all posts tagged “videos”
The Startup Video and Explania
Posted by: leelefever on April 4, 2011- 9:44am
Categories: Explainer Network, Explanation, startup, videos
I'm biased, but I think nearly every business website could benefit from a video that explains what they do in about two minutes. This is certainly true with startups - these young businesses are often putting something completely new into the world. Their challenge is to explain it - and few things compare to the power of a video to show people what you do and why.
Our friends at Explania, who are members of our Explainer Network, feel the same way. They are based in Belgium and have been doing a lot of work on Content Marketing lately. Here are their "three reasons why start-up videos score well in an online marketing strategy."
1. Start-up videos can be very convincing so they can increase the ROI of a website. Internet surfers usually don’t have much time, are overloaded with information and are very quickly distracted. They don’t have the time to read and wade through texts and web pages thoroughly. An animated video catches the attention, demands less energy to watch and the video provides much more information in a shorter time span.
2. A start-up video creates brand and product awareness. When the video is produced professionally and in an educative and captivating way, then it will be distributed via the internet. People will share it with their friends on social networks; bloggers will write about it and embed the animation. In this way the video achieves a larger audience and a wider online awareness.
3. Product videos can contain a call-to-action at the end. They tell a story and create a bond with the visitor. They outline a problem, provide the solution and can connect to a call-to-action: a test, a discount, a benefit. In this way the viewer of the video becomes much more strongly associated with the product. Furthermore, the call-to-action at the end will yield many more results than, for example, a classic banner advertisement.
Learn more about Explania, or check out other members of the Common Craft Explainer Network.
A few months back April Joyner of Inc. Magazine contacted me to talk about the growth of videos as a sales tool. I wasn't really sure what the article's angle, but spoke from our experience in working with clients on videos that explain their products. The article is now online and in the print magazine.
My big points came out (mostly accurately) as:
- It's not about how something works, it's why anyone should care about
- The script is really important, write it first
- Keep it short
The article also profiles the video experiences of iPhone app company Smule, Kiva Systems and has a mention of our friends at Wistia. Check it out.
Coming Soon: More Videos on Financial Responsibility
Posted by: leelefever on July 19, 2009- 5:00pm
Categories: business, financialbasics, future, money, Money Videos, videos
Here's a question for you: Were you taught about financial responsibility when you were young? 
When I ask this question, the vast majority of people respond with a quick "nope." I sure wasn't. In my high school I learned to recite a poem from BeoWulf in Olde English, but never learned about 401ks or compound interest. In light of the current financial crisis, we want to do our part to make sure people understand the important elements of personal finance and being financially responsible.
The First Three
This is why we've focused the first part of this year on videos about financial basics. We started with very basic videos, meant to be prerequisites for more complex topics. We've covered Saving Money (including Compound Interest), Borrowing Money and Investing Money. With these in place, we're ready to release our next three in the series. I won't divulge the titles just yet, but they're all meant to help people understand how to be more financially responsible.
Finance is Boring - But Doesn't Have to Be.
We see two big problems in learning about managing money. First, our financial system is filled with complex terms. It's difficult to care about financial information when you don't recognize the words. Second, most materials about finance are deadly boring. For these next Money videos, we've put a lot of effort into making the videos easy to understand, but also entertaining and fun. You won't find finance videos like these anywhere else.
For Whom?
We often have specific people in mind when working on videos like these. There are usually two audiences:
1. Learners - These are the people who need to learn about financial responsibility. They are students in classrooms and seminars, they are website visitors and employees.
2. Educators - These are the people who need better ways to educate others. Our goal is to provide these good people with accurate, useful and engaging videos that will help learners grasp and even care about financial responsibility. This is the audience we expect to license the videos.
Expect the first of the videos within a week from now. We'll look forward to your feedback and ideas...
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 the basic, fundamental ideas. On the right, the details and applications of the ideas.
For example, let's consider the subject of biology. We might find topics like these at corresponding parts of the scale:
As you can see, the scale goes from big, fundamental ideas to specific details.
When we think about our videos and how they can be applied, we think about the scale and what parts of it represent the biggest opportunities for us to have a positive impact.
The Problem We See:
We believe that one of the real problems in explaining subjects is that people assume too much about what people already know. Their explanation doesn't account for people who are new to the ideas and have major knowledge gaps. They start in the middle of the scale:
When this happens, people feel lost. They don't have context for what is being taught or how the idea fits into the big picture. They're forced to build on an insufficient foundation.
Of course, this isn't surprising. If the explainer had to account for every knowledge gap, it would be difficult to move people down the scale. It takes valuable time to get everyone on the same page.
The Opportunity:
We believe that the left side of the scale has been neglected for too long. Educators and influencers don't have time to cover all the basics and they often lack quality resources. We've heard this many times "I used to spend hours trying to make sure everyone gets the big ideas, but now I just show them your video and everyone gets up to speed together."
