Do I need to hire a media agency?
Where do I find an amazing camera man?
Once I get a media company to back me then I can start?
Do I need a video editor?
No, no, no, yes!!!
Something I dealt personally with when I was creating content for Silky Socks was video creation woes. I spent a good amount of about 2 years hiring and firing video creators. Everything from free lance videographers who wanted like $500/video to shoot and edit, to friends that were up and coming videographers and offered the work for free, to hiring in-house cameramen and editors who worked for $16-20/hour.
NONE OF THAT WORKED! It got me running in circles after circles and yes content was being made, produced and posted. However I exerted tons of valuable energy in finding the above, scheduling them to work, agreeing on payment, explaining my vision and then shooting the video with them, THEN waiting for editing and FINALLY seeing a final result that was par at best. I told myself in my mind that this is the only way. "I don't have time to do it myself and without hired help", I would tell myself. Until eventually one day, I said "Enough".
I got to shooting myself with my iPhone or 2 phones sometimes (a Main angle and a side angle) and tripods. I now said to myself, "The content starts and ends with me." And I don't need anymore hurdles. I will do this myself and I will fail or succeed myself with telling the story of my products and services. If people don't watch then I may not be doing something right or my products just aren't that great. WELL THEY WATCHED! 1 year and 150,000 views later on my top Silky Socks Youtube video, business is blowing up and has never been better! Editor? Well I did hire an editor. A freelance editor from Upwork (a hiring site to hire freelance talent from anywhere in the world). My editor takes the load off me big time. I pay him a set amount per video for just his role: Editing. I take it upon myself to come up with: - The Idea
- The Script (In outline form. Example shown below).
- The Shooting
- The Uploading of the Raw Footage
Then he takes it upon himself to Download, edit as per my script and put together a draft for me to review. With this system, we have streamlined the process and found loads of consistency and success, and for a low cost. I only pay his editing fee now, and he is happy and I am more than pumped to shoot and send him new work to do!
Now that I have the system down, then comes the question: What makes successful content?
That comes down to: Do I have something of value to say? Am I teaching? I am! Am I entertaining? Well in an educational way I try to be myself and be funny, creative and engaging with my content! Not overdoing it, as its not a comedy show. People are there to learn, but I also want to be myself and allow me to show sides of my personality, interests, hobbies, lifestyle and even my family/home life a bit. At the end of the day, with each new Upload and new video my audience is getting to know a little bit more about me AND learning something valuable in their interest (in this case Sublimation).
Jim Rohn says, keys to being a successful motivation speaker are "Have something good to say and say it well." And I'm doing just that...
