Hal's Blog

Every Post deserves a Good Picture

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:46:57 -0700

Carpenter Farm Supply for a story on CaryCitizen. Photo by Hal Goodtree.

Good Pictures Get Reads

People tell me all the time that they look at the pictures first and then decide whether or not they want to read the story. Moral: good pictures increase engagement and duration (time on page).

The Easy Way: Buy Pictures for About a Buck

Everyone knows you can't steal pictures from the internet. Technically, maybe you can, but it's not a good idea. Many pictures have tracking codes and you're liable to get an unpleasant phone call.

I use iStockPhoto to get pictures for about a buck. Massive selection, good search engine, buy the smallest size for web use and sleep well at night.

The Easy Way: Flickr Creative Commons

You can't steal pictures from Flickr either. But many photographers list their pictures as available for use with a link and credit. It's called a Creative Commons license.

To find these pics, search for a subject on Flickr. When the results are returned, clicked on "Advanced Search" (upper right). You'll see a whole page of options.

Scroll down to the bottom. Check off "Creative Commons." Presto! You'll see all the pictures that match your search and which are licensed for Creative Commons usage.

Here's a whole collection of stories on CaryCitizen where we got a picture from Flickr using a Creative Commons license:

http://www.carycitizen.com/?s=creative+commons

Take Your Own Pictures

You don't need a fancy camera to take good pictures. You do need a decent eye, steady hands and the ability to edit your shots. Here is a collection of pictures I took with my iPhone to prove that good pictures can be had from mobile phones:

iPhone Moments Set

Point-and-shoots can take good pictures as well: Here are some pictures taken with a Canon A400 filtered for "interestingness:"

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/powershot_a400/

Of course, DSLRs take great pictures. They have larger, more sensitive imaging areas than cheaper cameras and the significant advantage of great lenses.

A mid-priced DSLR will run you $1000-1500 but a used camera can be found on eBay for around $500.

Hire Someone

Lots of good photographers in your neighborhood probably willing to work for $25-50. Search Flickr in your area. Find someone you like. Make 'em an offer.

Make sure you ask beforehand to get a CD of all the images from the shoot and the right to use them for your business. That's what we offer. Call us.

Worth It?

Good pictures make all the difference in how people perceive your website, your brand and, ultimately, you as a service provider.

Definition: Brand

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:35:19 -0700

Cary, NC – From realtors to doctors, and from techies to tycoons, everybody talks about brand. Most of that talk is crap.

Based on 20+ years working for great agencies and companies including Saatchi & Saatchi, DMB&B, The New York Times and the NFL, here’s my take on brand.

What Is A Brand

A brand is the idea of your company.

It is not your product or service. It is your philosophy.

Brand Character

Brands are an embodiment of what you represent. Embodiment literally means turning something into a body, a person, a character.

Your brand character has the attributes you’d like people to associate with your organization.

I worked on Charmin for several years. Their brand character embodies softness, doing the best for your family and trustworthiness.

Brands Vs. Branding

Once you have a well-defined brand character, you can apply that concept to any related product or service.

Consider Nike Tennis Rackets. Nike started as a shoe company. At some point, they began leveraging their brand to include all manner of related sports gear.

“We should make a tennis racket,” someone must have once said. Great. But how to make it a Nike tennis racket?

Simple: apply the unique brand character of Nike to the generic object of a tennis racket. Make the new racket stylish, uncompromising and use top quality materials and workmanship. Make it excellent and cool.

Brand Unlocks Value

A cohesive brand differentiates products and services within a category.

I once heard ad legend Jack Bowen talk about TV sets in the old Soviet Union. All the TV sets looked the same and cost the same, but they were made in two different factories.

Let’s say one was in Moscow and the other in Siberia.

Soviet shoppers knew the TVs made in Moscow were far superior to the ones made in Siberia. Although both were priced the same in stores, shoppers would pay extra cash on the side to get a Moscow set.

Jack observed that this was an example of “primitive brand loyalty.” In a market economy, the Moscow plant would communicate its superiority in its branding, thus unlocking premium pricing for its product.

Brand and Your Character

A brand is an identity for your business. It is for others to consume. It is not a statement of who you are as a person.

My Brand

We offer a lot of services here at Goodtree & Co – photography, video, web development and copywriting. But that’s not our brand character.

Our brand stands for three things: Excellence, Creativity and Innovation. It’s baked into every email, post and picture we do.

Your Brand

What does your brand stand for? Can you define it in three words? Shoot me an email or post something in the comments.

New Site: Olive Chapel Park

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:52:38 -0700

Apex. NC – This is another website project from our friends at LiveOak Homes. Olive Chapel Park is a new neighborhood off Highway 55 just north of the center of town.

Something Different

We took a non-traditional approach for this site, avoiding the usual MLS hassle and building the entire site with WordPress. We made ‘posts’ for each property in the development and took unique pictures in each home.

Goodtree & Co. also adapted the WordPress theme (code and design) and did all the copywriting and photography.

