Our Product is Explanation
All posts for “business”
Online Videos, Testimonials and Conversion Rates
Posted by: leelefever on February 19, 2009- 4:00pm
Categories: business, marketing, statistics, video
It's too easy to just put up a web page and hope for the best. I can certainly attest to this practice for most of Common Craft's existence. However, as we've moved into ecommerce and built some traffic, I've become much more data oriented and learned more about things like "conversions" and "A/B testing."
Many web-based businesses have the same goal: drive traffic to your web site and then convert that traffic into some desired action. This is called conversion - converting traffic to... Continue Reading
A year ago today, I was writing the script for the video "Twitter in Plain English." A year later, the video has over 2.6 million views, thanks to a bit of collaboration between a handful of companies. Here's how:
We decided to make "Twitter in Plain English" for the same reason we made "RSS in Plain English " - it was a concept with huge potential that needed a better explanation. We wanted people to understand a resource that we value.
Twitter, Inc. didn't hire us to create the video and... Continue Reading
People often ask how our presentation quality videos are used in professional and educational settings. From talking to educators and influencers, we've learned that our videos are often used to introduce a subject - to get everyone on the same page at the beginning of a class, workshop, etc. Recently, as part of our planning for 2009, we came up with a model that helps tell this story. We call it the A-to-Z Scale.
The scale represents the path to learning a subject. On the left side are... Continue Reading
I'm a big believer that every business needs to understand exactly what business they are in - and for us, this has been a journey. I'm confident, through months of discussion and testing, that we've defined this direction for Common Craft. Here is what we learned:
I started Common Craft in 2003 to do consulting. It was just me and I provided consulting services. Once we started making videos, we were hired to make custom videos. Again, we were a services business. In the summer of 2007,... Continue Reading
Study: Americans Overwhelmingly Demand Simple Communications
Posted by: leelefever on January 13, 2009- 4:00pm
Categories: business, Explanation, news, plainenglish, politics
Siegel+Gale recently completed a year long study of 1,214 American
homeowners and investors that shows huge demand for simple, plain
English communications. A few interesting quotes:
Fully 84% of all consumers say they are more likely to trust a company
that uses jargon-free, plain English in communications. And 79% say
they think it is “very important??? that President Obama “mandate that
clarity, transparency, and plain English be a requirement of every new
law, regulation and policy... Continue Reading
In a word: Education.
Our goal in 2009 is to make explanatory videos that have a positive impact. To get there, we plan to focus of video subjects that are educational in nature and help address some of the big problems we face.
We plan to introduce new series of videos that diverge from our Web roots and cover subjects that we believe need to be covered. You'll see the first of these starting very soon and continuing into February. We're starting with the basics - big ideas that will be... Continue Reading
It's time for our 2nd annual Year-End Lessons Learned post. 2008 was a great year for Common Craft. While we published a number of videos that we're very proud of, 2008 was all about building a foundation for the future of our business. Going into 2009, we're feeling confident that we have a solid foundation in place - and now is our time to put more videos into the world.
Here are a few things we learned:
Overall Business:
Build Foundations. Think hard about long term opportunities... Continue Reading
Marshall at ReadWriteWeb, posted a story today about Common Craft that was actually published a few months back, but has been reposted at a "redux." It's one of my favorite bits of press and called "How Common Craft Stopped Doing Client Work, in Plain English." I don't know of any other blog post that tells our story better.
Since the original story was posted in September, we've created a resource that helps organizations in need of custom videos find producers who can help. It's called... Continue Reading
I've been a Twitter user for just over 2 years now and I'm still trying to figure out how to use it well. A couple of weeks ago, We created an @commoncraft account that's focused on our business and looks behind-the-scenes. Now that I have an established account (@leelefever) and one that's just getting started, I've been thinking a lot about what's possible with Twitter. Some thoughts:
(If you're new to Twitter, watch our video Twitter in Plain English )
To Follow or Not to Follow
I... Continue Reading
Being Lightweight: Planting the Right Plants
Posted by: leelefever on November 24, 2008- 4:00pm
Categories: beingsmall, business, lightweight, ourwork
If you don't like yardwork, you have a choice. You can hire gardeners or you can plant things that don't require much care.
This is my way of saying that we all have a choice in how we grow. Because we want Common Craft to stay small, we look at new opportunities in terms of yardwork and ask ourselves - is this going to require gardeners in the future? If so, then maybe we should look for opportunities that are more likely to take care of themselves and allow us to focus on what really... Continue Reading