Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Swine Flu, Videos and Email Series

Hope all is well on your side of the screen. Yesterday, my son
and I got diagnosed with Swine Flu! Yeah, what I thought was a
sinus infection for him and plain old fatigue for me turned out
to be Swine Flu. The doctor said she'd seen enough people to be
able to nail it every time even without tests. Seems they started
testing everyone who walked through the door, and every test came
back positive! So the lab asked the doctors to stop the testing
and just assume they were dealing with Swine Flu. Because we have
an "uncomplicated" version of the illness, and we're past our
contagious period, we're just roughing it for a few days more.
Then we're going to get flu shots on Friday, so we don't
develop a secondary infection.

Since I don't have a coloring book and crayons to keep myself
busy, I figured I'd write a newsletter. I was checking out my
CoolToolAwards.com product review site and discovered that its
Alexa rating has dramatically improved. About a month ago it was
hovering around 145,000 and today it is hovering around 130,000.
Not sure why though I tend to make more money through my reviews
when the site's Alexa ranking is better.

No doubt by now you have heard about the grumblings online
regarding the FTC's decision to clamp down on review sites. The
FTC wants truth in advertising, and if the reviewer has received
a complimentary product for review or receives potential
affiliate commissions, they want you to add language to your web
site or promotional emails stating the facts. I've always been
upfront when someone has given me free product to review, and I
also think it is obvious when you click on an affiliate link as
opposed to a direct link. I'm not sure what this new law is going
to achieve, but the FTC says they just want to cut down on the
fake reviews being posted especially in blogs.

Folks have been inquiring how difficult it is to incorporate
video into your web site. There are really two ways to do this:
either through a webcam or a DVD camcorder. The benefit of using
a webcam is that it is much cheaper to buy a webcam and record
directly to your laptop or PC. It pays to use a high-end Logitech
camera with a quality megapixel chip as well as a good combo
headset with headphones and microphone. Here's some options:

http://www.learnonlinevideoproduction.com/equipment.htm

Of course, you will get better video results with a DVD
camcorder, but unless your camera has an external microphone
input the quality of the sound may be inferior. To record the
best possible video and audio, you will need a DV recorder that
records on mini-tapes. Most of these types of cameras have a line
in for an external microphone assuring you of quality audio. You
can purchase one used on eBay for around $400-500.

Once you have your video, you need to edit it. I use Pinnacle
Studio Ultimate 12. I find it does virtually everything I need
including editing out bad video, adding titles and transitions,
and adding background music. It's not terribly difficult to use
and will work with most top of the line Windows PCs. Here's a
quick review:

http://www.learnonlinevideoproduction.com/pinnaclesystems.htm

Once your video is edited, it needs to be converted to Flash.
Here, too, you have choices. You can use a tool to simply convert
videos from one format to another, or you can use a combo tool
that also creates the actual video player. You have many options
here. Among the best and easiest tools to use are these:

Instant Video Generator
http://www.learnonlinevideoproduction.com/instantvideogenerator.htm

This is among the easiest. You simply login to your account,
click record, speak into your webcam, and click save. The system
then converts your video to Flash and gives you some code to cut
and paste into your web page. At that point you are done. There
is a monthly recurring cost for this service, but for
technically disadvantaged, it may be worth it.

Video Web Wizard
http://www.learnonlinevideoproduction.com/videowebwizard.htm

This one is among my favorite tools for video conversion because
it converts videos and creates the video player, too. It's wizard
based, and you have the option of even creating players for
YouTube videos. Very easy to use and very powerful. It even
creates a web page for you and allows you to preview your video
player and video in the web page. You'll need to do some FTPing
and cutting and pasting, but once you've done it, you'll be able
to do it again and again.

FLV Producer
http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/flvproducer.htm

This tool is one of the most popular video conversion/video
player creators available and has led the pack for years. It
provides many options for custom configurations and comes with a
nice selection of video players to choose from. One of the key
features this tool offers is the ability to automatically send
viewers of your videos to a URL of your choosing when the video
is over. This is good for promoting affiliate products or moving
people from a squeeze page to a sales page. You can't go wrong
with this one.

