Social Media

Search Engine Optimisation – or SEO – is always a hot topic because it is so important – it allows your business to be found online with ease. It’s also been a hot topic because in the past, it’s been shrouded in mystery. It’s an area of business people need to be made aware of – if you get it wrong and Google penalises you, the consequences are dire.

In the past, SEO was a challenging game to play; a big industry grew around it which continued to perpetuate the view that if you were going to make it to page one on the search engine results page, you needed an expert who knew how to manage the search engine in the way that no ordinary digital marketer could. This is not the case anymore. Google wants transparency and actively discourages any smoke and mirrors search engine optimisation tactics.

So what is Search Engine Optimisation today?

Here’s a definition – Search Engine Optimisation is a set of techniques applied to your website so that the search engine (usually Google in Australia) recognises your site as relevant to a search query entered by the user. The search results that come from a user entering a search query is called a search engine results page or SERP.

The aim of SEO is to have the links to your pages appear naturally or organically on page one of the SERP. Consumer behaviour has changed, and these days we don’t usually go beyond page one of the search engine’s results pages to find what we’re looking for. If we don’t find what we want on the first page, we simply refine our search query or keywords. The position of the links on the search engine results page is a result of SEO techniques.

Why is Search Engine Optimisation the business of everyone in the business?

SEO and content are today’s dancing partners – the ice cream and jelly of digital marketing. The SEO process starts with keywords, and it’s no longer just the job of the digital marketing team to think about these keywords. Defining keywords helps a business understand what it represents for its customers – what value or solution the business provides to its customers and what business it is really in.

What do I mean by this? Here’s an example. I recently ran through a keyword exercise with a doctor for her general practice. We started with the big headings; womens health; mens health, etc. Then I asked – what do you do in these areas? The answer I got was thorough and technical – a lot of terms that I could not understand. The next question – if your customers were looking for that service, what would they type into a search engine? That’s when we get to the real value, finding the words that your customers would use to find your product or service. Only then can we build out a strategy for SEO and establish a framework that informs website navigation and where the content will go. Would the doctor have thought she would be part of determining the SEO structure for the buinsess? No, she didn’t. Will the GP be doing the SEO? No, she wont be. But as you can see from the example, she is an essential part of its success.

Any content creator in the business also needs to know the keywords for the business and the SEO strategy. In the case of the doctor’s business, that is going to include the receptionists, the practice nurse and the other doctors in the practice, all of whom write some form of content that will most likely be published on the website (as well as used in other formats).

Link Building is a lot like Public Relations

SEO includes ‘on-page’ techniques, using your keywords in the URL, page title, headings, content and images; as well as ‘off-page’ techniques, which is essentially having other sites link to your site. Anchor text are the words or phrases on the site that links to yours containing the hyperlink to your site. These should be your keywords. You can understand that “click here” or “learn more” won’t do a lot for you. Links and anchor text should always make sense to the visitor. This is a way you can assess quality. If a link or anchor text looks weird or out of place, like it doesn’t belong, then it doesn’t.

If your customers were looking for that service, what would they type into a search engine? That’s when we get to the real value, finding the words that your customers would use to find your product or service

Good linking is helped by having active social media profiles and publishing a quality blog that others link to. But it’s also simply a matter of ensuring that businesses and organisations that you do business with have links to your site on theirs. Look to your partners, organisations that you sponsor, your community affiliations. Does that university business school that your CEO just made a speech to have a link along with the info and pic about the event? Does that sports team you support have a number of links to your site? What about the sponsorship you make to the local training awards program, is there a link from their site to yours? You check and if not, you make the phone call or send the email and ask that the link be made and then you check again. If every organisation you partner with in a variety of ways over time included links from their site to yours, your off-page SEO would be doing well.

What can you do about making SEO the business of everyone in the business?

It’s likely that most people in the business, outside of marketing, have little idea of what SEO is, and even if they do, they won’t think that they have anything to do with it.

Here are my top five tips for increasing the focus of everyone in the business on SEO.

