iPhone + YouTube = Gold


If there’s one thing has learned, its that no visitor to your website or Facebook page will contact you if they don’t trust you. And the easiest way to lower this trust barrier is to tell them face-to-face. In this video, Eric shows you how using your smartphone and a free YouTube account, you can destroy that barrier and drive more qualified prospects to call and email you. He lists the essential ingredients in a perfect video and how to generate them for free. In fact, this video is an example of what he preaches!


Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey I’m with EricSpellmann.com. And today we’re going to be talking about how an iPhone plus a YouTube account can equal gold. (or the Key to YouTube Marketing).

Now, one of the keys to understand here is what you’re trying to do. And to do that you need to understand what people respond to. Remember, our goal with is to get people to respond to us. We want people calling us up saying “Tell me more about what you do!” We want people buying from us if we’re selling something.

We want people to respond. And the key to understanding that is that you can’t have a website or a Facebook account that is simply an online brochure, or a virtual billboard. The web is not a one way megaphone! And so we want responses. We want social engagement! Let’s talk about how we do that.

The number one obstacle to online engagement (and by “engagement” I mean people talking to you, people doing stuff with you, people working with your company and choosing to contact you.) The number one obstacle to that is the trust barrier. That’s online marketing 101.

I mean whenever you’re searching the Internet, whenever you go online and before you ever call anyone or send an email to anyone, you kind of got to get over that trust barrier. Like, are these people going to bug me? Are these people safe to call? I mean I’m surfing the Internet and it’s anonymous and they’re not bugging me and I’m researching it and their product or their service looks like what I want.

Should I call em? Well the number 1 barrier to people actually getting over that hump and picking up the phone and contacting you is trust. They’ve got to trust you more. They’ve got to trust and when they do call you, they’re going to get a straight answer. You’re not going to take advantage of their time.

Keep in mind that people connect faster to people, not companies! And that’s what we want. We want people to connect to you. We don’t want people to connect to your company. I mean if you’re a massive mega company, yes, you want your brand to connect to the people like Nike or Pepsi or Coke or something like that.

But come on let’s be real. Most of us, the reason people do business with us is because of US! They want to do business with us as people and our company helps facilitate that. So keep in mind people will connect faster to people, not companies.

And that’s where video comes in. Also remember, remember I’ve told you before everyone on the Internet has A.D.D. and they’re lazy.

Well this is the lazy part of that equation. If presented with a video and a whole bunch of text on a website, people will click on the video every single time. You know on my home page I have videos, and those are the most clicked items, THE MOST CLICKED items on my entire home page. And that’s because people would rather sit back and watch something than have to read it. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, it just is. And so what I am saying is, take advantage of that fact, from an online marketing standpoint.

Video is the key. Video is the game changer. Remember, people connect to you with a video. I mean when you create a video and you get up there and start talking about your company, you start talking about your values, you start talking to them as if they were standing right in front of you. Then whoever is watching that connects to you.

I mean think about the difference there is between that and someone just reading paragraphs and paragraphs of customer service and competitive advantage and we will do this for you and that for you etc. The video is going to connect and people can get a sense of who they’re dealing with and what that relationship is going to be like because they’re watching who they’re going to actually be talking to.

Trust is almost automatic in this because it almost feels like a conversation. Now keep in mind these videos I am talking about, I don’t want them to be all scripted, I don’t want them to be all fancy and perfect. I want them to be as if you are talking to someone else. Keep in mind that as you talk, you are building your expertise in your industry. And you’ve heard me say this before in other videos; people would rather do business with an expert than a salesman.

And when you get up into a video and actually give people content and helpful information, the line between salesman and expert is blurred. And people actually go “You know what. I haven’t bought a thing from him. I haven’t contacted him at all and yet he’s given me something useful!” And so the law of reciprocation kicks in a little bit and you’re more likely to get that call! Trust me this works.

On the video, you can also show off your products and services. Sometimes you might have a service or a product that is kind of complicated or complex and it’s hard to describe. But one of the neat things about an video is you can actually show it and people get it immediately because it hits multiple senses.

