Videos can help you in your retail business in so many ways. On today’s episode, Mick Russell talks to us about how videos can be very beneficial to retail store. Mick explains that whenever you make a video of a product, you bring it to life in a sense. Videos can also show an application to a certain product and make your customers want to buy it. Mick says that a customer is more likely to buy a certain product after watching a video about it.
Bringing Business to Retail
Tips For Making Video Work For Your Retail Store - Mick Russell
Bringing Business to Retail Podcast, Episode 16, with Mick Russell from Lynchpin Studios. Welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast on selenanights.com. Stay ahead of the competition by opening your doors to business experts so you can learn, grow, and be inspired. Passionate about bringing business strategies to independent retailers. Please welcome your host, Selena Knight. Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. Now, before we jump into today's episode with Mick Russell, I'm super excited to announce that the first ever business course designed specifically for retailers called the Boutique Academy launches next week. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, I've been hinting at its arrival for some months. And finally, it's launching Monday, the 21st of September 2015. It's been a labour of love and I'm so happy to finally share this program with you. Now, if you're wondering just what's inside this business course for retailers, here's a quick overview of what you can learn. Are we talking more about it in the next podcast episode? And bear with me because I'm losing my voice. Now, in module one, I'll take you through number crunching, working out the numbers that you need to know in business and how to make them work for your retail store. Module two is where we dig deep and discover all about your brand, your ultimate customer, and most importantly, you. If you've ever wondered about the art and science to store fit outs and you know that the IKEA maze has a reason, module three will walk you through the psychology and science of your store fit out, plus you'll streamline your systems and tackle your tech needs. Now, you can't do everything in business, right? You need to surround yourself with the right people. So in module four, you'll learn an amazing hiring process that I've perfected. I've built it on the premise that you can teach skills, but not attitude. In module five, it's all about defining the customer experience and if you've ever wondered about how much inventory you need to be stocking, haven't we all had that problem? Module six covers that. And with all these newfound confidence, I don't want you getting overwhelmed, so module seven will help you take control and become a productivity all-star. And because I want to give you as much as I can, I included a bonus module called Keep in Touch, which will help you configure a communication strategy that will be the envy of your competition. If you're listening to this podcast when it goes live, then you'll know that the Academy only opens twice a year for enrollments. And in the lead up to its launch, I created a free video training series that's available now. The training series is called The Three Things Every Retailer Should Know. And in it, I answer the questions that I wish I had someone to answer when I had my retail stores. Now, I'm not going to give away what those questions are, but if you'd like to access this free training series, you can find it at selenenight.com/video-training. And if you're listening on the go, you can find the link to the free training series on this podcast episode on the website. Now, today's guest, Mick Russell from Lynchpin Studios is the man behind the lens of that video training series. When Mick's not sitting in a coffee shop drinking short blacks, which you can see fill his Instagram feed, he's running around with a camera in his hand. He's a dad of one and he lives with his wife Claire in Melbourne, Australia. He's a want to be farmer, which means he's always running around farmers' markets. Again, check his Instagram feed and visiting farmers to learn more about what they do. And this is when each drink film was born to tell the stories of farmers around the country to help get their message out to people. And we'll link to that in the show notes. Finally, taking notice of the cues the world was giving him, Mick decided to dump the boss and take on video production full-time to help small businesses use and understand the power of video. Mick says, "Video is one of the most powerful ways to tell your story. Every business has a unique story to tell and that's where Lynchpin Studios comes in to work out the best way to tell your story to the world." Video comes in many different formats and does not need to be expensive to produce. You could even just use your iPhone and in fact he'll be giving some tips in today's episode on just that. From quick animated videos, web series or how-to videos, Mick can help you with the strategy that you need to get seen by the right people. Now, video is super important right now. Facebook and Instagram rank it at the top of their content feeds and like they say, a picture tells a thousand words. So, I wonder how many words the video tells. Anyway, I digress. Now, I would like to point out that Mick doesn't film and produce my bringing business