It starts with education. How this happens in businesses varies greatly but even the very simple “paper bag lunch” training session will go a long way.
During your training, avoid technicalities and keep it simple. Playing a keyword game is a great place to start. Choose a topic and have everyone come up with three different words or phrases that they would type into a search engine if they were looking for that thing. Run some live tests and show the results.
Demonstrate how other businesses in your sector are using keywords by visiting a few sites. Show page titles and URLs, as well as content, headings and subheadings and images for sites that have good SEO structure and ones that don’t.
Inform everyone what the target keywords are and benchmark your performance for those. After some dedicated keyword -focused SEO work, celebrate your success as you move up the rankings in Google.
Set a quality ‘link’ challenge. How many links can your team generate over a month or two?

What are your tips to encourage your organisation to focus on SEO?

Beth Powell

Beth Powell is the founder of Digital Marketing Club, a coaching and support program for marketers and non-marketers that provides direct answers to your questions about your own digital marketing and gets your roadblocks unstuck. She has become known as the go-to person for clear explanations about how digital marketing works and how businesses can use the various solutions to improve their marketing and grow their business. Beth is a sought after conference speaker and author of the soon to be published book “Drive More Business: A 5 step Guide to Digital Marketing for Auto Dealers”. For more information, email info@digitalmarketingclub.com.au.

With additional reporting by Alan Smith of Digivizer.

robyn-foyster[1] Robyn Foyster’s career straddles the established heritage media and its upstart disruptor, social media.

Moving from a successful career in mainstream media that embraced Australia, the United Kingdom and the US, she founded Foyster Media and its primary outlet, TheCarousel.com, in early 2013 as a mobile lifestyle destination for women offering expert news and advice across fashion, beauty, health, food, home, parenting and bridal.

Since then, she has grown Foyster Media and TheCarousel.com to offer production and content management services to commercial clients. And she’s done so by tapping mainstream media talent and bringing it into the social media world.

“The digital media landscape is moving at an incredible pace,” Robyn, also a Telstra Influencer, says. “I’ve had a steep learning curve particularly because I wanted to apply best in class practice across everything from SEO to innovative content creation particularly skewed towards high mobile video traffic. We’ve tried various formats across both the advertising platforms we use to the mobile interface and types of content we create. We’re always trying new things and have learned by our mistakes and our successes. “

Beginnings

Robyn’s early career was in mainstream broadcast and print media, and was at the start of many innovations that we now take for granted. She was part of the team that conceived the ‘Kochie’s Angels’ segment on Channel 7’s Sunrise program in the early 2000s here in Australia, now a familiar segment and one much copied by the station’s rivals. As she points out, “to have a regular segment composed of mainly women, talking about topics of direct relevance to women, using panellists of the stature of Ita Buttrose, the late Charlotte Dawson and Sarah Wilson, simply hadn’t been done before.” It’s a concept she’s adapted as The Moral Maze on Thecarousel.com with TV psychologist Jo Lamble as the host.

…to have a regular segment composed of mainly women, talking about topics of direct relevance to women, using panellists of the stature of Ita Buttrose, the late Charlotte Dawson and Sarah Wilson, simply hadn’t been done before.

She started her media career, though, in newspapers. She was a copy girl on The Australian, and was one of just three graduates to join AAP Reuters on graduating from Sydney University. During these early stages in her career, she covered, she says, “everything from horse racing to the police round!”

She moved to London’s Fleet Street (when Fleet Street was still the national media hub for print newspapers in Britain) in 1988, and later became the Women’s Editor on the UK’s Daily Express and On Today Newspaper – Britain’s first full-colour daily newspaper. She was a Consumer Columnist and then Environment Writer, all unusual postings in their time. “The Today newspaper broke many moulds. It’s best-remembered as being Britain’s first full-colour newspaper, but it also led with the topics and stories it was prepared to consider and run that other papers wouldn’t,” explains Robyn. “We were the first newspaper to name and shame government ministers for not using catalytic convertors, we produced the first green shopping guide in the newspaper, and we were one of the first to campaign against the use of aerosols and campaign against racism. These ideas seem almost quaint nowadays, but at the time they were ground-breaking. It was wonderful to be part of this new media thinking, at the heart of Fleet Street.”

