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Video Vs Still Images

Let's kind of talk about Facebook. Facebook and what they've done with the organic reach. Photographers got their feelings hurt really bad when Facebook updated their algorithm a few years ago. I've never seen so many people get so upset about a company trying to charge, but then we get really mad when people ask us to work for free. So Facebook updated their algorithm. It just to just be how Facebook was, is you just posted, and if you had 100 friends and they all made a post, it would be the most recent, the next most recent, the next most recent, it just was, pah, pah, pah, pah, pah. That was it. No filter. Timeline. That's how it was, k? Same with your business page. If your business page posted, (clicking tongue) went in someone's timeline. If they liked your page, went in there. Facebook realized, they're geniuses over there, and they realized that Facebook's only profitable if people stay. They want to gauge your attention. They want you to spend your attention on Facebook. They...

want you there as much as possible. Dead likes, unengaged likes, hurt your reach, because every time you post, if those people are not engaging, that's one of the 10 people not doing anything, Facebook says, "This is a boring post." K? You can do pay-per-click stuff. So, you can go out and boost your post. I have mixed feelings on it, because there's a lot of evidence, if you go in and look at it, that a lot of the engagement you'll get from boosted posts are fake accounts. There's a lot of evidence, it's not great to do it that way. You're dumping money on something that may or may not be a good thing. For us, what we are looking into, is you can get so targeted with the marketing now, it's crazy. So, what we had done before, was, we'd say, okay. I'll show you the results later on, but we did an animoto slideshow, and we released it, and I paid to boost the post, and I just said, "Everyone in this market, "and I'll pay this much money," and I just gave it an area. I got a bunch, I got a few reactions. It wasn't crazy, but we got people that looked at it. Now what we're doing, is we're going in and we're trying to restrict that number, of when it says, this area is 10,000 people, I'm trying to filter out by the likes, the interests, you can filter out who has kids, you can filter out who is connected to the school, you can filter out who was at events, so we're trying to take that big, big number and we're trying to make it really, really small so that my marketing is going to people that I think are real likes, people that are really in the community. So there's an inherent numbers game with this that's really intriguing to me. I think that Facebook, the algorithm's crazy. How many ads are they gonna have on Facebook? Always just one less than it would take for people to stop going to Facebook. Those guys watch that. It's crazy how much analytics they study, and what they look at. What you're spending your time doing. It's nuts. Did you guys ever notice too, that you can go, if you look at something on Amazon and then you go back on Facebook, and it's in all your ads? Do you know that you can get that plugin and put it on your website, so that if somebody visits your website, you can get to populate in their Facebook feed? That's a thing. Yeah, go look. Tell me how it works. So, it's social media advertising. If you're doing it as a buckshot approach, I don't think you have a shot. If you're just gonna say, "Take my money," toss up an ad, I don't think you have a shot of making any money off of it. The other option that Facebook's doing too that I think is super cool, that I think you guys should look at, is you can actually go in and set up marketing campaigns, and you can test, you can do split-campaigns. So you can do two images at the same time. See which one's getting more engagement. You can do two different deals at the same time. See what's working. Now a lot of photographers right now are talking about videos. That video's the way of engagement, that people engage more with video. And all of the leagues and the stuff that we're doing, these guys are asking me for slideshows. They all want them. So I told you guys we did that Firecracker Run. Let's see. Is that gonna run the slideshow? (electronic music) So I cut it in the middle of that slideshow for a reason. After we went and we posted this, and everyone liked it, I went and I looked at my analytics. Do you know that no one made it past 10 seconds? I went back and I dug into all my analytics, and I dug into all my analytics on all of my videos on Facebook. I'm getting very, very short connections. So, is stills better? Absolutely not. Animoto slideshows are great products. It's an awesome way to engage, but I don't think it can be your sole way of engaging. And the other analytics that I don't see, is they get presented this slideshow. They put it