to retail TV episodes yet. Hopefully, in 2016, I'll be able to overcome the logistics of us being in completely separate states and he'll be able to work his magic on those as well. Now, my voice is dying, so here we go with today's episode all about how you can make video work for your retail store with Mick Russell from Lynchpin Studios. Welcome back to today's episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast and on today's show I have Mick Russell from Lynchpin Studios. And he's going to be telling us all about how retailers can use video to sell and just how important it is. Now, Mick tells me video is one of the most powerful ways to tell your story. He says every business has a unique story to tell and that's where he comes in because he likes to work out what your story is. And video comes in so many different formats and he's going to tell us about how it's not going to have to be expensive to produce. So, welcome to the show, Mick. Thanks, Lyna. How are you? I am fantastic and I'm very excited to have you on. I met Mick several months ago when I was looking for a video guide to do more videos for the Bo-Tick Academy. And I have to say I was a little bit nervous even though he came highly recommended and I had probably the most fun day I've ever had. I laughed, I think, more than I actually spoke. And it was so nice to have such a relaxing atmosphere even though we were shooting in alleys and laneways. So, thank you very much for that experience, Mick. It sort of opened up the world to me, I have to say. I've done lots of videos since then. Yeah, I think it just takes just to do that first video or first couple of videos and then once you've done that then the world's your oyster basically and you can just keep going. So, how can retailers use video? I have to admit from when I met you I thought that it was going to have to be a studio and all the lights and cameras and people and make up people. And make up people and all that kind of stuff. But it wasn't like that. You can do that and that's different production levels for different types of videos. So, a lot of retailers, you might want to do this studio, have all the lights, have all the audio and everything like that. But it costs a lot more to do. So, what you can do is if you do more videos like what we did with the right audio, the right visuals, then you can just make more of them for, you know, not a great big cost. And then when you're talking about retailers using video, there's a whole lot of facts and figures out there. But one of the bigger ones is I'm just trying to work out where I've got this actually from. But 73% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after watching a video. So, what that means to me is that if you've got an e-commerce website and you've got images, and if you put a video on there that helps sell that product, then, you know, basically you're more likely to sell that product. Now, there's a whole lot of technical elements behind it. But the main psychology of it is that people can see the product, they can see themselves using the product, and they fall in love with it, and then buy. And I guess you're also creating that trust factor, aren't you? Because if you're prepared to go to the links, and we're talking about retailers making these videos themselves, not a supplier just giving you the video. So, if you've gone to the effort to make a video about a product, as a consumer, I know that I would think they must really like this product. Like, to go to all that effort, they must really like this product and really endorse this product. And it depends on, because sometimes you're going to have the product with just the product. So, it could be just a boring video that just shows the product on a white background, and that's it. Well, that may not work as well as say you, the retailer, actually explaining a little bit about the product, maybe showing how it works, or showing some features. And then that way, as you said, it builds that confidence with that brand, or you as the retailer, that you're going to give them the right product at the right price at the, you know, the right thing for them at that time. And that builds that confidence level. It's funny you should say that, because I was actually just asked by someone the other day, or we're talking about how she sells a kid's lunchbox, and it's quite an expensive lunchbox. I would think it's probably in the $50 range. And she was saying she's so sick of people complaining about how expensive they are, even though they're stupid, they're fantastic, they have all these features. And I said to her, why don't you create a video showing how awesome this product is? Because I think if someone's spending $50 on a lunchbox, you want to be able to justify that against the $8 lunchbox, what are you getting? That's so much more exciting. And a video just conveys, I don't know, a little bit more prestige. Definitely, like you could just imagine the mother or the father, you know, doing the lunchbox in the morning and finding, you know, some crappy old lunchbox and wrapping their sandwiches up in some cling wrap and another bag for this and another bag for that. Because I think I sort of know which lunchbox you're talking about. And, yeah, in that case, you can show how easy it is to do the, you know, you can put the carrots in or whatever you're going to put in there. And it's, yeah, it's