Episode 71 – Video Marketing with Lou Bortone

Lou: Yes, I kind of grew up in a TV station because my dad worked there and time of the weekends running around the studio, playing on the new set and it was just like my little playground. I never wanted to do anything but go into TV. That's what I did. After I went to college in Boston, I got a job in the mailroom at the same station where my dad worked at WBZ, so happy to have him there upstairs. He was the Art Director and I had my humble beginnings there on the switchboard, which I think everybody should have worked on the switchboard because that's where you really learn what happens at TV station.

But went from there to radio promotion and marketing, and get a whole stint in Boston, and I moved to Los Angeles, and worked at E! Entertainment television which is a blast, and really just never wanted to do anything else aside from TV and video stuff.

Brian: That's cool. We were talking before the podcast and I was a video producer for a long time. Back in the day, the amount of equipment, the amount of cables, stuff that was out there. The first job that I had was at AT&T where I had to wire, basically moved an entire studio with 1 inch-¾ inch beta machines, switchers, mixers, audio, all of the stuff and I had to label all the cables, then we moved into the new place, I had to basically plug everything back in, but the thing was reverse so I ended up building all the cables again because everything was crazy.

But back then, one of the stories I tell all the time is my boss walks up to me after working there for a couple of years and he asks me and says, “How much is your house?” I said, “Well it's a $40,000 condo.” He says, “Okay. Well, you're going to put a camera on your shoulder today that cost twice as much as your house. So don't drop it.”

Lou: Yes, that's job security.

Brian: Yes, no kidding.

Lou: I know. It's incredible. The first time I walked into an editing suite at E! Entertainment Television because I had been mostly on the marketing side and then when I went to E!, I had to do some production and things like that. I was like, “Oh my god, is this NASA? Or is this an editing suite?” All those screens, machines, tape decks, it was really something and I think the turning point for me when I went from offline to online was when I had a partner who did the shooting and I did a lot of the editing, and he had one of those expensive fancy cameras and one day he showed up and I said, “Where is your camera?” He's like, “I traded it in for an iPhone.” He went from a $15,000-$20,000 camera to a $400 camera.

Brian: It's amazing the way the technology has changed and I think that's one of the things that a lot of people have never gone through all of that – understanding a lot of the details and maybe that's one of the things about video that kind of scares people, is not understanding a lot of the technology. Again, going back to the AT&T days, we used to have these things called overhead projectors which were just big lights that went through clear sheets that had typewritten text on them and now we got power to put it [inaudible] move all over the place. You see people producing videos that got all those moving parts and all these cool things, but that's probably not the best way to do it. Right?

Lou: Yes, the fun part though is that now, video is available for the masses and it used to sort of be. You had to own a lot of equipment to have a specialized knowledge. We're kind of kidding before the call here, if you've got an iPhone and a couple of apps, you're in business.

Brian: Right and it's so easy to be able to edit things and I love it.

So let's talk from a marketing standpoint, who needs to do video and why?

Lou: Well, I think anybody doing business today needs to do video and it's like when the web first came along and you didn't have a website, you really weren't considered a real business and now it's at the point where if you don't have video on that website or on YouTube, you're not considered a real business because it has become the way we share, the way we communicate, the way we sell and it has just become a such crucial part of business and culture that I think anyone that's trying to sell anything to anybody should be doing video.

Brian: And there are lots of different ways to do video. I've been learning how to use the newer technology forever – iPhones, iPads, even my laptop. But the coolest thing is the quality of the microphone on the laptop is awesome and the video coming out of the laptop is awesome. There's a little bit of acoustic things that you have to think about with the sound, but let's say we start producing these things. We get those apps, do all those kind of cool things. You mentioned YouTube, but there's a lot more than YouTube out there to post things. Right?

