video marketing

Francis

One other comment regarding YouTube, when you start doing that I would be very happy to learn from you about that because I also think this is one of my many projects in my projects folder.

I think I’m giving my main assistant nightmares with all the projects I’m opening and none that I’m closing.

But I would like also very much like to go into YouTube because I do believe that it is very a targeted traffic and from the right sort of persons. And I know that it’s very useful to have a virtual assistant to fine tune your videos.

And there’s one outsourcing expert, so to say, who’s shared a lot on YouTube already. I’m sending you a link. It’s from a person called Tyrone Shum.

Eric

Yeah, I’ve heard of Tyrone. I’ve seen some of his stuff on this.

Francis

And okay, I didn’t know you knew, but then I would suggest that your assistant should digest all his free information as much as possible because you obviously also have some paid service especially in the direction of video creation.

But if you have basic knowledge about working with virtual assistants, I think it’s more money efficient to train your own team than to pay him for a service. But if you’re not interested in that, then just go ahead and use a specialized service for that.

Eric

Yeah, that’s definitely something that I need to look into. Because I think especially with my medium – teaching piano lessons – that’s definitely something that needs to be more on YouTube because it’s such a visual type of thing. You know what I’m saying.

Francis

Yeah. But I really think when it comes to training your assistant, just let them watch training videos. I think there are lots of how to use YouTube videos on YouTube just as part of the training because I wouldn’t have the patience to watch all these videos if I wasn’t doing the task myself.

Eric

Right, yeah. And that will save us the time to have and actually go out and create the video themselves and making that time to do that too.

Francis

Yeah. Do you have special equipment for your videos? Your quality was much better than mine and you had a big microphone as well.

Eric

Well, at the moment, you see, I used to do some basic audio recordings so I have the microphone that I use for that. And I just use that for my videos. I mean, I just went out and got like a $200 HD camera.

Francis

Okay.

Eric

I went out and bought some lights, just $20 lights that I just saw. And really the qualities of my videos aren’t really that great yet but they’re getting better. But it’s probably only like a couple of hundred dollars and you can get a microphone, a decent HD camera and that’s really all that I have.

Francis

Yeah. That’s also the advice I’ve read often about videos. One advice that I’ve found very good from Tyrone was to just get started. Just do a crappy video first. And then he showed his oldest videos and they were crappy in comparison.

Eric

Because his videos have like explosions and sound effects and stuff like that. And in his first video, he’s like in the trunk in the car or something, really. And then I wanted to follow his advice and I just did that.

I prepared some sort of script and it was evening and I was tired because I watched all these videos but I wanted to get into action. I didn’t want to just read and not do anything.

And then it was dark and I didn’t have the lights installed too well, so I was looking almost green in this video. And I was like looking sleepy and talking slurrish like I was high. And I was recording then a 10 minutes video of myself talking this way. And then I was proud because I took an actionable step, you know.

Francis

And then I put it in the Dropbox and send it to my 2 best friends and my girlfriend. And I cannot tell you how hard they laughed at me. They did not laugh with me, seriously. They made fun of me and hard, really hard.

And I was just trying to explain myself. I was just saying, yeah, I know it’s bad but I just want to take action and the next one will be better. Then they said that was so bad, just don’t do that.

Eric

Let me say one thing though really quick, Francis. I’ve sent you a link to my YouTube channel.

And my videos, some of the first ones that I did – they’re horrible. I mean, I’m serious. And also, I was nervous in front of the camera. I mean I didn’t even have my face in them, it was just my hand. And the way I talk I was ah—ah, you know. I mumbled most of the time and they’re just horrible. So if you ever have a minute, watch some of them.

Francis

But you kept them online, I think that’s charming.

Eric

And if you look at some of them, I’ve got almost 110,000 views on one video.

Francis

Yeah, you have lots of views. I’ve been looking at it. I think in the end, the content is what’s important in the long run.

Eric

Right. And that’s the thing; if you can just get it out there I think that people are a lot more gracious than we think.

I think that even though that we look at it and like oh that’s terrible, that’s horrible, yeah. I mean I think that we want to strive for quality. I think we want to have the best stuff that we can.

But when you’re first starting your business, I think it is better just to get it out there. And I mean, you can see from what I’ve got; I mean they look horrible but I’ve got a lot of views.

And too I mean, it’s different for my stuff because I’m kind of piggybacking off of popular songs. I think that they’re doing a great job but they are horribly, horribly produced.

Francis

Yeah, I agree. But thanks for the heads up because I really sort of lost my motivation with that story because my tools were so bad. And yeah, also I’m aware that the tool I’m using for recording for my webcam has much lower quality than, for example, the recording that comes from Skype.

So obviously technically, I was not set up either. But I’d like to go into that soon also. And for example, for these videos, I will try work with my main assistant first because I will not have enough work for full time and then I give it to someone else.

I also believe before you expand, you have to have some sort of return of interest so some money which comes back into your business.

If you have videos and you create them. And over time, it creates you either direct advertisement income or links back to your services that you get money from. Then you can say, okay, I’m earning hundreds of dollars more a month, why not put them directly into the expansion of my team?

But if you just expand because you have so many ideas, like I am, then you risk just running and burning lots of money.

Eric

Yeah and you’re not getting anything in return on that.

Francis

Yeah, so that’s something to look out for.