This highlights how we see our videos fitting into the world. Our goal is to focus on the left side of the scale and ensure that viewers come away with the fundamental ideas that create a solid foundation for a subject. Educators and influencers can use the videos to introduce a subject and then spend their valuable time moving people down the scale.
A Caveat:
It may seem that we're orienting our videos around only fundamental ideas. This is not the case. The scale can be applied to almost any subject. For example, in terms of biology as a whole, the left side of the scale surely focuses on broad fundamentals. However, if we apply the scale to DNA gene mapping, our focus on the left side still applies. We would focus on the big ideas behind DNA gene mapping and leave the details to educators.
Use Case:
For example, let's consider a class on the subject of personal finance. It may be easy for the instructor to assume that everyone understands the basics of compound interest or annual percentage rates. Because it would take too long to get everyone up to speed, she chooses to spend time explaining more detailed ideas like buying a home and Insurance. She starts at about "K" on the scale.
People learn, but some in the class can't see the big picture because they have knowledge gaps regarding some of the basic ideas that create a foundation for understanding things like buying a home and insurance. They need a way to start learning at "A" instead of "K."
In the case above, Our Financial Basics Series, which is aimed at the left side of the scale, gives the instructor a fun and easy way to get the class on the same page and ensure that everyone can see the big picture. It helps her move quickly from A to K, so that her valuable time is spent on the details.
To Conclude:
In 2009 and beyond, our videos will be aimed at the left side of the scale. We want our videos to save educators and influencers valuable time by creating videos that fill basic knowledge gaps and get learners on the same page so that they can spend time where their time is most effective - on the right side of the scale.
As you may know, we've published a number "in Plain English" videos over the last year or two that are related to Social Media. Taken together, there are 9 of them on subjects from Wikis to Twitter. We've learned along the way that:
1) Professionals like you find these videos useful for introducing social media concepts to others.
2) You would prefer to use "Presentation Quality" versions that are downloadable and look great on screens of all types.
3) You love quantity discounts.
To serve all these needs, we've created the Social Media 9 Pack, which offers all 9 of our Social Media videos for the price of 7 videos. For individuals, that's about US$132 for all 9, for 3 years. Of course, the same videos are available as a "Site License" for entire organizations as well.
You can purchase and immediately download the 9 pack via our Store. Here's what it includes:
Hi, I am a teacher at a middle school in Ohio, I just shared your electoral college video with my kids and thy got it!!!!! Your explanation is the best I have ever seen. Now my kids want more of your stuff. Just thought you'd like a big cheer from Ohio.
Here's to kids getting it! Yay! The video is here.
We are blown away with the response to the recent post "What Videos Should We Make?" Not just the quantity (over 50 comments and lots of email), but the quality. It's exciting to see suggestions that have opened up new ideas and ones that fit with a couple of the themes that have been top-of-mind.
As I've told Sachi recently, it feels a little like we're at the edge of a pool, preparing to jump in. We're confident that we're on the right track, but the content of our future videos will diverge from the social media focus that people have come to expect from Common Craft. That's why your suggestions have been so encouraging - they help us see that there is a need for the kinds of "back to basics" videos we'd like to make.
At the end of the day, change is not only good, but necessary and the shock of a cold pool quickly becomes refreshing. I think we'll dive-in head first.
Well, as of today it has been exactly one year since all this video craziness began. On April 22, 2007 we published RSS in Plain English. We never guessed these videos would take us so far - it was just a problem that begged to be solved. Did you ever see a blog post with the same name from 2004?
Since our work is in front of people often, we both feel a little self conscious in talking about the numbers behind the videos. We don't want to seem ostentatious or too self-promotional. But, at the same time, I think that exposing some of the figures provides context and hopefully examples of the power of Social Media.
So, let's take a look.
First, please note that the #s of views are rounded and cumulative across hosts. A single video exists in multiple places and those views are added together. These numbers comes from our accounts on You Tube, Blip.tv and dotSUB. We use other hosts, but these are our core.
Totals April 2007-April 2008:
Total views (including client work): 3.9 million views
Total views (excluding client work): 2.4 million views
Most viewed Client Video: Google Maps for Mobile 834,000 views (includes UK version)
Most viewed Show Video: RSS in Plain English: 755,000 views
Breakdown of Views by Video (Common Craft Show only):
RSS: 755,000
Wiki: 436,000
Social Networking: 207,000
Social Bookmarking: 205,000
CFL Lightbulbs: 53,000
Zombies: 280,000
Blogs: 169,000
Photo Sharing: 42,000
Twitter: 223,000
Podcasting: 5,000 (published 2 days ago)
Breakdown of views by host (Show only):
You Tube: 1.3 million views
Blip.tv (embedded on our site): 772,000
dotSUB: 300,000
Incoming Links from Blogs
We would not have become popular without bloggers. We've always aimed to create useful resources that bloggers can use to educate others. One way that we track usage by bloggers is Technorati.
