Videos are a powerful part of growth marketing. Getting started can feel overwhelming and intimidating. Dealing with the different formats required by different channels and repurposing video content can suck time away. Here are tips and tools to make video marketing easier.
Create video once and easily edit it and resize it to use it for all your social media channels.
You can add subtitles to the video with just one click. It's automatically transcribed for you, so adding subtitles is easy.
Simplicity is the key to this product. There are no advanced video editing capabilities.
Edit your YouTube video description to include formatted timestamps of the chapters or key moments of your video. This will show the chapters in the video timeline, on the video page as chapters, and in Google search results.
1. Determine your video chapters or key moments
Find the timestamp of each key moment you want to highlight. Here are the guidelines from YouTube and Google:
On your YouTube channel, edit your video details. Anywhere in the description section, add your timestamps, each on one line starting with 00:00.
YouTube and Google will do the heavy lifting and automatically add your key moments to the time bar, the chapter section, and the google search results!
Your video description can contain more than just your chapter timestamps. You should take advantage of the 5000 characters you are allowed to add important keywords for your SEO results.
Have you ever had an irrational fear that held you back?
I know how important video is in growth marketing - yet for some reason, I’ve been irrationally avoiding taking the plunge. If you have ever avoided creating something because you were a little uncomfortable, let me share with you the things I did to trick myself into taking the plunge.
Oh, and here's a VIDEO companion to this article. See? If I can do it, you can too.
Scrolling through my twitter feed, Amy Knightley of Savvy Mudder put out a challenge: "What scary thing did you accomplish today? Tag yourself and I'll hold you accountable." So I took her up on it, and publicly took on the dare of creating my first video by the next day.
I love a dare, and making it public with a deadline put just enough pressure on me to have to get it done.
Instead of starting from scratch, I found a video style that I liked by Matthias Bohlen from Get the Audience and used it as a starting point. He was kind enough to share in the SwipeFiles community that he used ScreenFlow to create the video. So I had a good starting point.
To take the pressure off, I planned on doing a blooper reel or even a "making of" video. This helped the fear of having to get everything perfect on the first try, because if I didn't, it would be great content anyway. I did a short "making of the intro clip".
In setting up and testing the green screen, my husband and kids got into the spirit and we had fun playing around with different tests. Enjoying the process with supportive people kept things fun.
One danger is spending 90% of the time working on 10% of the project. The finished product of a first video is not going to be perfect. Make it good enough, get it done, and learn for the next one. Each video will get better and better. Having a deadline really helps with this.
I learned a lot making this little video. It's not perfect and there are things I will do differently moving forward, but it broke down the irrational barrier I had in my mind about making videos. I cannot wait to make the next one.
Now it's your turn!
Chroma key or green screen is a technique used to remove a background from a video and make it transparent. The screen can be any color, but usually it is bright green. The first chroma key was used in 1940 and was originally blue. Bright green has become more popular now because it is the furthest away from human skin tones.
In 2016, Queen Elizabeth wore a green outfit that went viral, and people had a lot of fun playing around with chroma key.
That's a wrap for this week's newsletter.
The new Scrappy MarTech channel has premiered on YouTube! The Scrappy MarTech video channel is a companion to this newsletter and will have videos on growth marketing, new martech tools, and clever tech solutions.
You can have a sneak peek before the public announcement goes out later this week. I hope you subscribe and join me on YouTube.
See you next week!
Happy Scrappy Marketing,
Michele Hsu
P.S. If you found a nugget of information in this issue, please share and help this little newsletter grow.