Using Video to Promote your Business

I've briefly touched on this subject before when talking about making video slideshows but I want to talk about another avenue to using video to promote your products: How To Videos. This is a brief overview not an in depth tutorial, I'm still learning the process of shooting these types of video myself.

Many people enjoy seeing how handmade products are created and this is a great way to get your name out there. A good video tutorial will get picked up by blogs and shared, if you remember to include a link to your shop in the video description this can lead to traffic and name recognition.

So what type of tutorials should you make? Well I wouldn't suggest showing step by step how you create your most popular product, that would invite copycats to steal your design. Instead I think you should either create a brand new project that you don't intend to sell or do what I've done in my tutorials and teach a useful technique. I've made videos on created a silicone press mold for polymer clay and on using Ice Resin in a necklace to seal objects underneath.

What do you need to get started? The basics are a digital video camera that can shoot high quality video with a microphone, a tripod to hold the camera while you shoot, and a well lit space to shoot in. The good news is if you already have a good quality digital still camera it probably has a video shooting function that will be sufficient for the job, if not a small digital video camera like the Flip Mino HD will run you around $150. After you shoot your video you can upload it as is or use a very basic video editor like Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie to add titles, credits, or combine multiple video clips together.

After you've created and uploaded your video to a site like YouTube you need to get the word out about it. Embed the video in your own blog, create a Squidoo lens with even more info, post it to Facebook or Twitter, or submit it to crafting blogs that share tutorials.