Lou: It is. There's just so many places now, too, so many platforms that you can use to get your video out there. I think the thing to remember is rather than being overwhelmed by the amount of options that you have, try and think about where is the best place to find your audience? If you're trying to get a teen audience, it's probably Snapchat and things like that, Vine and a lot of the platforms that the teens seem to adapt first. If you're trying to look for other folks, maybe older folks or folks in business, I've found Facebook to be really video-friendly, and it's a place where a lot of people discover videos. You can even do videos on Pinterest now. So it just depends where your audience is. The platform is almost unlimited. It's really a matter of finding, “When I put that video somewhere, where is it going to resonate with my target audience?”

Brian: Okay, let's say we want to start producing videos and I have no concept of what I'm doing, but I have an iPhone, or I've got a Droid – what are some of the most common basic things that people need to think about when they're producing a video?

Lou: Really, they should start with the goal of the video and a lot of folks fall into this trap like, “Oh, I've got to do video. I really need to do something.” They finally fire up the webcam and they're like, “Okay, wait a minute. What am I doing here? What do I need to do?” I think you need to think about the purpose of the video and the goal of the video and how does that fit into your business objectives? So while you're doing a video that's a welcome video for your website so that when people come to your website, they see that there's a person there and they get to know a little bit about who you are and what you do, or you're doing a video that's a tips video on YouTube – there's a lot of different videos for a lot of different purposes, but the very first thing that someone should do is decide why are they doing that video and what do they want that particular video to accomplish?

Brian: Right and producing these videos, there's obviously some technical challenges. In the old days, way back in the 1990's or '80s, literally we had 10 people to record a video. I wrote a blog about this a while ago. We had a director, we had a producer, we had a video shooter, we had a makeup artist, we had an audio person, we had a gaffer, the moving parts and all those things, and there were so many different people that worked on different things and nowadays with this technology, it's you.

Lou: Yes.

Brian: So what are some of the technical things that people need to think about? Lighting, sound, all those kind of things. What is going to be helpful?

Lou: Well again, if you're doing an on-camera video or an off-camera video. I think most people, the first thing they think of with video is the typical talking head video and the great thing now is you can do that from your laptop, or your iPhone, or your desktop with a webcam that's usually part of the computer. If that's the case, then you just need to think about do you have adequate lighting and even as you know, daylight is fine if you've got enough light coming in and the light is coming towards the subject and not behind it. I know a lot of people say, “Oh, I've got a great view. I'm going to do this video.” Standing in front of a big window here. That doesn't work. You want to have the lights in front of you as you know and just make sure you're not so far away from that camera that the audio starts to get [piny].

The nice thing is I fired up my computer and my Mac and I just talk into the computer. I've got a setting where I've got a nice neutral background, I've got enough light coming in front of me. In that way I can just pretty much create a video whenever the mood strikes me. The good news is you don't need to think about too too much, but obviously you want to make sure that you've got adequate lighting, good audio and a background or a setting that's not too distracting.

Brian: Yes, there are lots of things that people can do. Like for example I've got a mic on a tripod to do this. I can easily put that mic close to me so that I can sit back from my computer, plug it in as USB and get good audio from that mic, but not having the shot. There are lots of different tools. I don't necessarily think that it's wrong if you need to use a headset because a lot of people are doing that especially for training or even the earbuds. There are lots of different ways to get great audio and that's one place being an audio geek, that a lot of people like you said, they point the camera in the wrong direction into the light rather than having the right light reflect off them, getting good audio – those are the two key things that really I think annoy people, is when they can't see and can't hear. Right?

Lou: Yes, and especially the audio because I think people will forgive a bad video if the content is decent, but if they can't hear it, or if it's garbled or it's scratchy, they're just not going to put up with.

Brian: Right. So what are some of your best tips or advice about shooting, and editing, and posting? What are some of the things that we have to think about? Because obviously you can shoot a video, but there's going to be garbage at the front, there's going to be garbage at the end. Do we need to add graphics? Do we need to put what's known as a lower third to introduce yourself? What are some of the tools and tips that you can give people on this kind of stuff?