showing, it's bringing that consumer into your, into your brand, into your product so that they can actually see themselves using it. And that conveys, that gets conveyed so much more via a video than just an image. Yeah, totally. It brings the product to life, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so why is video so important? Apart from the fact that 73 people are more likely to buy something afterwards, why is video important? Well, video is important. Well, there's sort of three different reasons why I would count video is important. One, as we've discussed, it brings you into the picture. You being a way of separating yourself from the competition. So if someone's got two exact same products or something like that, if you're coming up and you've got your face there, your product is showing into these people's homes or into their mobiles and in the case of video nowadays, people are more likely to pick on the person who they trust, who they like. So it's building that trust. Then there's also the actual fact that people are lazy. So the world is getting lazier. And watching a video is so much easier than reading through 500 words on a product or something like that. So in terms of, you know, video on Facebook is going through the roof. And the reason is that people see it. They watch it. And they don't need to read. They don't need to do anything extra. And that's one real good element in the fact there that, yeah, there'd be facts and figures on what it is that, you know, people are more 80% likely to watch a video than to read something. So, yeah, there's a whole lot of facts and figures there. And then number three, I've actually forgotten what number three is, but it sort of comes back down to bringing you into the picture. And I know that I mentioned that in the fact one. Though you're really having yourself on your page or as the face of your product in the case of, you know, we could talk about a retailer as a kid's retailer or something like that. There's a lot of trust factor for buying kids products. And one of those things is having you as the face and that trust factor. And yeah, I'm trying to bring out the whole story element to it. Well, you are your brand. Yeah, the people listening to this are small business retailers. So they're going to have maybe a couple of stuff, but at the end of the day, they're the ones that are still making the decisions in their business. And they're the ones who are managing what the brand's persona is going to be. We're not talking multinationals here. So you're right. It brings the person who owns that brand and whether they choose to be a brand or a person behind the brand, it's still bringing everything that they've identified their brand's persona to be into the know, like and trust sort of scenario. So people know the way that your brand speaks and they know the way that, you know, they obviously like what you do and what you sell. And when you've built all that in and when you're giving this information to people, they have to trust you. Like people don't, information is expensive. And I think when you give lots of information away for free, people will just develop that relationship with you because you're seen as, you know, let's be honest, let's go back to the lunchbox lady. If she makes a video, nobody else has ever made it before, she's now the leader, isn't she? Yes. She's the person you are going to buy the lunchbox from because clearly she knows her product. She's made a video showing all the things that this lunchbox can do. And all of a sudden she is now far away the best person to buy the lunchbox from. And then don't forget about the fact that video is really easy to share as well. So you'll probably find that the mother or the father that buys the lunchbox will go. This is awesome. And then find the video and share it on their Facebook page and away you go. Which brings me, which brings me back to something that you mentioned before about Facebook and videos going viral. How hard is that to do? Oh, the million dollar viral. Oh, not the viral. How hard is it to put a video on Facebook? Oh, I did put a video on Facebook. I wanted to talk about the viral video, I think. But anyway, we'll talk about that. How easy is it? So it really is easy. So it can be as easy as you recording a video on your iPhone or your smartphone, going to Facebook and adding it in. Now, the production level of that may not be as good as taking that off a different camera or putting a little bit of editing onto it. Though you can really get your message out to people straight away. So Facebook has made it really, really easy and you can target people with the video. The other thing too is that Facebook is, I was trying to find some information on it the other day. But there's three different types of posts that you can do on Facebook. One is text, one is photo, one is video. And it seems to be that Facebook is really loving video and loving text at the moment. And pictures are starting to fall down the organic reach, which is interesting, because there was something that Zuckerberg said that in five years' time, he basically wants Facebook to be all video. So he can see the video is growing so much that people are lazy watching a video. And it's so easy. Think about it. When you're on your mobile and you're looking through Facebook, what catches your eye is that video that auto plays. I was going to say they've made