Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Esther
and I'm Melanie.
And today we're joined by Marie-Clare Byard, content creator of Now Media. Sorry, Melanie. That's now media and we're talking visual creation. Welcome, Marie-Clare.
Thank you for having me and delighted to be on the show.
Thanks. A lot of people just call you MC. Is it okay if we just call you MC?
Yes, that's perfect.
OK, great. Melanie, you have a question?
I do, actually. Visual creation is rapidly becoming more and more important for every business to do. But the arguments that we hear against it is I don't have the time and I don't have the money. How can you give that argument some legs and get people moving on visual creation.
OK, so it's all about the equipment and people think, you know, they need to possibly invest in a camera, I don't have good enough camera. Do I need to buy a flash, 20 big tripods, so start small and start simple, as a colleague of mine says, and you have the equivalent of the BBC in your pocket or TV done here and with your smartphone. So the end of the day, once you have a relatively new smartphone, you don't have an apple for, you know, with your relatively new Samsung, the Huawei, if I'm pronouncing that right and the iOS, you know, the cameras just keep getting better and better. So you have to work with what you have, because if you're on a tight budget and you're a Start-Up, you know, you're not going to have big fancy cameras and you don't have to. So and the the minimal what I would say to you, you know, he had a budget of 80 or 100 euros minimum. Let's keep it small. And I would invest in a selfie stick tripod. So it is selfie stick that's got three little legs on it, like a tripod, and you can get them online for twenty twenty five euros. And one caveat, if you have a super size phone, you're going to have to get an extra strong one because the regular light ones will kill over and they the head at the top that holds the phone you can angliss for landscape or portrait and what it also advise then if you're going to be working in noisy environments or outside, is to invest in a microphone. And I bought a two euro microphone on Amazon and it was crap, you need to invest a bit of money in a microphone. So the cheaper model, I would say the one called Boya(BOYA) and for about twenty probably twenty-five euros you get a microphone. And I would highly recommend a brand called Road the Road. It's a French brand for 60 euros you have a microphone that makes a hell of a difference.
And these ones are attached to your clothes onto the phone or how did the microphones work?
This one plugs into the headphone jack and has a cable. So you are depending on the length of the cables. So if you're the type of business system we're talking heads, talking to camera piece, interviewing people, you know. If you're subject to the length of that mic, but that mic is going to make a massive difference in the sound.
So seems like the hand-held one that you can you see the radio TV presenters adding to themselves and to the guest
you can handhold the mic is actually tiny. It's only the size of your thumbnail. You can hold it or clip it to your shirt or it's the lav, which means literally it's short for your lapel that other clips on your lapel. But I found if I was interviewing someone who'd hold it between us and the audio was still good enough. So that's kind of your minimal viable product to just up your game a little bit, to have steady footage. If you're doing the talking heads piece and have good audio, the good audio is the most important. If you're outside and you know you need a windmill for a dead cat, it's called on your
Do you really call it a dead cat?
Yeah, it was a friend of mine. She calls it her dead kitten. Oh, well, you know, it looks like a floppy bowl, so that's why it's called the dead cat.
There's a thought for you on a Monday morning.
I don't go it. I think, you know what?
That's not much better.
No, not really, moving on.
You can just invest in those two things, you up your game to stable with good audio. You know, it depends on what you're shooting if you're out and about. But if you're just doing, you know, the sales off for today, we have this offering. You get good audio.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. You know, a lot of our a lot of people would probably go, well, what would I be taking pictures of? You know, I'm the product, I am the service. You know, it's more service-based industry rather than a product itself. So what should they be taking pictures of for their visual content?
Yeah. So when you are a service based product, I'm MC your name, but I am the MC of my business. So you are the face of your business. So you do need to go in front of camera or if you are a bit shy and then somebody else in your office that you feel has more of the personality for camera and excuse me, and I would use them. So yo, it depends then what your service is. So you have to think what products are related to your service, so maybe in the beauty industry, say the Terrapins will say people often use photographs of nature and relaxing type
The way you make people feel.
Yeah, the way you want to make them feel when they come to your salon. Exactly
when they can.
And, you know, with your smartphone, when you're out for a walk in the park and you see a beautiful sunset, you know, take it one, two tips that give you is, you know, take multiple shots, move around, move the camera angle. We naturally hold the camera at chest level, get down on the ground and angle a little, stand on your tippy toes and see what different angles you have and always press your finger up against the screen to lock in the focus. It's a square on Apple and it's a circle on Android. And some people don't even know to do that and adjust up and down the light. And you can see how you can make a sunset pop. Let's get those maps I'd recommend. So if you want to enhance you photographs in particular, there's an app called SNAP Sead. It's made by Google, I think, and it's free and it has amazing editing features. If you take, say, for example, the autumn leaves and you increase the saturation you make that you just make that photograph pop. There's a brilliant app called Quick. Sorry, by it's made by GoPro and you can flip a lot of photographs and or video clips together and they automatically add captions, add music, add a little intro and outro and you know, you say you don't have time. This turns your photograph into a video in minutes.
