Friday, June 23, 2017

Freelancers Must Use Social Media to Promote Their Gigs

Freelancers Must Use Social Media to Promote Their Gigs

Let’s sum up why I think NOT linking to your gig pages and freelance marketplace profiles from your social media accounts is really bad advice:

Do you know what happens when you do not advertise or market your business?

Nothing.

Do you know what’s worse than nothing?

Putting in time and effort and paying money to develop the infrastructure of your business… only to get more nothingness.

If you’re more afraid of the competition than nothingness, shut your business down now and save yourself the stress of being an entrepreneur.

#entrepreneur #freelancing #socialmediamarketing

Originally shared by VideoToOrder.com

Why Freelancers MUST Market Their Services Through Social Media

I have a friend that offers voice-over business consulting services primarily to those who are new to the voiceover profession. In his usually very sound advice he advocates offering VO, narration and voice acting services through freelance marketplace websites, like VideoToOrder.com, and others.

He actually suggests setting up profiles and offering gigs in not one website, but in as many sites as possible – and I’m totally onboard with that.

Yesterday he posted a video in which he advocated offering freelance voice services through gig economy websites but then he said something odd.

He said, this:

“Do not post links to your gig pages from your social media profiles, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.”

The reason he gave was equally shocking:

“If you send a potential customer to a freelance marketplace then you run the risk that the buyer is just going to find your competition who will beat you on price and quality.” (Not a direct quote but that’s the abridged version.)

I was sitting there, with my chin on the floor, thinking,

“He can’t be serious. Can he???”

Needless to say, we needed to respond...

#freelance #freelancer #socialmedia
https://videotoorder.com/blog/5-reasons-freelancers-must-promote-their-gigs/

Monday, June 19, 2017

The Why and How to Use Video Marketing in Your Small Business

The Why and How to Use Video Marketing in Your Small Business

The primary reason video marketing is so successful right now is because of the skyrocketing popularity of video content and its demonstrated ability to not only communicate a marketing message but “convince and convert” readers to become customers as well.

The opportunity to reach potential consumers via video marketing for small business is huge!

Video marketing is working smarter because, today, it is the right tool for the job. You will get the most bang for your marketing dollar with video content because it can be easily converted into other types of marketing material too:

** Marketing articles can be created from scripts and video transcripts.
** Audio content, podcasts and audiobooks, can be created by using just the audio portion of your video.
** Still images, cinemagraphs and GIFs can be created from screenshots and snippets of your video.

The increase in demand for video content means that video marketing provides an enormous platform through which small businesses can reach potential customers.
http://lscottharrell.com/video-marketing-small-business/

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs Video Content RIGHT NOW

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs Video Content RIGHT NOW

In today's environment, video marketing is one of the best and most strategic methods of marketing your business. It has been proven that video messages help the audience more fully retain information and for much longer periods than a text-based message.

Why not take advantage of a free and easy method of building your business???

Because you're lazy.

There. I said it.

#videomarketing #videocontent #contentmarketing

5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs Video Content RIGHT NOW

Do you post or embed video content to your website regularly? Nowadays, for a website to succeed, it needs to provide various types of easily consumable content to an audience who demands content in a variety of formats. If you add a variety of content to your website - text, video, audio, visuals, etc., you will attract and engage a much broader spectrum of potential clients. Perhaps the most important type of content you can add right now is video. 

Let's discuss 5 reasons why your website needs video content today:


1. Video Content Provides More Interactive Information


Text-only content is boring, especially when the message includes numerous long paragraphs of information. Most people will not read your content if it does not capture their attention within the first few seconds. If you only post your content without properly breaking down the paragraphs, adding bullet points, using different font sizes, bucket brigades and inserting some pictures within your content, then you are sure to lose many visitors of your website.

Keep in mind that, unless it's an epic and highly shareable piece of content, text-based articles and blog posts should be written for both the human audience as well as for the search engines. You do that by settling on a longtail keyword (or key phrase) that's important to the audience of the blog and include it several times throughout the article in a way that sounds natural and not overused. (For example, this article is about "video content" or information that is presented through the use of video.)

Text-based content isn't going away and it remains vitally important, especially for SEO reasons, but there's a lot more to writing compelling articles for SEO. This is probably my favorite article on that subject: http://backlinko.com/seo-copywriting. I mentioned the term before, but the section in that article about "bucket brigades" and short, punchy content cannot be overstated. 

Video content is different. Video allows you to immediately captivate your audience and provide more interactive information that is easy to pay attention to, engage them through visual communication and move them through to your call to action.

Video content serves to refocus your website visitor's attention through impactful visual and auditory communication strategies. - L Scott Harrell

2. Video Content Gives More Power to Your Main Content


By embedding a video in the main content areas of your website or blog posts, you are able to add more emphasis through visual communication, which makes it a much more powerful message. The addition of a video can also help you to better explain the ideas found within your content. For example, if you are writing a tutorial about how to do exercises properly in order to lose weight, you can add a video or two of a person performing the specific exercises. This will ensure your audience understands exactly the message you intended. As you can see, using only text to write how-to tutorial might create some confusion with your audience, and video content can prevent such confusions from happening.