Expanding horizons

robyn-foyster-ww From Fleet Street, Robyn moved to Los Angeles, and wrote columns for Today, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday in Britain, and The Australian Women’s Weekly. Los Angeles also saw her first foray into broadcast media, delivering reports on-camera for the UK’s Big Breakfast television show. This ultimately led to her return to the UK to join GMTV, which had won the contract to broadcast the breakfast program on British commercial television in the early 1990s. She was responsible for driving the profile of the program to the point that it became the natural choice for show business stars of the calibre and popularity of the Spice Girls, BoysZone, and Diana Ross when on tour. The appearance of the Spice Girls on GMTV was their first television appearance.

“It was wonderful being part of the so-called Australian media invasion,” says Robyn. “Rupert Murdoch had broken the power of Britain’s print unions at Wapping in the mid-eighties, which in turn led to newspapers such as Today being able to open. This new competition in turn changed the broadcast landscape, particularly in the breakfast segment. It was a wonderful experience being part of this evolving landscape.”

Delving into the new media world

Thecarousel.com is a blog that differs from others on a number of levels. Robyn says, “From its inception we wanted it to invoke memories of childhood in our audience, to make it easy to find and absorb content, and do all of this on mobile formats from the beginning. And we wanted to create something that was fun and informative, that served the changing ways people consume content. We’re all consuming more, in more ways, using multiple channels, with more interaction. That’s what attracted me from the mainstream media, which was successful but safe. I wanted to test the limits of the new media world, and be part of those changes!”

What, then, was the scariest part of shifting from mainstream media to the new media world?

“I’d always had a strong involvement in digital,” Robyn replies. “For instance, I oversaw the first redesign of The Australian Women’s Weekly website since it’s launch ten years earlier. And, as the publisher of Harper’s BAZAAR, Cosmopolitan, madison and Grazia and Woman’s Day, I had overall responsibility for both the print and digital assets of the business. But setting up my own digital site meant I was actually a small niche publisher taking on the bigger media companies. While it feels like David and Goliath at times, I love the sheer challenge of it. The fact is we are very much holding our own in a competitive market and that’s because we have the ability to be nimble and quick. We don’t have the legacy of a traditional media and can make decisions that allow us to innovate quickly and we invest heavily in that and original content including video which is our core strength.”

robyn-foyster-thecarousel

“Also, I learned at the outset that it was important to have your ducks in a row. When I was first starting my business, I caught up with Joe Cross from Reboot With Joe . He became famous for his juicing documentaries and videos. He loved my idea about starting up TheCarousel.com and, sharing some of his own experiences, said: “Startup companies and entrepreneurs need three things – a great idea, money, and balls of steel.” He then quickly added: “There’s one more thing – and that’s luck”. He was right.”

Startup companies and entrepreneurs need three things – a great idea, money, and balls of steel.” He then quickly added: “There’s one more thing – and that’s luck”. He was right.

Start-up stumbles

We asked Robyn if there was anything she wished she could do over when starting up TheCarousel.com. After all, starting up any new business always comes with challenges; some that can seem insurmountable until they’ve been surmounted.

Looking back, I would have gone to market earlier with less functionality and added to it later.

“Building a website can involve a huge amount of money,” she says. “I wanted all the bells and whistles and looked at some of the top websites such as Mashable. Looking back, I would have gone to market earlier with less functionality and added to it later. The fact is you need to constantly update and refresh the site anyway and it’s best to do that once you’ve got learnings about what works best. Within ten months I was already redesigning the site with new innovations like a toggle on mobiles to switch from a straight feed of videos to a mix of videos and article. It’s an innovation I’m proud of because it’s unique in the market!”

Staying motivated

For Robyn, her motivation comes from a continuing passion for journalism. “Being a journalist is all I’ve ever wanted to be,” she explains. “Today’s social media, and the opportunities provided by the Internet and today’s connected world, are the latest incarnation of journalism. It’s new, and different, and exciting. Everything is changing at such a rapid pace, and it’s fabulous being able to talk about technology and to create new audiences.”

Thecarousel.com reflects the interests of its readers, but also leads its readers into new areas of interest. “We report, but we also stimulate,” comments Robyn. She and her team always have one overriding objective, though: “to follow the eyeballs. There’s no point missing our audience or our clients’. Which means we have to be experts at content – its identification, its production, and its presentation. And that’s where, I think, heritage and social media skills combine and overlap.”

