About Don Tracy

Don Tracy has been creating visual content and solving visual communication problems for the advertising, corporate, and editorial markets for over 35 years. In both photography and video production, he gets to the heart of his client’s communications needs and hands back finished content that tells their story and gets results.

19 02, 2018

Online Marketing for Local Small Business

By Don Tracy|2018-07-19T08:48:22-04:00February 19th, 2018|Blog, Small Business Marketing|0 Comments

Online Marketing for Local Small Business

You know the old ways of marketing for small business such as print, TV, and radio don’t work as well as they use to. We’re in the digital age now. So what do you do to take advantage of the opportunities in online marketing? Here are posts from two resources with information on online marketing for local small business.

Does Google Rank Still Matter?

Google continues to change its search engine algorithm, and as Google goes so goes the rest of the industry. Matthew Barby at HubSpot suggests that overall keyword ranking won’t be as important going forward. Instead, searches will show results based on previous search history, as well as being device specific and geo targeted.

“Ultimately, Google will deliver results that are personalized to a user based on their search history. This means that if I were to search for a query like “electric cars” and I’d previously been browsing the Tesla website, it’s a possibility that Google would tailor the rankings of the search results to show Tesla near the top.” — Matthew Barby

Help With Online Reviews

The folks at Small Business Trends have advice on how to earn more online reviews.
They include:

Click here to read the full article or find more information about online marketing for local small business.

So keep focusing on creating content with keywords and keyword phrases, but realize that as we move forward Google will consider these keywords within the context of the searchers history, device, and location.

Manage your reviews. You know the pluses and minuses of reviews. In the long run, it’s important to stay on top of them.

Featured Photo by Ian Baldwin on Unsplash

16 02, 2018

Equipment to Film Video Interviews on a Budget

By Don Tracy|2018-07-19T08:48:49-04:00February 16th, 2018|Blog, Video Production|0 Comments

Equipment to Film Video Interviews on a Budget

LumaVox Video Production Services Interview Photo

You want to film some video interviews for your business. You’re on a tight budget and want to do it yourself. Maybe they’re interviews of staff or perhaps interviews of customers giving testimonials. But where do you start? How do you get quality that’s a step up from just filming with your smartphone? What’s a good list of equipment to film video interviews on a budget?

The good news is that you can film video interviews on a budget and still get good quality. A few additional pieces of equipment for your smartphone should do the trick.

Accessory Equipment for Your Smartphone Video Interviews

Here is a list of equipment to film video interviews on a budget.

Smartphone with a good quality video camera.

Obviously the smartphone is the most important piece of equipment for your video interviews. Have a phone with the best quality video camera that your budget will allow.

External microphone for your smartphone

Bad sound quality is worse than bad image quality. An external microphone is the single most important accessory to add to your smartphone for video interviews.

Smartphone tripod

Next add a tripod. It can be either a traditional tripod that will be placed on the floor and extend high enough for your interview, or you can place it on a table or other sturdy surface.

Most of all, the tripod will insure that your video interview is rock solid. It will help eliminate shaky camera shots that will take away from your video interviews.

External light

Finally, add an LED light. You can get LED lights that will clamp onto your smartphone, eliminating the need for more elaborate rigging.

The LED light will add catch lights to your subjects. It will fill in shadows on their face. The LED light will greatly improve the look of your video interviews.

Start Filming Quality Video Interviews for Your Business

So start with a smartphone with a good quality video camera. Then add an external microphone, tripod, and LED light. These budget minded pieces of equipment will add quality to the video interviews for your business.

14 02, 2018

How To Do Video Content Marketing

By Don Tracy|2019-07-02T13:48:02-04:00February 14th, 2018|Blog, Video Marketing|0 Comments

How To Do Video Content Marketing

Use Video Content Marketing to Reach Your Customers

You know what’s changed. Everything is going digital. The old ways of advertising aren’t working anymore. But how does your small business start taking advantage of this new marketing reality? Video content marketing is one solution.

When you started in business you probably used an advertising technique called outbound marketing. In the pre-digital age, outbound marketing worked very well.

Outbound marketing includes:

Print
TV
Radio

In the digital age we’re in now though, outbound marketing is becoming more and more disruptive for consumers. Your customers will listen to you if they give you permission. A powerful way to do that is by offering video content.

The good news is that if you have a smartphone with a video camera, you can start video content marketing to your current customers and leads today by offering video content.

Two Sites to Publish Video Content for Marketing

YouTube

YouTube is now the second largest search engine on the internet. Think about that. What do you do when you want to find a do it yourself solution to some project you’re working on? Chances are you go to YouTube to find a DIY video.

Now think about how your business could add YouTube videos about your area of expertise.

So where do you start?

Use your smartphone and record a series of videos each teaching about a specific part of your industry
Upload one video per day, or per week, or per month. What matters is to make the uploads consistent
Then share those uploads on your social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Facebook

Love it or hate it, Facebook is still the number one social media channel for Baby Boomers and Generation X. That means that video marketing content you post to your page on Facebook will help with your engagement with your customers and leads in these demographics.

Facebook recently changed their algorithm to show fewer videos. We don’t know the full effect of this yet. But it in no way means that you can’t still use Facebook to reach your audience using video content. If you’re advertising on Facebook, video content should still be very effective at grabbing your audience’s attention.

So take out your smartphone video camera and:

Record and share special events and promotions your business is offering
Live stream your events
Use your smartphone video to post as lead generating ads on Facebook

Get Started!

So whether you publish explainer videos to YouTube or business news updates to Facebook, take out your smartphone and start shooting your video content. The age of outbound marketing is over. Upload your videos and start talking to your customers and leads using the new methods of video content marketing!

Photo courtesy of Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash

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