it so easy. Like you were saying, you need to make it easy. They've made it so easy. You don't have to click it anymore. You don't have to move your thumb to get the video. It just works automatically. The other thing to that is the video will be, there's no volume on the video when it auto plays. So a person needs to click on it to get the audio. So that also brings into the fact that you've got that three seconds or even less to try to attract the attention of the viewer. Which I was going to talk to you about a little bit later. But seeing as we're here, do you have some tips for that? Definitely with Facebook, it's having the main point of the video up front. So there's no use you traveling through. So we'll use the lunchbox example again. So with that, I'd have the lunchbox up front. So it would be a future lunchbox saying, I'm going to talk about this lunchbox. Yep, so that people will go awesome. I want to know about the lunchbox. If you went into sort of like a bit of an arty farty sort of video that some of the things that I've created where you sort of start with some say fruit or you start the sandwich and then you cut it up and you make it and then you end with the actual lunchbox, then people are going to actually pull off from that and not actually watch it. And there's some other little facts and figures in the background that a lot of people fall off watching the videos pretty quickly. I was just going to try to find while we're talking, I've been doing some video marketing for an Expo. And there's a couple of facts and figures that a lot of videos are getting about a 19-19 second average view. Yeah, I vaguely remember 15 seconds when you said that 15 seconds came into my head. Yeah, so there's a video that I released yesterday, average view of 14 seconds. So the video is only actually 35 seconds long. And I've lost half the viewers at about six seconds. So that means that I grabbed their attention in the beginning. And then they went, "Oh, no, I don't want to know about that information." And just let it go and follow it on. So I was going to say, so is the key here basically, first of all, knowing where you're going to distribute the video? Because what you've just said there, I've taken, if I'm going to distribute that video on Facebook, I probably need to film that slightly different than if I was filming a tutorial video that maybe went for a couple of minutes versus a 15 second Instagram picture. So is that something that you need to think about at the beginning? Is where am I actually going to put this video? Yes, so it comes to a point where when you're producing the video, having an understanding of where your main customers are. So if it is Facebook at the moment, which seems to be that, you know, billion people or whatever it is that are looking at it every month, seems to be where a lot of people are spending their time. So you would basically produce the video for that Facebook audience, being having that information up front, having a nice, short, sharp video so that people get the info. But then with that, you've got YouTube, which is, you know, it's an awesome search engine based, you know, for the fact that they're owned by Google, so anything search-wise will come up for Google in that. And the same video could be put on YouTube if you want. Because it's the same thing with YouTube. You sort of got to try to attract that attention pretty quickly. And all the stats in the background, you know, the longer people watch the video, the more people that get to the end of the video and all that sort of stuff help you get up in the search ranks. So I guess the good thing about YouTube is if you wanted to, like if you were happy with the quality that came out, once you put it on YouTube, you can then embed that into your website. Whereas what you're talking about right at the beginning is uploading what they call "native video" to Facebook, so it's not putting the link in from YouTube, it's uploading the original video into Facebook. And definitely putting it natively into Facebook is the key. So Facebook don't want you linking to a YouTube video or Vimeo or to your website video, because one, it won't auto-play. Two, they'll probably only give a link, and they won't actually give you sort of the ability to play the video really quickly and easily. And Facebook, yeah, don't want you going off to YouTube. And you could use your scheduler for this. Like it doesn't have to be a great big ordeal. We're talking, like you just said, 30 second videos is what you should be aiming for. 30 seconds, maybe a minute if you had something really, really fantastic. But it's not a big deal to actually schedule that into Facebook. You can use a program where you can do it using the Facebook scheduler. It's not like you have to spend the next six hours on all different social media platforms trying to get this video out. No, so the bare basics would be upload to Facebook and upload to YouTube. Both are really quick elements. They're easy to use, easy to upload if your file's only small. And work similar in terms of, say, keyword and description and stuff like that. So you can utilize the same information to put them in there. But that would be the basic YouTube and Facebook straight off the bat. And that's just a really interesting thing that you mentioned. I've just written some notes here while you're talking. People just forget that YouTube is there. But