Freelance and independent photographers often need to spend as much on their marketing as they do their craft. I want to introduce you to a new opportunity to reach lots of potentially new clients through Facebook. Facebook has long been able to embed and play videos from YouTube, but their programmers found that if they set videos to start playing automatically that lots of people would stop and watch. The trick is that the audio must not play unless the user clicks on the sound button. That way, you are not forced to interact with the Facebook page, but you might be attracted to watch a moving video. Particularly, if it is set up with titles instead of narration!
In order to make this work, you must upload you video to Facebook, and NOT to YouTube. Facebook only has control of playback and sound from their servers.
The above video is one that I took at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where I teach photography classes at the Art Institute. There critters are on display there, and they are Black Tailed Prairie Dog babies. They are cute and full of antics. The Desert Museum posted this video to their Facebook page and they are over 30,000 views as of this writing! Now, this is different than “likes” or “shares” as this statistic cuts right to the number of times it is being played. Much more impressive engagement than other Facebook methods.
In making this work to promote you business or organization, you need an engaging video. One way is with videos of cute, fuzzy critters, or animal babies that are universally appreciated. That’s easy for me since I work at a great place for getting those videos. But, as a photographer, you could check with your local zoo, wildlife park, or animal rehabilitation center. Donate some of your photo skills to help with publicity, publications and advertising, in exchange for photo/video credit.
Production Tips:
Keep it short and interesting. Use an overlay or “bug” to identify the organization or brand. Just learned this: Don’t use a fade in from black at the beginning of your video. It makes the video placeholder a black rectangle. Just jump in to an interesting scene.
Watch this Video on the Aruzona-Sonora Desert Museum Facebook Page
I discovered this while listening to Larry Becker’s VideoMarketingGuy Podcast. Larry’s program is full of useful and interesting information for photo enthusiasts that want to learn about video and it’s marketing applications!