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The Power of Video

Here's another fun question. I actually like this question. Do you know what they really say before I say yes when I get this question, why are you so expensive? And it's usually not a question, by the way. It's usually like a statement, an angry one. You are so much more expensive than the other photographers I've called, it's like it's at me. And you know what I usually say? I go, thank you, I'm really proud of that. I've worked really hard to be more expensive and to create a product that is worth more than everyone around me. I want to be better than everyone around me. So I usually don't go into that much of a tangent, but I usually do say thank you. Like, that's a compliment, right? That's a compliment. But why do we balk at this? Have you gotten this question before? Yeah, you get that, why are you so much more expensive? What is it? So the first thing you wanna say is, well, you get what you pay for, right? That's what you really want to say, don't you know? And sometimes I'll ...

say, I'll do the comparison with the Porsche dealership and the Toyota dealership. I just say well, you get everything you'd expect from any luxury service. You get convenience, you get a better product, and a better everything from A to Z. But here is one way that I actually answer this question before they ever ask it. When they get to fill out a lead form, they get an autoresponder back. And I don't like autoresponders, but it's just to kind of hold them off until I can check their date to see if I'm available. And the autoresponder has this email embedded in it. (cheerful music) I feel like that music, it makes me feel like I'm in a Disney movie, doesn't it? Music is very powerful. I'm gonna pause here to teach you guys a little bit about video. I'm in a very unique circumstance where my husband does video for a living. And while I don't really shoot for him, I have in the past. I've learned a lot of great things about video. And I wanted to fit this into the social media section before, but we just didn't have time, so I'm putting it here. Because I've told you about how powerful video is. It's social media, communicating with your clients, answering questions before they're asked, there's so many uses for it. And I wanna teach you guys how to make effective video that your clients will actually watch. All right, so one thing that you may have noticed about all the videos I've showed you. They're all short. So I'm gonna give you a bunch of tips on video. Number one, keep it short. We all talked before about the three to five minute promo video? Don't do it, not happening anymore. All the videos I've showed you have been under one minute. I specifically do a minute, because if I'm going to post it on Instagram, they only allow up to one minute videos on your posts. It's only 20 seconds if you're putting it in your feed, by the way. If you're putting it on Facebook, Pinterest, it doesn't matter, it can be longer. But I go for one minute. In addition to just being able to fit it on the Instagram feed, do you know what our attention spans are now? They used to be 20 seconds. That used to be that was the rule, that someone's attention span, 20 seconds. Not anymore. Our attention span rivals that of a goldfish now. Rivals that of a goldfish. It's sad, but you know what, you have to adapt, that's life, that's what it is. So Facebook, if you place an ad and you're going to put a video in there? Do you know what it recommends the video, how long the video has to be for the maximum potential that someone's going to watch it from start to finish? 15 seconds. 15 seconds. So my goal for most of my videos is to keep them actually around the 30 second mark. So that's your tip number one for when you're making videos is to keep it short. Tip number two for making videos, which you've seen me do in all of these, is to use text. Now while I want my clients to be listening to the magical Disney music that associates their minds with weddings and makes them feel all giddy and happy about what I offer them, 80% of people are not watching their feeds on any platform with their audio on. 80% of people are going online, on social media, with their audio off. Especially your brides, because when are they doing their wedding planning? Probably at work when they're not supposed to be doing their wedding planning, right? So you want to have text. Every video that I've showed you has text. With the new Animoto marketing videos, you can put text over the photos too, which is great because that helps the shortening the time. You don't have to do like, photo, text, photo, text. You can put one on top of the other. It helps shorter videos happen. Number three, so that was one and two. So keep it short, number one, number two, use text. Number three, bounce the eyes. You're all like, what? All right, so this is a trick that my husband taught me. It is a subconscious way to get your viewer more engaged with your video, and it's called bouncing the eyes. So if I were to show you slides, and all I did was just show you text in the middle, you'd get bored really quick. Why, 'cause you're just looking at the same spot on the screen every single time, smack in the center. It's actually photographically not great with composition. Composition teaches us what, to use the rule of thirds. When you're putting a video together and you're choosing what photo goes where and what text goes where, you do it in a way intentionally so that someone's eye is bouncing around the screen. So you want their eye to go to the left, to the right, to the bottom, to the