it's the second biggest search engine. So even if you have these videos that you've got on Facebook, even if you don't get loads of people viewing them, the fact that you end up having your own YouTube channel is a reference that you can then send people to. So if someone comes into your store, for example, and says, "Oh, I really love that thing over there, but I'm not quite sure how to use it." You can just link them to the video or you can just pull that video up yourself and say, "Well, here's a great video. I can show you how to use it." Or, "Here's a great video." Or, "If someone emails you, you can send them the link." So all of a sudden you have this great big repository of information that nobody else has. Exactly. It's a secret. And if you tag it right and you put the right descriptions in, then it becomes, yeah, as you say, this awesome resource of the information that people can just find and then keep going down and down and deeper, deeper into the whole of what YouTube is. And you said, back at number two, that you said before was, it separates you from the competition. And I, in my head, and I know, I've done this in the past, but we're not talking about me, in my head, that becomes the differentiator. Like, if I had a question and I know that that person's probably got an answer for it somewhere in video, I'm going to them all the time. I don't care if I have to pay more money. I'm going to them because they know their stuff. Well, I, I learn a lot of the stuff that I do video-wise, you know, new techniques and things like that from YouTube. And the first place I go to learn something new at the moment is YouTube. Straight into YouTube, type it in there and I want to watch a video. I don't want to watch, I don't want to read anything. I just want a nice video. And that's where, you know, being that, that point of difference. And also I wanted to bring up the fact that writing something is, for some people, easing. Putting in a photo up on the, you know, a website or Facebook is a little bit harder because, you know, you've got to get the photo right, it's got to look good. But then going to that next level of producing a video is a whole next level. And so many people don't get to that level. And that's where it also makes you stand out. That you've taken that time, the effort. And I think a lot of people understand that there is a lot of time and effort in producing the video. So they're going to give you that little bit of extra credit. Or at least I do, so. And I do too. One of the things that you also said right back at the beginning was it's, it tells, like video tells a story and it's easy to relate to. So can you give us some tips on, and I'm just catching you in a ways, just for those who listen, we don't actually script any of these podcast interviews. So the questions that I ask are purely off the cuff. So if the guest isn't quite sure about the answer, it's not their fault. They haven't heard the question before. So I'm going to ask Miki if he can give us say three tips to how to work out who you're selling this story to. And how to relate to that person. Okay, so who you're selling the story to. You should potentially know your customer. And whether that's your customer of one or a group of customers that you want to tell your story to. And it could be, let's pick something else other than lunch boxes, I think. It's a lunch box. I love scarves. I love scarves because all those videos are somehow like always seem to use scarves in my examples. Because you see all those videos on how to tie scarves and still can only tie scarves two ways. I've watched loads of those videos, still can only tie two ways. Maybe not watching the right videos or maybe someone hasn't produced the right videos for you. So in the case of scarves, you would be telling the story of trying to pick why your scarves are different. So whether it's a style or a design or a quality or, you know, the fabric that were produced by some artist or something like that. So there's sort of the first story bit. And then the second bit of the story is how to use it. And then the third bit of the story is how good you look when you've bought one of these awesome scarves. And why you need it? And why you need it? So it's not, you know, it's a want versus need sort of element with a scarf maybe, I think. So, you know, I need it, you know, it'll make me look great. And it'll keep my neck warm and, you know, and all that sort of stuff. So it's really bringing them into the picture, your audience. So if I was a scarf producer and I was trying to target men, then you'd have to make sure that it was, you know, this is how you tie it for a man. You know, put it around the neck, do this. You know, the fashion at the moment is, you know, dark colors or light colors or something like that. And, you know, it could be the length of the scarf. And I'm just, I'm so into your scarf now. I'm picturing, you're doing a very good job because I'm picturing. One of the key things in the scarf example would be to have a man doing it, not a woman, which sounds so basic. But would you trust a woman, like a woman who was making a video of how to tie a man's scarf? It just doesn't gel, does it? It depends. So the thought pattern there is that you might have the woman tying the scarf around the man's neck so that there's an element of, you know, we all know men are attracted to women, blah, blah, blah, or