Something Extra

In addition to satisfying all the needs of search, we were able to give viewers more info than they’d find in a standard real estate listing.

To create additional opportunities in search, we also created half a dozen blog posts about the community in Apex – shopping, health care and business. By building this inventory of information, Olive Chapel Park can appear many more places in search relative to their location in the town of Apex.

Don’t Be Shy

As covered back in January, WordPress websites have become a very attractive proposition for businesses of all types.

Get in touch if your business needs a fresh approach on the web.

Video 53 Times More Effective Than Traditional SEO

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:00:43 -0700

Cary, NC – Three years ago, I inadvertently discovered that video can jump a client to the top of search in a crowded infospace. Now, RISMedia has put a number on the advantage: 53 times more effective than traditional SEO.

The Facts

According to RISMedia:

“Recent studies have shown that when done correctly, videos with proper tags are up to 53 times more likely to generate a first page Google ranking when compared with traditional SEO techniques. Studies also demonstrate that video is preferred over text by a 6 to 1 margin and is growing online at a rate of 40% a year.”

Traditional SEO Takes You Part Way

Everyone should use traditional SEO all the time. It can have great, long-lasting results, especially against niche terms.

Choose a narrow set of keywords and use them in blog posts, headlines, tags and descriptions. Do it on your blog, Flickr, web pages and social media. For WordPress blogs, we recommend All-In-One-SEO-Pack, a very handy plug in.

It works great for narrow terms. In real estate, target a neighborhood instead of the whole town. One of my clients has done this for every single neighborhood in Cary. Another client decided to focus on her own subdivision. In less than a week, we’ve moved up to the top of page one.

But broader targets can be hard to crack. That’s where you have to go beyond traditional SEO.

Cranking Up Page One

Back in 2007, we had a large medical practice in South Carolina as a client. One of their services was non-invasive surgery to fix varicose veins.

This is a very crowded field, with national competitors and local doctors willing to spend big on AdWords every month. In short, we couldn’t crack into page one search results with just some web pages and blog posts.

One day, I brought my video camera (a cheapo miniDV, btw) and recorded one of the docs talking about their magical procedure. I posted the result on my YouTube channel (properly tagged of course).

A few days later, I was searching for terms related to my client’s business. I searched on the term “varicose veins.” Guess who came up at the top of page one? Me!

Quickly, we set up a YouTube channel for the docs and basically transferred the benefit to them. The rest, as they say, is history.

Good Video vs. Bad Video

In the intervening three years, a lot of people have jumped on the video bandwagon. The results have not always been pretty.

As an example, let’s look at dentistry. In my town, every dentist has a video. They’re all dreadful. Poorly lit, bad sound and a parade of people uncomfortably mouthing marketing points. “I get great satisfaction helping people have healthy mouths,” says a hygenist in one. Earth-shaking.

Most of these videos get 30-60 views. That’s basically the staff and their relatives.

Late last year, I shot a video for my dentist. He was shaving his head for charity. I used the same cheap video camera, shot the event, and had him narrate it with voiceover.

His video got over 1000 views. In the first two weeks.

Can you do this with your cheap video camera? Probably not. But the cost of high-quality, professional video has crashed over the last few years, mostly due to cheaper editing and better low-cost cameras. So now, experienced filmmakers have the ability to whip off a project in a day without expensive rentals or a large crew.

How To Make A Great Video

This is what I told people in seminars at WordCamp and RebarCamp last year: It’s all about the concept.

A great concept trumps fancy production every time. This has always been true in filmmaking. Still is.

It doesn’t have to be complicated or “highly creative.” Simple is best.

Tell the video producers about your business and let them come up with the concept. It’s their job to propose something that’s interesting and can be done within the time and resources available.

My First Viral

Three years ago, I did my first viral for a Realtor. We were going to include a testimonials page on her web site. I said, “Why don’t we shoot a video instead?”

She gathered three of her best clients and I asked them a few questions about Julie (the Realtor). I intercut their answers, added a little music and kept the whole thing under two minutes.

The result: the average duration of visits to the page almost exactly matched the length of the video. People watched the whole thing. It’s also the second most popular page after the index (home page).

More Info

For more info, scan my posts tagged video. If you’re considering a video project, email me.

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Picture above: on a shoot for The New York Times in 2004. We’re at the corner of 73rd and Amsterdam in front of the subway station. See the spot on YouTube and you’ll recognize the guy in the beige suit.

Writing a Real Estate Posting

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:48:28 -0700

Cary, NC – Realtors have always been among our most savvy clients. Whether you're writing a Postlet, an MLS listing or a blog, I thought I’d share a few tips for writing an effective real estate post.

Basic Guidelines for a Real Estate Post

Write proper sentences - Be grammatical. Proof-read to make sure you didn’t make any errors. Avoid all-caps, abbreviations, exclamation points and ellipses.
Sell it – Tell the reader about the charms of this particular property. A real estate post is most effective if it is more than a laundry list of attributes.
Use bullet points - Make the copy “scan-able” for key info like square footage, bedrooms and price.
Include your contact info – Sure, it may be on the page, but go ahead and stick it in the copy too. Make it as easy as possible for people to contact you.

