Is your brand on Facebook?

Well, if you’re still searching for a good reason to get a business Page on Facebook, the corporate version of a personal profile, the graphic above might be a good start. Are you where your visitors want you to be?

These days getting hip on Facebook isn’t as hard as it looks. There’s a fair number of template tools and companies ready and willing to get your page up fast. The problem has become, which solution is the best one to choose? An obvious answer is “the one that is the most effective!” I know, I know, which one is that? Unfortunately, one must try out different solutions and see what works best for your particular situation.

At the Association, we use a 1-2-3 punch approach. We create content on our blog, share it through social media, and also promote the same content through our Constant Contact newsletter. One of the reasons I appreciate Constant Contact is its consistent effort to provide value on the social media front. In addition to simple and easy to understand training videos about social media, their platform offers easy to use add-on tools that make creating a Facebook Page a snap. I’m not thrilled with the current templates for Pages, but I expect these will improve over time.

Meanwhile, it beats waiting for your IT guy to fiddle around with getting your Page up with some kind of meaningful call to action. If your company doesn’t have a newsletter, today is a good time to start. Most newsletter platforms have a free trial. Give them a spin, see what features you like or don’t like. Call their customer service and try it out. Maybe even ask for an extra trial month if you’re not sure. Once you’ve settled on a newsletter, use it to keep it touch with current clients, gather new potential customers by capturing email addresses, and drive blog visibility by promoting your blog content.

This kind of interactive effort can create an effective marketing plan using enterprise social media paired with your regular content creation. Good luck!

Looks like the social media landscape is shifting yet again. While that’s probably not much of a surprise (Facebook à la the new Timeline feature), this time it’s on the consumer side of the spectrum.  Which is also not a surprise, considering the overwhelming amount of information pumped out by literally millions of social profiles.

Enter Social Media Spam. After all, how much information can we really process in a day? The above graph illustrates that our favorite consumer isn’t all that keen on getting updated every other day anymore. Probably this doesn’t apply as much to daily deal type sites, if someone’s really keen on a particular brand or loves to eat out. But I know I’m a lot less accepting myself of constant data streams as I just don’t have the time to read it all.

What does this mean for enterprise social media users? How does your average small business and large business translate their social media efforts into something effective without miffing their faithful consumers? First off, I would ask your social “constituents” how often they expect an update. They just might surprise you!

But over the long term, for most companies engaged in any sort of corporate social media program, keep in mind that many of your new customers are likely to come from Google searches. By establishing a blog and providing lots of great content, long term visibility will develop that just can’t be beat in terms of cost (very cheap) and ease of use. And ownership. Remember, you don’t own Facebook. But you CAN own a blog. Where do you want to host all your hard earned content?

Stay tuned for more information on blogging! I’ll be covering how to create great content to maximize your visibility online. After all, if potential consumers can’t find you, what’s the point of being online at all?

All jokes aside, anything that can speed up editing and importing video is obviously a boon to the existence of any filmographer. If you have to render after every single cut or move, download the Canon plug-in for Final Cut Pro.

For the benefit of our Canon DSLR 5D and 7D users (not to mention everyone attending our Canon Camera Classes!), we have created a video to show you how to access the Final Cut Pro Plug in. Enjoy, and please let us know how you like the video or if there are other how-to videos you’d like us to create.

For the link to the article mentioned at the very beginning of the video, click HERE.

Using the Canon FCP Plugin from Fletch/The Association on Vimeo.

Creating content is part and parcel of maintaining an effective marketing plan. It’s also the most challenging. As if we didn’t have enough to do to forward our respective companies already. And now we have to come up with unique ideas to write about that someone might want to read and thus engage our services.

Fortunately, the benefits of creating online content far outweigh the challenge. Really.

If one thinks of the time and money spent creating a postcard and sending it out, only to have all that work vanish the same month into garbage cans (the same day it arrives in the mail box, just to rub it in), the fact that our blogs and articles remain on line forever makes it worth the effort. Consistent organic content creation is a cost effective way to break the visibility barrier online, and it will pay off in the future.