most. And there's that element there that could help him feel that if he's got the scarf around his neck that he could attract someone that's hot. True, I just meant like the woman doing this. I don't know, totally. Yeah, totally. I'm not a kid. Yeah, you don't want to be saying, "Hey, you know, man, he's this great scarf and it looks great on this, on this chick." Well, it's not going to work, is it? No. No, you're... Okay, so we know our audience and we know how to tell a story. How easy is it to record a video? Like you said at the beginning, you can just get your iPhone out. Is it as simple as that? It is as simple as that if you want to produce video that is quick and sharp and gets a message out there, but the production level won't be awesome on it. So the production level won't be awesome because the inbuilt microphone, the lighting may not be perfect. There's, you know, you hold in the camera as well. So there's different things that you can actually go and implement that could actually help with that. So there's a little smart lab microphone that you can get for your smartphone that just hooks onto you. That you see all the news presenters wearing, you know, just about six inches below them, below their mouth. That's a little microphone that will give so much better in the audio because a lot of times you sort of look at video as being 50% video and 50% audio. So you've got to remember that the audio is quite a major element of it to get the production level up. And I was just... I have to cut in there because I was watching this video today on YouTube about that in preparation for our talk today. And it was the guy who was showing how, and it was a proper, it was made by one of the camera companies. He was showing how, even though he was just recording with his iPhone, the fact that he had a cheap, I think he'd said it was like a $30 microphone, and it was just sitting on the table out of the view of the camera. And the quality of the video was pretty naff, like it wasn't great, but the audio was awesome. And then he switched that to the awesome camera with the microphone attached to the camera. So it was quite far away, and it was quite echo-y and tinny. And he was trying to show that if you've got great audio, it kind of doesn't matter about the quality of your video. People just don't care. Whereas if you've got really crappy audio, people are more likely to turn away than if you had poor quality video. Totally, totally, totally. People will forgive you for average video, as in video quality. But the audio, if the audio's, if they can't listen to it, can't hear what you're saying, and it's all muffly or noisy, they'll turn off. And go and find another video. So the little smart lab mic that I'll give you the link and you can put it in your show notes. It's $70 worth. It's got a little pouch, and it just plugs in. And it's got a length, it's got a meter and a half length. Easy. And let's be honest, that's like one or two product sales, isn't it? Like, in fact, it's going to get you the different. Now that you're the leader, you're the leader, you're the standing out for everybody else. You are the front runner. It's $70. And it's a text deduction. It's not like you're going out and spending oodles and oodles of money. And I guess, you know, depending on what you're trying to sell, you may not even need audio. Just wats a music over the top of it. Yeah, and then even then. So music, you know, you've got to make sure that you're using music that is royalty free and all that sort of stuff so that you can legally use it. So there's a few different sites that you can pick, premium beats. And basically you search for them online and you can get the audio. And the audio track is one of those other things. I always find when I get to the end of editing a video that sometimes the audio, trying to work out the actual right music can be the hardest part of getting the video. So I probably, you know, suggest that you get a video, sorry, an audio track. That is your sort of theme track. So that you can just have that one track that you know that you're going to put on, you know, underneath all your videos. And that also helps with your branding as well. So that when someone listens to it, the audio becomes a brand element to you as well. So, you know, whether it's upbeat because you've got an upbeat product or whether it's a, I did some meditation one the other day. So, you know, it was meditation music. So it was soft and, you know, lovely sort of music. So it depends on, yeah, what your product is. And if it's a, you know, like a fast product, like a skateboard or a bike or something like that, well, you want fast music. So there's a different, there's a few different things there that will help you with your production levels by adding the right music and everything like that. But for the listeners, you've got an iPhone or a smartphone in your pocket that does 1080 HD video, which is basically better than what you get on your TV at home. And you've got it there, but just with the right little, few little techniques and skills, like the microphone, having a light source that's in front of you so that it lights up your face, not being in front of something that's overly bright. There's a whole lot of different things that can actually get out of going. And I'm sort of all part of that now. I'm just about to start some workshops based around all that to help