Say no excuse, no guys, no excuse.
Is that GoPro one free or do you pay for that one?
That one's free as well.
Yeah. And these are available on iOS and Android, so no excuse for anybody on any device. You can all download those and get involved in taking your own pictures.
So one of the other questions I've been asked in the past is, you know, the need to create videos is so important. They appreciate it is important. But how often is it necessary for a business to produce new video content? I know it depends very much on how things stay evergreen, but is it a weekly or monthly thing or quarterly and how often they have to do it, do you think?
I would recommend weekly?
Wow.
Which people go, oh no. Oh my God. The thought of doing it weekly is going to kill you. Right. But I have a secret tip and it's not secret.
Well, it won't be a secret anymore. I don't know.
I heard it here
This is what all the pros do they Batch. So
I'm sorry?
One day a month you're doing fabulous. You put on all your makeup and you get five different tops to wear. So it looks like where it's a different day and you spend the whole day or it might you might get on a half day if you're just doing video content for social media, we're talking one to two minute clips. So you change your scene, you change a topic, you change your background, which you're all made up. You got the face done. If you're the ladies, man, if you're clean shaven, hair brushed and you
that time of year for a bath.
Yeah. And then you can create, you know, a month, if not two months worth of content, then the next day, all while you do your editing and then you can schedule it all to go out and you don't have to worry about for another month or two, you know, depending on it depends on how long your videos are. But if you're just tuned for social media, you could get ten videos done. You could get twenty done in a whole day. And then for editing, I strongly. So you're going to record in your smartphone and there's an app I fall in love with called In Shot. There is a freemium free version which gives a certain amount of features or it's worth paying it. I Think it's fourteen euros a year.
Oh wow.
No, a pint. If you were in the pub it's probably six euros so more than two pints and
that's nothing is it. For whole year?
The whole year. And you have a brilliant editing app, you know, at your fingertips that allows me to do transitions. I text the emojis and you can stick your logo in at the music.
And what about the music actually? Is it is there any five pieces of music you can add or can you add your own music or the engine goes paid for jingles, that sort of stuff?
Yeah. This app has a rather vast selection of music and musicians who want to get their music heard, give it for free to apps like this. I know that credited in the video. So there's a great selection. It goes through albums and there are different mood types, you know, might be called upbeat, jazzy and you can bring in your own music as well. Again, you have to watch for right protectant. You have to get that music onto your phone. So, you know, I suppose you could purchase downloadable music and have it on your phone and then imported into in Shot. There's another app called Bilello on the chip from the yellow. It's like in Shot. And I find it maybe a tiny bit harder to use, not much between them now. And the other advantage og Bilelo purchase. It's I think of a 14 year old and that's it. And it has. If this is of interest, your loads of frames were on your video, you know, Christmas frames, all sorts of so, if you're more a bit of fun and creativity, you know, and you don't want to be paying annually. That's an alternate.
OK, so you're recording them on your phone for your social media. So this is something that a lot of creatives that I would like to start to have their arguments. Do you do it, landscape or portrait?
Yeah. And if you ask me that five years ago, I would have said landscape landscape, but now I'd be saying more. So portrait. So that's a really good point. You have to plan your videoshoots on where are going to what platforms you're going to put it on and how much of it you can repurpose. So you don't want to have to record a different video for every platform. So if.
Yeah, because we've talked about repurposing your content here and obviously like Facebook, a lot of the Facebook videos would be portraits. But if you then go and uploaded to YouTube, then you've got all the black space sites. So YouTube prefer to be to be landscape.
But if you're using Inshot for as well, then It will help you change things.
Yeah. In shot at a press, a button can change. Change it round. And what is saying if you're if you're if you can stand keep the camera back a little bit, it gives you more scope for changing format so that you can zoom in Foursquare for Instagram.
Right. So this is where your selfie stick comes in handy or your tripod that you can set it somewhere and walk a few steps back. You should ask, should the person be centred? Should they have any in the background? You know what? What else would you recommend?
Yeah, it's all centred and that allows you to be able to repurpose better and then be very mindful of your background. No closure, would you believe I heard from someone recently. There's a there's a profession in New York where you can inspect people's shelves.
What?
There's a job in New York, a woman does a job where she inspects your shelves for the resume video.
I tell you what that BBC person could have done with that help a couple of weeks ago. That was hilarious
on her shelf.
