It’s been quite a while since my last post here, and I suppose it’s time to spill the beans.
Some of you may know… some of you may not… Zeppelin Media (the business and the blog) are heading for the sunset. But, before you cry in your beer, I should tell you that it’s not the end so much as it’s the beginning. In its place is a new business, a new name, and a new focus.
Well, Focal Point, LLC to be precise. Focal Point is a new business I have started (and will roll all of my existing customers into) that will focus on helping people use web video to promote their businesses.
You can see the first work I recently shot of Mike Sansone on “Blog inventory” as well as some other interesting stuff and a better description of what I hope to help you all do at the new site: www.focalpointmultimedia.com
For now, this site will stick around in case there’s something of value for you here.
Thanks for reading and sharing! Hope to see you around at the new business blog.
Yep, that’s right! After two years at the office in Uptown Ankeny, I’ve decided to pack things up and head on down to the “big city.” Starting Monday I’ll be in my new location at 1430 Locust Street, Suite 101. That’s right across the hall from our good friend Mike Sansone, the superman of business blogging, and just downstairs from the marketing guru, Drew McLellan, and his great crew at McLellan Marketing!!
Wow! I can’t wait to get settled in and start absorbing all of the genius brainwaves that permeate the walls there. You can just feel them when you walk in!
I could go into all sorts of jargon-speak about synergies, paradigms, value-adds, brain-dumping, and what-not… but I’ll just sum it up with one thought: I think this move will be a win-win for everyone at 1430 Locust!!
Thanks Mike for the gentle prodding, and hats-off to you Drew, for providing such a creative space for folks like me! I’ll see you guys next week!
Lola Peters, a congregational consultant in Ankeny needed to put together a very simple solution to help her promote her upcoming Healthy Congregations Workshop designed to help church leaders be more effective, and help them develop the skills needed to thoughtfully care for and work with those in their congregations.
Our simple solution provides her with the framework to share necessary information with her clients, and has plenty of flexibility to grow and evolve with her various other workshops, seminars, and consulting offerings in the future.
If you are a leader in your church, or know a church leader, be sure to take a look at how her workshop can help you!
Claire’s back to school
We’ve been really busy the past few weeks getting claire’s and Icing sites prepared for “back to school”… In fact, it’s kept us so busy, I haven’t been able to get any blogging done whatsoever. Whew!
Video Promotion!!
As part of our move to Des Moines, we’re gearing up to help businesses and organizations in the Des Moines area promote their businesses with web video!! We’ll help with everything from consulting, shooting, editing, adding video to company web sites, and posting video to various video sharing communities. Our goal is to help people quickly understand the things that make each business special so that they can make informed decisions without having to labor through pages of text.
If this is something you would be interested in learning more about to help promote your business, give me a shout! I’d love the chance to talk about the possibilities!
Here’s a great idea that gives me the opportunity to talk about collaborativeweb video.
Google has put together a viral marketing campaign to help “spread” the word about their popular email service Gmail.
As part of the campaign, they are asking users (that would be you and me) to submit their own short 10 second clip passing the Gmail envelope. If they think it’s worthy, they’ll rotate it into the sequence of video clips for the whole world to see. Could be fun! I might just have to participate myself!
Gifted with words, I am not, so it’s probably easier to see than describe:
So. Now back to how this relates to YOU and YOUR BUSINESS.
Collaborative video: What a great way to get others involved in helping to promote your brand. What sort of fun video campaign could you put together where you provide the initial concept and your users provide the bulk of the content? This really is fantastic way to get people to participate with you and your brand.
Viral video: Without a doubt, this campaign will spread like wildfire (hey it appears I’m helping!) The spread will happen for two reasons: 1) it’s fun and unique, plus people like to watch other people being kind of silly. 2) for those who actually submit video, they’re going to not only check back constantly to see if their clip was added, but they’re also going to tell all their friends to watch too! See? Like wildfire! What unique ideas can you come up with to watch your video marketing campaign spread like wildfire?
