Author: Yuriy

Looking to begin building your brand with the power of video? Here’s a list of five different types of videos that encourage interaction between you and your customers.

1. Product Reviews

Creating product review videos or sharing videos made by press or passionate consumers is a popular way for companies to gain attention as well as credibility for their products and engagement with their audience. Whichever type of review you choose to share, make sure the content is short and sweet. Adding excessive information can bore your audience and distract from the ultimate goal. Remember, all your audience wants is to know if the product in question is worth their time

For these types of videos, don’t worry too much about a strict script. Instead, just come up with a few talking points be sure to stay animated. If you start to get monotonous or long winded, you’ll lose your viewer’s interest.

2. Contests, Sales, and Campaign Kickoffs

Videos shared on social media are a fantastic way to keep your customers informed about any campaigns or special events you may have coming up. These can vary from more traditional marketing campaigns such as “Share a Coke” to more fun, informal videos asking viewers to share or submit their own videos to win big prizes or be featured on your brand’s pages. Non-profit organizations and charities can do especially well with these types of videos, as they encourage free publicity for a good cause, like the “ice bucket challenge!

Whatever your brand sells, services, or donates, video announcements allow for quick dissemination and offer an easy way for people to share, compete, or show support.

3. Vlogs And Unboxings

For these types of videos, it’s usually best to sponsor another YouTuber that already has a wide fan base. These sponsorships can be cross-promotional agreements or simply an offer to supply a sample of your product for free. The latter is an ideal arrangement for you to then request a reaction video, review, or “unboxing” video that will effectually act as an advertisement for you and an easy topic for the Vlogger’s next piece. These types of videos usually bring a lot of views and interest, especially with a personality that’s already well loved.

Given the current popularity of gaming videos, it’s usually the technology industry that reaps the benefits of these types of videos. After all, most people don’t want to watch a video about someone’s new mop, but they will watch a video about the latest phone or gaming system.

4. Livestream Events And Webinars

You may hold special events for your company or even public presentations and seminars for new products or initiatives. Unfortunately, not everyone who wants to go to your event can always make it. One of the best ways to combat this is with a live stream. Your customers will be able to see the content that they want and you’ll be able to communicate with a larger audience than just those who attend your event.

5. How-To And Tutorials

Company engagement shouldn’t end when a purchase is made. In fact, one of the best ways to stay in contact with customers after they make a purchase is to provide online how-to videos to keep them engaged with your brand and your product.

Tutorial videos don’t need to be limited to products requiring assembly. If you’re selling a tech device – such as a phone, television, or almost anything else – a how-to video can help you speak directly to your customers about some of the features of their device and how to set those up. If you provide a business service, you can make videos explaining how customers can get the most from their experience. A cosmetics or culinary company can utilize a how-to video for makeup looks and recipes, or a paper company could film a calligraphy lesson. Whatever your product is, there’s probably more than one way to use it — so get creative and share with your customers!

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Forget pages of frustration, represent your brand with the ease and personality provided by video.

Notice that your favorite internet pages have slowly transformed from pages of text to streams of video after video? Everyday, people become less and less inclined to read anything longer than 140 characters and happier to spend hours watching shared video content. While literacy rates remain the same, this slow but sure focus away from reading affects everything we do, including learning. Of course people still learn by reading, after all, you’re reading this right now! But as a brand, it’s not enough to only inform your customers — you need to engage them without giving them the feeling of doing homework. That’s why ditching the old-school instruction manuals in favor of well-produced videos can give you an upper hand. If you don’t believe us, look at brands like Home Depot, who totally killed the branding game with accessible, personal how-to videos for its YouTube channel.

Even dating back to 2015, statistics showed people spend more time each day on digital video than on social media. As a result, U.S. marketers plan on substantially increasing their digital video budgets. Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s Vice President of Global Content, projects that video will soon drive 90% of all Internet traffic. While these statistics may sound surprising, for small businesses and brands, this represents a great new opportunity to engage and inform customers.