According to Technorati (today) for CommonCraft.com:
Technorati Authority: 3,040 (incoming links over 6 months)
Technorati Rank: 170 (170th most linked-to)
Blog Reactions: 15,000+
Here's how "Blog Reactions" looks across videos (rank/authority isn't always available)
RSS: 462
Wiki: 786
Social Networking: 452
Social Bookmarking: 560
CFL Lightbulbs: 45
Zombies: 151
Blogs: 444
Photo Sharing:100
Twitter: 535
Podcasting: 34
Search Results
We've been surprised to appear on the first page of Google searches for these terms:
RSS
Wikis
Social Networking
Social Bookmarking
Zombies
Twitter
Our SEO secret? Make content people want to see.
Language Translations:
One of the resources that has been very important to us dotSUB - a free way for our videos to be translated into multiple languages via subtitles. We're so excited by these language figures:
RSS: 27 Languages
Wiki: 30 Languages
Social Networking: 25 Languages
Social Bookmarking: 18 Languages
CFL Lightbulbs: 12 Languages
Blogs: 20 Languages
Photo Sharing: 9 Languages
Twitter: 15 Languages
Podcasting: 4 Languages
So, this past year has been a blast and something we never expected. We just make the videos - you share with friends, you link, you view. We owe you - big time. That's what I love about the social web - everyone contributes a bit and those bits roll up to bring visibility to content that may have never been discovered otherwise. Thank you so much for an awesome year!
As I wrote recently, we've been thinking a lot about Common Craft's future. In the coming year, Sachi and I want to make even more videos for you - videos that are useful, both on the Web and in the workplace. We've recently created a new resource that will hopefully help us get there.
Today we're announcing the roll out of an early version of The Common Craft Store. It looks like this:
The Store is the home for "licensed versions" of our videos. Licensed versions contain the same messaging and content as the free versions, but are improved for the workplace.
Some features:
- Download video files immediately after purchase (credit card, paypal)
- Higher resolution (640 X 480 - better for projection screens)
- Less promotion (no Common Craft Show branding)
- Provided in Quicktime (.mov) for Mac, and Windows Media (.wmv) formats
- No DRM
- Two Licenses:
Site - Unlimited use for a single location of an organization
The Store is a direct response to emails we receive nearly every day asking for permission to use our videos in the workplace. By licensing our videos, we are removing any worries about permission and appropriate use. Influencers and educators now have a resource for downloading and using the videos in presentations, meetings, Intranets, trainings, etc.
What about the free versions?
All of our videos will now be provided in two forms, Free and Licensed. This may help:
We are committed to maintaining the free and open nature of our videos on the public Web. The free versions will be provided under a Creative Commons 3.0 (non-commercial) license. These videos will continue to appear on the Common Craft Show, on video hosts like You Tube and will remain open for use by individuals, schools, non-profits, etc.
By opening the Store, we are creating a channel for professionals who need videos that are easier to access and more appropriate for use in professional/commercial situations.
Our hope is that the Store will allow us to focus more energy on producing videos for the Common Craft Show - videos that will be open to bloggers and the Web, but also for licensed use in the workplace.
If you have questions or concerns, have a look at the FAQ, the Licensing Agreement and the Privacy Policy.
Looking back at my education, I wasn't a great student. I made decent grades and went to a good university and grad school, but school was never my thing. Looking back, I can pin-point a couple of points at which I lost faith.
It was sixth grade and I was in a math class with Mrs. Paine (it's true - Paine). The subject was least common denominators. I didn't get it. My worksheets came back with red marks, but I didn't really understand what I was supposed to be doing. The class moved on while I was caught up in trying to memorize the details. Instead, what I needed was an understanding of the reasoning - not how, but why. It was at this point that I fell behind and began to dread math, as I do today.
Another example was college and grad school - I went to business school and took a few accounting classes. Again, the light bulb just didn't go on. I passed, but not because I fully understood the reasoning of Accounting as I do now. I remember the first day of my first accounting class. The instructor went directly into T accounts, debits and credits, revenue and expenses. I felt blind-sided. My first reaction was to try to memorize all the debits vs. credits instead of looking at it from a broad perspective of how money flows. I had no context to build an understanding.
Looking back, context is what I have always missed in education. If someone could put a new idea in the context of the real world or show me how it enables other things, I would get it. It's just my learning style - I need the big picture before the details make any sense. By diving directly into T accounts and least common denominators, I got caught up in trying to memorize instead of understand. What I needed to know was why - why this works the way it does - and why it matters to me.
So, I think the connection to our style of videos is obvious. They are based on all the things that don't work for me in education. When I see explanations on the Web, the remind me of school - they assume too much. They sometimes dive directly into how something works and spend little time on context.
For me, it's a big problem - a problem that I believe others feel too. When it comes time for me to try to explain something, it just feels right to look at the world from the perspective that would have made sense to me that first day of accounting class - build meaning with context first, then explore details.
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