Future plans

Robyn plans to take thecarousel.com to new markets in other parts of the world. “Content is global and we need to be global to.” So Asia, the US and the UK beckon.

What of the near-future? What are the topics and trends Robyn and her team will be looking at in early 2015? “Health, and the role technology can play in staying healthy, is a real interest to our audience,” explains Robyn, “and this fits alongside wearable technology very closely. And women have a different interest and perspective on technology from men, one that still isn’t catered for as much as it should be. We aim to change that, and do so by talking about technology in their language.”

Technology has been at the centre of Robyn Foyster’s professional life for her entire career, and it’s changed markedly over the past 20 years or so. “I started by dictating breaking stories on the phone to a copydesk,” she explains. “In many cases, I’d have just the basic facts, and the rest had to be filled in from expert, background knowledge, to fill space in print, or a segment live to air. So we would also maintain vast libraries of press cuttings. If a story broke in a suburb of Los Angeles for example, we’d be able to research what else had happened there in the previous six months, who lived there, and so on. There was, of course, no Internet, no Google, and no cloud!”

Modern-day challenges

Today’s interconnected world makes life a lot easier, but speed also leads to inaccuracy, and sub-editing is now often done overseas, which can also lead to misinterpretations and missed subtleties.

“Today’s media is about content,” says Robyn. “Companies as varied as Telstra and K-Mart are creating their own original content because they are now publishers is their own right. There is also a wealth of bloggers creating their own content. The onus on those of us who produce, curate and publish content is to uphold the best standards of traditional journalism while providing value in new ways. If we fail, we lose the trust of our readers. Without that, we cease to exist. I love the challenge!”

The onus on those of us who produce, curate and publish content is to uphold the best standards of traditional journalism while providing value in new ways.

Robyn’s tips for budding journalists and entrepreneurs

You need to be able to say no. It’s really tempting to try to cover too much ground. What’s important is to focus on the main goals and you can only achieve those objectives by being clear and directional. You also need to back yourself and surround yourself with a strong team who share your vision.
(About breaking into the new media industry) There is no more exciting time to break into the digital landscape than now. Make new technologies your friend. Be disruptive. Think out of the box. You will see more opportunities opening up because the cost of starting up website businesses are less than ever and yet the power of technology is growing. The key trends are connectivity, cloud computing, devices and funding. All four trends are helping to make it easier to startup. This means there will be more jobs particularly for early adopters and those who embrace the new.

Find out more about Robyn and read some fantastic lifestyle articles at http://thecarousel.com/!

Today’s workforce is more dynamic than ever. This makes retaining talent increasingly difficult because people are changing jobs more frequently but, on a more positive note, social tools mean everybody is now a potential candidate for your next vacancy. Your business must embrace these changes to remain competitive. Welcome to the world of Social Sourcing.

Attracting and retaining talent is a global issue of growing importance. The average millennial is expected to have 17 employers spanning five careers during their lifetime. Only 28 per cent of respondents in Deloitte’s fourth annual Millennial Survey believe their current employer makes full use of their skills. Research from Roy Morgan has found more than one in four Australian workers will consider changing organisations within the next 12 months.

The average millennial is expected to have 17 employers spanning five careers during their lifetime

Historically, your HR team has waited for a position to become vacant before looking to the market. This is a reactive approach to recruitment that risks exposing your organisation to unnecessary skills gaps. A better approach is to build a pool of talented people who are interested in joining the company and keep them engaged using social media until a suitable role becomes available. This proactive strategy will significantly reduce the time it takes to hire.

To do this effectively you need a social sourcing strategy that considers which audience segments you’re going after, where you plan to engage them and the messaging you want to deliver:

1. Understand your target audience

The first step is to identify specific candidate segments with the required qualifications and experience. You need to develop an understanding of their likely career path and the challenges they face in their current roles. This will help determine whether their objectives align with yours.

2. Pick your communication channel

Which social networks will you use to engage this audience? You might use LinkedIn to share content with relevant groups and identify potential targets. You could also distribute your messaging through Twitter using relevant hashtags. If it’s a creative role then Instagram or Pinterest might be part of the mix. Then there are platforms like MeetUp and Eventbrite to help you find relevant networking events.