Lou: Yes and I like to make the distinction between – I like to think that there's two types of videos. There's the quick on the fly, spontaneous, the content is more important than the quality kind of video; and then there's the video that's going to have some shelf life, or maybe it's for your branding, or for your websites, you want to give a little bit more thought to it. For those kind of videos where obviously it's representing your brand and maybe it's going to be around for a while. Those are the types that you want to say, “Okay, I'm going to shoot this. Even if I shoot it with my iPhone, I'm going to make sure that I've got it framed properly and it's not shaking.” Or as you mentioned, it's on a tripod, “…and once that video is done, I'm going to bring it to some kind of editing system whether that's iMovie on a Mac or even online tools.” Like I use Wevideo.com which is a nice free online video editing software. As you know a little editing goes a long way, so if you chop off the beginning and the end where maybe you're turning on the camera, you add some music, some graphics, suddenly that humble little video is all dressed up and looks very professional.

Brian: Yes, those are great tips and there are lots of different ways to do things that are going to make it look better and the key thing is you can get away with taking your iPhone to doing that quick video and it does. It gets shaky because your hand is moving, or the wind is blowing or whatever is like that, but if you're trying to do something, yes, getting it on a tripod, even getting just like a desktop stand for your iPad, or iPhone, the laptops are already sitting on the stand, so that helps a lot. All of those things totally will make a better end-product and that's the key. It's who's your audience, what do they expect and what's the longevity of this, is really, really great points.

Lou: Yes. The other thing that I like that's a ninja tip is that if you want to just crank out a lot of videos quickly, I use Google Hangouts to record videos and I can share my screen with Google Hangouts so I can show a slide, I'll show a screen and I kind of use that as a recording device because once my Google Hangout is over, it gets sent directly to my YouTube account, so then I don't have to worry about uploading, downloading, editing, any of that kind of stuff. I think Google Hangout is a cool tool because you don't really have to get too hung up about the editing. It's really more about, “I'm going to get my content out there and I'm going to share my story or show my slides.” And it's just a quick way and a neat way to crank out video quickly without a lot of aggravation.

Brian: That's cool. If somebody wanted to have a desktop app for their PC or Mac, what are some of the things you'll recommend there?

Lou: In terms of editing or just in terms of video shooting, video in general?

Brian: All of the above – shooting, editing, whatever.

Lou: Yes. Well, obviously if you have any kind of Apple device like an iPhone or an iPad, iMovie is a great resource that allows you to shoot, and edit, and upload videos. You really can do all of that from the iPhone, or the iPad without ever going to a computer so that's kind of cool. Really, one of my favorite apps, even though it's only for iPad at the moment, it's called Adobe Voice because it's a free app that really focuses on storytelling. You kind of narrate your video or your story and then you match it up with images, icons and graphics that Adobe Voice provides and you can make a really cool looking video for free basically.

Brian: What about Camtasia, or Screenflow or any of those kind of things?

Lou: Yes, those are great if you're using a desktop and you want to do a little bit more editing and get a little bit more into it. Camtasia is a great screen capture software and editing software. I'm on a Mac so I use something called Screenflow when I have to do some basic editing and some screen captures and things like that. The tools have become much more accessible, they've become a lot more affordable and they're also much, much easier to learn. Really the only one that I don't advice people to get into too much is Adobe After Effects because it has more of a learning curve, but that's when you're really getting into some serious special effects and things like that.

Brian: Yes, that's heavy duty video. Big time.

Lou: Yes.

Brian: Lou, some awesome tips. Let's talk about what are some of the biggest common mistakes that you see people making when they're producing, shooting, editing and posting videos?

Lou: I think one of the biggest mistakes is really not thinking through the process and what you want to accomplish in terms of what's the goal of the video, what platform are you going to use, what distribution, methods you're going to use whether that's YouTube, or Facebook, or Pinterest, or LinkedIn. How are you going to get that video off the hard drive and on to places where your audience can see it? That's just the overall, “I need to plan this video and think it through strategically” part and then of course there's all the little things like, “Okay, let's make sure it looks decent and the lighting is right and it's framed properly.”