on their YouTube channel. They send it in the E-mail blasts. I don't know who's watching it from them. I don't know. But that video, what we did, all I did was I did a GoPro, climbed up on the backstop, stop action, guy thought that was really cool, wanted to open it up with that. The rest is all stills. We found out another thing that was a big deal with that video specifically, was I made the whole slideshow, and he goes, "I love it," and then he wanted me to use copyrighted music, and so you do have to make sure that you're doing things right, that you're playing legally, so was Triple Scoop Music that's royalty free. We have the legal right to use it, but you have to communicate that, because your clients might not know. They might not understand why they can't have the latest Taylor Swift song on there. But, yeah, we tossed this video out, and it reached 1,600 people. That's a lot of people, right? That's a lot. But that Bird Bash, the one that I was telling you guys about earlier, the one that we donate every year to, that one only posted stills. We didn't do a video yet. I reached 6,660 people without paying to boost. Way bigger response. Why? Because people got in and commented, shared, liked it. People were going in and tagging other people, people that weren't even connected to my Facebook page. That's where the money is in social media. That's the money shot. It's not paying for the boost. It's getting it organically. So, what we're doing, is we're still using the animoto slideshows. We're still making videos. We're still doing that, but we're actively being aware that posting the stills has a better organic reach for us than the video alone. So for the animoto slideshows, are you using their standard slideshow, or are you using their business, they've got a new feature, or a new product line that's specifically done for business videos. That one was last year. I don't remember. I don't remember. But I know that we went through, I know that it was, well, it's gotta be commercially licensed. I'm sure I had a business account for it. Go ahead. Yeah, I think what you were talking about is that there are two, there's the marketing video builder, which is a new product, but this looks like the slideshow, the different product line. The slideshow ones. Yeah. Yeah. And it's great, it's easy to use, super easy. If you guys don't use animoto, it's one of the best slideshow softwares out there that I've seen. It's awesome. But this is what I want. That animoto slideshow didn't get me the attention I wanted. Doesn't mean it's a bad product. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep doing it. I'm just gonna do both. And the thing that we're trying to connect with, is getting the people that are involved at these associations to be engaged in your posts. So, all it is, is we have a woman who's involved on the board on this. She loves us 'cause we spend a bunch of money, and we give a lot of time every year. So when I post stuff, she gives my business positive reviews. She tags us in their posts when they release stuff. She's always pushing our business name. And so that person, that sneezer, that one person who sneezes and gets everyone else to sneeze, that sneezer is the reason why this stuff works for me. And so that's what we're working towards. When we do these slideshows, or when we do the stills, all I do in Lightroom is, I create a watermark with the logo of the event and my logo. We size them at four by six, 300 dpi. We export them all that way. The logo goes exactly in the middle. On the four by six, it'll go this way. If it's a vertical shot, it goes right on the edges. So it's right there. We export it out of Lightroom. That's what gets posted, so it's higher res, a four by six, 300, it looks good. We don't, we aren't doing 72 dpi, 800 on the long end. We aren't doing that. Yes, people crop my logo out. It sucks, but I don't know what you're gonna do about that. We also will then deliver the high-res, un-watermarked versions to them for free. They can use them for whatever they want, no questions asked as long as I get credit for it. So that Firecracker one that we were talking about, this year we took that 7D Mark II, the studio version, and we were trying to figure out, we wanted to shoot some video stuff. I have a guy named Jordan who works for me. Jordan has a degree in video. He's brilliant at it. I know nothing about making films, so we had to buy a few pieces of equipment. We have that 7D, and we went out. We did this video. I shouldn't say that. I was there. He did it. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 2017 Firecracker right here at Excelsior Elementary is where the start is, and we're gonna run through beautiful Excelsior, Shorewood, Greenwood, Deep Haven, and 10k-ers'll end up right back where the 5k-ers and the one milers will. Thanks for coming, everybody. It's a beautiful day to be in Excelsior. (rock music) (crowds chattering) Alright, you guys ready for the run? Are you excited? Yeah. How far you running? 