Tag: Business

Posted on

Marketing Yourself with Video

Video can be a great way to market yourself and your business online. It has become easier and easier to upload or embed video to your website http://tiny.cc/Ymuj8 and your blog. In additon, video host sites like You Tube or Vimeo allow you to upload and share your videos and let you create your own TV channel. http://www.vimeo.com/kellymooney/videos You get the value of people sharing your video virally and referring others to it. You can also create a link back to your website or blog.

With that said, you want your video to call attention to your business and be consistent with your brand. It needs to be entertaining or informative and relevant to your target audience for it to be noticed and shared. The quality has to be decent enough to get your point across and if your business is a creative one like photography or video production, good quality is a must.

Your video can be about yourself, how you work and can show you in action. Photographer Chase Jarvis has a nice promotional video on his site. http://tiny.cc/NacGq And depending on your target audience – it can be instructional. The video should be short – less than 5 minutes and engaging. You want to make people remember you and come back to your website or blog.

With all the new tools like the latest iphone and the Flip, creating videos for blogs and emails has never been easier.

Posted on

Competing With Free

A lot of old sayings come to mind. “You get what you pay for” or
“The less one pays, the more they expect” are just two that come to mind.

Yesterday I read in the trades that a new stock photo agency had sprung up and the content was free. I’m guessing the business model has their hopes on making revenue from online paid ads. But it was interesting to note that the owner said his company’s biggest problem was getting free content. Gee, I wonder why.

If anyone thinks that giving away content or services in hopes of getting paid gigs down the line – well then I have a bridge to sell you. That dangling carrot is as old as the hills.

Now I’ve done a lot of pro bono work in my life and will continue to do so – and it has always brought returns – many times monetary ones. But I have never given something away for nothing because someone tells me that they will pay me in the future.

Think about it – why should they pay someone who places no value on what they create. Lou Jones had a great reply when asked by a potential client to work for free on a job with the promise that he would be hired for future paying jobs. He responded by saying that he would do the paying job first and then in the future would consider offering some free services.
I thought that was a brilliant reply.

Bottom line – if you give it away – you are saying your work has no value.