14

Video Brings Your
Brand to Life

The marketing manager of a billion-dollar Fortune 500 company said to me, “Ramon, I’ve watched all your videos. I know you love burnt pancakes and bacon . . . We’d like to hire you to host a new show.”

I was shocked (just a bit).

This executive saw my quirky (and serious) videos and knew that she wanted to leverage the dynamism she observed in my videos for her company.

If I had not have been consistently producing videos, this encounter might have never happened. You can leverage video in a very powerful way to personalize your brand and humanize your expertise. Business cards don’t buy from each other; humans buy from humans. Showcasing yourself in a video is a great way to attract attention and “sell” yourself.

There are two main types of video you should have:

1. A profile video that encapsulates your professional expertise and shows you in the best light. It’s a video that shows your accomplishments, such as any books you’ve written or anything of value you’ve created. It should show you speaking and include any other elements that express how amazing you are. This video might only be updated once every two or three years. Some people call this a sizzle video. This video should be professionally produced and give people who are interested in you a quick taste of who you are, how you work, and how you are able to help them.
2. Educational videos are a must have. These are videos you produce on a regular basis to educate your audience and keep you in the forefront of their minds. You can record and share these videos from your smartphone. You can see the many videos I produce by checking out my profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Educational videos can be fun or serious, but they are intended to provide information or something of value to the viewers to help them in some way. You create them with some regularity. Some of the titles of my videos include “Can You be Happy in the Rain,” “Why Luck Is Overrated,” “Follow Up without Being a Jerk,” and more. Think about your audience and your industry. What questions are they asking? What answers do they want? Your educational videos should be about these things.

So how can you produce your videos? It’s very easy to shoot great video. Here are a few tips from my play book:

1. You can use your phone or you can buy a professional DSLR camera, which will have better image quality and other features. I’ve been using my phone much more than my professional camera, as the phone quality of video is fit for online viewing. If it were being broadcast to TV, I’d need a higher-quality image, most likely. The modern phone in your pocket (one that’s no more than two or three years old) produces video that’s good enough for most purposes.
2. Have good lighting. Be sure that the light is behind the camera facing you so you’re well lit. You don’t want to be in shadow. You should be clearly lit and visible.
3. Audio is important. You want people to hear you clearly. Be sure to shoot your video in a quiet room or have an external microphone to capture the best sound. There is a variety of solutions you can use to capture great audio. I have a shotgun microphone. It is a long microphone that looks like a small umbrella or a baton one might use in race. This microphone is great for isolating and focusing on the sound right in front of it. You have to hold it toward the person’s mouth or have it clipped to your video camera. I also use a lavalier microphone, which I can clip onto someone for an interview in a quieter location.
4. Now it’s time to edit your video. You can hire someone or you can edit it yourself. There are many great video editors you can find on freelance websites, such as Upwork.com (great for all sorts of freelance professionals). I also use an app, Magisto, which is great for editing videos on your phone. Adobe Premier Elements is a simple and cheap-enough video editor that you can use on your desktop computer! It’s best for fuller video editing with various tracks and other features.
5. Many people watch video with the sound turned off, so you might want to add captions to your videos so that people can read what you’re saying without having to have the audio on. You can use a service, such as Rev.com, that will take your video and provide a caption file for a dollar per minute of video. You then take the caption file and upload it to Facebook or YouTube (or other services) with your video file. After your video is processed, when people play it, they’ll see captions in your video and can “hear” what you are saying without the sound.
6. Include a call to action. End the video by asking people to follow you on social media, watch another video, visit your website, or take advantage of a special offer.

After you shoot and edit your video, be sure to share it far and wide—place it on social media, your website and blog. Remember, the more great videos you produce, the more your personal brand is strengthened and developed. The more videos you do, the more credible and more comfortable people will feel about you.

STOP!

I know some of you reading this are already thinking about how you have to get things “just right,” how perfect your video needs to be, etc. I’ve been doing video for many years, and although my goal is always to do my best, every video is not always going to be perfect. If your message is clear and you can be seen and heard clearly, you’ll be just fine. In fact, sometimes being too perfect is a turn off. Clients, your community, like to see “real” and authentic. This is why reality TV is such a hit. Of course, reality TV is scripted, but it’s the closest we’ll get to seeing the “real life” of the Kardashians or famous people in Atlanta, etc. As you consider using video to build your personal brand, just be consistent. When I first launched #AskRamonRay, a live show I do on Facebook on Sunday evenings, it was not perfect. In fact, it’s still not perfect, but I’m out there, engaging with my fan base, and the viewership is growing. That’s what matters!

My friend Roberto Blake has a lot of great content all about video production.

Posting your video on YouTube is powerful. YouTube video marketing is an industry all on its own, and it’s a skill set. Use a descriptive, keyword-rich headline for your YouTube videos. Be sure to fill out the description. Remember, YouTube is owned by Google, so its keywords and descriptions are so important and will help to get your video in search results.

Video is the NUMBER ONE reason why my brand is growing and why I am a celebrity CEO. If you’re creating good video, your fan base will increase, people will share your videos, and people will want to work with you. You’ll find that, like me, you’ll be chased down more and more by people interested in your business, your products, and collaborating with you. That’s the power of video!

I guess this is why Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and TV are so popular. This is why all the social platforms are investing so much into video. Humans love seeing other humans in action, and video is the only way to do that if you’re not there in real life.