The Challenges:
Despite video being so popular, most small businesses seem to stay away from this powerful marketing tool. Why? Some of the reasons cited include:

The good news is that producing high quality video is no longer reserved for the large businesses. Thanks to the continuous improvement of smartphone cameras and constant creation of mobile production and editing tools like Cinamaker, polished content can be made with any budget. With the right accessories, strategy, and maybe some creative effects, anything is possible!

If you’re still not convinced video is right for your brand’s educational content needs, here are some of the most compelling reasons to use video rather than a printed manual:

Enhanced Understanding
The opportunity to deliver a pitch or set of instructions with personal appeal and visual aids will always be more effective than limiting your message to words on a page. Video gives you the opportunity to explain and actually show things the same way you would in person, which can not only clarify ambiguity that can happen with text and ultimately make the entire experience (and subsequently your brand or product) seem more fun and easy.

Increased Memorability
An impressive 80% of people remember the videos they see online. The same cannot be said for every article or manual you read. Creating a video gives people something to remember for days to come. This means that a business has to invest in quality content that keeps users engaged.

Unique Emotional Connection
A 30-second video can bring you to tears or inspire you to take a certain action. Videos can speak to the core of who we are as human beings, because they can create a feeling of connection with another human being. As a brand, you need to realize the amazing opportunity video provides you to connect with your audience. This connection can help you build relationships with your customers and ultimately create a foundation for brand loyalty.

Ability To Repurpose Content
When working with video, you can use single images, distribute behind the scenes footage or further edit the source video to create promotional clips for marketing purposes. Video allows you to be creative and flex your marketing muscles in considerably more ways than text.

Easily Shareable
A creative video doesn’t have to be confined to your site. You can upload your videos on Vimeo and YouTube and use keywords to draw interest to them. This not only increases your brand exposure, it also leads to increased web traffic that could convert into sales.

Speed Sells
In this day and age, speed is critical when it comes to consuming content, and a picture tells a thousand words. Imagine how many more words can be shared and how many minutes can be saved with 60 frames per second!

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YouTube is a powerful marketing tool, and these five brands are here to prove it. Last week, we discussed tips for getting your content seen. But don’t lose sight of the content itself! Long-term success on YouTube is ultimately created by frequently and consistently publishing unique, authentic content. It’s real work!

If you’re looking to make waves for your brand with video content, start with studying the pros. The following is a list of the top brands whose hard work and smart tactics have created a strong, lasting YouTube presence.

Nike
Few companies would ever dream of having the marketing resources Nike has. Although Nike hires a lot of influencers and celebrities, its success on YouTube has been about more than just hiring renowned names. Nike’s success can also be attributed to the fact that it stayed in touch with its brand’s many unique audiences on a personal level.

For instance, while the Nike Football YouTube channel is targeted to the UK market, the brand also maintained channels like Nike, Nikefootball, Nikefutebol, NikeSoccer and many more location and sport specific channels. Rather than trying to accommodate all its content on a single channel, Nike worked hard to create and maintain channels that provided a special place for each audience segment, and that hard work paid off.

Halifax
Halifax bank has truly used YouTube to help drive brand awareness by differentiating itself from competitors. Unlike other banks, Halifax focuses on short, simple, and creative videos to deliver a campaigns real influence.

Halifax also uses the TrueView YouTube ad platform, which means its ads play alongside each other or stream in related content. This ensures that its videos gain massive, relevant reach. Moreover, Halifax creates their video and ad content with the medium in mind. Its concise and interesting content works to convey memorable messages — and they work!

BlendTec
Who knew such an arguably boring product could be made to appear so flashy by a simple video? BlendTec does accomplishes this task perfectly.

This brand found success on YouTube by analyzing what its product really does better than its competition and highlighting the “secret sauce” that converts viewers to consumers. On top of all that, using the CEO instead of actors provided incredible ethos (and perhaps even some pathos) that gave the BlendTec brand a real human appeal.

