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It’s week three of the video marketing challenge; how many videos have you created? No pressure if you haven’t done any, but I’d say make it a goal to get on board ASAP if you want to grow your business this year. Today, I want to share about shooting live video at events. My philosophy when it comes to capturing things on video is “always be ready.” You never know, you might be one of those folks who catches a big event on your phone camera that makes it on the news?

If you attend a live event, capturing a video clip can do a few things for you. First, you can help those who could not attend the event get a glimpse of it and secondly you can leverage the keywords related to the event to help get exposure for your video (or blog if you create a video blog post) by using keywords in your titles, descriptions, and social media sharing. As you will see in my example below, the better the quality of video camera, the better your results will be.

Yesterday I visited the Barrett Jackson auto auction in Scottsdale, Arizona which is something I do every year. This year I had the opportunity to meet one of our clients there who was visiting from out of town with his wife. Brian (my client) and I had previously discussed how we need to add more video to his online marketing campaign, but because he runs an insurance agency in New Jersey, it was a bit harder for me to help him make this happen from Arizona. This turned out to be a great opportunity to shoot some video for him and for the video marketing challenge. We ended up shooting a video of Brian talking about insuring collector cars, a video testimonial from Brian (he was sharing the successes he was seeing form our campaign, so I asked if he would go on camera), and then I shot the crazy video you see below. I was just having fun with this one, but in it you will see a celebrity sighting (Chip Foose), and catch a clip of the auction in progress. It’s a bit difficult to hear and of course, it was just an iPhone video, so it’s not the best quality for that kind of thing. I guess if I had thought it out, I would have brought the Flip Video Camera as well.

I believe that is a record for me; three videos uploaded in a week. I had my excuses as well of why I was not doing it, but I have retired those excuses. How about you? How is your video marketing coming along?

It’s not too late to join the video marketing challenge. Just let us know you are doing it, by commenting below and start making videos.

Now, here is my (lame) video of the Barrett Jackson auto auction in progress:

Hey everyone, it’s week two of the Video Marketing Challenge. I hope you have joined us, and if not, there is no better time to start than today. If you are taking the video marketing challenge, just leave a comment below to let me know.

As you implement video marketing in your business, keep in mind that video testimonials are some of the best video you can create, and for many reasons:

1. Video testimonials are more powerful than written testimonials. Why? Anyone can write a testimonial and grab a picture, but once you put someone on camera, there is a bit more accountability (because real people know them.)

2. It’s better to have other people say great things about you than doing it yourself.

3. You can usually do it pretty quickly. I shot the video below with my iPhone in one take and had it recorded and uploaded to YouTube in under 5 minutes. It doesn’t get much easier than that (thanks to Stephanie at Backfit Chiropractic for agreeing to go on camera on the spot.)

The next time you are in front a customer who has just thanked you for your service, pull out your phone and ask them for a video testimonial.

Check it out!

As we approached the end of 2011 I must have sounded like a broken record. I kept asking people what they were doing as far as video marketing was concerned for 2012 because it has been estimated that over 50% of Internet traffic will be video by December 2012.

I am not sure if you have a plan yet or not, but I want to issue a challenge to you. I want to challenge you to create and post a new video every week online. I recommend using either YouTube or Vimeo, both are free and great platforms. The Video Marketing Challenge is intended to motivate you and give you sense of accountability to do your video marketing. There is not big prize (yet… I might find a sponsor), but there are some rewards and here they are:

1. A larger online footprint. If you follow through with the weekly challenge, you will have 52 new videos online that can be found in online searches and lead back to you.

2. More business. Having more exposure usually results in more business. Most businesses need this, and chances are yours does too.

3. It will motivate you to lose weight I can only say that because I am talking to myself. And if the reason you don’t get started is because you aren’t happy with how you look, I have some news for you. People already know what you look like Don’t let something so shallow hold you back from success!

3. A sense of accomplishment. If you haven’t done it, doing it will give you the satisfaction of getting it behind you. Who knows, you may love it!

Getting Started
If you have a smartphone (such as a Droid or iPhone) you have no excuse. Also, if you have a fairly new laptop, most of them have video cameras built in. If you don’t have either, you can still shoot video with most cell phones, or you can get a cheap computer video camera.

Many people say they don’t know what to say on video and the simplest way to come up with video content is to think of the questions that people ask you throughout the day. As you answer these questions, you will be positioning yourself as the expert in your field and it will lead to new business opportunities.

If you are going to take the challenge, please post your first video in the comment area below. And with that, here is my first video. It’s intentionally not perfect… don’t worry about perfection, just focus on getting something online!

Wishing you the success you deserve!

If you have not heard, the Dallas Cowboys has forced one of it’s cheerleaders to close her Twitter account. She is Melissa Kellerman, the cheerleader who was blindsided by Tight End Jason Witten during a football game (he unintentionally ran into her at the end of a play.) It seems that she figured out how to attract an audience better than the team did, and of course like most good corporate entities, they simply don’t know how to handle the success of an employee and fear that they will somehow taint the organization.

When I first read it, I was tempted to be shocked that yet another large organization has not figured out how to use social media effectively. I did assume that an organization such as the Dallas Cowboys had a social media expert on staff and also that they had a social media policy in place given that it’s almost 2012.

Here is the missed opportunity. They should have simply played along and interacted with those that were drooling over, I mean following Melissa. It would have been good for the organization overall. Now they just look bad and have their fans, the media, and all of America (well, perhaps all of the men) watching to see what will their next move will be.

Punctuation makes all the difference in the message. Perhaps, my title should have read “Stop WireDoo!”

For some reason MC Hammer thinks he can build a better search engine than Google. I am not sure if he is aware, but others – including former Google insiders – have tried to beat the search giant and have failed miserably. Let me remind you of a now defunct search engine called Cuil.com that somehow managed to raise $33 Million dollars. They had some Google insiders helping them and as I recall, the search results were mediocre at best.

One has to ask “why would someone want to go anywhere but Google to search?” Assuming they had lots of good answers, they would then have to solve the problems posed by those who would leave Google.

Hey, I grew up in the 80′s and I actually like MC Hammer as a person; he’s a positive guy, but I also like a lot of other smart and nice people – none of whom have any business trying to start a search engine.

I am not sure who his team of experts is, but at first glance the WireDoo home page has gotten lots of negative feedback from the haters. That’s probably because he said it has been two years in the making. I could have given him something better in two weeks from a website standpoint and that’s not being arrogant, it’s just saying it sounds like he jumped the gun in announcing this site.

Let’s be honest, Hammer was great on the stage, but he hasn’t proven himself otherwise, let alone in the search engine world. I am not sure who is backing this venture, but my advice to him is “please Hammer, don’t Hurt ‘Em.”