But how do we get there? We still don’t have the time to write content every week, much less daily. And the budget for staff writers just isn’t there. And my cousin Jimmy is a terrible writer. What now?

Now there is Zerys. Zerys is another word for “Awesome.”  That’s capitalized on purpose.

Zerys is the eBay of writing. Need an article? White paper? Blog Post? Custom content for your corporate social media campaign? Zerys has you covered. Create a free account, outline what you want with their step-by-step “I will hold your hand” user friendly approach, and submit your content requests. Writer’s accept the work, write the content and submit the work for your approval. If you don’t like it, you don’t pay. Easy Peasy. The writer’s can even optimize the content with your long tail keyword research.

After a while, you’ll find the writers you really like, and negotiate long-term pricing with them to create your content. Ta-Dah! You have your staff writer! Or writers. The pricing is fair, regular content can be created at about 4 cents per word. So your average blog post costs about $20. Obviously, more complex writing requiring heavy research or very technical concepts will probably cost more, but if you limit those to once a month, it’s still very cost effective.

I’ve been looking for a solution like Zerys for my clients, so I’m very excited to introduce them to you. Check them out here:

Paying for performance is the way to go. Now you can get quality content created of any type, while continuing your normal duties uninterrupted. Well, at least uninterrupted by having to write content! Not sure what kind of content you need to write? Do you avoid words like “long tail keyword research” like the plague? I can help you set up your Zerys account and get started. Drop me a line anytime.

Many of you are probably wondering what really goes on behind the curtain at our now famous Canon Boot Camp. So we created a video from our January Boot Camp to share with all y'all.

If you watch the video, you will see we have a lot of fun! The reformatted class is hands-on, more so than ever before, and you learn everything you need to know to set up the camera and shoot. We assume that you have a job booked for the following Monday, so we stress proficiency and skill while you're at the class so that you get the job.

Maybe you have a job booked, maybe you don't. But you're going to know how to use that Canon DSLR by the end of the day, that much is for sure. We even give you our own Canon Certification on your Canon DSLR 5D, 7D or 60D, whichever one you bring along, complete with certificate. Don't have a camera? That's OK too. Sometimes students share a camera with another Boot Camper, or rent a camera for the day from our industry partner, EVS Studios. Most Pro Level I courses are hosted by EVS Studios, so it's super convenient.

Here are the graduates from the Pro Level I Class in January:

Jenna Spellman
Cris Judd – Choreographer, Producer
Stan McClain – FilmTools
Rick Apichairuk
J. P. Brennan
Hannah Murphy
Chad Baldree
 

We are looking forward to their future Canon HDSLR projects and will share them as soon as we get them! For future Canon Boot Camp dates visit our website or click on the future class dates listed to the right of this blog post.

Here’s a few points to keep in mind when making a video for business development purposes.

• Make sure your video can be found through online search by getting a pro to optimize the video with keywords. Search Engines can’t "read" video, so videos must be tagged with well selected keywords AND provided with a written description that also has keywords as part of the content. This is easy to screw up, so either learn how to do it, or get a pro who really knows long tail keyword research.

• If you have a newsletter and an email list to send it to, make sure to announce your video to drive views and thus increase it’s visibility online. Don’t have a newsletter? Might want to start one. Over time it could be very profitable.

• Share the video on your blog with a description that also uses keywords. Blog posts should contain anywhere from 150 to 500 words to increase the likelihood of getting indexed for search. Write unique content, don’t copy and paste the same exact description in multiple places.

• From your blog, ensure you share the content on your social networks. A good video has the potential of getting passed around by your friends, who will probably at least look at the video just because they know you. From there it can go viral in nature, which will help drive views and increase visibility online. Most blogs have social media sharing built in to their platform.