But a lot of the tools from basic photography can carry over to video. You want to make sure that you're in the frame, you're not chopping your head off especially with so many video selfies being done, it's kind of hard to see exactly what you're doing if you're just holding the camera out at palm's length. You want to take a look at that before you post it and make sure that it looks and sounds good. Also a big, big mistake that people make with their videos is not including a call to action at the end of the video. You really have to tell folks exactly what you want them to do next. They're often the YouTube rabbit hole somewhere where you're watching Justin Bieber videos suddenly or something.

Brian: Awesome points. And what's your take on – you mentioned Hangouts. Obviously there's YouTube, but there's things like Vimeo, there's S3, what if you want to host your own videos? What are your recommendations there?

Lou: It's funny because the description I usually use is that YouTube is like the Walmart of video hosting sites and Vimeo is more like the Nordstrom. Vimeo has a nicer interface and some of video [inaudible] sort of like that a little bit better. But the main thing is just get it out in those places where your audience is going to see it. If you want to host it off of YouTube and you don't want to count on YouTube, you mentioned Amazon S3 is a really great reliable hosting service. There are now sites and resources like Wistia.com which is a great place to host your video and I use another one called Viewbix and the visuals is like Wistia and Viewbix, let you go to the next level and take it to another level of professionalism because you can now control what the player looks like, and you can control the environment in which the video appears. You can make people opt in to your video before they watch the whole thing, you can redirect them at the end so that they end up back at a website. Those kind of places give you a lot more control over your video rather than just putting it on YouTube where you're playing in YouTube's backyard.

Brian: Yes, and that's one of the things we talked about earlier in a podcast about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, or something along those lines where you're using the free service like Wix or something of that nature. The thing is that you don't own it. If you put all your video on Facebook and Facebook all of a sudden decides that you're overselling on your personal side and they shut your account down, it's all gone. That's the key thing I think the people need to understand is yes, you want to save versions to your hard drive, but if the only place you're saving is to YouTube and YouTube all of a sudden either shuts it down, which I doubt it would happen, but it could, or they decide that your content is offensive – I post pictures of bacon and all of the sudden, a vegetarian group decides to shut me down because I'm posting too much pork products, they can do that. So that's where I think people have to be a little bit careful.

Lou: Yes, exactly and ultimately you want to have control over your videos and not just hope for the best with YouTube. YouTube is obviously a huge site and the second biggest search engine and a place where a lot of folks go for answers and things like that. But you're playing on somebody else's real estate. If you want to have more control, you got to basically control your own real estate.

Brian: Yes, totally makes sense. So what are some of the power tips that you could offer my audience about shooting, editing, producing? What are some of the things that you tell your clients to look out for to do?

Lou: I tell them to basically divide their video strategy into on-camera and off-camera. The on-camera videos, especially for women because I know they probably think more about their appearance than us guys, but they want to make sure they're wearing the right clothing or whatever. So I usually advice them to do their videos in batches. Take a nice quiet afternoon, hopefully one that the person across the street isn't mowing their lawn and making lots of noise and do several videos at once because you can crank out a lot of video if you just concentrate on that, sit there and say, “Okay, I'm going to make five videos today.” You could even do it like I said earlier on Google Hangouts where you can pretty much just use it as a recording device to send those videos to YouTube.

So if you're doing on-camera videos, try and gang them so that you're doing them several at once so you don't have to think about it. And if you're doing off-camera videos, then just think about the platform that you want to use. Again, it's like if I'm doing a video in a software called VideoMakerFX, I might do two or three as long as I've got that software open and I'm in the groove of doing that.

Brian: Yes, there's a lot of other tools, which I know we don't have time to cover, but VideoMakerFX is one. There's always new video tools coming out a lot.