Very cool, indeed. This gets my mind swirling with possibilities.
Here’s one example: I have yet to meet Mitch Matthews, but something like this could do wonders to help get some major traction for his game, “Q“. (Mitch, you can send me a check for the idea when the money rolls in!)
Hat tip and a nod to TJ Mapes of GetANewBrowser. Thanks for the idea and inspiration!
Becky McCray from Small Biz Survival gave me the inspiration to extend the conversation she started over at her blog. Be sure to start there!
In Becky’s recent post about how to use video to promote your small business, she lists several example businesses and shows a few video ideas for each example to kick start the thinking process. I thought it was such a great post I wanted to make our readers aware of her post and also hoped to extend the conversation a bit.
Specifically, I wanted to mention some ideas for using video that would help any business or organization.
Present - Present your ideas, products or services in such a way as to quickly help people understand them. Video can do in seconds what text and photos takes paragraphs and pages to do.
Introduce - You and your team are the heart and soul of your business. Introduce yourselves to your customers and potential clients so that they understand who you are! Video introductions can be a great way to help build trust, initiate conversations and establish relationships with your viewers.
Promote - Promotion of your products and services can be incredibly effective using video. Video is engaging, easy to consume, and relatively quick to digest.
Announce - Grand openings, sales events, holiday specials, open houses… whatever
the occasion, video can help spread the word. Adding “forward to a
friend” buttons can even help the message go ‘viral’.
Invite - Adding video to your invitations, either by email, or through special messaging in your off-line promotions, can really add excitement to your events. Couple that with an online RSVP tool and you have yourself a powerful tool working 24/7 to bring people to your event!
Recruit - Whether your a college, university or a business, you’re all looking to recruit the best and the brightest. Video can help capture the essence of what makes your campus or organization unique, and deliver that directly to your top candidates.
Demonstrate - Are you an expert in your field? Provide your readers some video demonstrations explaining the things you understand but they don’t. Or, if your business provides a product or service, you can use video to demonstrate that product or service and show us all how it’s better, smarter, faster, cooler, cheaper, more efficient… Well, you get the idea. Show us all how it’s done, and we’ll be more apt to beat a path to your door.
Video has been a powerful tool for a long, long time… but it’s been limited by it’s distribution methods. Online video is an incredibly powerful new medium that will benefit us all. The businesses that take the time to understand its power and flexibility and then take action will most certainly make a lasting impact on consumers.
** Shameless self-promotion: call or email me to set up a time to kick around some ideas that might benefit your business. I’m always up for a good conversation about how we can help… chris (at) zeppelinmedia.com, or 515-965-9779.
(Oh, and Becky, if you’re ever in the Des Moines area, give me a shout! I’d love to talk shop for a while.)
This year is the first year in my life I have planted a garden. My wife and I bought our first house last year, but with so many projects to do inside and out and our getting prepared for baby #1 we just didn’t get it planted last year.
As I was out tending to the garden this weekend, I noticed an interesting analogy. Those precious plants in my garden are sort of like customers.
First step. Before planting them, I need to understand what they require in order to thrive. Every one is different and has its own unique set of challenges. It’s my job to pay attention to those details to ensure their success.
Step 2 is planting them. This can be hard work! The soil needs to be tilled, holes dug, stands set up. It’s dirty. It’s hot. It requires some special tools and a few skills. And all the while, I need to remember each one’s individualrequirements. To complicate things, sometimes tree roots get in the way or ant hills need to be battled. But eventually, the hard work is done and I can just sit back and wait for the reward, right? Not a chance!
Step three is maintenance. And it’s the biggest step yet!
Weeding. I don’t know what it is about weeds. They are serious about messing up my pristine garden. Hoe a few out and more come back. Pull some and more pop up. (That reminds me, anyone have any tips on how to get rid of old rhubarb plants? Ugh.) Again, more hard work. But I need to be patient and keep on top of things or my plants are not going to fair well.