10k. What are you guys here to do today? Firecracker 5k. We're here to run the, woo. Running the 5k. Awesome, have you done it before? No I haven't. Where are you from? Right here in Excelsior. I woke up at six this morning, and they said, "You're running a 5k," and I said, "Okay." (laughing) You ready, you ready? Who's gonna run faster? Me. (laughing) Firecracker run. Five, four, three, two, one, (drowned out by cheering) (rock music) (cheering) (crowd chattering) So that's the promo video we did for them. That we just did on the fourth of July, is really, really different than the other stuff we did, which I was really grateful I reached out to the director and I just said, "Hey, we haven't "really talked about anything. "I assume we're just doing stuff like we did last year." And he's like, "Oh, yeah, exactly what we did last year, "but we don't want stills. "We want all video." Okay, well, I'm really glad we talked so that we shared the vision on this, but going out, I went and I bought, I went on Amazon. I bought a bunch of Faux Pros, like fake GoPros, that are 40 bucks, and I stuck those suckers all around on the course. We had the 7D video. We bought microphones for it, and we put that together in about a day and a half notice, we found out we had to do that video, and it turned out pretty good, but you'll notice that it's, well, you didn't see the full animoto one, but that was four minutes long. This whole promo's 90 seconds. We're trying to keep our videos shorter so that people don't get bored. We're trying to keep the attention. We're trying to pull that in better. I have a question about your social media, when you put stuff out there, you're pretty widespread across a lot of genres. Do you have a, we share our weddings, we share our seniors, we share everything you do? Okay, so I'm actually pretty awful at social media. As a business, it's something that I struggle with. We should post more. We should do more. The big things with what we share, this stuff, we share because the leagues, the associations, they have us do this. This is a big thing for them. Since the job's done, we're gonna share it. And when we do share it, we make sure that we tag them in it, and we try to tag any people in the community we know are in it, 'cause we want to get that engagement going. I would post weddings, and families. We post seniors, whatever they buy wallets of, they get a free digital sharing file. Those we post. Those are all water-marked, low-res files. So we do post some of those images, but we aren't as good at it as I wish we were. Because I feel like social media does give you a huge platform to establish relationships with clients. I feel like, I know that if I'm out there and we're sharing and people are reacting to it, that only strengthens our relationship with them, but you have to do it. So when you're sharing, something like a big community event thing, that you're just giving back, you get a lot more engagement then your one-off client, so, okay. Yeah, but that's a numbers game, too, because if it's one family and the mom and dad maybe have 800 combined Facebook friends, so I'm hoping to get some attention from the 800 friends that they're sharing their image with, which is great, we'll take what we can get, I definitely don't wanna be turning my nose down at that, but it's not the same as a community event where there's 300 people in the pictures. And then you're connecting to an association, in sense a business, that has thousands of followers. That reach maximizes my reach. Partnering up, taking in as many people as you can. Bringing them in exposes you to new people. And really, all business is, all it is is finding and keeping customers. Every business. That's all they do. They find customers and try to keep 'em. And the attention that, we're all fighting for attention right now, and if you have opportunities to go out and produce something that you're proud of, and you know that somebody else is gonna stand up loud and say, "Look at this. "It's amazing. "Go check this out. "It's incredible." That's getting the attention. I need as much, weird, you guys wouldn't have heard me. You guys wouldn't have thought I would have felt that way. I love to be the center of attention. I love it. I need it. I crave it. And my business does too. It needs it. We need attention. Without attention, it's easy to be overlooked. Can't think of anything worse for my business. I don't want to be overlooked. If I don't get the job, I don't want to get the job because I'm not qualified for it. I didn't want to get it because you didn't think of calling me. So, competing on that, staying in people's minds, it's big, it's big. It's why we do a lot of stuff. Even through our traditional stuff. We were talking about, why do we do the constant contacts, and we reach out three to four times a year? 