PERSON OF THE WEEK: For many people, YouTube is the ultimate leisurely time-waster, where one can find amusing videos of cranky babies, misfit singers with angelic voices and fat boys pretending to be Jedi warriors. But YouTube also has significant B2B potential that is only now being recognized. Jay Miles, author of the new book ‘Conquering YouTube: 101 Pro Video Tips‘ (published by Michael Wiese Productions), spoke with MortgageOrb on why real estate finance professionals should pay serious attention to YouTube's viability as a marketing vehicle.
Q: Why should a company in the mortgage banking industry have videos on YouTube?
Miles: There are three reasons to consider opening and maintaining a YouTube account for institutions such as real estate finance companies: cost, ease of use and distribution.
YouTube is a free, low-maintenance, worldwide distribution platform that can serve as an excellent supplement to more traditional marketing and communication efforts. From showcasing current listings and properties to offering tips or advice to your client base, short video clips can carry a ton of useful information to an international audience (subscribers to or friends of your YouTube channel).
Your videos also work to reach new markets as your established viewers pass along your clips via email, text messages and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Imagine repackaging the outreach that is traditionally included (and quickly discarded) via monthly newsletters and other cumbersome, expensive and outdated communications flowing across numerous platforms, and you can begin to grasp the power of new media.
Customers and clients can either view your videos via your channel directly, or on an external site (i.e., your company site, Facebook, etc.) using the embedded code that appears at the end of each YouTube clip. This feature allows your firm to build a body of video work that doesn't eat up precious (and expensive) hard-drive space with the company that handles your Web hosting. In short, you can deliver previously untapped impressions to a wide range of markets across nearly every demographic, for little to no expense.
Q: In creating a corporate video for YouTube, do you recommend hiring a professional videographer, or is this something that can easily be done internally with a store-bought camera?
Miles: We are living in an era where off-the-shelf technology rivals that of most lower-end professional video equipment (both in terms of cost and quality), and this gap is shrinking rapidly. The obvious advantage here is expense, as the cameras, software, lighting and audio gear have all become drastically more affordable.
The downside is that your current staff may not have the time, resources or visual skills to execute videos in a manner that is both consistent and professional. And I probably don't need to warn you of the dangers of leaving your video efforts in the hands of an inexperienced aspiring filmmaker, no matter his or her level of enthusiasm or their political or familial proximity to the CEO!
Depending on the size of your outfit, and the type of presence you intend to create by way of video production, the hiring of a professional videographer may be the only possible course of action. But don't overlook the middle ground between emptying the coffers for a few expensive shoots and handing your marketing manager a camcorder and a shot list! Consider bringing a pro video guru in for a series of workshops that can bring members of your existing staff up to speed, taking the fear out of the technology and priming them to be keen visual storytellers.
You also need to decide if you simply need a few pieces of high-end video that can run online for several weeks or months at a time, or if you need to generate video content on a monthly, weekly or daily basis. Knowing what amount of output you feel will be most beneficial to your organization will also help you decide whether you need to hire a pro or simply order that camcorder – just don't forget to order a good tripod!
Q: What are some of the key considerations in putting corporate-related videos on YouTube?
Miles: Three of the top considerations for corporate-related videos on YouTube are copyright, branding and a subtle – but often overlooked – aspect of your online presence: voice.
In terms of copyright, I always encourage avoiding the use of previously recorded music and images that are under copyright. In our drag-and-drop world, almost every version of video-editing software allows you to effortlessly add MP3 files and numerous image formats to your videos. While this may work fine for your family vacation videos, it should be avoided for any of your corporate offerings. But videos without a musical component can generate more boredom than your 10th grade math class.
The solution? There are a ton of royalty-free MP3s online and numerous music-editing software options currently available for free. The upside of this is that it has become relatively painless to plop a piece of audio into your edits.
That's the good news. What's the bad news? We are already starting to hear the same loops of music running in national, regional and local radio spots and all across YouTube. You can work around this trap by hiring local musicians to record some simple tracks for exclusive use in your clips. Up until very recently, this was not a viable option, as the cost of renting a recording studio was simply too great. But the same free software that has created such an overuse of prerecorded loops and samples is also freeing scores of talented musicians to record tracks with excellent fidelity in their own living rooms!