Lou: It seems like there's a new one almost everyday. It's hard to keep up with it. The good news is many of them are really low-cost, very easy to use and they sort of give you that low-hanging fruit of, okay, if I have to do a video and I have to do it in the next half hour, I'm just going to go to Animoto and use photos because that's probably the quickest way I can crank out a video.

Brian: Yes. You could even crank out a really killer video just using iPhoto on a Mac. Just put them in sequence, create a slideshow, put some music behind it and boom!

Lou: Absolutely. Most of my videos, especially webinars are essentially just narrated PowerPoints and I'm just sharing my screen on Google Hangouts and I'm walking through a PowerPoint and that's the webinar, then that webinar becomes a product and hopefully that product becomes something that's sort of in my vault for a while.

Brian: Cool. So when it comes to video, obviously views are one thing, there are lots of different ways to measure success. What do you teach people about measuring success with video?

Lou: Again, if you've thought through what you want the video to accomplish and you've thought through your strategy, then hopefully you've decided at the very beginning like, “Okay, if this video sells 100 classes, I'm going to deem it a success.” “If this video gets me 1,000 new friends on Twitter or something like that, you want to sort of set those goals and set those realistic goals at the beginning and realize a lot of people measure success by YouTube views which is the bad way to do it, because the vast majority of YouTube views never get more than 500 views. Again, if you are selling a coaching program and you have 20 spots in that program, you maybe only need those 20 views to sell your program. You don't necessarily need 200,000 views on YouTube. Don't measure it by views, measure it by really the business results that you're getting and are you achieving the objective that you set out to achieve?

Brian: And do you suggest putting it on multiple platforms and seeing what's working and what's not working?

Lou: Yes, absolutely and it's funny because I probably get more traction on videos that I post to Facebook rather than the videos that I post on YouTube and it's just a matter of where's your audience and what's the best way to reach them. I'm right in the midst of a 30-day video challenge that I'm doing with another colleague of ours, Felicia Slattery who I know you know, and we're sort of goading each other on just like, “Okay, we're going to do a video every single day for 30 days and I'm doing 30 different types of videos.” So I'm trying to think of a different kind of video to do everyday. I forgot where I was going with that.

But consistency and where you're posting it – I'm posting some of them on Facebook, and some of them on YouTube, and some of them on my website to see, “Let me see where I get the most traction.” Because it's going to depend on the video and on the audience, but it certainly doesn't hurt to put them in several places.

Brian: Awesome. So Lou, you have a system that's going to help people who are not super video capable to at least start to get their hands wet in producing their own videos. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Lou: Sure. The biggest issue, or complaint, or point of overwhelm with video for most people is the time that they believe it takes and that they have to set aside the time for video. So I was in Chicago once at a conference watching an infomercial and I think it was for the 10-minute video training. You can do your whole workout in 10 minutes and I thought, “Hey, you can do the same exact thing with videos, so I created a 10-minute video trainer, which is basically just 10 10-minute lessons on video basics. I've got one on YouTube, one on Google Hangouts, one on creating your own studio. So they're all very, very simple, very short and sweet how-to videos for getting started with video.

Brian: Great. Sounds like an awesome system at least to get your arms around what it is that you can and cannot do.

So Lou, if people wanted to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Lou: Either on my website at Loubortone.com, or via email at Vip@Loubortone.com. I use to answer all my own email, I'm happy to get it, I'm happy to answer it. Vip@Loubortone.com is where you can find me most easily.

Brian: That's awesome, and Lou Bortone, just in case.

Lou: Exactly.

Brian: Awesome. Hey Lou, this has been fabulous. I love talking shop with people in the video and audio because it's my niche. But you're a fabulous guest. I really appreciate all your insights and great ideas, great tools. I think everybody is really going to appreciate this so thanks for joining us.

Lou: My pleasure. Thank you, Brian.

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