The Upward Path

your message matters

video

The real reason spelling and grammar matter – video blog

By

To a wordnerd like me, spelling and grammar mistakes jump out and make my brain itch to fix them. And I want to do the best job I can with language.

Most people aren’t wired up like that. If you’re not, is there a real practical reason why you should worry about that stuff?

Yes there is, if you have an audience – clients, supporters, followers, peers – and you care how they see you.

 

 

(This is part of my video skills learning journey. So I apologise for the tics, like saying “you know” every twenty seconds! It was done in one take, so not bad for a learner. Onward and upward!)

 

Is your video marketing like the guy we avoid at parties?

By

Video camera iconOnline marketers love video. Now that the web is able to support throwing media around, it’s a way to appeal powerfully to humans as social animals. We can hear the person’s voice, and see their facial expressions and body language: the kind of communication we’re designed for (except only one-way).

That’s great. But there’s another thing to understand about video.

A video marketing experience

I was just looking at an email from an online marketing guy whose mailings I subscribe to. I find him engaging, and within my tolerance for ra-ra and pushiness (which many are not). Hey, he says, I’ve discovered this thing you can do and you should know about it. Then he links to a video. In the video he takes 10 minutes to talk about the thing. He could have covered it in 5, but I don’t mind too much.

Then, he says, if you want to learn more check out this training programme thingy from one of my friends. I click the link to give it a quick once-over. It’s a page with just a video and no text. The video is embedded in such a way that I can’t pause or stop it, and there’s no visible info about how long the video is. I do the mental equivalent of throwing up my hands in alarm and close the browser tab.

It’s kind of like someone coming up to you at a social gathering, starting to talk about some random topic, and droning on and on with no apparent prospect of escape. Who feels enthusiastic about that?

[Read more…] about Is your video marketing like the guy we avoid at parties?

Don’t be a video-mugger

By

If you embed a video in a web page, don’t set it to start up automatically. Ideally, don’t even have it downloading automatically.

When I come to your site, why should my data feed slow down because of content I might not want? Worse still, why should my music listening (or other video watching) be interrupted by some bod piping up out of nowhere, leaving me to scramble for the source of the problem?

If your media content gets classified as a problem, you’ve an extra obstacle to overcome in getting your message across.

Make it the user’s choice to download and launch the content. Use your words and layout to make them want to do it.