YouTube Power

Video can be a very effective way to inform your customers and potential customers about your product.

I recently consulted with a very interesting company called iConfident in San Francisco’s Northbeach neighborhood.  They create web-based software, which enables dentists and dental professionals to collaborate and communicate with great ease on things like dental implant parts.

I was working with them as part of a new venture with Click To Play Media and I was extremely impressed to learn of the success of a video produced by Click To Play Media, which has helped iConfident increase referrals by 70%.  By adding the video to their “tell-a-colleague” form, they found that 70% more doctors and dentists were likely to send the referral along to their colleagues for a free trial as opposed to when there was no video.  That is a huge difference.

So why is video so effective?  Because the moving image is the closest thing to real life.  If a video is well done, it can tell a story in a much shorter amount of time than it would take someone to read a description and it is easier to digest, because it is inherently entertaining and interesting.  If you think about it, with moving pictures and audio, you have a much richer experience and it is far easier to grasp the gist of the story or idea.  Since it’s more like You, you respond to it more quickly than plain text.

Click To Play Media captured testimonials of professionals using the product in a way that makes it easy for doctors who haven’t heard about the product understand the benefits and how iConfident can increase efficiency and save them money.

If you’re interested in creating a video for your company or product, please visit Click to Play Media and tell Anna you were referred by Susby.

Website Redesign: A Before and After

For the past few months, I have been fortunate to work with D’Layna Huguez-Dixon, Founder and President of Vocal Downloads for the redesign of the Vocal Downloads website.  We were a small team with D’Layna doing a lot of the heavy lifting, I consulting on the project specifications, testing, some Flash animation, graphics optimization and requirements documentation, and one programmer to do all the code changes.

It has been quite a journey and we have finally reached destination number one: Phase 1 launch.

D’Layna’s emails all end with a quote which helps me understand her drive and also why I admire her so much.  The quote is:

“If your vision is not your obsession, it will never be in your possession.”

Here’s a picture of before, and be sure to check out the after too.

Vocal Downloads Previously
Vocal Downloads Previously
New Vocal Downloads Design
New Vocal Downloads Design

There are many new features including an annual subscription product, enhanced display of samples with expand and collapse options, new member profile and login functionality and the ability to save samples to your crate for purchasing and downloading later. Oh, and right out of the gate the site has a great website grade in terms of SEO as well.

I am so proud of D’Layna for her persistence and courage on this project. It is a labor of love and D’Layna has shown both the labor and the love in great abundance.

Please check out the redesigned website and let us know if you have any suggestions, observations or recommendations.

Why Blog?

In his blog post for today, Seth Godin shares four videos about noice, social and decency and in the spirit of group genius, the power of the group and collective insight, Seth encourages his readers to vote for their favorite video. That’s a great way to get fans to watch all four videos, which are all worth the few minutes they take. My favorite since I just finished teaching my Internet Marketing Now: New Tools & Trends class for the summer at SFSU is the “Seth Godin and Tom Peters on Blogging” video embedded below.

Quoting from the video:

“Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself […] How do you force yourself to describe in three paragraphs why you did something? How do you respond outloud?

If you’re good at it, some people are going to read it. If you are not good at it and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. […] Force yourself to become part of the conversation, [because] that posture change, changes an enormous amount.” — Seth Godin

“No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging.” — Tom Peters, Best Selling Author, Management Visionary

And it is indeed free!

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