people take. I'm finding that gap in people where they know they need to use video. They want to use video, but it just becomes too hard based on the shooting, the editing. They've tried it before. So I'm trying to give them that skill so they can at least start it. And then hopefully when they are millionaires making lots of money that they come and hunt me down. And that's a fantastic thing. Is that going to be an online course or a live in person workshop? I'm going to do it both ways. I want to do it in person because I can then show people. And the more you show people or get them to actually do it with their own hands, the more likely they're going to actually use that skill. But definitely going to do it online. I'm not saying I'm going to do it for ages and ages. For now that it's out there, you don't have a choice. And for those of you who are listening, Mick is actually located in Melbourne, Australia. And you can hunt him down. I will certainly be putting a link to his website in the show notes. So I guess you've kind of made it sound not that hard. You're just saying just get the iPhone out and shoot a video and see it on Facebook. Why are people not doing it then? It comes down to the fear. So the fear of seeing themselves on video. So I probably 99% of the time I do a video for someone. They say, "Oh, is that how I look?" And I sort of go, "Oh, is that my skill level? Have I not been able to?" And it's not because people see themselves in photos and they go, "Oh, that's not a very good photo." Or, "That's not this. That's not that." But it even limits myself. You know, what I do is as many videos as of me on them, and I don't necessarily like them sometimes the way I look. So it's one of those challenges. However, most of the time people don't care. They don't do that. How often have you watched a video and you thought, "Oh, that woman's hair looked crap. She really shouldn't have filmed that." You just don't. You just don't think that. You're just like, "Oh, my God. I didn't know how to use that product like that." Any time that you would probably get that point of going, "Oh, that chick's hair is really bad." Is if the content's crap. And the audio's bad. And the audio's bad. So if it's something that people want to know, they're going to look past that. They're not going to look past the audio if that's crap. But they're going to want to get the actual information. So as long as it's really good quality. And that's where you might even be bringing up some of those live streaming apps soon. Oh, yes. I haven't gone there yet. I was talking to Mick just before the show about Periscope. And in fact, it was only just this week that Facebook, that probably be several weeks by the time he listens to this, but this week Facebook brought out live streaming. But Periscope has been around for about three months now. And essentially it's live streaming, but it only stays up for a couple of weeks. And then it's gone into the heat. 24 hours. I was at 24 hours and it's funny because I've filmed TV shows. I do a lot of video, but I haven't been able to make the leap. So here I am saying to you, why do people not want to make video? And yet I have not done a Periscope yet. And that's for me, I guess. I think my biggest thing is I don't like being caught unprepared. And even though I love impromptu speaking and I'm actually reasonably good at it, the thought of opening up something like Periscope and trying to give a training without being prepared for it fills me with fear. I don't want you all to think I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. When you do other production in terms of video, you've got that time to script it to, you know, if you need to do one or two shots, then you can do that. We're not all one take wonders, are we? You did very well when you were down here. Oh, thank you. If you may cause me the one take one that my whole point of that is I've seriously got better things to be doing. I don't want to be doing too much editing, so just read the script and get it done in one go. So the thing with Periscope, just my little take on it, is that I think of it a lot of the times at the moment is noise. When I talk about noise, it's like a social noise, a social media noise where, as you're saying, you know, we haven't got time to spend on stuff that isn't quality. And a lot of times when I go to Periscopes, there's a lot of the first three or four minutes of people saying, "Oh, hello. Hello, Bob. Hello, Jane. Thanks for coming and seeing, you know, the Periscope." For me, that's not quality for me. No, I've tuned out within three minutes. That's about all you've got me for anywhere. Yeah, so there's a lot of that going on, and yeah, fair enough, it's new and people are getting on to it and stuff like that. And then there's the quality. So a lot of people are just putting their iPhones up and not thinking about lighting and not thinking about audio. So there could be noise in the background, a computer fan or something like that. So it's once again being prepared to do the Periscope is one of those key things, I think, and then the quality as well. So, you know, we could talk about portrait versus landscape shooting as well, which is a... Oh, just quickly, because we are getting towards the end of time. So back to Facebook, should we be shooting? And what I might actually ask you to do is maybe put together a hints and tips sheet for us that