Examples of Weak Posts

These all came from a cursory viewing of homes for sale in the Winston-Salem market. Each could have been a more effective pitch for the propeties:

(Too many abbreviations) Immaculate 3BR, 2.5BA Manufacture Hm in Davidson Co. Perfect 1st Time Hm. Featuring Pine HW s in the Kit. & Den. Kit. offers Oak Cabinets & Island. Forma,l DR graced with Mouldings. LG Master w/ Updated WIC. 2′ Blinds/Ceiling Fans Thru out. Ledford Sch.

———————————————————————————————–

(All upper case is hard to read and may come off as shouting) PRE-FORECLOSURE, PROPERTY SOLD AS IS CONDITION, NICE LEVEL LOT, WALK-IN CLOSET MASTER BEDROOM, EASY TO SHOW

———————————————————————————————–

(Sloppy, disjointed, typos) Downtown Living! .. Approx 1700 sqft 3BR/2.5 Bath Updated Home .. Kitchen & Breakfast with Tile Flooring and Pantry, Laundry Closet, 1/2 bath on Main.. New carpet in Livi,ng Room and Formal Dining Room.. 3 Bedrooms upstairs with 2 full baths.. Master Bath with Garden Tub and Walk in Closet, Landscaping in Progress.. Fenced Backyard with D,eck.. Great Skyline view of the City, Well Kept Neighborhood with Walking Trails.. Ready to move in!

More Info

If you’d like to chat about copywriting for real estate or hear about our private seminars, please email me.

Photo of Marcus Baxter Dry House in Cary, NC by Hal Goodtree.

Web Trend for 2010: Blog Sites

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:37:30 -0800

Cary, NC – We try to overhaul our website once a year. Wipe the slate clean a tell our story without any preconceptions. This year, we decided to go with a blog site, a CMS powered by WordPress.

The advantages are easy to enumerate:

Low cost set-up
Easy to maintain
Professional look out of the box
Well-connected to search

Here’s a little more detail in case your business is thinking about a new site in 2010.

WHAT’S A CMS?

CMS stands for Content Management System. It allows users to add content with little or no programming skills. Need to change a page? No problem if your website is built around a CMS. Enter the info and hit publish.

WHAT’S WORDPRESS

WordPress is the Number One blogging platform in the world. It’s open source (that means free) and has a large population of developers supporting it with upgrades to the code and special add-ons to accommodate almost any functionality.

THE GROWTH OF WORDPRESS

Over the last couple of years, more and more developers have been seeing the possibilities of WordPress as a CMS. Around the world, programmers have been extending the uses of WP to include video content, maps, e-commerce, real estate, social networking and portfolio sites.

For the end user, most of this activity is visible in the growth of themes. Themes are skins over the WordPress installation that create an instant look and functionality for your site.

THEMES GO PREMIUM

A couple of years ago, most themes were free. They were an improvement over the standard WP theme (called Kubrick) but support was sketchy. As WordPress grew, free themers had a difficult time keeping current with the code. What looked pretty cool last year barely worked twelve months later.

In the last six months, the development community has switched over to Premium themes. In short, you now have to pay for the best themes. But competition has undercut the pricing – just last summer, we bought and installed one of the first really robust premium themes (called TV Elements). It cost about $100.

Now, great themes have fallen to about half that price. The theme powering this site (called Display) cost less than $50.

$50 doesn’t seem like a lot for a top notch theme with about 90% of the coding baked in.

SAVE THOUSANDS

The bottom line for business is that the growth of WordPress as a CMS and the development of premium themes has lowered the cost to business for a truly modern website. Development time is quicker and many businesses can now afford a slick look that would have previously been out of reach.

Can you do this yourself? Probably not. Not unless you’re a closet hacker. But the important point is that you’ll pay a lot less for development and get a world class site.

SOME EXAMPLES

This is not your Daddy’s blog. WordPress can now be easily configured to powered the most complicated websites. The New York Times runs on WordPress.

We predict strong growth for WordPress sites in 2010. Even compared to CMS stalwarts like Joomla and Drupal, WP offers a compelling value.

Here are some examples of our recent work with blog sites:

CaryCitizen – BlogNews theme
Sterling Realty Carolinas – Cubit theme
Streetstyle TV – TV Elements theme

CONTACT US

If you have more questions about blog sites, WordPress or content management systems, feel free to contact us.

Intro to Video Blogging

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:29:34 -0700

Summary of my presentation on videoblogging at WordCampRDU this weekend at NCCU.

1. WORDPRESS & VIDEO

The most basic question about video blogging might be: how do I get my video content into my blog? We recommend:

Video —> YouTube —> WordPress

Upload your video to YouTube, grab the embed code and paste it into your blog. Make sure you paste it in “HTML” view in your WP blog.

Why not upload your video directly to WP?The answer is Search.