3. Video Content Helps with the SEO of Your Site


Before embedding video content into your website, it is better for you to first upload your video to YouTube or some other video platform of your choice (To use Facebook or YouTube is always a huge question.) It is much easier to embed your video directly from YouTube, and it will also help to save the website bandwidth that you have. By uploading that video as unique content on YouTube, it will have its own title and video description. The YouTube listing can help boost the rank of your website when you include your target keywords in your video title and description. Therefore, your video content will also help with the SEO of your website

4. Video Content Can Be Free and Easy to Add to Your Website


Chances are you have a smartphone capable of recording video within arm's reach right now. Pick it up, turn on the video function and hit record. After you end the recording, upload that video to your favorite video host and that's it. You've just created video content and didn't cost you a single extra dollar to do it. 

Of course, if you want to create compelling and engaging videos, then you'll have to go a few steps further. If you have a message or a point you want to make through your videos, then it's probably important to create short scripts to follow until you're comfortable being on camera and speaking "off the cuff". 

Audio is super important and you'll want to pay attention to your surroundings or backdrop, too.

Of course, if you're having a tough time creating videos on your own, you can hire freelance video production help and get the entire video created for you from script writing all the way through video uploading and promotion at VideoToOrder.com.

Embedding video content to your website does not require you to spend more money or invest in another costly marketing campaign. You can do it for free, and it is really simple to do if you have a WordPress or other CMS-based website (like Wix, Blogger, Weebly, etc). If you do not take the opportunity to strengthen your content by adding video content to your website, you are missing out on numerous opportunities and most likely leaving money on the table.

The bottom line for creating video content for most people is the fear of doing video poorly or not creating perfect videos. This limiting belief is KILLING would-be entrepreneurs and is probably the #1 factor why most small businesses are not adopting video marketing as quickly as they should be.

Seriously:

"The Perfect Video Does Not Exist. Get Over It and Get Sh*t Done!"

5. Video Content Modernizes Your Website


Adding video content to your website makes your website look modern and up-to-date. By today's standards, sites that only provide text content are considered old and out of date. Video content also allows you to freshen and improve your content and specific messages multiples times each day, which will help to attract more frequent and unique visits from your audience.

Perhaps as important as keeping content "fresh," video can also dramatically increase the amount of time visitors stay on your website, this is called the "bounce rate." High bounce rates and low time on page is notoriously bad for positive search engine rankings.

In today's environment, video marketing is one of the best and most strategic methods of marketing your business. It has been proven that video messages help the audience more fully retain information and for much longer periods than a text-based message. Why not take advantage of a free and easy method of building your business?


ABOUT L. SCOTT HARRELL


I am the founder of VideoToOrder.com, an online marketplace where buyers can find freelance video professionals who create, edit and market all types of video content for them.

I am also the Executive Editor of Video Entrepreneur Magazine, an online magazine for freelance video professionals who want to make money by making videos, editing, marketing and related business services.

My primary interest is meeting the burgeoning demand for video content; specifically, custom video content creation across a sweeping range of needs and budgets.

I can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and other social media networks.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

A battery of barracuda

A battery of barracuda
A fluther or smack of jellyfish
A turmoil of porpoises
A risk of lobsters
A shiver or slew of sharks

And many others.

Oh yeah, and one of my underwater videos was featured in the article as well!

#scuba #diving #scubadiving
http://scubadiverlife.com/whats-smack-jellyfish/

Friday, June 16, 2017

"Keep everything simple.

"Keep everything simple. You don’t need to use complex words or technical language in your script writing. You don’t need to show off your intelligence to your audience by making everything too complicated and confusing for them; this will only drive them away and most likely drive them to your competition. The less complicated your script, the more successful your video will be and the more likely you will be to increase your viewership. Keeping your message short and simple is also a fundamental rule of advertising."

Originally shared by VideoToOrder.com

Writing Scripts for Short Marketing Videos is a Challenge

In today’s hurried life, more and more people crave instant gratification in every aspect of their lives, including the videos they watch. One of the most important elements of a great marketing video is a solid script to accompany it. Videos created for video marketing purposes need to be short and punchy, which often creates a challenge writing a script that communicates the call to action CTA) and compels the viewer to move through the marketing funnel in the shortest amount of time.

https://videotoorder.com/blog/write-video-marketing-scripts/

#VideoMarketing #Copywriting #Advertising
https://videotoorder.com/blog/write-video-marketing-scripts/

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Excellent idea for flexible part-time and home-based freelancers not afraid to get in front of the camera!


Excellent idea for flexible part-time and home-based freelancers not afraid to get in front of the camera!

Originally shared by VideoToOrder.com

Aspiring actresses and actors: You can earn a part-time income and hone your acting craft by creating video testimonials for businesses!

The Video Testimonial Marketplace™ (powered by VTO) is where businesses and brands will PAY YOU to talk about their products, services & events on video. No experience necessary!

http://TestimonialSource.com

#actor #actress #homebasedbusiness