center, and up and down. I'm gonna go through that video one more time with audio off, actually, if we can. Where's that at, there we go. And all I want you to do is look at where your eyes go. So your eye's in the center a little, and now it's in the top right and the bottom. Now it's in the center gain. Now it's to the right and to the left. Now it's to the left and to the bottom. Now it's in the center again. Do you see how your eye is bouncing all around the screen? That is very intentional. When I made this video, I specifically, that is a massive group, oh my gosh. But I specifically decided to put a picture, that was a mistake, did you see that one, your eyes were in the center both times. That wasn't good, I should have mixed up those pictures. Mostly I mix up, the text goes in the middle, but now you're looking to the left, now to the middle, now to the left, now to the right. I specifically put them in an order so that your eyes are bouncing around. It is subconsciously more interesting to the viewer, and it makes them watch it longer. It makes them less bored, even if just for a few seconds. A few seconds is all you get, so stretch it as much as you possibly, possibly can. Tip number four, when it comes to video, you need to stay legal. As much as we wanna put, I don't know, Beyonce's latest hit on our music video, right, or whatever it is, probably not Beyonce for weddings. Maybe a Ben Rector, right, that's a good one? Do some Raz, right, you wanna put his music on there. You need to stay legal. So use music sources like SongFreedom is one I use. Or Animoto just has it all embedded in there. You get their entire resource library of music that you can just use. It's great, the other day I had one of my client videos online and I get a notification from YouTube. Hey, this is copyrighted material. And I'm like, yep, it is, but I have a license for it. So I just wrote them back, told them where I got my license, Animoto licenses it, and we're good. So you wanna stay legal because you can be sued. In fact, I know a videographer that was sued for like a million dollars for an infringement like this. And the company won, he did not win. Luckily he had some kind of copyright infringement insurance that paid for it, and then later dropped him, I'm sure, from the policy. But you have to stay legal. And then tip number five with video. You want to embed it and share it natively. So when you go on Animoto and you finish doing your video, there's little buttons. And really any slideshow, or any video production thing that you make. By the way, I use Animoto so I talk about it, 'cause that's what I know, but there's other ones like ProShow Gold, you can mix up an iMovie. I've actually used them all and Animoto's just the fastest. And I'm not a video producer, I'm a photographer, so I go with what's fast and effective. But all of them, even iMovie, just have a Share To button. And when you export it, I can just click and share to Facebook. I don't want to do that. Why? Because what's one of the goals of social media companies? Where do they want us? Do they want us on third-party applications? No, they want us on their platform, using their embedded video player, being on their system. So while you can use third-party applications to post your video, it's better to go to Facebook, upload it from there and let them share it. So quick five tips on video. I've given you a lot to do, and I know it seems like I've given you all this extra stuff that's not on your normal to-do list. This is stuff that you're going to do above and beyond and extra. So in the next segment, we're going to be talking about workflow and the products and how you can make it all come together and work for you so that you're not behind the computer. I'm gonna go back to the big picture here. I started off by telling you that the business of wedding photography has to do with your overall life goals, and you're overall definition of success. All of these tricks, the ones that we talked about first, were really about how to market yourself, how to brand yourself, how to make sure that you're getting clients in your doors. And I know it doesn't seem, a lot of these things don't seem like, why don't we talk about Facebook ads, and why didn't we talk about how to put ads on Instagram or ads on WeddingWire or The Knot? Those are all great, but the experience and the branding and marketing that you can do organically are so much more powerful than anything that you can pay for. And you're going to pay for it, though. Not monetarily, but in time. So I told you that my success is free time, but meanwhile I seem to be contradicting myself and giving you all this stuff to do, and sucking up more of your time. This is where it's all going to come into play. We're gonna talk about workflow, talk about how to get things to flow together so that you're not spending time behind your computer or worse, you're at dinner and you're on you phone. Have you ever had, it's hysterical actually. Some of my brides will do this. So like, Friday night date night, and they have their Instagram story, and they're panning through, and then they pan over, and then there's their boyfriend, fiance, or husband on his cell phone. And it happens so often, but I don't want that to be you. I'm giving you all this stuff to do for your business so that you can make money and have free time. I'm not giving it to you so that you can be all-consumed with work. So a lot of what we're talking about in the first half of this day is going to come together during the workflow, talking about the products, and then eventually we'll also get into the pricing as well.