This is the first part of a 3-part blog series focusing on producing dynamite video footage for your website while getting the most bang for your buck.

The tips I provide below are based on a conventional corporate-video formula intended to yield about 5 minutes of final, edited video footage. They are just guidelines and as such, you can tweak them to fit your situation.

Pre-Production

Secure 5 Interviewees
3 happy customers and 2 expert employees. Getting customers is often challenging …

I’m enjoying watching the Olympics. For me, it’s not just the action that’s entertaining—I also enjoy the words used to describe the action. Let’s look at some:
Hat Tricks in Hockey

I know that a hockey player makes a hat trick if he or she scores three goals in one game. By why is it called a hat trick? Apparently the term began among cricket teams, where it was the sporting thing to buy a new hat for any bowler who dismissed three batsmen with consecutive deliveries. Sort of like three strikes, you’re out except to three different batters. …

Online Content Management Systems allow you to consolidate the entire back-end of a website into a single secure yet easy to access location.

Traditionally any time you wanted to make an alteration to a website you needed to contact your Webmaster, who would in turn render your changes into code and and then use specialized programs to upload this code onto the servers which shared your information with the rest of the world.

No matter how responsive or dedicated your webmaster, the need to work through an additional person would build in a lag - one which would only be exacerbated by …

One week ago a new four-colored dialog box appeared in my Gmail account.  And I don’t mean some clunky square computer dialog box that we’ve all grown accustomed to, I mean an honest to goodness comic book style dialog box.

Clearly this was some new sort of chat functionality, which surprised me, as I already had a GTalk session open.

Apparently Google was launching it’s answer to Facebook and Twitter, and you know what, I couldn’t be bothered.  I already have all the personal social media tools I need.  In fact, I have more social media tools at my disposal than I …

Last week, I introduced a business man – let’s call him Pierre – and the two reasons he gave me for not having a web site:

I responded to his mistake #1 last week.  Here are my thoughts about Reason #2.

OK: Pierre gets business from word-of-mouth advertising. So he has a Marketing Plan and it’s called Referrals. Great! Referrals are fantastic, and are the …

For the life of the Internet, the art of protecting online e-mail addresses has rested upon the ability of web developers to come up with effective ways to sort man from machine.  In short, a CAPTCHA.

If a machine can identify and grab your e-mail address, you will become a target for SPAM - but removing your e-mail altogether is not an option if you want to provide legitimate clients and leads with a way to reach you without having to leave their computer.

When I first started looking at website code (back when a 28.8 baud audio modem was state of …

As business owners, most of us realize the importance of being “top-of-mind” in our customers’ eyes, and we use e-mail newsletters to tell them about new products or information they may not be aware of. Many businesses that use e-mail newsletters to market to their customers however, miss a huge opportunity to help their own online marketing efforts.

E-mail Newsletters Can Help Your Web Site

Online marketing is often referred to as “search engine optimization” or “SEO” or “internet marketing”. The idea is to get your Web site so it shows up in Google’s index of results on the search engine results …

What is it about an online article that makes people forward it on to their acquaintances?  Is it a feel good story? Practical advice? The unexpected?

According to a recently concluded study of the New York Times  all three play a factor, but the most important element is whether or not a story can evoke a feeling of awe.

There is no science to evoking awe, but there are some patterns that you can look for.

• Does your writing evoke a feeling of vastness, that there is something greater than you and your reader?
• Does your article tell the reader …
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“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”

There is a lot we can take away from the first Fundamental Principle of Olympism found within the Olympic Charter.

Yes, the Olympics are the world’s premiere athletic tournament – but they are also an invitation to reflect on the joy of effort and excellence in all endeavors.

What do …

At a marketing workshop I attended recently, the subject of web sites naturally came up. One attendee was feeling the pressure to create a web site for his insurance business. Although he knew he “ought” to have one, he was obviously reluctant (indeed, suspicious) about the need, the cost and the benefit.

His reasons for not getting a site boiled down to:

Today, I’m going to examine reason #1. I’ll address reason #2 next week.  So let’s …