Search engines, and Google in particular, love video content. It is often returned above websites in a search result. Additionally, posting to YouTube gives a chance for a wider audience, better syndication and distribution.

Finally, don’t forget to use consistent tags when you upload your video to YouTube and WP.

2. EDITING IS GOOD

Editing is crucial to successful video production. Let’s start with available programs that are either free or under $150.

PC - Pinnacle/Avid, MovieMaker
Mac - iMovie, Final Cut

The key things you need to be able to do with video editing are:

Edit sound and picture separately
Decide the order of shots
Decide the duration of shots

Those three are the biggies, but video editing has other key benefits as well:

Ability to add music
Add titles
Add transitions (btw “Cuts” are 95% of all transitions)

3. PRODUCTION

Production (shooting) can be great fun. Here are a few tips and tricks to get a good result.

A. Composition

This is how you frame a shot in camera. Consider these four guideslines:

i. No need to move the camera

ii. Web video is a close-up medium

iii. Rule of Upper Thirds - place the subject’s eyes about a third down from the top of the frame.

iv. Keep it Square - pay attention to the horizon line.

B. Coverage

Make sure you get everything you need when you shoot.

i. B-roll and cutaways help illustrate the story

ii. Use different angles to provide variety

iii. Use the “short” end of the lens as much as possible (that is, stay wide and get close)

iv. Avoid zooms

C. Interview Technique

i. The person on camera should look at the interviewer, NEVER the camera.

ii. The interviewer needs to “hold the eyes” of the subject. Be nice, act interested, smile and nod. Don’t look down at your notes.

iii. Don’t talk over the talent. It generally ruins the take.

iv. Get the subject to restate your question in their answer (”statementize”)

D. Cheap Gear

Tripod

Low cost lighting - Home Depot aluminum reflector and high output CFLs

Microphone

It’s also good to have a power strip, extension cord. some duct tape and a big plastic bin to keep your kit together.

E. Some Sage Advice

i. Plan your shoot in advance / develop a shot list

ii. Check your gear before you go

iii. You’re the Boss. Own it.

5. COMPARISON OF VIDEO CAMERAS

We also covered The Best Camera for Videoblogging, a reprise of an earlier post on this topic.

6. EXAMPLE

Here's a video we produced using the techniques outlined above. I took about an hour to shoot.

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EXTRA

To get a PDF of the slideshow, please contact me.

WordCamp RDU This Saturday, 6/13

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:21:15 -0700

Sharpen your blogging skills and rub shoulders with the Triangle's social media elite. Sign up now for WordCampRDU, this Saturday 6/13 at NCCU in Durham. $25 in advance - no tickets sold at the door. Beginner and Advanced tracks. Keynote speaker is Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress.

Stimulate your mind and find out how to get more from the valuable time you spend blogging. Sign up for WordCampRDU right now.

WordCamp RDU

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:04:29 -0700

Attention all bloggers: WordCamp is coming to the Triangle. Sharpen your blogging skills and meet other members of the NC business community at this all day event at NCCU in Durham on Saturday, June 13, 2009.

Beginning and advanced seminars cover topics including:

Building a successful blog
Search Engine Optimization
Social Marketing

Keynote speaker is Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress.

Tickets are going fast. Make your reservation now.

J. Alane's Fine Lingerie

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:44:49 -0700

Here's another example of producing broadcast-type work with a home video camera. This is a cable spot for J. Alane's Fine Lingerie in North Hills. Shot entirely on my Canon 800 mini DV camera and edited on my laptop. We even composed the music in Garage Band.

Video is truly the most powerful of marketing tools. And it has become more affordable than ever. Contact us if you have a great television idea for your brand.

The 3 Pillars of SEO

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:50:41 -0700

Andrew Miller of YourSearchAdvisor.com made a fantastic presentation at WordCamp in Richmond last week. Here’s a summary of Andrew’s best practices for optimizing search.

THE BACKGROUND

Reassuringly, Andrew pointed out that search engine optimization is:

Not Rocket Science or Voodoo
Not Free Traffic
Not “Set It and Forget It”

Too true. Managing search is like caring for a useful pet, perhaps a sheep dog. You want to herd the audience to your content. Andrew called it a “funnel to capture intent.” His metaphor is probably better.

THE 3 PILLARS OF SEARCH

Many pundits try to explain the quantum mechanics of search, but Andrew’s summation seems as good as any. Ranking in search rests on three pillars:

Accessibility - Can the search engines find you?
Relevance - Who related is your content to a particular search?
Credibility - How can the search engines tell if you are an expert?

ACCESSIBILITY

Andrew touted the benefits of Sitemaps to create visibility for search engines. These are not the site maps that viewers may use to find pages on your website. Sitemaps (capital “S”) are code documents that index all your content and provide instructions for search engines.

Andrew noted that many tools exist online to help you generate Sitemaps including Google Webmaster, Yahoo Site Explorer and Sitemaps.org.

RELEVANCE

Want to boost relevance - take a look at the stats for your website or blog. What are the entry keywords - that is, what did people search for that led them to you?

