How to Use YouTube to Bring in Clients | Producers eSource

Here are some examples of topics you could consider:

How-to videos are an excellent way to show your expertise
1. How to apply for Social Security
2. How to title your documents
3. How to find high quality investments
4. How to find higher yielding CDs
5. How to find a good advisor
6. The possibilities are endless
Customer testimonials—Let your fans talk about what your do and how well you do it
Introduce your staff—put a face on your practice. Make it approachable, professional and fun
Offer a video tour of your office and put it on your “About Us” section of your website
Answer customer’s FAQ’s—and ask for more questions
Success stories—Walk through a case study on how you helped a client and the consequences they avoided
A product presentation—explain the features, advantages and benefits of a product
Demonstrate how a product works
Demonstrate how a technique works
Tell a story with pictures— photos, or if you can draw, are really fun and interesting way to tell a story—just show the pictures as you walk through a story—set up your camera for a “Bird’s-eye-view” of your desk as you draw or go through the pictures
Give an overview of your practice and how you help your clients
Send a video instead of an email—studies show that open rates can double with a video
Talk about what’s happening on the news and address how it is affecting people or how they can either capitalize on it… or protect themselves from it
Consider making an introduction to your company and running it in your waiting area before initial appointments
Film a video for your blog (if you have one—which you should!) occasionally instead of always writing
If you are still having trouble thinking of something to do for your video, brainstorm by asking or thinking:
1. What’s popular on the web, news or media right now?
2. What would my target audience find funny or interesting?
3. What does my target audience want to learn?
4. What frustrates my target audience?
5. What is my target audience afraid of?
6. What does my target audience want more than anything?
And don’t forget about doing a video FEATURING your 5QES as well as tagging all of your other videos with it.

Whatever video you end up creating, always ask yourself, is this video providing value to someone that would make a good client? And remember, simple is best and keep it to less than 3 minutes:

Be aware that the average video posted online loses 20% of the viewers in the first 10 seconds
And loses 60% by the first 2 minutes according to video analytics research firm Visisble Measures

Don’t think you can provide value or simplify a complicated subject in 3 minutes? Watch the nightly news… or go to www.commoncraft.com to see how you can convey complicated information, simply and quickly.

Equip Yourself

You’ll need just three things to get a video on YouTube… a camera, a tripod and a computer with internet connection to upload your video. That’s it.

You have lots of choices when it comes to equipment. You might already have what you need camera wise. If you already own a Digital SLR that shoots 1080p HD video, you already have the best of all choices! Just use that camera.

If you don’t have one, you could start out with a new smart phone with good video or one of the simple but effective camcorders that have come out over the last few years—Either the Flip HD or the Kodak Zi8. Here’s a synopsis of both:

Flip HD	Kodak Zi8
New around $426 Used $160 on Amazon.com	New around $429 Used $150 on Amazon.com
Allows you to load to YouTube very easily	Better HD quality and has built in image stabilization
Uses AA batteries	Uses a rechargeable battery
Has 8GB of internal memory—which is plenty	Uses removable SD cards for memory, which can be convenient, but you’ll need to buy one of them as well if you don’t already have one

Two other pieces of equipment to consider are a tripod and an external mic. A tripod is almost necessary. Whether or not you will need an external mic for your camera will depend on your room’s acoustics. Go ahead and shoot a video before purchasing an external mic and see what you sound like. Remember, good sound is really important to getting people to watch the whole video.

Getting Ready to Shoot a Video

OK, now you have your equipment and subject, what’s next? Sit down and prepare an outline and notes—don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize them and you are not going to read them on camera. Creating an outline and notes merely helps you organize your thoughts in a coherent manner. As we talked about earlier, you video is only 2 or 3 minutes long so you want to be organized.

Get your visuals together. You can use a Power Point presentation, or a white board or pictures of some kind… or you may just talk to the camera. Whatever you are going to use, organize them so you don’t have to think about them while you are filming.

Make sure you have a “Call-to-Action” at the end of your video. Tell the viewer what they should do. At the end of the video have a:

For more information…
If you have a question…
To take our survey…
To share your story with us…

You’ll also need to decide on your location

Find a good place to shoot your video. Here’s some things to keep in mind:

Lighting

Daylight is great if it creates even light throughout the room—you don’t want shadows.
Make sure your face is well lit without having a light shining on your face
Do not shoot with sunlight windows in the background as they will cause problems

Audio

As we said earlier, check to see if you will require an external mic for good audio
Check for background noise—the thumb rule is that if there is background noise, the viewer should be able to see the source… like a desk fountain. A lawn mower outside that the viewer can’t see is a no-no.

Minimize distractions

Make sure surroundings make sense and are not distracting
Make sure your desk or shooting area is clean and uncluttered
If shooting against a wall, make sure you do not blend in
Make sure there is nothing in the background that could be construed as controversial—political, religious, memberships, etc.
Try not to put family pictures in the scene either

Clothing

Just wear what you would normally wear on a business day—no need to fret about getting a new suit or anything
Make sure you are neat, tidy and well groomed
Stay away from strips and patterns as they can play havoc with your camera

Shooting Your Video

Great videos are authentic, not contrived. Sure, “professionalism” can help, but being “real” is far more important. Some of the best videos on YouTube are completely amateur, but really click with people’s emotions or beliefs… those are the really successful ones.

With that in mind, here’s some things to consider:

Make sure your first shot catches the viewer’s attention and relates to your headline. The more interesting it is, the more likely your client or prospect will click to view the video.
Try to film yourself from the belly button up… whether you are standing up or sitting down.
Because you are keeping it to less than 3 minutes… shoot two or three takes so you can choose the best one when you are ready to post.

Now go ahead and film your video! After shooting your video, you may choose to edit it. That’s great if you have the skills or have access to someone that does, but remember, authenticity is way more important than editing. This is especially true when you are keeping your video to a short 2 or 3 minutes.

Uploading Your Video to YouTube

You can upload your video at www.youTube.com/upload .

You can learn how to do this in less than two minutes by watching several short YouTube videos that show you how (YouTube is great, isn’t it!) Simply Google, “how do you upload a video to YouTube.” It’s unbelievably simple.

During the uploading process YouTube will ask you for a headline—THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!

Always try to come up with a descriptive headline. A headline can be the difference between someone choosing to watch your video or not.

Leverage Your Video

Now that you’ve uploaded your video, you need to let people know! Get it up on your website and blog if you have one. Promote it to all of your Social Networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you add a “share this” button on each video to make it easy for people to share your video on all of the different Social channels. 8% of all shared URL’s on Twitter are links to videos on YouTube and that number grows every day.

You can also upload your videos to other video search engines like:

com
com
iTunes—yep, even iTunes!

Also remember to regularly change out the videos on your website and blog so it you don’t have the same old videos posted on your front page for months at a time. It’s really important to add new content on a regular basis. The more good content you put up, the higher your results will be. Practices the consistently creates good, informative and fun content on a regular basis will begin to create audiences. And audiences create clients, referrals and brand.

Good luck and have fun!

About
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Mike Kaselnak

Founder at 5Q Group

Mike Kaselnak has been in the financial industry for over 25 years and has successfully coached over 500 advisors since the year 2000.He is considered to be one of the most creative marketers and sales coaches in the industry. His past coaching clients make up a who’s who of the financial industry.Over a dozen of the advisors Mike coached saw so much success they were able to start their own marketing and financial firms.Open any industry journal or magazine and you are sure to find two, three, and even four of his former pupils being featured.