If you think your business could benefit from a video marketing campaign, but aren’t sure where to start, you’re not alone. Many businesses delay incorporating video into their marketing strategy, because they don’t know what they should do first or how to go about it.
Put simply, the hardest part of video production is starting.
Where Does the Difficulty of Starting Video Production Come From?
A large part of people’s hesitancy to dive into video production stems from the fear of getting it wrong. Businesses are afraid of making mistakes in their first attempts, because they fear it could have a negative impact on their business.
And I’ll give it to you straight: your first attempt probably won’t be very good – but neither is anybody else’s.
This isn’t exclusive to video. People across the board are afraid of not knowing enough, of making mistakes, of failing or looking foolish. In writing, in public speaking, podcasting, web design… and pretty much any other creative endeavour you can think of. But in the end it all comes down to one thing: getting started. Only once you’ve begun can you get good at it.
How Can You Nix the Fear?
Well, you can’t. Not until after you’ve taken action, anyway. The fear will remain until you’ve taken your first steps into the mysterious realm of video production.
It’s tempting to read more books and blog posts and articles, and watch more tutorials and how-to videos, trying to gather as much information as you can before you start making your own videos. But there’s only so much you can learn by reading; you can read all the books you like on a topic, but until you start experimenting and trying things out for yourself, you won’t really learn anything.
Think about how much easier it is to figure out how that DIY bedframe is to assemble when you actually start picking up the pieces and seeing what fits where. Reading the manual will help to a point, sure: you’ll know roughly what you should be doing. But until you have the bedposts and nails in your hands, you won’t really know exactly how it works.
Same thing with video.
How to start producing videos in SPITE of the Fear?
The key to remember is that successful videos don’t actually need highly skilled production teams or editors. If you’ve got a solid idea, it doesn’t matter if your first video isn’t produced particularly well: you’ll still be offering value to the people who watch it, and that’s the important part.
Presumably you already have a solid business (or a solid business plan), and that’s a great start. Now use what you know about your business and what you want it to achieve, and start planning out how your videos can help you accomplish this. It’s much easier to get started if you have an endpoint in mind.
Perhaps your trouble is that you don’t have a solid idea of how video could help your business’s marketing, but you may find your creative juices start flowing once you actually start playing around with it. trust me, there are plenty of ways video can help your business, and just get comfortable with the equipment you’ll be using.
Once you’ve started, you’ll find you naturally pick things up as you go. All that theory you read suddenly becomes applicable. It’s easy to get ahead of yourself when reading theory, but reading about how to edit properly isn’t going to be any use to you until you’ve managed to pull something together that actually needs editing. So stop wasting time reading about stuff you can’t implement yet, and get on with experimenting with and practising video production.
What Will Happen After You’ve Made Your First Video?
For starters, the world won’t come crashing down around you. Your business won’t fail because of one lousy video, especially not if your business and its videos have a brilliant idea behind them.
Guaranteed, any successful business you see online that has incredible videos… if you go back far enough, you’ll see their first videos were, well, pretty rubbish. But they had a good idea and they kept moving with it; they kept practising to get as good as they are today.
Take a look at Philip DeFranco. He produces an almost-daily YouTube news show, heads up a number of other projects and YouTube channels behind the scenes, and runs a popular apparel line.
Warning: these videos contain strong language.
The Philip DeFranco Show has 2.5 million subscribers, a rabidly loyal audience, and over a billion views on the videos on his main channel alone. But his first videos…
…left a little something to be desired, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Once you’ve produced your first video, you’ll be able to assess your level of skill. It’ll be easier to see the areas you need to improve on and the ones you’re actually surprisingly good at. You’ll also be left with a much better idea of why you’re making the videos in the first place, what you hope to achieve with them, and how you can get started down that track.
As soon as you’ve got your first video up, you’ll be able to use analytics data to find out how well it’s performing, and you may also receive helpful comments from people that can help point you in the right direction. In fact, you can outright ask people for constructive criticism if you’re feeling brave. (Just make sure you don’t ask your mother; she’ll only tell you how wonderful it is, which, although nice to hear, isn’t particularly helpful.)
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the fact that you can’t change, refine or edit anything until you have something solid to work with in the first place. So how are you supposed to get better without even trying? Not by reading more books, I can assure you.
If you need help with your business’s video production and marketing, get in touch today to find out how we can help. We offer a range of services that are focused on boosting your business and delivering results.
Read more: Web Video Production – How to Stand Out