable materials and you can pick it all up at your own pace.
Oh, and it’s designed for a busy professional, not someone who is going off on an island for a retreat somewhere. Check it out.
And please make your corporate blog less boring. Please?
Chris Brogan is a business advisor, keynote speaker, and the New York Times bestselling author of 9 books and counting. Learn more about him here.