Expertise on Tap | Email & Video Marketing...made easy

Now we can all make money on YouTube! Or can we?

Until recently only producers of the most popular videos were eligible for YouTube's Partner Program. This program enables producers to serve ads during their videos and take a cut of the revenue generated. For example, Howard Davies-Carr the father of the two boys in the "Charlie Bit my Finger" viral video has reportedly earned £100,000 from it. Mind you, it has had 444 million views! Now YouTube has opened up its Partner Program to everyone. So could you make money from your videos and how do you go about it? And what are the potential pitfalls for businesses and brands? You can enable monetization for one or more of your videos in account settings. You also need to have a Google Adsense account set up. For detailed advice on how to do this please contact me. Hold your horses! Before you rush off and start monetising your videos here are a few things to bear in mind. 1 For your videos to be eligible for monetization, you must own all the necessary rights to commercially use all visuals and audio, whether they belong to you or a third party. By commercial use rights, this means the rights to make money from the video. Read more about this.     2 To make real money you're going to need tens or even hundreds of thousand of views. This is not a get rich quick scheme.     3 Consider the impact that adverts will have on the enjoyment of your videos and more importantly the perception of your brand. You can choose whether to display "pre-roll" ads before your video starts playing or you can choose display ads which will appear superimposed over your video. Or you can choose both. If you opt for monetisation on your YouTube account, banner ads measuring 300 x 250 will be shown by default to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestions list.     4 The adverts might be related to your video content. This means adverts for competing businesses may well appear. So what's the verdict? If you think you've got a video which is going to go viral like "Charlie Bit My Finger" then definitely consider monetising it. However if you're using YouTube for videos relating to your business then it might be best not to bother due to the potential adverse impact on your brand. If you're not sure, you could trial monetisation of your videos and assess what types of adverts are being displayed. Oh, and if you're one of the few people on planet Earth who hasn't seen "Charlie Bit my Finger" here it is...

How to measure audience retention for your videos using YouTube analytics

Big news from YouTube! They've recently introduced a massive improvement to their video analytics. This brings some powerful benefits if your business has videos on YouTube. You can now monitor how long people watched your videos for. It's all very well saying your video got 800 views but what if those viewers stopped watching part way through thus missing out on your key message? Now you can play the video and view a graph showing exactly which proportion of the audience were watching at any given time. See the example below. How to view your audience retention 1 Go to www.youtube.com/analytics and logon to your account. 2 Click "audience retention" on the left hand side bar. 3 Then choose your video beneath where it says "content". 4 Choose your date range. 5 Play the video and the red vertical bar will move. Note: This will only work for videos with more than a few hundred views. Top 3 tips on how to use this to your advantage: • Anyalyse where the drop off occured. What specific content caused people to tune out? • Was your video too long? Could you have got your key messages across in a shorter video? • Use the results to work out what you could do differently next time you produce a video. Here is an example of the audience retention measure. As you play the video in your YouTube account the vertical bar moves across.

YouTube Analytics: Find out how people 'discovered' your videos

Big news from YouTube! They've recently introduced a massive improvement to their video analytics. This brings some powerful benefits if your business has videos on YouTube. YouTube now has a new ‘discovery’ measure which shows you the different in which people found your video. This measure could prove useful for future videos in terms of where you decide to embed it. For example on your own site, on other people's sites, web forums and such like.  See the example below.... You can access this information by clicking the small icon next to your views count which looks like this >>> And you can set these statistics to be public or private.

HOW TO remove YouTube branding from videos embedded on your website

Until recently, one of the downsides of embedding YouTube videos on your website was the YouTube logo in the lower right hand corner of the screen >> There's now a way of removing this by adding a small snippet of code to the existing embed code. The following instructions assume you already know how to add YouTube embed code to your website. 1 Find the video on YouTube. 2 Click on "Share" just beneath the video player. 3 Then click on "Embed"   4 Scroll down and untick "Show suggested videos when the video finishes". I recommend this to avoid competitors' videos playing when your video has ended. 5 Select your required video size.   6 Grab the resulting embed code. 7 Add &modestbranding=1 immediately after where it shows ?rel=0.   So, this: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e8BORfMv5Pc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>   Would change to: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e8BORfMv5Pc ?rel=0 &modestbranding=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> If you get stuck please call me for some free of charge help.

Expertise on Tap on location at Edgbaston Test Match

Expertise on Tap has just completed a corporate event video shoot at Egbaston for Birmingham based Gala Hospitality. The event took place at the England v India Test Match on 12th August 2011 and featured a Q&A session with cricketing legends Nasser Hussain and David Lloyd.

Alan George of Gala Hospitality comments “This is the second video Expertise on Tap (EOT) has produced for us and we’re delighted with the result. We have used several videographers before and they haven’t come near to EOT’s quality. Their attention to detail and their eye to get a variety of different aspects of our events, really show the atmosphere and help to sell next year’s event. We will definitely be using them in the future.”

