I’m sure you’ve been told how useful and valuable video can be for your business.
- Almost every social platform encourages you to use it by making it as easy as possible to “go live” or upload a video.
- YouTube is the biggest search engine on the web after Google Search.
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text! (Source: https://biteable.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics/)
Using video for your business is easier and more effective than ever. But actually making the thing, is a lot harder.
I started making videos for my business in 2017. I get the full-body cringe if I have to rewatch those early live streams and ‘tutorial’ posts. They were far from perfect, but even in their wonky, imperfect form, these videos helped me to get clients online. They helped people to find me, get a sense of how I work and even simply to remember my name.
There are a bunch of things that I struggle with, each and every time I do a video for my business. In this article, I’m sharing the top 3 (even though I could probably list about 50!!!)
1. My appearance
Maybe my hair looks weird, or I look too tired, or it’s just one of those days when I look my age +15 more years. I struggle to make a video when …the-head-on-ya, Claire is my first reaction to my face on the screen.
How do I get past this?
I remember – people don’t really care what I look like! I’m not an influencer. I’m not selling skincare products. Looking fancy is not the point of the video. The point of the video is to bring value to my audience. I show up on video because it helps people in my audience to understand something about their website or web strategy.
So here I go… eye-bags ‘n all.
2. Content
Is anybody going to understand what I’m trying to say? Are they even interested in this?
Classic impostor syndrome here. I’m always worried that my content isn’t good enough or interesting enough or that it doesn’t make sense. And there are so many resources online, why should someone listen to my take?
How do I get past this?
I remind myself of my ideal client and how she consumes content online. I remember to make a video on a topic that she has potentially ‘Googled’ recently. I break down my information in a way that looks at this topic from her specific point of view. I make videos (and blogs) that are designed to be helpful to her and suddenly, it all gets that much easier.
3. Distribution
Uch this is the worst one. I alway struggle to distribute the videos that I’ve made. My usual process looks a bit like this
- I’ll get asked a question by a client or potential client
- I’ll explore the topic in greater detail and draft some notes
- I’ll record a video (using Zoom) or I’ll go live on one of my social platforms.
- I’ll upload the video to YouTube and then embed it on my website and create a blog post around it (just like this one).
- Then I’ll share it on my social media channels and send it out to my mailing list.
What I neglect to do though is to re-share it. Things move fast online, sharing the same piece of content a bunch of times is fine. It means that someone in your audience has a greater chance of seeing it. While I KNOW this, I get reluctant about re-sharing. I’m actually not sure why!
How do I get past this?
I remind myself… If they don’t wanna watch it, they won’t watch it, it’s fine. And if they do watch it for a second or third time, that’s actually great.
Another reason re-sharing is good. I sometimes get really busy and don’t have time to make something new. To keep showing up, I’ll repurpose an older piece (and silently cringe) but at least I’m showing up repeating myself, it’s better than not showing up at all.
Publish over perfection.
I think it’s clear from my example that you can decide for yourself what your video style is. If you can make a super-slick, super professional video every week, go for it! But it if comes down to it, just showing up with something your ideal client will get value from is enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be valuable and specifically for them.