Tell your stories - using your phone to create promotional video
Video content is growing year on year. Smart Insights stats on social content tells us video is a highly effective form of content and its popularity has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of social media. We ourselves are attracted to more visual content than ever before. Our goals as businesses is to create useful and helpful content and spread it as far and wide as possible, all while promoting our business to potential service users. Video content must be included in the overall marketing strategy.
In my role as digital communication, I have dabbled in video marketing creating testimonial videos and PR for our centres of excellence. Although I am proficient ICT user – using video content was frustrating for me! I have an awesome camera that shoots high quality video, but it was a challenge to piece the footage together and literally taking weeks to edit on my desktop software. Now like me, who has the time to dedicate a week to video content? Exactly. I needed a faster solution but one that still enabled the product to be professional (and worthy of sharing).
So I took myself off on an internet search and found a training workshop on ‘Smartphone Promotional Video Marketing’ in Omagh Enterprise with Women in Business (WIB). WIB is a business network for female entrepreneurs and business leaders in Northern Ireland. I paid a small fee of £15 and would pay double again from the knowledge and skills provided by Aislinn Higgins, Director of Dream Media Ireland. It was exactly what I needed, and I want to share my learning with you all who are marketing their early education and care services.
Aislinn started the workshop off by showcasing a variety of equipment. But this equipment was not thousands of pounds, most she purchased from B&M bargains! I am heading straight to my nearest store at the weekend to pick up a few pieces. My favourite (and most useful for me) are listed below:
Smartphone lens kit: macro lens for close distance, a fisheye lens for a 180° shot, which is perfect for taking selfies, and a wide angled lens.
Tripod: prevents camera movements and can be used for video or photography. Great if you want to film one location or even jump in front of the camera yourself.
Monopod (tripod with no feet): to support cameras and steady it more.
Selfie light for phone: Lighting makes everything look better.
Rode microphone with a (furry) wind muff cover: this was bought on amazon. It helps pick up sound and reduces wind noise.
We also got some DIY tripod resources which I will definitely be trying out (google images of DIY phone tripods - great creativity).
Now that you have your equipment purchased and you have the story planned out on what you are recording. Aislinn’s top tips when starting to film include:
Keep arms close into your torso. If you need to move angles move torso not arms.
Don’t use camera zoom. It is ok to take multiple shots and piece together. For example, starting with a distance shot, stop/pause, move closer to subject, start new video.
Lighting most important. Always make sure light behind camera not in front of it. For example, your back to the window not the subjects. There is a lighting adjustment on phone. When you open camera and the yellow focus box appears, tap it to hold and move your finder up or down screen to adjust light.
Play about and familiarise yourself with equipment and location. Have a practice run beforehand.
Feeling pressure, that is ok. Shake it out and start, if you mess up lines or something doesn’t go to plan, stop and redo.
It is important to note online attention spans are much shorter in real life. Best to keep videos short and snappy. YouTube videos can be longer but if your audience is on Facebook the ‘sweet spot’ for video length there is 60 to 90 seconds. For a PR video, the maximum length of a video is 2 minutes.
Video Editing
The fun part. You don’t need to purchase anything! No desktop software, no pricey apps. Aislinn provided two FREE video editing apps we got to download to our phones and play about with, ‘Filmora’ and ‘InShot’.
You import your video footage along with any photos you want to appear, from your phone gallery. You can add royalty free music over your footage and add filters, text and logos. Both apps were really simple to use and user friendly. They also provide tutorials online (google the app name and how to edit) which you can follow to guide you through the editing process.
The apps allow for export at 1080 which is the highest format and then you can upload to your preferred social media platform.
I have recorded a video recently for one of our centres of excellence on my camera, but I am off to import the footage (somehow – will need to google) into my phone camera and edit in one of the apps mentioned above.
I hope this helps you in your journey to producing more and more video content. I can wait to see them all online.