Oh, man, it's not worth mentioning here, but the people who are hearing this when it first comes out live, you know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, keeping things. I mean, I have clocks in the background, so obviously that would be something I'd have to think about if I'm recording.
The point is,
I've got a dead cat. Look. Oh, you take back cats. Actually, for the people who aren't watching in this recording, I don't actually have a dead cat. It's a wooden ornament. It's up on top of my doorframe of a black cat.
So to clarify that,
yes, I'm glad, now something I've noticed M.C. since I started having an interest myself in videos, I'll be honest with you, I don't do them for me. I do them for other people is I notice that a lot of people who do their own videos do this moving in and out of shots. So especially if you're going to be on screen for a fair bit of time, they may say a paragraph or two and then that the screen will go in and then they'll speak again and then the screen will go back out again and they'll speak again. Is that to just sort of trick people's eyes into staying focussed? Is that what that's for?
Yeah. So you'll notice that in movies and films they keep changing the angle the two camera. That's a two camera set up. Or it can be done in post-production where if you had only one camera and you want to make it look like it's different angles, you can zoom in and it kind of can give a different shot. So even in the basic little in shot, you can zoom in. That's why it's better to be standing a little bit further back so that you have the opportunity to zoom in and out. But you don't want to look like you're miles away from the camera either.
Yeah, now I totally get it and, you know, it's just another thing that you can add to your repertoire, I suppose, just to make your particular piece of video stand out, isn't it? And that's what we're trying to do, is in it?.
Yeah, I have a question just before we finish. If it takes you just two minutes to record it and we know it's not just the recording, it's the scripting beforehand. It's figuring out what you're going to say, then figuring out what you're going to wear, figuring out where you're going to record it and all of that. But once you have it recorded, how long does it take to edit a two minute video?
And I have spent up to two hours one time, but it was the one where load the clips, but it shouldn't take that long. You know, if if you have your your intro that you're repurposing with every video, you have a standard kind of setup. You get into a practice that they look similar-ish as well without looking bland at the same time, you'll get well practised. And one thing I forgot to say is you don't have to learn off the script with inShot you can literally say one sentence then and stop say the next one and stop, say the next one. And then when you bring them all into in shot, they'll all play together in a row so you don't even have to learn off the script. So that kind of speeds up the production.
But we found out somebody we know who uses a tool. I never expected them to say that they use a teleprompter.
Yes. That's if you get more advanced. But you don't look like you're reading the news. Well, that's the one thing, you know, be authentic, be yourself, have a laugh, have a giggle. Let your personality shine through because people buy from people and on video is the next best thing to being in person. And another big tip is when recording on your phone, get a Post-it note, punch a hole in it and stick it over the camera hole on your phone and make eye contact with the camera.
Yes, always know where your camera is at all times so that you're not. Looking all around the screen and I'm trying to, you know, I think sometimes people I'm one of them, I don't do lives or videos.
well, we're getting better. We're slowly talking to people who are forcing us to do imaging.
I think I think, Melanie, lines these guests up, of course, you know, it's like go live, go live. Here's how you go live. Like, subtle, Melanie, subtle.
How important do you think doing pre-recorded videos is these days? Marie-Clare is essential. Do we have to do it?
And this, if you look at the statistics, video is blowing up year on year on year and like up to 90 percent are watching now on mobile. They're watching, you know, when they're in transit, on the train to and from work. And if you are not on video, you're left behind. One angle I didn't mention is there is a massive value for live video and go live where you can and there's no editing. I know you have to get comfortable with it, but you can practise, go live and put it in private mode so it's only you can see it as a practice or. Yeah, go live and people, the growth of live, the interaction because you can talk to your audience, they can engage with you. There's so many different options between Facebook live and Instagram. Live every platform, Twitter fleets. You know, the fleets, fleets of Twitter is it.
Yeah. Twitter stories. Yeah.
Yeah. And obviously story format has to be Portrait and you can repurpose that down into square if you are buying on centre. So being centre is, is very important for repurposing.
OK, ok, I get it. We have to do videos. We have to go live. I might need to hear it another like forty times just letting you know before I actually do it, but I
Yeah. You have to do it,
Where can we learn more about you, Marie Claire and what you do so that you know, because there's a lot of people here, we're going to have more questions and as a people than what we need to do for them.
So I can I do one to one coaching or zoom where, well we can't do it in person at the moment, obviously. So if anyone wants to drop me an email or reach out to me on social media, I am on all social media and my handle is @nowmedialive as in L-I-V-E, I do a lot of live events at @nowmedialive
brilliants
on any social media site.
Thank you so much for being with us today. It was another great insight into the purpose of going live and the necessity to go live and make videos. We're back next week with another episode of the Monday morning marketing podcast. We hope you'll join us then. Bye bye.
Bye