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Somebody explain this to me
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Kids, kids, kids – we featured this story in Creative COW Magazine quite a while ago, and featured it as the lead story in our newsletter JUST LAST WEEK.
It was written by Richard Harrington, who runs a company doing local work in Washington DC, with a dozen or so employees. He has very specific suggestions – some of which have been covered here already, some not.
Take a look at “Social Media: Is it Real?” right here. The short answer is yes, if you do it right. Otherwise it can actually SUBTRACT from your business by wasting your time.
Don’t hesitate to ask him your questions there. He is truly one of the world experts in social media for traditional media companies.
Among the suggestions he points out that I KNOW some of you aren’t taking advantage of: the services listings at services.creativecow.net, and where applicable, tying it to a reel posted at reels.creativecow.net. Because of the relevance of the COW’s traffic to your business, we regularly see placement for our service listings even higher than some folks own corporate listings. You are doing yourselves a deep, deep disservice if this isn’t part of your online profile.
You are also doing yourselves a disservice if you don’t read Creative COW Magazine, and keep at least one eye cocked toward the newsletters. We spend a lot of time reading forums like these, and coming up with the best possible information for people all across the COW, and beyond.
Sorry for the scolding, but we’re doing everything we can to make it easy for you.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW MagazineMy Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!
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Whoa! This sounds like a larger video market issue and not so much a social marketing issue.
Every single creative endeavor for the last 15 years has been slowly getting more and more computerized. Photoshop. Illustrator. Final Cut. Flash. After Effects. This list goes on and on. It’s not stopping any time soon, either.
Do you think Mercedes worries when Kia comes out with a competing car? Mercedes markets themselves as a high-end, luxury automobile with drool-worthy features and specs. Kia markets to lower- to middle-class families who need an affordable car without all the drool. Yeah, they’re in the same business, but nobody would claim they are only separated by price. There is a virtual cavern of difference between the 2.
The same applies to you: if your market is “everyone” you will go broke trying to market. Find a niche and market to that niche. If you’re even remotely serious about competing with a kid with hacked software, make them compete on your field – don’t compete on theirs. You’ll go broke trying to compete on their territory and they’ll quickly show their true colors on yours. Your experience will win out.
Social media is just another advertising, marketing, and promotional platform. That’s it. It’s there if you want it. Use it or don’t. Not everyone puts ads in newspapers, or TV spots, or does email or SM or whatever.
People buy all kinds of things for dozens of reasons. Quality, experience, relevance, scarcity, conspicuous consumption, and, even, price. If “price” is the only thing your clients are looking at, don’t bother with the rest. You can be the cheapest. What you need to do is convince your customers why you are better. It’s not price, right? You have much better equipment than a $1k camcorder, right? do your customers know that? Do they know why you are more expensive than Kid with Camcorder? Your job is to sell them on why you are better. Don’t bring price into it. If they say so-and-so has better prices, have a 10-item list for why you’re better and price ain’t it. Value? Quality? Are you quick? Do you offer perks the other guys don’t? You charge $5000! I can get it for $500! Yeah, but can they offer you a script written by award-winning writer so-and-so or a slew of Addy Awards or a customer list a mile long? Probably not. If they insist they want you for $500, use my favorite word, “no” and walk away. If they really want you, show them the numbers – yep, detail exactly where the money goes. Make it clear that the line that says “profit” is non-negotiable – you aren’t in business to give away freebies and sympathy work, are you? I’m pretty sure neither are they.
One last thing: a person selling a video for $500 isn’t going to do that for very long. I had a friend want to make a series of affordable real estate videos. Wanted to charge something like $79 each – go to their house, shoot video, take to the office, edit, final, etc. Now, including drive time, shoot time, and edit time, I’m in for 5-6 hours. He wants to pay me $20. I laughed in his face. I told him minimum wage was higher and forget about it. Needless to say, he had never run the numbers. Even if he had done it all himself and got a slew of clients, the business wouldn’t survive. What about car, gas, equipment and supplies, paying someone to do the work, etc. His costs may work, but he’ll be very, very busy and will eventually tire of charging so little and the business will fail. My point is if you can show people you are a Mercedes, you don’t have to worry about Kia. Compete for the big money, NOT the small money.
Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293 -
[Jonathan Ziegler] “Compete for the big money, NOT the small money.”
All well and good, Jonathan. Problem is that way too many of the people who used to be “big money” are now trying to squeeze pennies and isn’t a video a video? I’m tired of having other people’s prices used to bludgeon me. It seems like in the past year only about 1 in 5 who went the cheap or do it yourself way have come back, realizing the huge difference.
As I said earlier, all of this has been discussed here many times over.
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Nick
“We’ve had this conversation…. I’m tired of hearing “$5,000 for a short video??? I can get a video for $500.”
I feel your pain.
But the reality is there isn’t a way to stop this.
It doesn’t matter if you shun SM, or hide your client list in a timelock vault. I doesn’t matter, because business isn’t done in a vacuum. Someone, somewhere is talking to your client, or thinking about it, in hopes of getting work. And when client X says “I already have someone”, they are lured in with the promise of more for less. Revenues are down, sales are down, the viewing public has been conditioned to accept lower and lower production values. The market is diluted with ‘editors’ and ‘DP’s’, that are looking for work. It’s a perfect storm.
The consumer is feeling the money crunch, and is embracing ‘store brands’ and generics, and in a way the people writing the checks are doing the same. They get a product thats ‘almost as good’ (at least in their eyes) for a lot less money. This is probably due to the fact that for most clients, video is secondary to their actual product. In other words, they are not in the video business.
I know there are those on the forum that are charging top dollar, and so busy they are turning away work. And most of their clients are in the film/video business. But I wouldn’t consider this to be the norm, and even those clients that currently have money to burn are not immune to budget cuts, financial problems, or even management changes that result in cost cutting, or vendor changes.
How many big post houses that had the ‘best of the best’, in terms of clients, gear and people, that threw huge parties, had lavish offices, had a lobby full of awards, and now they are nothing more than distant memories.
They were done in by others that came along and were willing to do more for less, and they were not.Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com -
I was going to Mention Richard’s article, truly, I was, but I felt this thread had merit on it’s own, and Mike’s funny and pithy post would make a worthy bookend to Harrington’s piece, IMO.
I’m probably the last person to listen to, regarding Facebook: soon after I joined it, ( under duress, to be in the loop for an expected funeral planning session that thankfully didn’t happen) I decided to close “friend” membership on my fb page to less than 15 of my closest family members, and a couple of college friends and that is IT. Every month I have to tell somebody that I’m not taking any more “friends”, but they can still message me any time they want to reach out. I decided I had too much online cruft to sort already; it was taking too much of my time.
I also never participate in any of the games, or other thinly-disguised attempts to data-mine my life for marketing purposes, that Facebook is always rolling out. I don’t care about your fake mafia farm or whatever. I am an antisocial media kind of guy, I guess;-)
Obviously, I’m talking there from the standpoint of an individual consumer type person, and not a business. I still think that a Facebook page is of more use when built around a specific project, than around the business itself. Making a facebook page, for example, just for an indie movie you’re producing/shooting is a great way to generate a following and marketing buzz, and to leverage assets for promotion, fundraising, etc… And yes, yuo can ptu hoks into that from your main online presence, where appropriate.
But I’d rather not do those things at all, than do them poorly. If I’m going to do one, it will be well thought-out first, and have a purpose beyond a mere vanity project.
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[Tim Wilson] “Take a look at “Social Media: Is it Real?” right here.”
This is what is cool about Creative COW. We can be having a conversation (aka, a thread) about a topic and KAZAAM! There is a link to an article elsewhere on the site about this exact topic. I just re-read Richard’s article and he has some great pieces of advice.
Can Facebook help business? It can, and it probably can’t hurt.
Can Twitter help business? Maybe.
How about Creative COW? Judging by the top results if you google “surgical video” it can definitely help. I get leads all the time!Richard’s point I like best is that it’s not how many people you know – it’s the quality of the people you know – Quantity vs Quality. Better for me to be linked to 1 surgeon than 10 soccer moms and a plumber.
You should also check out Richard’s Photoshop tutorials – I learn new things from his posts all the time.
I think there is some great information in this thread also. Not sure we have answered Nick’s original question, but we are definitely having a good dialogue.
