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photo credit: UggBoy♥UggGirl [ PHOTO : WORLD : SENSE ]

It’s Amber here – wife to Mr. upNext Media, and all around cool person. Today I’m sharing my own thoughts on why you need to respect your customers’ time. It will be riveting, I promise.

Recently, two of my credit cards expired. One was a Mastercard and one was a Visa, and they were issued by different banks. Right on schedule, I was sent replacement cards. Each card a big sticker affixed to the front advising me to call a 1-800 number to activate the card before using it.

So far, my experience with each card was the same. My feelings on the interaction up until that point were neutral.

When I called the 1-800 number to activate my Mastercard, I got a computer-automated system that required me to punch in numbers. Eventually, I punched in enough numbers and I was told that I could use my card. Computer automated systems aren’t necessarily my favourite things to deal with, but on the upside I didn’t have to wait on hold or anything like that. It took me about 90 seconds and I was done. Voila, my new card was ready to go.

When I called the 1-800 number to activate my Visa, a computer answered and I had to press some buttons to decide who I should be speaking with. And then I ended up on hold, waiting to speak to them. I grooved to the music, but it wasn’t easy because every 30 seconds a voice broke in reminding me not to hang up. Don’t they know that when the music stops you become hopeful you’re not on hold any longer, and the automated voice just dashes those hopes? No, apparently, they do not.

Luckily, I was only on hold through one informational spiel about how they were recording my call and a couple of minutes of regularly-interrupted easy listening before a real person answered. She asked for my name, and she dutifully typed it in. Then she asked me if there was anything else she could do for me, and I said that I was good. And then she said that while we waited for my activation to finish, she wanted to share some information about an exciting service with me.

Do I need to say that I was less-than-enthusiastic about this service? Because I was.

She was hocking a purchase protection plan for my new credit card. As she spoke, the script started to sound familiar. Why? Because the last time I renewed my credit card three years ago I heard the same sales pitch. I declined it then, but that wasn’t sufficient, because I had to listen to it again. And listen I did, for a good five or six minutes before I was prompted to sign up.

I said I wasn’t interested. I was asked why. I gave my reason. The reason was countered, and a new pitch offered. I finally said, “I am aware of the benefits, and I am declining the plan.” At this point, I was told that my activation was finally complete and to have a good day.

I spent 10 minutes activating my Visa, and was forced to sit through a years-old sales pitch in the process. As lovely as it is to speak with an actual person, it’s not so lovely to have to repeatedly decline the same product.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to sell a product. It wasn’t the fact that someone tried to sell something to me that really irked me. It was the way it was sold. I was not informed that my card was actually activated until after I sat through 10 minutes of being on hold and hearing the hard sell. I was effectively held hostage, even though the actual card activation probably happened more or less instantaneously. And on top of that I was offered stale information.

If you are sharing information, make sure that it’s current and worthwhile. Ensure that your sales pitch is going out to someone who is actually ready to receive it. Listen to what your customers really want, and respect their time. You know, treat them like the real people they are. You’ll not only gain customers that way, but people who respect you in return.

As for me, I’m contemplating a new Visa card. As soon as I can figure out which bank will treat me like my time actually matters.

Catch up with Amber’s own efforts to respect people’s time and offer current useful information over at Crafting my Life.

Today I am frantically racking my brain, thinking if I’ve forgotten to buy Christmas gifts for everyone. I’m pretty sure I’ve ticked off everyone on my list, but there may be a Christmas Eve scramble to wrap something found in the bottom of the closet for the cat. The cat hates to be left out.

Anyways, while we’re on the subject of the holidays, this is one area where a quick video greeting goes a long way. Instead of sending Christmas cards, here are a couple of ways you can quickly send out a video message to customers and friends over the holidays. I’ve come up with a couple of examples of different styles of Christmas greetings, see which one is right for you.

Just a simple camera and a quick hello? Here’s one Lady Gaga did a couple years back. I’m sure this year she’d have a bigger budget to dress up like a fully lit Christmas tree.

Here’s an example of a video done for an internal audience, from NASA administrator Charlie Bolden. The thing he does really well is acknowledge that there have been hard times at NASA, but goes on to explain how the agency is heading towards a brighter future.

The final example of a great holiday greeting comes jazz artist Roxi Copland. If you’re doing any flying in the US this holiday season, this one is for you.

Happy Holidays from all of us at upNext Media.

photo credit: Marc van der Chijs

When people start out with online video, the first setup you usually have is a webcam. It’s a fantastic way to start, because it doesn’t cost you any money. Turn on the camera, start talking. Easy breezy beautiful.