Focus your content on the keywords and concepts most dear to your audience. Use your keywords liberally - in links, headlines, body copy and elsewhere.

Write for humans, not search robots, and you will also keep the audience you attract.

CREDIBILITY

Links from other websites to your content, also called incoming links, build cred with the search ‘bots. One sure fire method to build incoming links to to circulate your content widely.

For example, we’ll repost this blog on ActiveRain, the portal for real estate professionals. We also use Feedburner and other services to notify all the search engines when we post and distribute the content to blog aggregators everywhere.

Finally, Andrew mentioned another of our favorite things: deploying an AddThis button on web pages and blog posts. AddThis and other social buttons give your audience a wealth of ways to share and save your content, including bookmarks, email, Facebook and Twitter.

All this enables more sharing of your content and more external links back to you.

SLIDE SHOW PRESENTATION

Andrew conveniently included his slides in an online slideshow.

SEO WordCamp Richmond

WordCamp is great for bloggers of all stripes. Thanks to Matt Walters for organizing WCRVA.

Look for more details soon about WordCamp RDU for folks in the Triangle area of North Carolina.

Be Safe - Use Bit.ly to Shorten URLs

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:45:22 -0700

One of the buzz topics last week was Security & Safety. The issue is URL shortening services.

WHAT IS A URL SHORTENER?

Some URLs run to dozens of characters, making them impractical to use. URL shortening services transform long URLs into short ones, thus:

http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204

becomes

http://bit.ly/jphUs

Shortened URLs are particularly important on character-limited status services like Twitter (140 characters max).

4 PROBLEMS AND RISKS OF SHORTENERS

Some shorteners are built in to services like Twhirl. Most can be surfed up on the web or added to your toolbar. Very convenient. But what are you getting? And what are the risks?

1. Transparency - I like to see where I'm going before I click.

2. Who's monitoring my traffic? By introducing a third party between the user and destination, the issue of trust becomes important. Or, as Ronald Reagan used to say, trust but verify.

3. What if the service goes dead? What happens to my links? All of us use links in our content. It would be bad if those links failed because the service provider went belly up. Is there backup of all transformed links?

4. Bogus redirects - All of us get rickrolled once in a while, but shortened URLs potentially open the door to all kinds of click fraud.

THE SOLUTION: USE BIT.LY

Dozens of services have sprung up, in part to serve the booming Twitterati. Danny Sullivan does an in-depth review in SearchEngineLand.

The short answer: Bit.ly. It's safe and secure. It also has a couple of very cool features:

LINK STATS - I love stats. Now you can have stats on how often and who clicks on your links. Guess what? This can help shape your content to more accurately match your audience.

PREVIEW PLUGIN - This beta plugin for Firefox gives you a cool Flash popup preview of the destination before you click. Voila! Click fraud defeated.

MORE INFO

Got more questions about URL shorteners or security or using social networks for business? Contact us.

No-Budget Video

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:14:23 -0700

We released this video for Luxe Apothecary about 2 weeks ago and it has been generating considerable buzz.

And while the secret to creating the illusion of fuller eyebrows is interesting, the technique we used to make no-budget video look like broadcast TV is even more interesting and relevant to real estate.

Rule #1 of No-Budget Video

You don't need a crew and a lot of fancy gear to make quality web video. Here is the single most important technique:

Edit video and sound separately

Lots of inexpensive desktop editing programs provide this capability. For the Mac, we like Final Cut. Perhaps readers can share some favorite programs for the PC. Once you are free from the tyranny of the soundtrack that is recorded when you are shooting, the whole world of filmic communication opens up to you.

SCRIPT

Even though you have no gear and no crew (and presumably no writer or producer) it does not pay to wing it. We script every project. Here are two useful structures for No-Budget Video: INTERVIEWER TECHNIQUE

Interviews can be about discovery or they can be a vehicle for a marketing message (i.e. a testimonial). Either way, write out a list of questions.

- If discovery: what do you want to learn?
- If marketing: what can you ask that will motivate an appropriate answer?
- Technique: always have the subject look at the interviewer, not the camera

Here's an example of discovery that Hal produced for the National Football League. Players and fans were asked to name their "Recipes for Success" during the NFL season.

Here's an example of the marketing technique in an interview:

Both examples used questions to motivate the subjects on camera. The first cost about $100,000 to produce. The second cost less than $1000.

NARRATOR TECHNIQUE

Another great technique for NBV is narrator-driven. The formula is very easy to shoot:

- Introduce the narrator on camera
- Use the narrator's voice under a series of illustrative shots
- Close with the narrator once again on camera

Here's our video for Luxe, an example of the narrator technique:

Gear & Crew for the Luxe shoot:

Camera - Canon 800 miniDV (costs about $250 new if you can still find it)
Lights - None
Crew - Just the director
Editing - Final Cut Express on a laptop

Time - 1.5 hours to shoot; approx 4 hours to edit

PLANNING

Before you start shooting, look at the script and make a list of the shots you need. Plan a couple of backgrounds for your opening and closing titles. Make a thumbnail schedule of how long each shot should take to get.

