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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.”

Today on the news, I saw a story of a woman from Arizona who was so fed up with the latest invasion of privacy from Facebook, she had her lawyer file a federal complaint against the company. Her lawyer said the intention was to make it a class action suit and according to the Arizona Republic, she is not the first to attempt a class action suite against the social media giant.

I have to say, I am not a big fan of the latest changes, especially the “we want to track everything you do”‘ feature. I don’t believe it is necessary and people already give up enough information and privacy to participate. The new tracking is confusing to most people, so they will most likely end up giving more information than they want to. And for some, it might even be embarrassing as this Mashable article suggests.

I am curious to see how this one plays out. Stay tuned