Build a pool of talented people who are interested in joining the company and keep them engaged using social media until a suitable role becomes available

3. Develop tailored content

Clear messaging is the trigger you need to engage potential candidates and pull them into your organisation. This content needs to be focused on them and not you. Show them how you understand the challenges they’re facing and how you can help them achieve their career goals.

4. Deliver business outcomes

With a pool of readily available talent at your fingertips, you can reduce the time and cost associated with hiring new staff. A sales role might be fairly straightforward for your organisation to fill but a vacant back office job can quickly have a negative impact on customer service. With social sourcing you already have a handful of vetted candidates as soon as that role becomes available.

Social sourcing is an opportunity for your business to take a more proactive approach to finding and attracting talent. Yet it’s important to remember this is a supplement to human interaction and not a replacement. It’s an opportunity to connect your business with available talent and build a relationship. Your people skills will still go a long way towards defining how successful your social sourcing strategy is.

Kathleen Francis

A seasoned Human Resources generalist with a Master of Psychology degree, Kathleen has extensive experience working across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific. Kathleen has specialisation in HR Shared Services, Acquisitions, Recruitment, Mobility and change management. As an HR practitioner, Kathleen believes that people are the core strength of any business and strengthening talent is vital to enabling businesses to grow and thrive. In the Human Capital Management arena Kathleen works with organisations to understand their business priorities and partners with them to optimise and transform their talent strategies through thought leadership, process enhancement and technology.

In the physical world of business everyone checks out what their competitors are doing, right? But what about getting a clear understanding about what they’re doing online? In my experience, many businesses either forget that part, or are so random about it, that there isn’t any strategic benefit from the exercise.

Dave Chaffey, the UK-based digital marketing expert and author of the excellent book “Emarketing Excellence: Planning and Optimizing your Digital Marketing” says, “The purpose (of analysing your competitors online) is to gain a level of insight that allows you to evolve your digital marketing strategy based on competitor insight. It’s not that you should be dictated by what you learn about competitors, since being very reactive to that can be worse than doing nothing. Yet common sense tells us that knowledge is power”.

Here is my 5 step method to knowing what your competitors are up to in Social and Digital

1. Start with a spreadsheet or whichever recording tool you prefer

Note the date of your analysis, the name of your company and the name of the person who is doing the analysis. The reason for this is that you are going to continue to do this over time, so you want a good record. Put column headings in your spreadsheet and include the following columns:

Competitor URL
Website observations/opportunities
Blog observations/opportunities
Positioning words
Email
Social (you can choose to have a column for each social channel: Facebook; Google+; You Tube; LinkedIn; Instagram; Twitter)

2. Choose four competitors to analyse

Two of those should be direct competitors, and two indirect competitors that are outside of your specific industry, but similar.

For example, for car dealerships it is appropriate to look at real estate sites and boat sale sites. In some industries, a few website supply companies or digital marketing companies serve most of the businesses and even when that is not case the digital marketing practice of particular industries can start to look very similar. This is the reason to look at sites outside your own industry.

3. Start with a manual process

Go to the competitor websites and look at the structure, design, content, positioning keywords and the way the website is generating leads. Do the same with the blog and ask the following:

Does the blog add value to the prospect/customer?
Is it customer focused or product focused?
What are the keywords?
What is the frequency of publishing?
What content opportunities are there for us?
What can we learn?
What are they doing that looks great that we are not?

Be critical and granular in your analysis. For email/newsletter analysis, simply sign up to any email program and, while you are signing up to things, “like” their Facebook page and follow their Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +. Subscribe to their You Tube. Analyse these for the content topics and types, the level of engagement, and frequency of publishing.