SHOOTING

Here are a few basic guidelines to getting good results:

Keep it simple - no fancy camera moves or zooms
Get a wide establishing shot
Tell the story in a series close-ups
Use a mic if you can for important dialogue or narration
Use available light if it is soft and indirect
Get what you need, but don't overshoot

EDITING

Lastly, a few conventions and helpful hints about editing.

Duration - Keep it short. Two minutes is a lot of time to fill.

Selects - when you load your video into your editing program, slice the raw footage up into "selects" or shorter clips. Label each piece descriptively, for example "Intro, Take 1."

Grab the Main Pieces - You know you'lll have an intro and an ending. Drop those into place on the timeline. Look at your main selects again. Choose the best two or three clips in the project. Fit those on the timeline. Fill in and build your story.

Titles - Text on screen forms an important part of the message, but don't overdo it. No one likes to read TV.

Wipes, Flips & Dissolves - Don't use fancy transition devices like mosaic wipes and flips and cube rolls. It distracts from the message. Use a fade up in the beginning, cuts throughout the body and a fade out at the end. Dissolves are used to connect two same-sized shots or to communicate passage of time.

Horizontal Slideshows for your Web Pages (and Blog)

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:54:32 -0700

Almost every business benefits by using photos to help tell their story. Increasingly, businesses are turning to Flickr as the perfect channel for serving their pictures.

In the last few months, a tide of new tools for sharing Flickr photos and sets have flooded the market. For the most part, these are free utilities that you use on the web. You enter some info, click “Create” and grab some code to put on a web page or in your blog.

We’ve found a lot of great tools for re-distributing Flickr photos. Flickr makes its own tools (which are very nice). FlickrSlidr is also cool (see it on our Photo page).

Most of the widgets we found were approximately square in shape: 1:1 or maybe 4:3. So, when we needed a wide horizontal slide show widget (16:9 or better), we searched around and found Slideoo.

Slideoo is simple to use. We created the widget in about 5 minutes. Their embed code worked perfectly (see above).

You can set the width and picture size with Slideoo. The widget above is 700px wide with "medium" pictures. The flash includes “+/-” buttons and a slider at the bottom. See a different config on our Portfolio page.

The emerging world of widgets lets us concentrate on content, not code, adding cool features without any programming. Slideoo is a great new tool in the utility belt.

** Realtors could use this to show lots of pictures of a property without crowding up a web page.

Facebook Pages Get a Major Upgrade

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:01:56 -0700

Not too long ago, we railed against the limited functionality of Facebook Pages for business. But all that is in the past. Facebook Pages now look and behave like Profile Pages, enabling true two-way interaction with your customers and fans.

IF YOU HAVE A FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE

If you already have a Facebook Page for your business, you need to go have a look at what the changes have wrought on your previous design.

Many people had previously used a work-around called Extended Info to add more content to FB Pages. That info is now assigned to the sidebar, leaving the new page mostly blank.

Visit your FB Page, update the content and send a blast to your fans.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE

If you have resisted getting a FB Page for your business, now is the time. With all the new functionality, there is sure to be a rush of new Pages.

Join the fray now. On your FB Home, click on Ads and Pages (on the right, under Applications). If you don’t have Ads and Pages, search under the Applications link and add it.

Contact Goodtree & Company for more info. Or friend us on Facebook ;)

What is Social Marketing?

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:06:32 -0800

Originally posted at Goodtree & Co :: Blog

Ever wonder about all the buzz surrounding Facebook, Twitter and other social networks as marketing channels? Here’s a brief summary.

The term “social marketing” dates from the 1970’s and originally defined a concept of using marketing for social good. Today, social marketing means employing user-generated channels on the internet to achieve business goals like reaching a broader audience and motivating action.

Social Marketing Channels

Here’s a quick run down of some popular social networks and how businesses are using them as marketing channels:

Facebook - Businesses can create pages, groups and ads. The FB platform is 5 years old and boasts 1 in 5 internet users worldwide.

Twitter - Sometimes called “microblogging,” messages are no more than 140 characters in length and often contain links to more content. Great tool for a real-time interaction with your audience.

LinkedIn - This portal is all about business and networking. Its social tools are still pretty basic, but users can start groups, republish blogs, post status and employ several other useful features.

ActiveRain - A huge community of real estate professionals. Vibrant blogging community.

Flickr - Popular site for serious photographers (amateur and professional). Millions of users. Flickr is both a utility (a convenient way to serve pictures elsewhere on the web) and a social community.

Ning - Build your own social portal. Works well for niche categories.

YouTube - like, Flickr, YouTube is both a utility and a community. YouTube videos can have a profound effect on search results, catapulting your business to the top of page one.

Delicious - Social bookmarking is a way to share collections of links. See an example of how we use this for Julie Roland Realtor.

Blogs - A huge audience gets news and information from blogs, often without knowing it. Blogs provide businesses with a low-cost personal publishing platform that can accomodate text, pictures, video, links and comments. Blogs are easily shared and republished, making them a powerful social marketing platform.

