Samantha was standing with her back pressed against the wall so tight at the Jr. High dance, she could feel every outline of every brick in the wall. And she was watching all the other kids go by as they made triangles with their arms in the line dance for "Walk like an Egyptian”.
She was painfully shy, and wanted to join in so badly, but just couldn't make herself move from the wall - it was a miracle she came to the dance at all.
That was nearly 30 years ago now.
And as an adult she STILL doesn't like to appear in video, doesn’t like her picture taken, and she doesn't like to be the center of anything.
She's also a smart entrepreneur, and a successful business owner. She’s one of my favorite coaching clients because she always takes massive action and gets results.
And she watched as the entire internet was taken over by video.
She knows that video is a huge competitive advantage when it come to marketing your business on the internet, but there’s no way she’d be get caught doing a Facebook Live… or making any other type of on camera appearance.
So she put together a roadmap that works for her and for other shy people to be successful with video marketing, without ever having to put their face on camera.
She recently shared some of her top video marketing tips so that even shy people can leverage the power of online video in their businesses.
1: Videos don’t HAVE to be of you.
Lots of times people think that when they put a video online it has to be of their face talking into a camera.
But that isn't the case at all.
Many times a video version of an article that you did, or product you're selling will actually work just as well. And any video that you do will work better than no video at all.
This is especially true on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Don't feel like you have to be featured in the video yourself in order to be an effective video marketer. This just isn't true at all.
2: Voice overs from other people can be very affordable.
Often very shy people don't even want to be the voice on the video. And that's completely understandable.
Luckily, if you need a voiceover on your video you can get one done very affordably at the website Fiverr.com.
Short videos often cost just five bucks, and longer videos are priced based on the length of the video. I recently had an amazing hour long video voiceover done for around $100; this would have easily cost hundreds (even thousands) of dollars.
You can also have your voiceover done in nearly any accent you'd like. So if you want an English accent, or a Scottish accent, or perhaps even a Jamaican accent - that is available as well.
3: Cell phones take great video shots (even when they aren’t selfies).
In the current climate on the Internet, you don't have to have a really slick professionally produced video to be successful. In fact, if you're doing a video via social media, sometimes the most homemade looking videos work the best.
What I usually recommend is that people just use their smartphone to take the vides along with a basic tripod to keep the camera still. You can use a lavaliere microphone for better audio quality.
This is a great technique for showing off a product that you have.
If you are doing videos of articles you wrote, then a slideshow usually works best. For that I recommend exporting either from PowerPoint or using the software like Camtasia.
4: Annotations really work.
About 80 to 90% of the time videos on Facebook don't get their sound turned on. So if you want to market via a platform like Facebook or Instagram, you need to use annotations. Annotations are simply call out boxes that explain what's happening in the video as you go.
These are super easy put it into your video using most of the video editing software that is on the market. Again, I really like Camtasia for this. But there's another video software called Vegas which is a little less expensive and works great. Of course with just about anything else, all of this can be outsourced if you don’t want to deal with the tech.
5: Square videos are GREAT for showing off products.
It always used to be that videos were made like the ones we see on TV with a horizontal orientation. But now on the web, videos tend to work better if they are square. Mostly because a lot of the times people are finding them either on your Facebook newsfeed or your Instagram feed, and in these cases square video just takes up more real estate in the feed and get noticed faster.
They also allow you to move in tighter on the product that you are featuring in the video. And so they give your product a much better chance to show off.
Remember, video marketing isn’t just for extroverts. If you are a shy person, video marketing can work very well for you too. All you need to do is get a little bit creative with your video marketing attempts.