Media Menu Producer
http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/mediamenuproducer.htm

This is a cool companion product which enables you to quickly
create a video player that will play multiple videos. Let's say
you have a course and you've broken it down into multiple videos,
or you have a bunch of video reviews of related products. You can
use Media Menu Producer to create a single player that will
display thumbnails of each video and allow the viewer to click on
those thumbnails to jump from video to video, kind of like
YouTube and other video sites. Definitely worthy of your
consideration.

With all of these products, there is usually some low level of
technical skill required. You should be able to hook-up a webcam
to your laptop or PC; you should be able to copy and paste some
HTML code into your web site; and you should be able to FTP files
from your laptop or PC to your web host account. None of this is
terribly difficult, but you may need some assistance the first
time.

So start looking at your web sites and ask yourself how you
could use video to enhance your site's sales efforts. Here's some
examples you can check out.

Designing Ebook Covers
http://www.designingebookcovers.com/flip/

I did this for a promotion I recently ran with another
newsletter. I'm using video to introduce myself and my ebook,
Designing Ebook Covers, and to convince people to subscribe to my
newsletter in exchange for a free first chapter of the ebook. Go
ahead and go through the process to see the steps required to
accomplish this bit of marketing.

Raise Fit Kids
http://www.raisefitkids.com

This is a site I did for a client to help promote their kid's
fitness program. We're using video here to introduce the program
and to compel people to subscribe to his newsletter in exchange
for hearing his top tip. Again, I encourage you to subscribe to
see the flow and the companion video and sales letter on the
other side of the promotion.

In both of these cases, we're using video as the chief selling
method. It's also important to remember that once subscribed,
there is an autoresponder series set-up to send out newsletters
for 10 weeks that continuously highlight the value of the product
and push people to return to the site to make the actual
purchase.

So my point here is that while using video is more compelling to
sell than mere text, you still need to have a text element
combined on the back end with an autoresponder series to keep
your product in top of mind position and to encourage people to
reconsider a purchase.

Understanding that not everyone has the gift of writing
autoresponders, I suggest a few tools for your consideration:

Follow-Up Email Creator Pro
http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/business/followupemailcreatorpro.htm

This is a wizard-based tool which walks you the process of
creating a series of autoresponder emails. It won't necessarily
write them for you, but it provides you the ability to quickly
customize and generate a series of 21 messages. You simply answer
questions, fill in some blanks and click to generate the series.
Then you need to sit down and actually finesse the individual
emails, add links, etc. It's a good brainstorming tool and
considerably cheaper than hiring me to write a series of 10
emails for $750.00. Mine will be infinitely better and more
compelling, but you may want to give it a try yourself. Why not?
The price is right.

Marlon Sanders Push Button Email Software
http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/business/pushbuttonemailsoftware.htm

Like Follow-Up Email Creator Pro, Marlon's product is a
fill-in-the-blanks type of survey that generates a series of
email messages. Marlon is an experienced copywriter and marketer,
so his questions tend to be a little more probing, and the
resulting series can be much stronger depending upon the time and
effort you put into it. Again, you need to remember that these
"writing robots" are only as good as the quality of the
information you put into them and the level of effort you put
into finessing and improving them.

Anyway, that gives you the ins and outs of implementing video in
your web promotions as well as some additional tools to consider
for creating your own email series. Remember, using video without
the series is not nearly as strong a marketing tactic as
combining video with email promotion. Build your list and then
follow-up. That's the key to selling ebooks, software or even
services.

I'm going to grab 40 winks to sleep off my Swine Flu.

All my best,

Steven

P.S.: If you have not done this yet, please click the link below
before you forget, and do your friends a favor by forwarding my
newsletter to them. They will thank you for it, and I do, too!

http://getresponse.com/forward.html?x=a62b&m=VhAV&s=BM46r&y=L&

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