Viral for the Masses

One of the key attributes of the new social media landscape is the opportunity to launch viral marketing initiatives. “Viral” simply means that you are relying upon your audience to circulate your message.

Where viral happened in the past, it was either carefully engineered or largely by accident. Viral marketing remained a small business.

But social channels including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook all contain built-in features that allow anyone, anytime to start something viral. Example:

“Share a link” on Facebook
Retweets on Twitter
Status messages on LinkedIn

What’s better than getting your audience to circulate your message?

Promote Engagement

Social media, which include blogs, promote engagement between marketers and the audience. It’s important to open up all the potential avenues (while protecting yourself from spam, of course). Make it easy for people to comment, share or email your content.

When people take the opportunity to interact with your brand, they are more likely to return, remember and purchase.

The keys to promoting social engagement:

Real people, real names - audiences respond best to real people using their real names. “info@…” doesn’t cut it in social media.
Many channels - it’s easy to share your content across many social marketing channels. Enter it once, it appears everywhere. In social marketing, you have to go where your audience congregates, not expect them find you on your outpost in cyberspace.

Those are just a few of the most popular ways businesses are using social marketing. We’d love to hear how you use social marketing to advance your message. Comment here or drop us a note.

Blog is a Dirty Word

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:13:18 -0800

We continue to install WordPress for clients at an ever increasing pace. But we stopped calling it a Blog.

Sure, the blogosphere gets bigger every year. The pool of experts continues to expand (you know you’re one if you read ProBlogger). But even more key, the pool of non-experts is really taking off.

Two things are widening the audience for blogs:

Better options for integrating blogs into web pages and social sites
“Subscribe by email”

Better Options

Back in the day (last year), you could re-publish your blog as html, allowing you to place it on a web page. Now, you can click a box and syndicate your stuff so it automatically appears on Facebook and Twitter.

Over at WidgetBox, you can build a shiny widget with a few clicks that others can easily use to re-publish your content. About a third of our traffic is coming from off-site syndication.

Bottom line: more people have more places to see your stuff and it doesn’t look like a “blog.”

Subscribe by Email

Feedburner and others give publishers an option to include a “subscribe by email” link. It’s easy to enable - just a few clicks and embed a piece of code.

Feedburner’s email service (free) provides a really clean, professional, business-grade product to the inbox of subscribers. People who “don’t read blogs” are signing up in droves.

Check it out for yourself: Subscribe to our blog by email :)

Call it Anything Else

Call it a Journal or a Notebook or News. Take inspiration from The Sartorialist, Make the Logo Bigger and Slashdot.

Why do we call ours a blog? Cause it’s for experts ;)

New site for North Hills

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:46:16 -0800

We've just finished a new site for North Hills, the shopping, dining and living mecca in Raleigh. Lots of interactive features including maps, calendars, YouTube widgets and blogs. It also features a section on residential real estate.

Over 10,000 page views in the first 5 days :)

BeanCast #37 - The Marketing Podcast

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:47:44 -0800

Subscribe to the BeanCast on iTunes.

Facebook Business Pages

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:49:04 -0800

Facebook is the new hot ticket in marketing. Previously, I rattled on about advertising on FB, but now let's talk about Facebook Business pages.

Facebook lets you create pages to promote your business. But the functionality is still pretty limited. Here's a synopsis of our experience with FB Business Pages.

PAGE OWNERSHIP - A DIFFERENT MODEL

Facebook specifically advises that business pages are to be a subset of profiles. That is, they frown upon creating two (or more) profiles (one for a biz and one for an individual). This runs against the model of other social networks including MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.

But FB has a pretty good reason for their approach: the Facebook franchise is based on real people with real email addresses (unlike MySpace where everyone has a slew of profiles).

PAGE DESIGN - WEAK

The options for page design are pretty limited. Most of the Apps you can add to a profile cannot be added to a Business page. FB only offers one generic choice for color and style (white page, black type, blue accents).

FUNCTIONALITY - LIMITED

Pages don't offer much opportunity to push content out to an audience. I'm a fan of a dozen pages, but never get an update. So, in effect, I forget about a page after the initial contact.

The New York Times has created an App which streams the most-emailed stories to your profile. But creating a custom FB application is totally beyond the means of small advertisers.

FB PAGES - ANALYSIS

Facebook pages have a long way to go before they provide any meaningful value for business. Better to run an ad on FB and direct the traffic to your website or a landing page.

FB is the hot ticket today, but they'd better improve the show before the next circus rolls into town.

A Good Example of Why Twitter is Important

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:56:16 -0800

Last week, Scott Monty, the head of social marketing at Ford, conducted an impromtu Q&A with Ford CEO Alan Mulally on Twitter:

Twitter Q&A with Ford's Mulally

The point is: Twitter can be a marketing channel to your online friends. Ever use your status message on Linked In or Facebook to convey marketing info to your peeps? Same thing, but more universal. You can configure Twitter to feed many of the most popular social networks including FB and blogs.