How to increase click throughs for your e-newsletter using video

If you try and embed a video into your e-newsletter it won't work properly in most email programs. The email is also likely to get blocked by anti virus ssoftware. Technology is changing and this may become possible in future but for now a work round is necessary. Here's a simple technique which I use with great results in clients' newsletters. Simply pause the video and take a screen grab then add a play button onto the image. Use this image in your newsletter so that it looks like a video screen. You'll get far more clicks than just using a text link saying "Click here to watch video".

^ Examples of video ^ screen grabs used for my client The Stuart Holmes Hair & Beauty Spa

How to link to a specific time in a YouTube video

It's a common dilemma. You're watching a funny pets video and you want to send a link to your friend about the bit where the skateboarding dog comes on. Usually it goes something like "Check out this amazing dog, LOL! It comes on around 2 minutes in". Now you can send an exact link of a specific time in any YouTube video. Just right click on the video at the relevant time and then left click on "Copy video URL at current time".  The link is then on your clipboard for you to copy into an email, a Tweet, a Facebook post or whatever.

The resulting link will look something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je8nn-RzYZk&feature=player_detailpage#t=28s

How we used video to help 360 degree feedback company promote its services

CASE STUDY Lumus™ is one of the UK's leading suppliers of 360 degree feedback surveys - leading the way in technical excellence, feedback report quality, latest thinking and client support. Lumus had a business challenge which was how to convey their unique and cost effective approach quickly and effectively to potential clients and website visitors. There were three stages to the process: 1. Planning discussion We discussed what type of video would work best for Lumus. Following our input they decided on a "1 way interview" technique We recommended this technique because the resulting video ends up looking more conversational and less like a hard sell. It's also easier for the interview participant to appear more natural than talking direct to camera. 2. Story board development We worked with Lumus to develop this. It was vital to ensure we didn't just turn up for the shoot with no ideas on the structure and content. 3. The Shoot Although we had built a story board as we got into the shoot we realised some elements of it could be improved. A key point here is just because there is a story board it need not be cast in stone and if there is an opportunity to improve upon it during the shoot don't be afraid to do so. Mike Cooper of Lumus comments: "Working with  Expertise on Tap was a pleasure – they provided lots of great advice and steered us through the development and filming process in a very professional and skilled way – I’m overjoyed with the finished product" Here's the video...

How we used video to help Cheltenham author promote her new book

Mary Pearson is an accomplished meditation teacher based in Cheltenham. She has written her first book "Meditation - the Stress Solution" and wanted to record a meditation excercise to help promote the book. This was a bit different to our normal videos as it didn't involve any in-vision recording. We simply recorded Mary's audio and overlaid some calming still images. The result is a good example of the type of a fast turnround video which we are happy to produce for clients. We received the brief from Mary and completed the video within a few days. After watching the video, if you're interested in learning more about meditation or want to buy the book please visit Mary's website. Here's the video...

Can you transform amateur video into something which looks professional?

Yes you can. It is possible to transform amateur footage into something fairly watchable but it depends on the quality of the footage. The tv news channels do it often with user generated content (UGC). What they do of course is edit the footage provided by the viewer into a brief 20 second clip. Of course it's never going to be as good as if their own news crew had been there. As professional video producers we'd normally prefer to be there ourselves and edit our own footage. We've produced numerous videos for our client The Stuart Holmes Hair & Beauty Spa however when they recently attended the Hairdressers Journal Awards (HJA) it was not practicable for us to be on hand to capture Stuart's moment as he accepted the award for Salon of the Year. Not least because HJA had their own film crew in attendance. The workround was Stuart took his own video camera and a team member shot the video as the awards were announced.  Stuart then passed the footage to us to see if we could transform it into something watchable! Here's the result... So, when it's not possible to have the video professionally shot and you need to use amateur footage here are some tips to enable a professional editor / producer to transform it for you. Our Top 5 Tips 1. Shoot far more than you need - This will enable the editor to choose the best bits. - Don't be tempted to "self edit" by stopping and starting. If in doubt leave the camera rolling. 2. Try and keep the camera still - If it has an image stabilisation function switch it on. - Resist the urge to pan from side to side or up and down. - If sitting at a table rest your elbows on the table to steady the camera. - Consider investing in a basic tripod. Or you could try a mini tripod as shown here. 3. Don't zoom in and out - This is called "tromboning" and will make it diffcult for the pro editor to edit your footage. - Use the zoom but do so to frame the shot and remember any camera shake is magnified the more you zoom in. 4. If the lighting is poor adjust the exposure - Some domestic camcorders may have a function to manually adjust the exposure settings. Don't overdo it though or the picture could become over exposed. 5. Use an external mic for close up speech recording - The internal mics on domestic camcorders are not that great so by using an external mic you'll improve the quality of speech recording. See some external mics here. - Note: For the above video the camera's internal mic was the best option as it picked up ambient sound from the venue's PA system.