4. Use some online tools for a different perspective

There are a number of free online tools that are useful

Rob Hammond’s SEO crawler (http://robhammond.co/tools/seo-crawler)is great for analysing your competitors’ pages, keywords and titles
spyfu.com will show you which keywords a site ranks for, if they are moving up or down in search, how many keywords are unique and how many are shared across competitor sites and the value of search engine optimisation to the site (expressed as a dollar amount). This tool will also tell you if your competitor is using Google Adwords, or paid search links in Google and for which keywords and what the bid is for that keyword (how much they are paying for a click through on that link). Note that www.spyfu.com data won’t be perfect but will offer some insights in a comparison, only if the website you are performing the check on has enough data for the tool’s analysis.
For an overview of your own site and competitor sites there is a handy free tool called similarweb.com It provides site ranking, traffic overview and traffic sources (both of which track volume) for your site and competitor sites. Yes, you can see how much traffic your competitor gets and where it is coming from! You can see how they are performing against you in search, if they are doing display, how they are tracking with referral sites. Very cool and useful! For very small sites, however, there may not be enough data to get the full analysis.

Go to competitor websites and look at the structure, design, content, positioning keywords and the way the website is generating leads

A useful site to evaluate digital marketing technology investment is www.builtwith.com. This site allows you to input any web address or URL and it provides information on the technology the site is using. You will be able to understand from here what advertising systems the competitor is using, what technology they are using for email distribution, for analytics, and for their website. At the very least you will learn how much investment your competitor is putting into digital marketing and over time you will be able to evaluate continuing investment.
For a catch-all, regardless of the size of the site, use Hubspot’s marketing.grader.com. Here you will get an overview of social, mobile, SEO, blog activity and a handy score. It’s really useful for a strengths and weaknesses analysis.
For Facebook, Meltwater has made a tool called likealyzer.com This tool analyses any Facebook URL and provides information on engagement, time and frequency of publishing and response, use of hashtags and an overall score.

A note on the site-focused competitive intelligence tools – these tools are sometimes not very accurate but as Avinash Kaushik, author of the Occam’s Razor blog and the book Web Analytics 2.0, says, “You are comparing ‘bruised apples’ with ‘bruised apples'” . There are many competitive intelligence tools available, so choose the one you like to use and stick to using that one for your analysis. That way you are always comparing the same bruised apples.

5. Draw some conclusions and apply the “So what?” test

Ask yourself: What did we learn? What actions can we take?

It’s useful to benchmark the data you gather about direct competitors against your own data. You can then take the data analysis an extra step. Ask yourself – “why does this matter?” and then ask the same question of the answer you get. This process will result in one of two responses, either: “okay, this is just an interesting observation” or “we can act on that and this is what we are going to do”. In analytics, the second response is the only correct one (more on that in another blog post) but in competitor analysis, so long as we observe and learn from the process, I think the first response is okay also. For indirect competitors ask yourself, what are they doing that seems to be working that we are not doing? How could we implement and test that to make sure it works for us?

How regularly you schedule time to revisit the five step process depends what industry you are in and how competitive it is. For some of my clients every 6 months is fine, for others monthly review is important. The main thing, though, is to decide your suitable time frame and schedule it. If you don’t it is unlikely to happen until the time comes for some massive review because you find you have a P76 (car metaphor there – tell me in the comments below who gets it?).

These are my methods to understanding what competitors are up to with their digital marketing. What methods do you use? We’d love to hear in the comments!

Beth Powell
Beth Powell is the founder of Digital Marketing Club, a coaching and support program that provides direct answers to your questions about your own digital marketing. She created the first social media and digital marketing training programs in Australia and has become known as the go-to person for clear explanations about how digital marketing can grow your business. Beth is a sought after conference speaker and author of the soon to be published book “Drive More Business: A 5 step Guide to Digital Marketing for Auto Dealers”. For more information, contact her at info@digitalmarketingclub.com.au

The power of using video to boost business amazing. Many businesses are jumping on board to make videos. I’ve been making corporate videos for nearly 25 years and I’m seeing a lot of people making some avoidable mistakes in their rush and excitement of becoming YouTube stars.

Waste thousands

One of the common mistakes for people who are making videos is they rush out and buy expensive video equipment. They fork out thousands for a camera they don’t know how to use. It doesn’t have the functionality they need and they use it once and then leave it sitting it in the corner staring at them – making them feel guilty for the unrequited attention.

I recommend you hire the equipment you need if want to go down that path. Try it first. It will only cost a few hundred dollars for broadcast quality equipment. See what works for you. Learn what you need and what you don’t need. Then if you find yourself using it often you could look into buying something suitable. By this time you will have a better idea of what you need.