Mike Cohen
Medical Education / Multimedia Producer
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[Mark Suszko] “Mike’s funny and pithy post would make a worthy bookend to Harrington’s piece, IMO.”
I was thinking the exact same thing, Mark.
When I grow up, I wanna be just like Mike Cohen.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW MagazineCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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[Mike Cohen] “Better for me to be linked to 1 surgeon than 10 soccer moms and a plumber.”
But what about a female plumber who is also a soccer mom and practices surgery occasionally on the side?
You remember the joke, Mike, about the doctor who needed a plumber for a stopped up sink and when he was given the bill, said “$430 for ten minutes work? I’m a doctor and I don’t even make that!”
To which the plumber replied with a smile: “Yeah, I didn’t make that when I was a doctor, either.”
Sorry. I’ll go away now.
;o)
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW MagazineCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Scott Sherrif: 1. It is free. Of course, you get what you pay for, but since it is a free way to promote your business, why not use it.
Lots of great posts about this subject (enjoyed Mike’s conversation)…but one huge misnomer is that social media is “free” and that it’s quick and easy.
It’s free from the standpoint that setting up a page doesn’t cost money, but in my world, my time is worth a lot. Just in the last 3 years we brought our website in-house, started a blog, started a regular email newsletter, created a YouTube page and have made a concerted effort to regularly contact clients and potential clients through regular email. Those 5 things have added probably 20-25 hours of tasks to my workload per month, sometimes more. Has it been worth it? Yes, but to now add several more hours of work learning, setting up and maintaining a Facebook page just isn’t an option…especially since our sales have suffered from the down economy and we sadly had to lay off a long-time employee a couple months back. That increased everyone’s workload just a little more.
I think many companies big and small are in the same boat. They’d like to get more into social media, but if you don’t make a commitment to it, it’s not going to be much good for you…and many people just don’t see how they can fit it into an already bloated schedule. That time commitment costs something, be it ignoring another equally important promotional task or taking away some of the time you try to now spend with your family etc.
Like most social media, I think companies need to gauge whether they have something to say. I think websites are social media sites, and certainly blogs are as well. How many times have you visited somebody’s website and it be confusing and devoid of basic information or samples of their work?
To me, it makes no sense to spend time setting up a social media site if you don’t at least have a decent website. How many times have you seen somebody promote their blog, only to visit the site and see posts about mundane subjects that their own family would be bored by? Again, in my opinion a blog like that does more harm than good because the company or person has nothing of relevance to say. People are savvy and they can see right through a company’s attempt to “sell” by jumping on facebook or twitter or blog bandwagon.
I visited one company’s blog and was at first impressed by their posts about WordPress, which I’ve taken a liking to in the last year. UNTIL I got a few pages in and started seeing the SAME posts buried five pages deep in a category with the same article heading about websites and wordpress along with the names of cities in their region. So this company was taking the knowledge that blogs get highly ranked by search engines and using it to their advantage by posting the SAME article, with the same heading but changing the names of cities and regions in the heading and the article (in about a 200 mile radius of them). Why? because a company in Skokie does a google search for “website design in Skokie” and guess who’s blog article comes up? Yep…the guys mentioned above. Is this good use of a blog or is this abuse? I’m not really sure, but my gut reaction is it’s abuse…followed by my second reaction of, “I wish I thought of that.” Unfortunately, I don’t have the moxie to design our blog that way and I just think that’s cheating. I figured out what they were doing after 5 minutes on their site and I’m sure other savvy marketing people do too.
Anyway…social media is sure a hot topic, but I think it’s difficult (if not impossible) to measure its value for small to medium size businesses, especially in monetary terms. If you have the time to devote to it and have something to say, it certainly cannot hurt and likely can help from a purely PR standpoint.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Gentlemen, remember where you are. You are on the Largest Social Media network for like minded people on the web. The Cow is a social media network. So, does social media work for your business? YES! The issue is not DOES Social Media work, the issue is are you using the RIGHT network.
Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, etc are networks that have value and can generate a ROI. But they are not for every business and they don’t generate the same return for all users.
Embrace social media! Just make sure your attached to the ones that generate profitable business and returns!
Alan Smith
Media317
https://media317.net
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