Resources

Satisfy the Growing Demand for Short Online Videos

On smartphones and tablets, people are viewing short, online videos everywhere they go. So, does everyone who searches for products online expect to see video content on every website they visit?

Maybe not yet, but they will soon. Research has shown that organizations that include informative, but casual videos about their products, services, and capabilities not only get more traffic, but they also keep people on their websites three times longer.  Watching video content is a more passive than reading. You simply sit back, look, and listen.

Online video provides a fast way to demonstrate the features of certain products, show the personality and expertise of company personnel, and let people around the world tour your facilities.  Video also offers a cost-effective way for companies to provide better employee training and customer support for their expanding range of products and services.

Why should you care?

If you are a writer or designer, knowing how to cost-effectively produce short videos can come in handy—either to promote your own products and services or to better serve publishers and corporate clients.

Photographers who can shoot high-res video can create new niche businesses for themselves by understanding the types of short videos that businesses of all sizes want and need. For example, pro photographer Michael Soo recently filmed video testimonials for real-estate agent Terel Beppu. Jack Affleck is promoting his ability to produce “action” videos of moving subjects.

If you are an artist, creating videos about your work can help collectors better understand who you are as an artist and how and why you created certain pieces.

What about the expense?

To gain some perspective on the wide range of online videos that are being created at all budget levels, download the 12-page white paper from Knowledge Vision Systems. Entitled “Divide to Conquer: How to Tame the Online Video Content Beast,” the white paper acknowledges that “Demand for online videos is growing much faster than budgets to produce it.”

The white paper advises companies to budget for three types of videos: showpiece, workhorse, and long-tail.  (The long-tail options help you get started in online video without a lot of money or if you freeze up and look painfully awkward in front of a camera.)

Showpiece videos. These are the splashy videos that bigger companies produce for the front door of their websites, for trade-show booths, and for sales meetings. They don’t need to be updated regularly and should be produced by a video-production house.

Workhorse videos. These are the crisp, clear videos that explain a company’s most important products, introduce key technologies, and move prospective customers further along in the buying process. These videos should be focused and authoritative, with a style that conveys the personality of the organization.

Long-tail videos. These are simple, low-cost videos that can combine PowerPoint presentations, product animations, or screen grabs with voice-over narrations.  In a corporate environment, they focus on answering specific questions or educating customers about a specific process. But they can also be produced by individuals with expertise in a specific subject area.

The white paper emphasizes that “Creating video for any type of business communication doesn’t have to be hard. And it doesn’t need to be expensive…When you start to rethink your definition of online video, explore new tools, and leverage the value of your internal subject matter experts and existing content, you can tame the video content beast.”

Knowledge Vision is a flexible, online video presentation platform. Synchronizing video, presentation slides, animations, just-in-time footnotes, and virtual handouts, Knowledge Vision presentations can be embedded within any website for on-demand, live, and mobile applications.

Knowledge Vision Systems is also beta-testing Knovio, a system through which individuals can bring online PowerPoint presentations to life by adding webcam video or voice-over narratives.

LINKS

Knowledge Vision Systems

Divide to Conquer: How to Tame the Online Video Content Beast

Knovio: Personal Platform for Creating and Sharing Video Presentations

Book Futurist to Discuss Digital Bookmaking Tools

WRITERS:  In a free one-hour webinar entitled “Digital Bookmaking Tools Roundup #3,” book futurist Peter Meyers will explore existing options for creating digital books and answer questions about what options are best and  easiest to use.  Part of O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change for Publishers series of educational programs, the webcast is scheduled for Thursday, February 23.

Meyers has been reading, writing, and designing digital books for years. In the mid-1990s, he co-founded Digital Learning Interactive, a pioneering multimedia textbook publishing company which he sold to Thomson Learning in 2004. At O’Reilly Media, he worked in the Missing Manual group and led a number of projects aimed at figuring out how to transition from print to digital.

In addition to his expertise in publishing and online learning technologies, Meyers is well-attuned to the concerns of authors and lovers of printed books.  He studied American history and literature at Harvard and has an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

He publishes the blog “A New Kind of Book,” and is currently working on a book entitled “Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience.”

Can Digital Books Be As Satisfying as Print Books?

In the book, “Breaking the Page” Myers raises the million-dollar question: “How do we make digital books as satisfying as their print predecessors?”

Meyers wants to help authors discover reader-friendly ways to use the digital canvas to convey their best ideas.  He explains, “As app book tinkering flourishes, and as ePub3 emerges as an equally rich alternative, the time felt right for a look at the difference between what can and what should be done in digital book-land.”

In December, Meyers released three preview chapters so he could get feedback from readers on the digital book examples he provided as well as additional ideas.

