How Search Engine Optimization Works
First, let’s clarify the terms. SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization, which creates organic reach as people search for businesses like yours.
A great photograph typically combines several key elements that capture the viewer's attention and evoke emotion or interest. Here are some factors that contribute to making a photograph exceptional:
A brand is so much more than a logo, name, or visual identity—its what people think about your business, product, or individual. It encompasses every experience, interaction, and message that shapes how someone feels about your brand.
Brands are built one impression at a time and in ways that most people aren’t even aware of.
A new logo can become a memorable, recognized symbol that represents and elevates your brand.
But some logos end up creating negative issues for their brand. They can inadvertently become controversial, be difficult to use, or even convey an undesirable image.
That’s why it’s so important to prevent those problems during the development stage. Here’s a checklist to help you think through all of the possibilities and challenges a new logo can bring.
The interview is the foundation for many kinds of videos—from executive updates to a good story. Setting up a good video interview starts with you, the project manager, before the video crew ever arrives. Here are some tips we share with our clients that can help you get a better video.
A local shelter came to us looking for ways to support their largest fundraising campaign in history—a new facility for women and children looking to transition from homelessness to lives of self-sufficiency. Their story is powerful, but they needed a way to tell it more broadly, and that’s how this video was born.
Getting heard is getting harder. But creating good content continues to be a winning strategy for building strong brands.
Whether you want to build culture, increase employee engagement, or win customers, video outperforms all other media in getting viewed and remembered and should be part of your 2017 brand content strategy.
But don't get caught thinking only of traditional, high-cost video productions. Videos now come in all kinds of styles and price points—some less than you've paid for a traditional print ad. Here are eight popular types to consider:
Pros: Evokes a feeling about your brand through the artful use of visuals and music without narration. This style is less about persuasion and more about connecting you emotionally to the brand. These work well as the hero video for your website's home page.
Pros: Brings your message to life with custom illustrations in almost any style—from casual and fun to sophisticated and stunning. Helps you avoid that moment when you realize that your competitor is using the same stock images that you are.
Pros: Great tool to add humor and fun to a topic that might be complex or less than exciting. Can be produced quickly without the need for images or footage. These are ideal for explaining a process or an idea.
Pros: This unscripted style can make a leader's message more personal or bring to life a customer testimonial. Affordable to produce.
Pros: Lends the credibility of real people doing real life. And who doesn't love a story?
Pros: This is a fast, affordable way to bring simple messages to life using motion graphics and music. Great tool for adding impact to websites, digital ads, and e-letters. In its simplest form, this can make you look smart even if you don't have the time or the budget to get great photos. And it can be embellished with photos or illustrations.
Pros: Nothing reveals the heart of your organization like a story. These can be built with interviews, narration, b-roll, still images, illustrations, and on-screen text using fresh production techniques and arresting music, but the key is often a good interview. This versatile style is the must-have piece in any company's video portfolio and works well for web, special events, fundraising galas, e-letter marketing, and digital marketing.
Pros: Put your old-school PowerPoint presentation on steroids by reinterpreting it as a video rich with visuals, music, and narration. Good for selling an idea, strategy or vision to employees, customers, and shareholders.
Wondering how video can help your brand get noticed? Let's talk.
Engaging physicians is vital—and an area of internal communication that is too often neglected. While health care professionals have a strong impulse to help others, daily work can sometimes make it easy to forget this. That's when engagement slumps, burnout happens and the drive for excellent quality and service wanes.
The antidote? Stories. Not just any stories, but stories that show how a peer is keeping the impulse to serve awake. Stories that remind people of their purpose at work.
Watch and see for yourself. Were you different at the end of this remarkable story?
This is akin to the question “how much will a house cost?” There are many variables—the location, size of the house, quality of construction, amenities. So the price range for videos, like houses, is big.
Different business needs call for different kinds of videos, and each of those have unique costs. Here are some things that will impact the cost of your video:
What kind of video is it? Basic interviews with b-roll? Animation? Whiteboard? It’s much more time-consuming to create a whiteboard video, since it requires custom drawings, than an interview video. Animations add cost. Complex graphics add cost.
How and where will it be shot? Flying a crew to the outback of Alaska will add cost—as will shoots that require more days.
Does it require professional talent, like a narrator or custom music? Adding narration requires writing a script (not necessary for an interview video,) researching, auditioning and recording the voice talent. Adding custom music requires composition and production of the song to fit your piece exactly. Both of these add cost.
How much creative effort is involved? The creativity that goes into a Super Bowl ad isn’t the same level of creativity required for a CEO’s video update.
What level of post-production is required? The possibilities here are almost unlimited, but most of them add cost.
What kind of talent and equipment is needed? A simple concept can be executed by a freelancer with a camera and basic editing skills. Add complexity, and you need more equipment (lights, cameras, software) and talent to pull it off.
What other services are needed? Do you need help developing your brand story before you produce the video? Do you need help ensuring that your video gets seen? Do you need a company that understands the unique aspects of your industry? All of these require broader talent than video production, and can add cost.
So does your house have granite counters and a swimming pool? Or is it a tiny house in your grandma’s back acre? The range of costs is so big, it’s impossible to quote either a house or a video price without knowing the goals, what you want to achieve and your resources (time and money). But a good video vendor can not only help you decide how video can advance your business goals, but work within your budget to give you those answers—once the parameters are outlined.