our listeners can download. Because you've said quite a few things that I've written notes down, but maybe if you put them together, that will thank you very much. So, portrait on landscape, how are we shooting? Okay, so if you asked me this question three months ago, I would have said landscape, landscape, landscape. Now, the reason for landscape is that's when you've got your phone longways that you're holding it longways, so that you're picking up a lot more vision across the landscape, basically. The reason for that is that your TV at home and your computer screens and everything else is formatted landscape, so that you've got a wider view. So just, you know, in technical sort of terms, HD video is 920 by 1080. So 920 pixels wide and 1080 high, where if you're doing it as a portrait, you're doing it the other way around. And if you want to try to fit that into, you've probably seen on YouTube videos when you've seen the black lines down the side. The reason for that is that it's been done in portrait. However, with that, if you go and look at that same video that you just saw on YouTube with the black lines on your mobile, it will come up full screen. So that people don't have to turn their actual screen to get a full video. So the issue there is that because more videos have been watched online, it then becomes a thing about that laziness. Are you too lazy to turn your phone inside? And if you are, then shooting it in portrait is going to mean that you're full screen. And you're not just the half screen if you've got a video that you haven't turned the screen. So it's an interesting one. And then you've got periscope that shoots in portrait. You've got me cat that shoots in portrait. I haven't looked at what Facebook does. It looked pretty square when I saw one that Darren Rouse was doing yesterday. But basically you're saying it doesn't matter to shoot the damn video. Yeah, content, content, audio, and you or your product on it, just shoot the video. And get it out there. I think people are just going to look past that sort of stuff and just get it out there. But if in doubt, shoot it in landscape, that way you've got more ability to edit it later on. I talked to someone the other day, they said, "Should I shoot in portrait or landscape?" And I said, "So when they do your bio, your book in 20 years time?" And they say, "We'll put these videos in that you shot 20 years ago. Do you want the black lines coming up on the big movie screen?" Well done. Then shoot it in landscape. In landscape, yeah. Thank you so much for all those tips. It's so much to take in. And I'm hoping that I am such a big advocate for video. And you mentioned something earlier that I did write down in my notes, which was writing comes easily for some people. I, just to bring this all back to me, I was blogging earlier on in the year. And I just couldn't get into it. It just seemed like such a pain. And I think when I did the videos with you, all of a sudden I realized, this talking thing's way easier than the writing thing. I'm out of here with the blogging. I will do videos for you, but I'm not writing for you anymore. So, yeah. Because it's just about finding which one works for you, doesn't it? But at the moment, video is the thing. People love video. And it's the same for me in terms of writing. Am I an okay writer? Yeah. Am I great? No. So, video gives me that leeway to stuff up a few words, to play around with grammar a bit without getting the grammar police onto me. And the other thing too, if you really want to have it as text, you can just always get your videos transcribed. Exactly. I love that. I haven't actually thought about that, but that's a great idea. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mick. Where can we find you? You can find me at linchpinstudios.com.au. That's where my little company is. And also, once this podcast is out, my podcast will probably be out too. This is my little spiel now. So, I'm doing a podcast called Social Artisans. And what it's about is the behind the scenes of me doing video and social for companies. So, you'll get a reality TV, but in a podcast. So, you'll get a little bit more insight into, say, why I chose a certain type of video, or why did I do this, or why did I put the video there. So, it could be a nice little sort of addition to this podcast that could help you just understand a little bit more behind the scenes of the whole production and the whole way of getting your video seen. Well, we will certainly make sure that we link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Not a problem. Thanks for having me. See you later. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. You can find all of the show notes over at selenenight.com. If you found something that you heard today particularly useful, I'd love it if you could leave me a review on iTunes or Stitcher. And of course, feel free to share this episode with someone that you think could benefit by listening to it. Want more retail business strategies? You can watch the Bringing Business to Retail TV show where each week I'll answer a question or provide you with a simple, actionable retail business strategy that you can implement in your business right away. If you have a question or a guess, I'd love to hear from you. Drop my team an email at podcast@selenenight.com and I'll see you on the next episode. Have a great week. [MUSIC] (upbeat music) [ Silence ]