Warning: with the increasing popularity of Twitter, it's inevitable that some genius will start using it as a spam channel. You can block out the bozos, but don't post unless it's something your audience might really find interesting - audiences are quick to push the spam button in push media.

Twitter is the New AIM

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:50:48 -0800

Poor AOL. They've been a step slow and a day late for almost a decade. The one bright spot was AIM. They were the big name in instant messaging and everybody else was playing catch-up.

Along comes Twitter. It's not exactly new, but of late has been growing by leaps in acceptance and usage.

Twitter is sometimes called a "microblog." Most posts are one line. Including a link is popular. People use them as status updates or even marketing channels.

You can grab the feed and display it on a standard web page. Your "tweets" go out to all those who are "following you" just like friends on Facebook or Contacts on Flickr and Linked In. But you can also "direct message" individual contacts. Which is where AOL gets in to trouble.

Why do I need an IM client (like AIM) open on my desktop hogging up RAM and real estate when all my pals are on Twitter now? I can just "dm" them from Twirl or Tweekdeck.

You can follow me on Twitter @hal990. I probably won't be AIM so much anymore.

Facebook: Re-blogged

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:18:56 -0800

More evidence that FB is the topic du jour. My tutorial about advertsiing on Facebook was reblogged here -

http://activerain.com/blogsview/803716/Advertising-on-Facebook

Thanks to Mike Jaquish for the heads up.

---------------------------

Off-topic: I'm not so sure about the AR policy of penalizing points for posts under 50 words. I think the opposite might be a better strategy ;)

I guess I'll just prattle on for a bit so the robots know for sure that I'm firing up a quality post. There, that should do it.

Advertising on Facebook

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:27:09 -0700

Our roads and bridges may be crumbling, but our information infrastructure is growing like kudzu. One of the most interesting new developments is the expansion of advertising opportunities on Facebook.

THE FIRST STEP

The first thing to do if you want to advertise on Facebook is get yourself a profile. It's free. Ads are used to promote Facebook Pages. Pages are associated with your profile. You can build an unlimited number of pages on Facebook. But you can only have ONE profile. The rules and regs are very specific. You cannot create a second identity for your business.

MAKING AN AD

Once you have a profile and have created a page for your business, you're ready to advertise. Select Ads & Pages from the menu of the right side of your Home.

On the top right, select Create an Ad

The process involves four simple steps (and is a wonder of user-friendly design):

Select a target (where do you want the ad to link)
Create the ad (text and picture)
Choose a target demographic
Set a budget (how much per day, how much per click)

STEP 1 - TARGET

When viewers click on your ad, they are taken somewhere on the web. In step one, you selected where you want to send your traffic.

You can send your audience to an external web page, a Facebook Page (as we've selected) or you can copy an existing ad.

STEP 2 - CREATE AN AD

Creating an ad is as easy as writing a headline and a little body copy, then uploading a picture.

Help is always available on the right side of the page.

STEP 3 - DEMOGRAPHIC

Here's where it gets interesting. Choose the region or city you want to reach. Add keywords that target your audience. Watch the audience size change as you alter the variables.

STEP 4 - BUDGET

Advertising is a relatively new thing on Facebook. Rates are pretty cheap and the site is not yet over-run with competing promotional messages. $25 gets you started.

Once you create a campaign, you can edit the budget and schedule. It's a little counter-intuitive, but works ok in practice.

REVIEW YOUR CAMPAIGN

You get one last chance to review the campaign.

Change the ad or place the order.

WHY FACEBOOK IS A GOOD PLACE TO ADVERTISE

Lots of people want you to advertise with them online. What's different about Facebook is that it's like being invited to advertise in someone's home.

The process is easy. The rates are cheap. The channel is relatively uncluttered. Why not give it a try?

Advertising on MySpace

Hal Goodtree - Web 2.0 for Business (Goodtree & Co., Inc.) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:21:41 -0700

Both MySpace and Facebook have beefed up their offerings for advertisers. Today, we'll talk a little about M/S because it has the more robust interface.

First of all, you don't need a myspace account or a myspace profile to advertise. Even if you have a profile, you need to create a separate account for advertising. Ads can be targeted by geography, gender, age and interest.

As well, MySpace ads offer interesting stats, just what you'd expect from a Google company. But maybe the best feature is Build an Ad:

Build an Ad has an easy-to-use interface that offers a lot of creative options. You can build a box ad or a banner. Use a pre-made template or upload a picture. Size, scale and color your fonts. Experienced designers and novices will like this feature.

AUDIENCE

Finally, a word about the audience. Every social portal has it's own vibe and character. Here's what we think:

MySpace is like a bar
Facebook is like the YMCA

If your product or service targets the party crowd - 21 to 30, not married - then MySpace has a powerful new way for you to reach your elusive audience. It's not just for brewers of beer - MySpace is a great channel for reaching young adults interested in fitness, fashion, health, culture and more.

If your audience is adults 30 and up, tune in again for our upcoming post on Facebook advertising.