How considering the psychology of your audience can yield more effective creative
I recently read this interesting psychology article about a phenomenon called the 'False Consensus Effect', which is directly applicable to so many situations. In a nutshell, it is about how people believe that most other people behave similarly to themselves, and if they don't, there must be something wrong with them (we all consider ourselves rational). However, in reality it is difficult to accurately predict the behaviour of others, and if they behave differently to us, or how we imagine they will behave, it is simply because they are different (despite usually also being completely rational).
In the article above, the first study of the False Consensus Effect was a theoretical one, and the second a practical one which was…
Options for incorporating video into your Powerpoint presentations
Powerpoint is a bit like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. However, the same person can love Powerpoint one day and hate it the next - because it all depends on who has put the presentation together and how they present it.
An innovative way to make the most of Powerpoint is to use video to enhance the visual potential of the medium. There are a number of different ways that you can use video to make a presentation more engaging. Here are some of our favourite ideas.
Using video in your face-to-face Powerpoint presentations
If you use Powerpoint to deliver presentations at meetings or conferences, there are ways that you can use video to liven up your visual aid. Your other option is to completely waste the opportunity and use Powerpoint to display a list of bullet points (you know exactly what I…
A 5 step process for creating or refreshing a business blog
Whether launching a new WordPress blog or, as in my case, relaunching an existing blog, there are many issues to consider and a number of ways to approach the project.
Having recently redeveloped and redesigned a WordPress blog, to help other marketers, I thought I would share some of the considerations that we took into account. I've split the project up into two parts; this first post focuses on the objectives, planning and resource considerations. The more "hands-on" functionality and implementation considerations will follow in Part 2.
To add a bit of context, 3 years ago, a brand I now work on, set up a skiing blog called Ski-buzz, run on WordPress. Set up on a free theme and with minimal amounts of additional resource or budget it started life quite slowly. Unbranded, sitting on its own (totally separate domain) and growing slowly…
An overview of the options available for TrueView YouTube advertising
AdWords for video allows you to advertise in a similar way to the traditional TV advert - your advert can be displayed on a video before, during or after it or in the Youtube and Google Display Network search listings. The big bonus is that you don’t have to pay unless someone watches your entire advert. Adwords has been innovating a lot over the last year or so with its TrueView ads now available in a range of formats on mobile (from August 2012):
YouTube have also recently produced the ‘Advertiser Playbook’. It is a detailed guide (122 pages) to using YouTube and AdWords and includes the latest (2012) best practice information and strategies for building big audiences on YouTube and increasing traffic to your website.…
6 Recommendations to broaden your playlist
I've found podcasts to be a pretty good way to keep up-to-date on new marketing techniques and tools. I don't travel a lot, so I'm not a big podcast user, preferring working to music, but I do have two regulars I enjoy when on the Tube, etc. These are at the start of my recommendations below.
Update: July 2012. I recently recorded an Episode with the Digital Marketing podcast discussing approaches to developing digital strategy and publishing - thanks to Daniel and Ciaran for arranging this. You can listen here.
I'd really recommend these, but am looking to add a few more to my downloads, so I asked on the Smart Insights LinkedIn Group for recommendations on the best digital marketing podcasts. Thanks if you contributed - my playlist is now longer and better.
I would also be interested to hear about other recommendations to those…
An interview with Bill Scott of Easel TV
I was recently asked after a conference talk about my views on Social TV by a student who was researching it. I must admit I didn't have much of a view on it... It's not a topic that we've covered much on Smart Insights either, so when I saw it was covered at the recent Econsultancy Future of Digital Marketing conference by Bill Scott I was keen to learn more from a specialist.
Bill is COO of Easel TV who work with broadcasters, content producers, pay TV operators and major consumer brands to help develop services to engage consumers in connected TV. I found Bill's answers helpful for explaining what Social TV and showing it's potential through the examples. I hope you find it interesting.
What is Social TV?
Q1.What is the scope of social TV? Is it any form of interaction with a brand via web or mobile…
8 top tips and examples of producing great low cost video from scratch
If you are new to marketing with video, starting simple could be the key.
Throughout the process of creating less expensive and less challenging video content, you will learn the ropes and be inspired to build upon the basics.
The learning process will generate ideas that will contribute to developing a more thought-through video marketing strategy; putting you in the position of being able to justify bigger budgets in the future.
Examples of successful video using a bootstrapping approach
Here are some great examples showing just how effective low cost videos can be.......
This example shows screencasting in action - as well as showing you how to use Screenflow as a tool for yourself!:
The production of this video animation was definitely not inexpensive. However, it shows how mobile phones can produce great results:
Finally, this video…
Explainer videos for marketing story telling
I'm writing this post about explainer videos since we've just created a new explainer for Smart Insights, which you can see below. At the same time I thought it was worth showing how you could use explainer videos in your own marketing.
Here's our new explainer video created by First 10 Digital, it's part product description and part brand story telling since we wanted to give potential new users a flavour of why we exist.
We hope it works in conveying what we're about?
The king of content marketing?
They're a major tool amongst all the content marketing options. Some might argue Explainer's are the tool in the content marketing toolkbox. They offer a way to capture and hold the user's attention, and communicate…
A tutorial and examples of adding captions and subtitles to videos
In the past, there were four main things that needed your attention in order to optimise your online videos for search engines; video title, description, category and tags. These things still apply but now there is another really useful tool. Closed captioning means that the content of your video is available in written word format which is something that search engines can read and identify.
What is closed captioning?
Closed captioning is the process of displaying text on a screen (e.g. on a TV programme or online video) to provide additional information to what is already being presented.
The reason it is termed ‘closed’ captioning is that only viewers who choose to activate them will see them. ‘Open’ captions are visible to all viewers.
Some people use the terms ‘captions’ and ‘subtitles’ interchangeably. However, captions are slightly different as they aim to describe what…
Tips to remember when creating an animated video for your business
In Part 1 I showed some benefits and examples of using animations for online marketing.
In Part 2, I will look at some tips to help make your animations effective for marketing. This is what I've found from the ones that worked well and not so well.
Tip #1 Remember - it’s not live action video. Be imaginative!
One of the benefits of using animation over live action video is you can create something engaging and high impact.You can make things happen that would be outside the realm of a typical corporate video production budget.
Many people approach an animation thinking they will need a main character who talks to the audience about the company in a setting consistent with what the business does. If you want to be this literal, you may as well hire a film crew to do a live…
