₦airaland Forum

Folks have been turning to online content for a while to generate more sales.

The caveat I like to give is that online content, or content marketing, and any other kind of content driven play isn’t going to yield immediate results.

So if you’re looking at putting out a piece of content today so that you can see results tomorrow or next week, then the content game isn’t for you.

If you’re willing to put in the time to create content, the next question becomes what kind of investment do you need to begin?

This is so especially for those of you who want to explore video and become the next YouTube sensation? Or maybe TikTok?

For one, you don't worry to much about what video equipment you have... at least not in the beginning.

If awareness is the goal, you’ll find that most mid market and high end phones are adequate. If producing advertising videos is the goal on the other hand, then that’s a topic for another conversation.

Most mid and high end phone with their multiple cameras and native software that allows for depth of field manipulation (recording with a soft background), contrast and colour editing, etc... will make for a good quality video that you couldn’t do maybe 5 years ago.

However there’s one thing you ought to worry about.

Now you have to pay more attention to your AUDIO and sound!

There's no point in having a SPECTACULAR video that no one can hear.

If you don’t want to worry about external microphones and noise canceling apps, then pay attention to the level of ambient noise going on.

Ambient noise is the level of sound and noise going on in the background. That is ALWAYS going to be imported into the video recording that you make.

Apart from sound, audio captioning is also becoming a big concern.

This is because most people are watching videos WITH THE VOLUME OFF.

You want them to be able to guess from the subtitles what your video is about before they scroll and move on.

Who knows? If the captioning seems relevant and interesting, then they may turn the audio on for your video especially on apps like Instagram where people are scrolling through and don’t want all the video content to start playing over the speakers immediately.

So if you’ve been following so far, I hope you’ve been able to grasp that when it comes to video, it’s about the relevancy of the content first before you start worrying about “video production value”.

Production Value is all the extra stuff we add to a video to make it more “polished” and “professional”... like studio lighting, extra actors, sound design, transition effects, elaborate scriptwriting and character development, etc.

We can worry about that later when we’ll be able to afford higher video production value.

Until then, phone video will be fine for now.

Just make sure your audio is good, and what you’re saying is relevant to your target audience.

I have made a lot of song and dance over here on the blog and the podcast about how sales and marketing conversations ought to “question” led.

It’s not a good idea to have a “one way” kind of communication where we’re talking AT our potential clients and customers, instead of having a conversation WITH them.

The one way conversation traditionally has been built around US, what WE are interested in, how WE are great, and how fantastic our PRODUCTS and SERVICES are.

This is no longer an interesting conversation to have in the market place because in today’s world where everything is commoditized, the customer has many alternatives and we’re all saying the same thing anyway.

The new kinds of conversations should be built around what THE CUSTOMER thinks is interesting, how we can understand THEIR situation, challenges and aspirations, and we should be asking THEM questions around what their motivations are.

This will allow us to improve our products and services because we’ll be laser focused on meeting the needs, challenges and visions that actual people in the market place have.

If you look at it this way, the most selfish thing we can to is to focus on OTHER people when it comes to our sales and marketing efforts.

If you want the customer and your other stakeholders to focus on us, we have to learn to throw the spotlight on them.