I mean they’re watching it, they’re hearing it; they’re seeing it in motion they understand. One of my favorite videos that show cases this is the Will It Blend videos, where this company who makes a blender wanted to show off how tough their blender was. And so they created a whole bunch of these YouTube videos where basically they’re dropping random items in the blender as if it was a real scientific experiment! They’re hilarious at it. Look them up on YouTube “Will it blend”. They’re dropping iPhones, action figures, I mean all sorts of just random things in the blender to see if it will blend. And yes they’ve sold a ton of blenders.

So what are the ingredients to the perfect video? Well first of all, you know me. I’m always about the cheap. I’m always about doing whatever I can for free. And especially a lot of you small businesses you don’t have a lot of extra cash flow to be buying all of this stuff. So first, you need a free YouTube account. And like I said, they are free.

You need an iPhone, smart phone or a web cam. Something that can actually film a video. And preferably something that can then automatically upload that to YouTube. I also recommend, depending on what you are showing on your screen, some software that can actually
show your screen. And just for you to know what I am doing, I use a piece of software known as Cam Studio. You can find it; it’s totally free and available at camstudio.org. It is perfect for your strategy.

And what it allows me to do is to film my computer screen, which is actually what you’re seeing. I’m using PowerPoint and a little video window which is provided with my web cam and that Cam Studio software and that’s all I’m using. Nothing fancy here folks!

So what about the video. I recommend that your video be 2-5 minutes long. We don’t want some long thing and I agree most of my videos are longer than that. But for your website or your video blog, they don’t need to be long at all. 2-5 minutes.

Now here is the thing. And this is going to scare a bunch of you. I truly believe your video should be done in 1 take. That’s right. No going back, no editing. You film it and you’re done. You upload it and you share it, it’s out there. Now some of you must be going “Eric what if I make a mistake. How do I correct it?” Then go back and correct it live.

You see what I’m saying; I want you to talk to the camera like you’re talking to a real human being. If someone were to walk in your store or your business and just talk to you, you don’t go back to them and say “Oh excuse me. Let me rewind and re-say that last sentence.” You don’t do that. You just talk to them. And when you do that on video, basically you come across as authentic, as real. And people connect to that.

If you look back at some of my other videos you will see I have made mistakes. You’ll hear me actually go back and change something. That’s fine. People know I am a real person. Because I talk to the camera like I am talking to you as if you were sitting in my office. It’s got to be real. So I am a big fan of the one-take video. Also, if you go back and keep looking at the video wondering oh that was stupid, I look stupid, I sound stupid, that could had been a better word to say… If you keep doing that you will never get it done because there is no such thing as a perfect video.

Then you upload it to YouTube. And a lot of times you can use your phone to do that. I mean you just upload it and you’re done. Finally, once it’s uploaded to YouTube on a public account, then what you can do is share it out. You can embed it on your website, you can post it to Facebook, you can tweet it, you can do so many things with it from an online marketing standpoint.

And that’s one reason I like YouTube. Some people ask me why not just upload the video to your website. Well, if you’re going to be doing a lot of videos that can overload your website storage, depending on who you’re hosted with. Also, let’s say that your video goes viral. I mean all of a sudden everyone’s forwarding it and it goes crazy. Well believe it or not you get too many people simultaneously watching your video if it’s hosted on your website, you could take that whole server down! And you can’t have that.

So when you put it on YouTube and then simply embed it where you want, remember YouTube can handle a million simultaneous views on a video. And so if it goes crazy, you don’t care because everyone can be watching it and it doesn’t look choppy and it works great. And YouTube just has a lot of great features. I love it. Every single one of my videos is on YouTube because it makes it easy for people to see.

Well, as always give me a call if you have a question. Well some of you may be wondering “Eric does that mean I don’t need to have a professional video made?” No. Please don’t hear that at all. In fact, there are some professional video producers that are my customers and I’ve even had professional video made for me.

There is definitely a time and place for that. For instance, one of the videos on my home page was made by one of the best in the industry. And when you get to that point, when you need to be able to show something and when you need some help and you need a video that might be put on TV, might be in a professional arena, might be shown in front of thousands of people, then definitely find someone who knows what is video marketing. Someone who can get the lighting right, someone who can get the sound right, someone who can get all that done.

What I am talking about is for maybe the day-to-day videos, you just want to do a video blog or something like I do. There are ways to do that where you can do it yourself. When there is technology involved the cost is definitely great.

Well if you have any questions as always just let me know. I’m happy to help. I am with EricSpellmann.com. I’ll see you in cyberspace.