'Cause I want you to remember me. I want your attention. And why do we do these posts? Why do we do this stuff? I'm everywhere because I want you to look at me. Feast your eyes. (laughing) No, sincerely, though. I mean, it sounds, it sounds almost gaudy, like I'm being ridiculous, but it couldn't be more true. As soon as you are not getting attention, people are not thinking of you. If people are not thinking of you, and you aren't out there asking for business, it's not going to just happen. Businesses that grow, Coke. Coke asks for your business. They put ads out. Who hasn't heard of Coke? They're still asking. They're still fighting for your attention. Nike. All those guys. Billion of dollars gets dumped into that. They all need your attention. And here I am, just this little guy in a little town with a couple of people, and I'm fighting all of those guys, and what's going on in your life, for just a little bit of your attention. So, I don't think that's, I passionately think that more people need to be able to stand out and say, "Look at me," and be proud of what they're doing. Be proud of your work. Be happy to share it. Right? Oh, the other thing that I do want to talk about. Legal stuff with some of these. And being a better resource. So, when we donate stuff to silent auctions, there are always photographers that donate stuff. Always. I always see people with the little canvas print on the table, free family session. And it's always pathetic how little money gets spent on it. It's terrible. It's a great deal for the people that are buying it, but I go out and I donate a $500 gift certificate, and it gets 30 bucks. It's ridiculous. So I will put a minimum if I'm doing a gift certificate. Has to bring in at least X amount of money, but, I'm trying to get these people to really, really like me, so some of the things that we do, is we'll partner with other businesses in our community to make our donations way cooler. So I have three photo booths. There was a couple of years ago, I went all in on the photo booth game. We were doing 200 a year. It was crazy busy. We loved it except for the fact that I was on call every single night for Friday and Saturday night. If a photo booth broke, I had to deal with it. I don't want to work Friday and Saturday night. So, we pulled all those photo booths. We don't do the marketing for it. We probably do 20 events a year now, and most of those are ones that we donate. We donate to a lot of our schools, and we donate it as silent auction items, so when we used to donate the photo booth, it would bring in like 300 bucks, which is cool, I guess. It's not that much money. What we started doing, though, is with that Robbinsdale one, the Bird Bash, we took our photo booth, we put it together with Chipotle, that was donating catering for 20, there's another local company called JonnyPop that was donating desserts, like popsicles, that are these organic organic fruit popsicles. We put all of those together, and we sold it as a grad party thing, okay? $1600. It was one of the top items sold at the auction by kinda bundling it together. And so, you have to think not just, try to get creative in how you can take a little bit of money, or what you're doing, try to figure out how we can make it look way better, make it be much more valuable. Oh, and the other thing about donating to silent auctions, that one that sold, that big one that sold for all that money, never got redeemed. I'm surprised how many things I donate to auctions, and then I never get a phone call. I never get booked. So people will spend money, and I think they're just okay with it 'cause they know it was a donation, and then they never get around to booking it. But we do put expirations on it, too. It's good for a year, it's good for whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you have to let us know by this date what you wanna do with this. And we also make sure when we're photographing all this stuff, like the Firecracker Run, it's on your signup sheet, it's a blanket model release. You're here, you're gonna be photographed, it's gonna be in marketing, it's gonna be in promotional stuff, if you don't wanna be in that, don't show up. So make sure that you're kind of aware of that. It's less of an issue again, with those fun runs, 'cause they are in public, but I'm still aware that some parents might freak out if their kid is in my slideshow, so you have to make sure that you're going through this process in the correct way, and that everybody knows. This is the stuff that makes me unique. So, you have to keep innovating and pushing and giving. And then some of the results, too, is just going out and looking. They do, they release our pictures, it goes in news articles, local news articles, talks about the money it raised, my name. I love that the picture that they picked is a picture of them taking their own picture, but no one asked me. That's okay.