LEGO
Who doesn’t know and love the LEGO brand? Because of LEGO’s unique place in the hearts of children and adults around the world, this brand was able to utilize a unique form of video marketing.

LEGO’s YouTube videos include animations as well as ads with actual LEGO toys being used and played with by actors. To succeed on YouTube, LEGO evaluated their brand’s audience and created video content based on this research. As a result, the channel not only includes the latter form of more traditional ads, but various series of animated videos to give even more life to its world famous building blocks.

The Home Depot
One thing’s for sure: The Home Depot is never over the top in promoting its products. Instead of over-saturating screens with over-salesy ad content, it creates content relevant and useful to its audience.

By bringing information to consumers in the form of educational videos on YouTube, The Home Depot has only further established itself as a trusted expert. It’s also worth noting that The Home Depot keeps with this no-nonsense theme by posting tutorials hosted by actual employees working in real stores rather than celebrities who may have never even picked up a screwdriver in the last decade.While celebrity appeal may work well for some brands, it’s important to remember that such endorsements tie the celebrity and his or her actions to your brand, which can spell disaster should they be revealed in anyway less than upstanding.

What’s most important is that The Home Depot’s content provides money saving tips and practical knowledge. They’ve stuck to a theme that’s authentic and useful — if your brand can do the same, a YouTube channel may serve as one of your greatest marketing assets yet.

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When it comes to creating a successful YouTube or Vimeo channel, recording your first video is just a fraction of the work that needs to be done. After that comes the really hard part: trying to direct new viewers to your content. Luckily, it doesn’t all have to be left to chance. There are some concrete steps you can take in attracting an audience to your page. Some of this requires trial and error, but don’t sweat it — we’re about to give you some of the best tips to drive more traffic to your channel.

Choose Your Username Wisely
Before you do anything, you’ll have to choose a username for your platform account of choice. This username will be representative of you and your content, so it’s crucial you choose thoughtfully.

First and foremost, pick a name that relates to a central theme of your content. Whether it be beauty, automotive, or a personal vlog, pick a name that’s going to remind viewers of you and your unique appeal — make it catchy and easy to remember! Think about it this way, a name with a lot of numbers or random letters isn’t one that someone can easily search. Names like Pewdiepie and VanossGaming are unique and help viewers create associations with the content’s main personality or subject. Whatever name you choose, make sure you keep it consistent across any other platforms you may share your content on.

Use Social Media
Don’t just leave your videos on one platform and hope for the best; post them everywhere you can. Utilizing other popular social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat can help establish and promote your video channel across a wider range of individuals.
Just be careful to keep your content where it belongs. Constantly sharing on other people’s pages or in their comments can look desperate There’s a fine line between enticing people and annoying people. Don’t lose your cool for the sake of advertising.

Networking Will Take You Far
If you’re the only one sharing your videos, you’ll only get so far. You need to network to make a splash.

You can improve your reach by working with influencers – online personalities, bloggers and even bigger video creators than yourself. Someone making a shout-out for you to his or her already dedicated fan base is incredible free publicity.

Create Interesting, On-Point Titles
We aren’t suggesting you go full-on clickbait like “This One Weird Trick…” or “You’ll Never Believe How I…,” but now that videos are so ubiquitous on the web, your titles need to make your content findable.

The process of naming your videos should be similar to naming your channel. Pick something that’s memorable, clearly related to the content, easily searchable, and ideally catchy or clever. You need to title your videos in a way that stands out as uniquely your own and grabs the attention of your audience while maintaining a strong enough connection to the central theme of the video. You want to engage, not confuse.

Captions And Subtitles
The important thing to remember is that the Internet is truly the Worldwide Web. This means that if you want the most viewers possible, you need to cater to as many people around the world as possible.