This may seem like a big step or like entering uncharted territory for a corporate endeavor. But hiring a musician to generate a memorable and effective piece of audio is really not that much different than subcontracting any other type of labor, and it could just be the element that drives your YouTube presence ahead of the competition.
This leads to the next big consideration: branding. Worried that a local musician will deflate your corporate image? Reconsider the possibilities, especially in light of the current keyboard riff used by The Home Depot, or the all-too-catchy ‘I'm lovin' it’ jingle from McDonald's. Similarly, maintaining consistent visual elements in your videos will prove crucial. Fortunately, incorporating existing graphics into video has become much less terrifying, as the current software does a much better job of properly displaying still images than ever before.
Selecting the correct font for any additional on-screen graphics that you find necessary has also become much less troublesome, as current editing software can recognize, display and render (ready for output) almost as many fonts as your desktop editing and word-processing software can handle.
Matching your existing signage, logos and imagery should not only prove relatively simple, but should guide you as you begin to generate a ‘look’ for your online videos. This can easily carry over from graphics into other aspects of production. If your existing branding revolves around the use of blue, for example, shooting your videos against a background of a similar color can be a simple, elegant solution. This also doesn't need to be costly – you would be amazed how great a simple blue tablecloth can look on camera!
Lastly, don't overlook the type of ‘voice’ that you want to convey in your videos. This might involve the decision to include key members of your staff in your clips, offering advice as the ‘go to’ expert sources within the industry. Or you might consider finding on-screen talent outside the confines of your office.
Q: A great deal of the content on YouTube consists of funny videos. Do you recommend incorporating humor into a corporate YouTube video?
Miles: I would only suggest including humor if it is integral to who you are as a company or if humor is an appropriate element of your communications. There is a huge misconception out there that YouTube videos have to be funny, weird, wacky, disturbing or otherwise unsafe in order to be effective. Not true.
Don't forget to keep the ‘you’ in YouTube, building your channel (a digital extension of your brand) in your own image. In addition to employing your established fonts and graphics in your videos, you can generate whatever tone you prefer within your videos.
Q: How can a company measure whether or not their YouTube videos are being well received?
Miles: Views, ‘likes’ and comments are the engines that drive YouTube success. Views are a simple count of the number of instances that a particular upload is played, either via YouTube directly or while the video is embedded on an external site. Taken from a marketing perspective, views offer insight into the amount of effectiveness that a particular clip has generated. Although counting views can be more of a popularity contest than a scientific breakdown of market penetration, there is more advanced data that is available to the owner of a particular channel.
When logged in to YouTube, users can select a function labeled ‘insight’ that offers a wide range of demographic information about a particular clip, or by comparing all of the clips that have been uploaded to that channel, presented in graphical and chart formats. The insight tab breaks down views by date, time and geographic region, and offers users the ability to easily select date ranges and other factors generated by views. The data can also reveal how viewers found or watched your clip, whether by a YouTube search, direct viewing, embedded video player, mobile device, subscription or other means.
Portions of these charts and graphs can be exported for further study in common spreadsheet programs, and users can also see how long the average viewer watches a given clip in real time as the clip plays alongside the data. Not bad for a free, worldwide video marketing platform!
Comments that are posted about your videos allow direct feedback from your clients, fans and customers. At first glance, this might seem like a sure-fire way to let a flood of unwanted comments into your online presence, and to be sure, the Internet can be counted on to deliver more negative commentary than any other marketing effort that you undertake. But by making careful selections in your account settings (and as you upload each individual clip to your page), you can determine how viewer comments are posted.
There are options for approving individual comments on your videos before they hit the public portion of your YouTube channel, so you can filter out those comments that are off-topic or inappropriate. Some users even avoid comments altogether, sidestepping potential landmines. But don't completely overlook the upside of this commodity: Positive feedback from viewers works like unsolicited testimonials for your content and can help generate residual business.