Now while this is a great way to get started, it’s not a great place to stop. Having a video with one person talking to camera without a lot of other stuff going on works up to a point. People that are very dynamic speakers are better able to pull it off than most, but even that isn’t optimum.

When I think of videos with a speaker that work very well, I think of the TED talks. Talks that are no more than 20 minutes in length, TED brings the best and the brightest speakers from all walks of life to tell us something we didn’t necessarily know before in an engaging way. For an example, here’s Scott Stratten’s speech at TEDxOakville.

Now this is an incredibly powerful talk. Scott is a speaker who is in demand and shows an incredible amount of humanity and skill to command the room like he does in this video. All that being said, if he made the same speech in a room by himself in front of a webcam, it wouldn’t have nearly have the impact this video does.

We humans like to get cues from the audience. Being in a room full of people, being a part of that collective, is something we all have experience with. When you watch Scott giving his talk, in our minds we are a part of the audience in the room with him. When we’re sitting in a room hearing a talk, we have no expectation for any other kind of visual stimulation, the social cues of being in a lecture theatre work well enough to keep our attention.

When someone is alone talking to camera, we don’t have that feeling of being in an audience. Television has known this for years. Talk shows have studio audiences or they feel second rate. Sitcoms have laugh tracks, so we are socialized into laughing along with the audience. If a show is shot like a movie (Modern Family comes to mind), the laugh track would seem strange, but when it’s a standard studio show, the sound of the audience laughing is crucial to the presentation.

When you’re talking to a webcam, there aren’t any situational cues that help us. Instead of fighting the uphill battle of trying to engage viewers with your force of personality alone, take the easier way out.

Show people what you are talking about.

Video is visual. You don’t have to put the camera on a tripod and talk to it. Pick it up, walk around with it, show me something in your world that illustrates your point. Eventually you will get fancy enough to actually edit together some shots with your voiceover, but start with just showing me something.

Here’s a very simple video from Meghan at Geek Girls Guide showing off her office. Nothing fancy, but it’s much better than talking to camera and telling us what her organizational system is.

Something like this can be done with a simple Flip-style camera that you voice-over as you shoot. So the next time you’re thinking about shooting a video with you telling us about something, figure out a quick and easy way to show us.

photo credit: rickbradley

One of the most beautiful books on the art of communicating well is Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Basically what you need to know is that Powerpoint, with the litany of bullet points, have reduced presenting to putting slides on a screen and letting the audience read along. Instead, what we want our audience to do is follow the narrative, and to make that narrative as simple as possible. Garr explains some of the principals in this video…

One of the main points he makes about slides in a presentation is that every slide should only have one point. Trying to cram too many things to say in one slide just distracts your audience. Now what does this have to do with video?

Every video should have one point

When you set out to create your video, define what you want people to know when it’s over, and make that your number 1 goal. If you don’t have a point you are trying to make, it’s much too easy to ramble. By all means have material that supports your point, build an argument, but have one idea, and one idea only, that you’re trying to get across.

One person who does this very effectively in her videos is Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. Her videos are part of a continuing series of videos on the theme of Happiness, but they make sure to only have one idea they are trying to express. Here’s an example.

Now you may have more than one point to make, it just means you have material for more than one video. It makes it much easier to come up with ideas for videos when you have a potential series. Record all those videos at once, release that series on a schedule, and you’ve taken a large part of the work in getting your online videos going and made it much easier.

If you have other examples of effective single-point videos, share them in the comments, I’d love to hear!

Last week we talked about the most important thing in online video is having a consistant release schedule. One of the things that will help you achieve that consistent release schedule is having a standard process to create your content.

Part of that standard process can be the time and place you create. Some people are really good at getting up at 5am, meditating, aligning their chakras, then sitting in quiet contemplation to compose their online stories. Some of us have to make due with 35 minutes stolen in the middle of the weekend with their headphones on to drown out the sound of the screaming children. I’m sure you can guess which group I fall under.

Another thing that speeds up the process, and something we at upNext Media can help you with, is having a consistant set of graphics to wrap around your video. Check out a video I recently did for theV3H.com, and in particular pay attention to the graphics I use to wrap around the piece…

Having that graphics package does a few things for your video…

Your graphics package doesn’t even have to be as involved as mine. A simple 3-5 second animation off the top of your videos gets them off on the right foot. Even a simple frame grab of your logo works great when you’re starting out. Just make sure you don’t use the first frame of the video as the thumbnail, or all your videos will look the same when people click to play them.

How much does one of these graphics packages cost? It can vary wildly, but expect to pay about what you would pay for a website to be designed. Or if you want some exact pricing, check out my services page.