Issue #1030 June 18, 2016
Publisher: Joan Stewart
“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”
In This Issue
- App for Easy YouTube Videos
- How Speakers Annoy Audiences
- How Long Does it Take to Call You?
- Hound Video of the Week
This Weekend in the Hound House:
If sandpaper could talk, it would sound like my voice. I’m still croaking and wheezing from a bad cold that’s well into Week 2. The doc says there’s nothing I can do except let it run its course. If you know of a magic elixir, click “Reply” and share.
1. App for Easy YouTube Videos
As the video above shows, creating a promotional video for your business can be an expensive, nerve-racking hassle. You either pay a video producer or you struggle to do it yourself.
That’s why most people don’t bother. Now, there’s an easier way.
The free YouTube Director app, available for iPhones in the U.S. and Canada, and coming soon for Android, walks you step by step through the video creation process. It offers templates. It tells you exactly how many seconds to shoot a video clip. It instructs you on how to do voice-overs and graphic overlays. You can create, edit and publish the entire video in less than 20 minutes.
YouTube hopes you’ll like the video enough to use it as part of a pay-per-click ad campaign. Based on what I’ve read about this, you can simply upload the video to YouTube even if you don’t want to buy an ad.
To do: If you have an iPhone, download the free YouTube Director in the app store. Give it a whirl and send me the link. I’d love to see it! Before you get started, you can watch two slick videos that were created using the app: one for The Dog Cafe and one for The Barbershop Club, both in Los Angeles.
2. How Speakers Annoy Audiences
You see this all the time when you watch a press conference, or a White House press briefing, or you’re at a live event.
The speaker, who’s in front of a microphone, takes questions from the audience and answers them. Problem is, the answers don’t make any sense because the people asking them don’t have mics, so most of the audience never heard the questions.
That’s when people in the back of the room start yelling, “Repeat the question!” It makes the speaker look inconsiderate and unprofessional–especially if they’re on TV.
Polished speakers always repeat the question, even if they’re in a small room and are pretty sure most people heard it.
To do: If you do free or paid speaking, you’ll love the goldmine of advice from speaking pros in the Compilations section of SpeakerNetNews.com. Find tips for sales & marketing, better presentations, running your business, creating books and products, technology, media and publicity, and travel tips. It’s all free.
3. How Long Does it Take to Call You?
If you can’t figure out why you aren’t getting publicity, sales or phone calls, try this.
Pay someone who doesn’t know you well $20 along with a challenge. Using only a desktop or laptop computer, tell them to set a time, go to your website and try to find your phone number.
Tell them to do the same exercise again using only a mobile phone. Then ask them to report back to you how long each one took.
I’m guessing that most Publicity Hounds reading this would be embarrassed to learn the results.
I did this just now on my desktop and iPhone. It took less than 15 seconds on each. But I found one old phone number and one bad link because the information was never updated.
To do: Issue the challenge. It could be the best $20 you’ve ever spent.
4. Hound Video of the Week
On this “Good Morning America” segment, an adorable rescue pup from Toronto is loving his self-fetching toy and he even has a “happy dance” to prove it. Buddy’s owner Rennie Berchard filmed the dog using his GoDogGo ball thrower.
[Tweet “RT @PublicityHound — App for Easy YouTube Videos #YouTubeDirectorapp”]
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