The full edition, planned for release later this year, will cover questions such as:

  • What’s the best way to integrate—and not just add—different media types?
  • Is it possible to make the viewing experience as seamless and immersive as reading is in print?
  • How do you pick the best balance between personalized design (reader-controllable font sizing, for example) and author-driven fixed layout? Are there any acceptable compromises?

LINKS

Book Preview: Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience

Blog: A New Kind of Book

Free TOC Webcast: Digital Bookmaking Tools Roundup #3: Feburary 23

Author Salon Seeks to Be Project Source for Agents and Publishers

WRITERS. Whether you plan to go the independent-publishing route or submit your book to an agent, your work must be so remarkable that others will recommend your book to others.  As anxious as you might be to get the book published as quickly as possible, it might be wise to get some objective feedback first.

One new source of feedback and assistance is Author Salon, a literary community website for aspiring authors as well as agents and editors in the book-publishing business. Author Salon seeks to help promising writers transform their fiction or non-fiction works into commercially publishable manuscripts. At the same time, Author Salon wants to establish itself as a viable and ongoing source of new projects for agents, producers, and editors in the book and film business.

Author Salon replicates the rigorous work-to-publish environment of a writing workshop. A rigorous peer-pro review system helps winnow serious writers from hobbyists and identify writers who might have the chops to publish commercially successful works. In other words, the process helps you evaluate your own work as an agent or editor might.

“When you sign up for Author Salon there are a lot of questions about your work. Often these questions make you look at your manuscript through new eyes,” explains  Alon Shalev, author of The Accidental Activist. “This is essentially the idea, that you see it not as the writer, but as the agent or publisher.”

At its core, Author Salon is about teaching and nurturing the art of good storytelling, whether it involves a story that is true, nearly true, or absolute fiction.  To that end, everyone at Author Salon, staff and writers alike, work toward creating the best stories they possibly can.

LINK

Author Salon

E-Book Shows How to Update Your Photography Business Plan

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to adopt a more methodical approach to running your  photography business, check out the free “2012 Photo Business Plan Workbook” from PhotoShelter. The 24-page e-book provides dozens of excellent suggestions, as well as links to PhotoShelter-approved resources. For example:

Update your marketing plan. To get people’s attention and convert them into customers, you may need to conduct multiple campaigns through multiple channels. Plus, your marketing plan should be designed so it doesn’t treat each potential customer as if they were in the same state of readiness to hire you. Plan more nuanced marketing activities that treat those who are closer to making a hiring decision differently from those who may be just beginning to explore their options for buying photography or photo-related services.

Get your finances in order so you maintain a level of professionalism and accountability. Do you have separate bank accounts and credit cards to keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses? Do you have an accurate bookkeeping system and a cash flow plan that ensures that your spending doesn’t outpace your income? And, do you have the right type of business insurance?

Give your website a tune-up. If you regard your website primarily as a digital version of a printed portfolio, it’s probably time for an upgrade. To compete with other photographers who use their websites as sales and marketing tools, your website should have the following capabilities: image search, e-commerce, file delivery, newsletter signup, a blog, and contact information.

The 2012 Photo Business Plan Workbook also explains how to:

  • Clearly define your products and services
  • Determine your audience and addressable market
  • Use SEO (search-engine optimization) techniques to attract traffic to your website
  • Optimize your use of social-media tools
  • Create an advisory group
  • Generate new business by following up with old clients

“You can’t expect to succeed in the coming year if you don’t have a plan to make it happen,” said PhotoShelter CEO Allen Murabayashi. “We see photographers all the time who have lofty goals but don’t afford themselves the time to make a plan.”

The workbook is divided into easy-to-digest sections, with action-item checklists that indicate how long it should take to complete the items on the list.

“The 2012 Photo Business Plan Workbook” joins PhotoShelter’s expanding library of free business guides for photographers and creative professionals. PhotoShelter’s e-book library includes guides on email marketing, search engine optimization, starting a photography business, and social media marketing.

LINKS

The 2012 Photo Business Plan Workbook by PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter E-Book Library

About PhotoShelter

Preparing for Your Digital Afterlife

Are you prepared for your digital afterlife?

It’s a good question to ponder, particularly during these last two weeks of December as we sort through our 2011 files and look ahead to 2012. John Romano and Evan Carroll, who wrote the book “Your Digital Afterlife,” note that all of us will have some sort of “digital afterlife” whether we are prepared or not.  Ensuring that others can continue view our digital files after we die should matter to everyone. But it should be a particular concern for photographers, artists, writers, and other creative pros whose work might have more than sentimental value.