To make matters worse, some pesky rabbits are munching my pepper plant. My neighbor put up a fancy green rabbit fence around his garden. I haven’t decided if I’m going to follow in his footsteps, but it’s not a bad idea. Sometimes we need to adapt to new challenges, and I hear BB guns are not allowed for rabbit control. Too bad. (just kidding)
The other big maintenance step is watering. Or at least checking up on the state of the soil to determine if it needs water. And all the while I thought I could just plant it and forget it.
Hopefully, after all of this hard work, I’ll have a nice harvest throughout the summer. I can’t tell you how rewarding it will be to see the success of each plant in my garden. The fruits of one’s labor definitely taste the best!
It would seem after enjoying the bounty of a good harvest, I can then expect to sit back and relax, pat myself on the back a few times and call it done. But reality tells me more hard work is in store. After cleaning up all of the old stalks and unusable stuff, I’ll need to evaluate what went right and what went wrong. Then set a plan for next year so that my harvest will be even more bountiful!
You see, there are good ideas in a garden! The biggest lesson of all? Hard work and careful attention will yield bountiful results, and thoughtful evaluation will allow for continuous improvement over time.
Now, pass the butter and salt. I’m getting hungry.
There’s a great service I found for real-time web collaboration, web conferencing, and webinars. It’s called Vyew. I have used it a few times and found it to be fairly easy to use. Vyew makes sharing visual information very simple.
To use it, I can load up a few slides, layouts or photos and phone a client to discuss. I give them the link to get into the meeting and, presto, they can see the images I put up there for them to view. In addition, we can both make notes on these slides, draw, point, load more pictures and otherwise share visual information just as if we were in the same room. And the other real nifty bonus — I can either share my desktop if I want to give a presentation in another application, or I can view my client’s desktop to troubleshoot any problems. Pretty cool, huh?
Have I mentioned I can do all of this for FREE? For a small monthly fee I can upgrade to more features, but the free version is a fantastic tool to get started with!
What makes it great?
The scaled-down version is FREE
It uses Flash technology to share information so no need to download any special software
Shared desktops
Directly imports Powerpoint slides
Annotate directly on slides, photos, or layouts
Use a pointer tool to direct users attention to certain details
Publish the presentation for use on web sites, MySpace, etc.
Print to printer or to PDF
What’s not so great?
I had a few times I couldn’t start a meeting, probably a bandwidth problem for the free users
Not very speedy. I wouldn’t try to run any animation whatsoever through this. It’s a little slow.
Unless I missed something, there’s no sound
Might be nice to include VOIP with the tool, but maybe that’s asking too much considering it does just use Flash as its engine.
Overall I found this product very useful. I have used Webex in the past, which is somewhat pricey… and Vyew is pretty darn close to the performance I was used to with Webex. I think it works great to talk to clients about layouts. It would work well in many different industries where sharing visual information would improve sales, marketing, customer service, etc.
I came across a really great post today by Greg Verdino titled “Get off the scale.” The essence of his article says that marketers need to be focused not on breadth (measuring how many people did we reach) but on creating depth (how much interaction took place) in our marketing projects.
To quote:
…people don’t love brands or buy stuff because they’ve achieved (shallow) reach of a large audience…people love brands that make meaningful connections with them as individuals.
A lot of the time, the bean counters and decision makers are focused on how many people have been reached by a given project. The more eyes on something the better. While that may be partially true, Greg argues that the goal should be less on reach and more on making a connection with those people.
To do that, marketers have to work hard to pursue innovation. What worked once, may not work again in the future. We need to stay committed to trying new things.
Amen to that!
It is innovation that inspires new ideas. Innovation yields efficiency. Innovation nurtures relationships. It is innovation that brings us all closer together in ways that are new and exciting! True, with innovation comes risk and cost, but anything of value comes with risk and cost. Without innovation, our businesses will stagnate and perish.
Time to roll up the sleeves and set aside some time, energy and money. The future holds great promise to those who are willing to do so!