If you want to use your own equipment, then start out with your phone. The quality of the cameras on the phones these days are remarkable. With some decent lighting, you can create some useful videos.

Alternatively work with a camera operator who already owns his or her own equipment. They know how to use it, they know about white balance and depth of field and framing and lighting. Ask yourself do you want to be a video business or do you want to add value by doing what you do well?

Look stupid

It’s never been easier to make video content. It’s also never been easier to make videos that do damage to your brand. My advice is don’t release videos that make you look dodgy.

The first mistake people make is poor audio. We can tolerate poor quality vision, but we won’t tolerate poor sound. If you do make one purchase, make sure it is for a microphone. If you choose to dabble with your phone as a camera plug in a lapel microphone. You can pick up a decent one for $50.

When framing your image keep the head at the top of the frame. I often see people centring the subject’s face in the frame. They leave all this empty space above the head. Look at the entire contents of the frame and be aware of what is in it and how it should look.

Be aware of the lighting. You want to make sure the light is in front of the person being filmed and not behind. If you have it lit well, it look can great. If you have the light in the wrong spot, you can look silhouetted like you are on the witness protection scheme – not a great way to build credibility.

Wobbly shots are also not a good look. It is easy to get a tripod or even a little stand for your phone to ensure your shot is steady.

And if you are using your phone please, please hold it in landscape mode. If you hold it vertically you will end up with a thin video and big black bars on either side. That screams amateur to me. It might look good on your mobile phone Facebook feed, but that’s the only time.

Other common mistakes

When thinking of what to talk about, I see businesses wanting to focus on what they do. When meeting with my video clients I explain some harsh realities of business – your audience doesn’t care about you and what you do. They care about how that makes their life better.

You need to quickly relate your service or product to a better outcome for them. Keep asking yourself why does this matter to my viewer. Amateur business video makers can become bogged down explaining their processes and systems. They talk about themselves. In this transitory viewing world, you need to quickly engage your audience and let them know why they should be excited about your offering.

Another common issue is videos that are too long. For promotional videos they need to be under 90 seconds. If you have more to say then make a series of short videos.

So slow down, take a breath and ask for some professional help so that you don’t waste your money or damage your credibility.

What mistakes do you see business owners making with videos?

Geoff Anderson is owner of Sonic Sight, a corporate video production company. He presents on using video in business and is the author the Amazon Bestseller “Shoot Me Now – Making videos to boost business”. To find out more about Geoff and to learn about the 5 Mistakes to avoid when making videos, visit www.sonicsight.com.au or visit www.geoffanderson.com.au

Just when you thought social media couldn’t become any more ubiquitous, livestreaming app Periscope has burst onto the scene.

Since its acquisition by Twitter in March for a rumored $100 million, Periscope’s been getting comfortable at the round table of social media kings. After lots of looking, testing and listening, it’s proving to have the potential to bring new opportunities and challenges for the business world.

So, how does it work?

Periscope is simple. It has 4 main areas:

1. Camera

This allows you to broadcast to the wider public. All you do is fill in the title that asks, “What are you seeing now?” and hit the Start Broadcast button. You have the option to make it private and broadcast to select followers, as well as send a notification to your Twitter feed. Your recorded video will be able to be viewed for 24 hours following its broadcast, but you can delete it with a simple swipe.

2. Following

This page shows you the stream of anyone you’re following when they go live. You can be notified when they start livestreaming, and with a simple click, you’ll be watching the world through their eyes (or rather, the eyes of their phone).

3. Global

This page shows you the current streams of users around the world. All you see is the title of their stream and the number of viewers currently tuned in.

4. People

As Periscope is synced in with Twitter, this page shows you a list of the people you’re following on Twitter and allows you the option to follow them on Periscope.

What about when you’re watching a stream?

You’ll see the world through the user’s front or back-facing camera and have the ability to typecomments and see everyone else’s comments. The number of viewers is indicated at the bottom and if you touch the screen, it’s the equivalent of giving them ‘likes’ as little hearts are displayed.

