Must-See Online TV

All of us have seen HGTV and the Food Network, where chefs and contractors are turned into celebrities overnight.  Getting the call from Hollywood not only translates into popularity for these newly minted stars.  It also means added profitability for their businesses as well. While that’s all well and good for those lucky enough to be approached to host a cable show, what are the chances that you are going to get star treatment.  Probably not very likely.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that you don’t have to wait for Hollywood to beat a path to your door.  

YouTube to the Rescue

With the advent of YouTube, you can easily create and distribute programs of your own.  Best of all, they don’t have to be the standard 22 minute length required for a half hour cable show. (The other 8 minutes are reserved for commercials.)  On YouTube less is more.  That means that you can create microcasts of 2-4 minutes in length.  This will give you the chance to dazzle the audience without having to break the bank.

Now for the big question: How do you shape your telecasts?  For starters, there are three gotta-haves for must-see-online-tv.  

1. Funny – Never underestimate the value of humor to make your point and generate an audience.  While I am not suggesting that you add a stupid pet trick to your lineup, unless your business revolves around pets, what you need to do is look for the lighter side of life.  For example, check out my video: The Care and Feeding of the 800lb Gorilla.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZhLs-g1qjY
2. Solves a Problem – The reason that how-to shows are so popular is that they help people solve a problem.  I have a pet theory about the fact that most of the people who watch all those cooking shows can’t do toast.  So it is the allure and not necessarily the delivery of a tangible solution that can help you get viewers to tune in. Take a look at my video: How to Get your Video on Google Page 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmC0V2QeZE
3. Eye Candy – No, I’m not necessarily talking about a buxom blonde, although that never hurts.  What I am referring to are elements in your videos that offer something in the line of visual appeal.  Watch me bring the house down in my promo for Access-JAX.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfNilfGHjxY

Putting on the Producer’s Hat

Now for the hard part…i.e. using these three guidelines to come up with programming.  When I take on a new client, the first thing I do is explain to them that if they want to produce a series of broadcasts as opposed to the standard one or two videos that most website owners post on their sites (if that), then they need to put on their Associate Producer’s hat.  What I tell them is that they need to start thinking like a TV producer, which means being cognizant of the things that occur in their businesses everyday that would make for riveting programming.  

In order to facilitate this, I tell them to bring a digital still camera and a small notepad on the job with them.  Whenever they start a job, they need to shoot a series of before photographs.  Then during the job, they should take notes, as well as shooting a few pics while the job is underway.  Last but not least, they need to take the after photos.  Between the photos and the notes, they should be able to gather enough material to rough out an episode.  (I remind them that it is benefits that sell prospects and not features. The reason that someone buys a drill is not for it's power or torque, but to make holes.  In other words, don't talk tech to your audience.  Act as though you were trying to explain the process to a twelve year old.)

Once they have a couple of episodes in hand, they come to me to shoot the intro and closing shots on our green screen.  This provides the look and feel of an HGTV show.  It is at that point where they give us their photos and notes from which we produce the polished episodes before loading them onto their YouTube channel.

I also tell clients to always be on the lookout for visually appealing and/or funny scenarios that occur during the course of business as usual.  You would be surprised at how many times clients tell me about oddball moments on the job.  If they weren’t able to capture them on camera, many times we can do a reenactment.  The most vital ingredient is to train yourself to make notes of these moments in order to turn them into killer episodes.

Life is the Ultimate Reality TV Show

 The thing is to avoid is making the performance of these duties a chore.  Have fun.  It should take no more than an hour or so a week to actually capture the elements needed to continue producing your series.  As you gain more experience your production values and your audience will continue to grow.  Eventually producing your own online series will become as natural as pulling on your shoes in the morning.  As a bonus, you will be able to rerun these videos on your website, your blog, your social networks and even in your printed literature by using a QR code.  As your YouTube channel gets more programs, both Google and your audience will take note.  Suddenly your videos will start popping up on Google page 1and your viewers will start passing your videos along to friends and family.  Who knows, if your series becomes popular enough, maybe you will hear a knock on the door one day from your friendly cable producer.

Carl Weiss’ video production company, http://jacksonville-video-production.com specializes in viral video marketing.  If you are looking to shoot a video for promotional purposes, check out Carl’s blog at http://jacksonvillevideo.blogspot.com/ or follow him on Facebook 

What is Your HGTV Moment?

Anyone out there who watches HGTV is familiar with the fact that it is storytelling that is crucial to making someone want to watch paint dry, or tile get laid.  Not to mention the fact that having your face on TV can do wonders for promoting your business. 

Well what if I told you that you could have both of the benefits above without having to beg a cable affiliate to make you their next celebrity contractor.  What I’m talking about is the phenomenon of Microcasting, which could be coming to a PC near you.

Unlike cable TV, where a 30-minute program is equated with 22 minutes of video, online TV shows need to only be two to three minutes in length.  Also unlike broadcast TV, online you don’t need to pay for a timeslot to broadcast your show.  All you need to do is create a channel on YouTube for free.

Of course, if you want to build an audience, you will need to take a lesson or two from all those “Fix This House” shows.  What this boils down to is coming up with programming that people will want to watch.  More importantly, you want to produce shows that people will want to pass along to their friends and in so doing help you build audience share.  Accomplishing this does not require you to pay for studio time or invest in CGI special effects.  All it takes is a little imagination. 