One thing that helps generate international and local views is the use of subtitles and captions. Doing so allows inclusion of more deaf, hard of hearing, or even fully hearing local and foreign individuals. Even if you can only include English subtitles, you’re more likely to catch viewers scrolling by with the audio off or even non-native English speakers whose reading comprehension is better than auditory.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a technique that has become rather commonplace for online content. Don’t worry, though, it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Actually, all you need to do is decide what your video’s main topic is.

There are several keyword generators, such as lsigraph.com, that will help you find the best keywords. These keywords should be inserted into the title and description of your video as many times as possible without sounding unnatural. The more you do this, the higher your video should come up in search engine results when the keyword is searched.

We hope our tips help you with your video sharing endeavors! For more help improving your video creation and distribution, download the Cinamaker Creator’s Mobile Studio and check out our blog!

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Today we’re bringing you some seriously spooky Hollywood hacks just in time for Halloween. Learn the ways of filmmakers like Kubrick, Hitchcock, and more in this handy listicle, perfect for up and coming creators with big ideas, but little funding. 13 is about to be your lucky number.

1) Master the dolly-zoom, or Vertigo effect, by moving the camera towards the subject while zooming out at the same time. It might take some practice, but this trick is dizzyingly simple.

2) Don’t have a dolly? Use a wheelchair or any other comparable wheeled conveyance to give your shots some movement.

3) If you’re looking to create a foggy dream sequence, rub some vaseline on the lense of your camera. It’s messy, but worth it. Just be careful when you clean it off.

4) Need another eerie light hack? Make your own cucoloris! Create cool shadows and casts by cutting patterns into cardboard or other light-proof materials and hold it in front of your light source. Choose the best angle for diffusing the light to severity you want. The closer to the light the sharper the shadow, the farther the foggier. You can also try using natural shapes like fronds and other leaves to create such effects.

5) Keep your budget low from the get-go by writing with minimal characters and even more minimal set changes. In television, scripts like this are called “bottles episodes.”

6) Shooting your horror masterpiece in black and white? Fake blood just got a lot sweeter — just use some chocolate syrup. If you’re filming in color, work in some red dye.

7) Not shooting human blood? Crack open a glow stick and mix it with some clear lubricant like they did for predator blood in Predator. Perfect for Aliens, Fairies, Goblins, or whatever otherworldly creatures you may dream up.

8) If your characters are falling (from the sky, not in love), take a tip from J.J. Abrams and hack your scenery with some large mirrors. Instead of expensive CGI, film your subjects from above as they fail over a mirror reflecting the clouds. Don’t get your camera in the shot though! This may call for multiple takes.

9) This next trick hails from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Remember the floating pen? No CGI required. If you need to make a small object float in a similar manner, attach it to a pane of transparent glass with two sided tape and slowly rotate the glass in front of the camera.

10) If your film has some spooky or unnatural sounds, try your hand at foley! Foley artists create sounds for the film after shooting with a toolkit of odd objects and instruments. Need to make the sound of a rough blow to the head? Crack a watermelon. Or, check out this page of free foley sound effects.

11) Foley sounds are fun, but don’t forget the real stuff. Filmmaker Tony Errico, a producer and sound engineer, says “Always record a ‘wild track’ – or ambient sound… one minute of total silence on a set, before or after the main shooting – to have a neutral background sound. ” This will help you set your audio levels in post, so everyone sounds like they’re in the same location at the same time.

12) Filming a risky or hyper-precise scene? Do it in reverse! The best example is James Cameron’s Aliens. Instead of letting the facehugger leap at Sigourney weaver. They acted the scene backwards and then reversed the footage. This way, they could be sure the action ended precisely as it was intended.

13) Finally, probably the cheapest trick here for adding an element of unease to your films is mastering the “dutch tilt.” This deliberately slanted camera angle is a classic dramatic effect to give your cinematography a little extra oomph.

Happy Halloween!

-cover photo from Halloween 2 (1981) c/o IMDB-