• Make sure your video is hosted where it can be viewed on a mobile device. As more and more eyeballs shift to mobile use, neglecting this point can be fatal! 

Of course, creating a GOOD video is the first battle. If you need help with your custom video production, give us a shout.  We’ve been producing them for years. We can even teach you how to shoot your own video inexpensively with the Canon DSLR 5D or 7D at our Canon camera classes. Either way, we’ve got you covered! 

As part of our “Tips from the Trenches” series at our Canon camera classes every month, we invite DPs and other industry pros who have hands-on experience with Canon cameras.  Experience trumps a manual any day of the week and twice on Sundays, so our interviews with pros like Dana Christiaansen, ASC are invaluable. Even though we have been featuring the Canon DSLR 5D and 7D in our boot camps, we’re looking at providing boot camps for the C300, which is why we were so excited when Dana agreed to visit our boot camp this past December.

The C300 DPs–Dana Christiaansen Pt. 3 from Fletch/The Association on Vimeo.

Dana discussed his exploits shooting for director Sam Nicholson on the set of the short film “XXIT.”  We broke up the interview into 3 parts.  In this section, the 3rd part of the interview, Dana describes the lighting techniques and custom-built light panels he used for the C300 in the film.

Ensuring the lead actor looked great in close up shots was accomplished using customized 12″ X 12″ and 6″ X 12″ Rosco pads as the primary key lighting, which Dana discusses in some detail during the interview, as well as a few other lighting gags.

Missed the earlier part of the interview? Check out Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE.

Interested in Canon Certification or our Canon Camera Classes? Visit www.canonbootcamp.com to find out more specifics, or check out upcoming class dates to the right of this blog post! You can also sign up for our newsletter RSS Feed HERE.

While there’s no lack of reading material on actions to improve our corporate social media practices, real-life case studies can be helpful to grasp the possibilities. And maybe get some ideas for our own use.

Most of the Superbowl 2012 advertisers took advantage of mobile technology and that almost 60% of Super Bowl viewers checked out the game on a mobile device. Several companies leveraged special game time apps that would recognize specific ad content and provide viewers with discounts, sweepstake entries, etc.

Chevy, Pepsi, Subway and Go Daddy are some of the companies that took advantage of apps that recognize content and served up additional offers to viewers.

At the forefront of this cross-platform advertising engagement is a company called Shazam. Shazam’s app recognizes audio content via mobile devices and connects the user to a variety of free/paid offers or other content. Millions of Super Bowl viewers used the Shazam app to tag audio content (including the half-time show).

This innovative company has managed to tie a typically static advertisement into a dynamic platform that connects interested viewers directly to other specific offers that entice further participation. I nearly always have my cell close to hand, so it’d be super easy for me to access the Shazam app and engage with audio content no matter where I am. How many other millions of mobile users would do the same?

It remains to be seen if this will increase the use of direct response TV ads or take away from the production of TV commercials. I think companies like Shazam create a compelling environment for direct response to expand. We’ll have to wait and see. Meanwhile I’m going to keep blogging, which is a surefire way of increasing visibility online (well, as long as you use long tail keyword research!).

Enterprise social media and online promotion is sort of like trying to organize spaghetti. No matter how much you try to line up all the pieces into straight lines for an effective marketing plan, it all comes unglued and globs together in a sticky, ball of a mess. But it’s ok, because it’s going to taste good no matter how it looks. Well, it will taste good if you know the secret sauce!

So what is the recipe for success when it comes to Social Media? Well, first off, how about understanding the pieces that comprise the general topic? I realized early on that there were a few basic parts to this puzzle that most people had heard of, but had incomplete or even false ideas of what these parts were or how they fit in the overall picture. Thus, the Demystifying Social Media Webinar.

In this webinar, I take apart the most common pieces of social media and explain what they are, and give an overall perspective to the topic. Armed with this framework, you will be able to move forward with your online promotion with more confidence and understanding.