“The things we produce help us pay the bills, exercise our creativity, and leave an impact on our professions,” notes Carroll in an article on The Peachpit Press website entitled “Digital Estate Planning for Designers, Photographers, and Developers.” He says creative professionals have immense digital footprints because we tend to create, share, and collect far more data than the average person.

Yet a lot of the digital content we have created has been scattered over multiple digital devices, including work and personal computers, smartphones, backup drives, and online accounts such as Flickr. In some cases, our digital creations may reside on computers over which we don’t have direct control.

To save your heirs an immense amount of frustration, Carroll and Romano advise creating a digital estate plan. In addition to giving your family access to works that might be regarded as heirlooms, a digital estate plan can help ensure that the photographs, manuscripts, designs, and sketches you’ve created remain readable and available to those who want to view your work.  You can get started by taking an inventory of your digital assets, recording the appropriate access credentials, and documenting your wishes.

In an interview on the PeachPit Press website, Carroll and Romano said they wrote the book to help people understand the new digital lifestyle and how it affects their legacy: “We’ve heard countless stories where grieving families have lost access to precious content or they’ve found content that revealed embarrassing content that belonged to the deceased. Our book will help you avoid both of these scenarios.”

The first section of the book talks about the risks that digital legacies face and current advances to help avoid those risks. The second section walks you through a step-by-step process to help secure different types of digital assets.

“The biggest mistake you can make is to not take any action at all,” said Carroll and Romano. “You will have some form of digital afterlife whether you take action or not. By not taking action, you leave everything to chance.”

LINKS

Article: Digital Estate Planning for Designers, Photographers, and Developers by Evan Carroll

Article: Your Digital Afterlife: An Interview with John Romano and Evan Carroll

Book: Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What’s Your Legacy?

Website: The Digital Beyond

E-Mail Marketing Guide for Photographers from AWeber

PHOTOGRAPHERS. AWeber Communications, a provider of email marketing software and services for small businesses, has published “A Photographer’s Guide to Email Marketing.” The 17-page guide explains:

  • Why email marketing is such an effective marketing tool;
  • How to build a subscriber list (online and offline);
  • How to confirm and welcome new subscribers;
  • What type of content to include in your emails:
  • Different types of emails, including newsletters, announcements, and blog broadcasts;
  • How to keep your email marketing going, even during busy
    periods.

According to AWeber, email marketing can increase your exposure and nudge those word-of-mouth referrals along a bit. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email has the highest return on investment of any marketing platform–about $43.62 for every dollar spent.

The Email Marketing for Photographers guide notes that every email is a chance to turn subscribers into clients. But the authors point out that “You don’t have to go for the hard sell right away. Instead, create a vision of the experience people get when they book with you: your friendly, easy-to-work-with personality, your creative genius, and your beautiful, striking photos.”

The guide can be downloaded free from the blog on the AWeber website. You don’t have to furnish any information about yourself in order to access the guide.

LINK

A Photographer’s Guide to Email Marketing

About AWeber Communications

 

Use Interactive iPad Book to Study History of Graphic Design

Cover of Megg's History of Graphic Design BookDESIGNERS. John Wiley & Sons has introduced the Fifth Edition of the best-selling textbook “Meggs’ History of Graphic Design” by Philip S. Meggs and Alston Purvis. The Fifth Edition not only contains new information on multimedia, interactive design, and private presses, but the book itself will be available in e-book formats for the Kindle, the Nook, and the iPad.

The interactive iPad edition from Inkling will bring the history of graphic design to life, with embedded video and audio and “guided tours” that let you learn the story behind each image. To tour an image, simply tap through sequential pop-tips to learn the details and info that make each image important. Interactive timelines include pop-tips with image samples. Other features will include slideshows of multiple images, flashcards, and quizzes that let you test your knowledge of the title of the work, the designer, and year of creation.

As with other e-books, you will be able to search the contents, highlight with ease, and save and share notes through social learning networks.

The first edition of “A History of Graphic Design” was published in 1983. It was heralded for it balanced insights and the thoroughness of its content. The book shows how graphic design has been a vital component of each culture and period in human history, with sections on topics such as the invention of writing and alphabets, the origins of printing and typography, and postmodern design.

The 624-page hardcover version lists for $85.00. The iPad version is expected to be released in January will sell for about 40% less.

Inkling is a San Francisco-based company that is seeking to redefine the textbook and the way people learn. The engineers and designers at Inkling work closely with content and education experts to take advantage of the fact that multi-touch devices such as the iPad allow publishers to move beyond the constraints of the printed book.

LINKS

About Inkling

About Inkling’s iPad version of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design

Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, Fifth Edition