As a rule, there are three maxims for reality TV:

1. Humor
2. Solve a Problem
3. Eye Candy

Take for instance one of my clients, Bill Aldridge at Aldridge and Sons Plumbing.  After extolling the virtues of microcasting to him, he was interested but skeptical. 

“I hear what your saying,” he told me.  “But how do you make plumbing funny?”

So I told him to think back to all the times he managed to narrowly avoid disaster (think flood), or anything that surprised him (like the time a cat got stuck inside the wall the one time I tried to fix a leaky pipe in the bathroom), or in short anything that would have visual appeal.  So after kicking a few ideas around, we both decided to put our heads back together the following day.

Fortunately for me, it didn’t even take 24 hours to come up with an Eye Candy idea for Bill.  After talking to one of my business associates, Andy Stansfield, about my interview with the plumber, he told me, “Let me pitch you a show.”  It turns out that a couple of months back, Andy had called Bill for help fixing a clogged drain.  Bill dispatched his son Billy to do the task.  While he was there working on the drain, Andy told him that lately some rather rank odors had been wafting up from the kitchen sink.  Billy looked at him and said, “It’s probably your dishwasher.  What say we clean it out.”

Andy agreed and Billy proceeded to open the freezer and take out the storage compartment from the icemaker.  Walking casually over to the disposal, he filled the contraption up to the top with ice.  Then he drizzled a few drops of liquid dish detergent on top of the ice.  Then he turned the disposal on.

“The disposal started churning with a noise like a sno-cone machine gone wild,” Andy told me.  “A few seconds later up out of the drain came this column of foam.  It practically filled up the sink.  It was the craziest thing I ever saw.  All I kept thinking was, ‘I should take out my I-Phone and videotape this for YouTube.’

Needless to say, not only did Andy get a sparkling clean garbage disposal out of the incident, but I also got my inspiration for Bill’s HGTV moment, which we are going to shoot as a reenactment later this week.

While this kind of programming is just the ticket for hooking viewers, you can’t rest on your laurels.  Not if you expect to build an audience. To do that you need to feed the monkey.  By that, I mean that you need to produce a series of microcasts. 

For Bill Aldridge, what I suggested was that his son buy a low cost video camera and an inexpensive external hard drive (nothing eats space faster than video).  His assignment is to follow his techs from time to time and shoot enough how-to footage to enable us to put together four episodes at a time.  Since we are going to feed his audience a blog a week and a video every two weeks, this will mean that we can put together enough material for two months of broadcasting with one post-production session.  Once he has the material, we can shoot the intros on our green screen and then produce four shows every other month.  This way Billy won’t have to quit his day job and Bill Sr won’t have to break the bank to pay for post production.

Mind you, we aren’t looking to teach the audience how to do Bill’s job.  What we are looking to do is show them some helpful hints and colorful stories, as well as cue the audience as to when it’s time to call in a professional before the task gets way out of hand.  (Like my attempt at fixing the leaky bathroom pipe.)  I also told both Bills to keep a weather eye out for any amusing anecdotes that either they or their technicians pass along as this is grist for creating enertaining reenactments, such as the disposal incident. 

No matter what your business, by putting on your television producer’s cap and having a preproduction meeting with you staff, you too can create must-see-online-tv.  It beats waiting for Hollywood to come knocking at your door.

Carl Weiss has been producing online and cable programming, corporate and how-to videos for more than 6 years.  For samples of his videos, check out his Jacksonville Video Production website today.  If you want to see some humorous programs, click on the "Commercials" tab.

How Video helped a Start-Up Land Shelf Space at Wal-Mart

I guess everybody here is waiting for me to write an article about the public launch of Google Plus.  Well, I’m going to hold off on that for another week. Instead I want to tell you about an article I read on Monday on the Wall Street Journal online, titled “How a Start-Up Landed Shelf Space at Wal-Mart.” 

The piece profiled an entrepreneur who spent $40,000 to develop the Orabrush, not a better toothbrush mind you, but rather a brush that you use on your tongue.  To make a long story short, they offered this device to a number of big box retailers.  You want to guess how many sales they racked up?  That’s right a big fat goose egg. 

Now desperate to try anything that could possibly leverage a sale or two before the company went belly up, the patent holder approached a marketing professor at Brigham Young U, who was so impressed with the product that he promptly passed the project along to an undergrad student.  This student volunteered to create a 2-minute YouTube video for the company for $500.  After spending forty grand, the guy behind the Orabrush figured, “What do I have to lose.”

So I guess you’re wondering how effective a two minute video about a tongue brush could possibly be?  Today the company’s YouTube channel, called Cure Bad Breath, has racked up nearly forty million views, making it the third most popular after Apple Computer and Old Spice. 

Not only did the company get that coveted shelf space at Wal-Mart, but before the big box could sign them on the dotted line, Orabrush had sold in excess of one million units online.

So if that’s what a little online video can do for the inventor of the tongue brush, just think of what it can do for a business like yours.

If you want to read the article in its entirety, click on the link .

Carl Weiss specializes in viral video marketing and video SEO.  To view his video knowledge base, go to Access-JAX and Jacksonville Video Production

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