Periscope allows you to see into the un-edited and un-filtered lives of anyone around the world, watch as breaking news unfolds and get a front row seat to unique events; all from a live, first- person perspective. For example, you could sit next to a news anchor as he does his live news broadcast, jump on a tourist’s helicopter as it flies over your favourite city, take a tour of a foreign neighbourhood with a local, dance in the throngs of a street festival, or see your favourite musician jam away from their rehearsal studio or packed-full arena

Game-changing for business?

The difference between Periscope and everything that’s come before, is the unprecedented ability for the consumer to become the producer. It gives real backbone to the loosely-used term, ‘Prosumer’. Viewers on Periscope can interact with live content and quite often direct its outcome.

Breaking news and coverage will now be brought to us instantly as we have the option to watch as events unfold by tapping into the viewpoints of multiple Periscope’s livestreams, offering unparalleled first-person perspectives of those caught up in the action or event. In a way, the traditional producers of news – the broadcasters, reporters, and cameramen – are suddenly thrown into the consumer’s seat. It’s a complete role-reversal.

The opportunities that Periscope offers to businesses are extraordinary.

Imagine livestreaming a view of the coffee line at your café to give potential customers an idea of the waiting time, or holding real-time Q&A sessions with your designers, developers, strategists or customer care teams. You can conduct live surveys and tours of your offices and production sites, or stream product launches and give demonstrations of products in development.

We’ve all used Skype, FaceTime and Google Hangouts, but the ability to connect directly to a wider audience in real-time in this manner is unprecedented and will revolutionise the way we engage with our communities on a global stage.

Lingering Questions

There’s two key areas of contention being thrown around in the Periscope hubbub:

1. Privacy

Your Periscope broadcast will be broadcast to the public unless you choose the privacy option. Anything you film will therefore be broadcast to the public, which raises issues concerning the privacy of you and others. It will take some time before a Periscope ‘etiquette’ is established, and a whole other range of questions will be raised when it comes to the issue of consent and privacy laws.

Further, Periscope’s privacy policy says it will “use and store information about your location” or “infer your location based on information from your device” and they reserve the right to “share your precise location with your video”. Similarly, your video contains a host of data derived from sights, sounds, location and chat log that Periscope (and Twitter) have the right to collect and share with third parties. Of course, you’ll be familiar with all the other anxieties surrounding use of our data, and this could add weight to the arguments of the naysayers.

2. Piracy

Periscope poses a huge threat to ticketed and pay-per-view events. A lot of events already impose a ban on mobile phone images and recording, but Periscope is navigating unchartered territory, as evidenced during the recent Mayweather vs. Pacquiao match, where Periscope received 66 ‘takedown’ notices for breach of copyright (because who wants to pay $100 to watch the fight with pay-per-view?).

Responding to accusations that the platform is a “vehicle for pirating content” Periscope co-founder Kayvon Beykpour says that within a few minutes, they took down around half the streams that violated copyright and the other half had already finished broadcasting.

He also notes the necessity to strengthen their tools for monitoring and managing content that could be breaching copyright: “The DMCA process mandates that you should respond to these within 24 hours, which obviously isn’t relevant in a real-time setting. Obviously there are tools that should exist and can exist, with a lot of time development to handle this stuff in real-time, and we’re genuinely interested in working with partners on figuring that out… it’s new territory”.

What’s next?

Periscope is a vehicle for exploration, discovery, connectivity and (acceptable) voyeurism. Judging by consumer reviews, it’s already leaps and bounds ahead of its direct competitor, Meerkat, due to its additional features, usability, and seamless integration with Twitter.

Got a spare moment? Whip out Periscope and see a man in Turkey train his dog to flip, or take in the view out the window of a bus on a rainy day in Dublin. Catch the rodeo in Texas from a front- row seat, or relax on the still waters of a lake on a fishing trip in New Zealand. Why not hold a live Q&A with one of your influencers, lead product developers, or devoted customers? The possibilities are endless.

Have you thought about the ways that Periscope could revolutionise your business? Let us know in the comments.

Anna Craven is a Digital Content Coordinator for Social Media Week Sydney, and an Assistant Account Coordinator at Rinsed. You can follow Anna on twitter @AnnaCraven1‏

Photo credit: Anthony Quintano

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