In Tip#133, you identified your expertise. The next step in creating video content is to identify your ideal customer. 

To identify what your customers want to know about, you must first understand who your customer is and what are their needs. 

Fact: 86% of consumers say personalization plays a role in their purchasing. 

Knowing your customers’ needs and the questions they may have about making a purchase or doing business with you is the first step in creating your edumarketing plan. 

Let’s start with step one, which is identifying your ideal customer.

Step One: Identify Your Ideal Customer

Here is what that may look like if you are a real estate agent. 

Ideal Customer(s):

1. Someone who wants to purchase a home.

2. Someone who wants to sell their home.

Pretty basic, huh? Now, we will get into more detail about their wants and needs and how to drill down on what they need to have to really qualify as a...

Over the next several months we are going to be sharing with you information to help you build a foundation of creating educational video content. These tips will help you create more video content. We’re including a handout that you can download, print off and use. Each week we will break out one step to help you come up with topics that will help to educate your borrowers and partners. We encourage you to print off the hand out and follow along each week.

The first step in creating video content is to know who you are and how you help your customers. Simple right? Not really. I’ve worked with several long-time originators who have struggled with explaining all that they do. Take the time to answer these questions and if there is anything we can do to help you, please contact us at [email protected]. We love helping originators create video content!

Discover Your Expertise

If you are a financial planner, your...

1. Use lighting to highlight yourself or your subject

2. A key light gives direct source for your production

3. Fill light fills in shadows from the key light and gives even look

In this video we share some tips for adding lights to your videos. If you'd like help editing and producing your videos, let us help you! We can edit and produce your videos and post them weekly for you on YouTube and social media.

It's a great way to build your marketing and expertise!

You’re ready to start filming. Follow these four basic tips to increase the production value of your mobile content.

1. Phone video settings

You’d be surprised how much a few switch-flips can make a difference when it comes to capturing beautiful mobile video. If your phone’s relatively new, we’re willing to bet it’s got the ability to capture video in 4k (fancy!), you just probably need to select it in settings.

Head to your mobile camera settings to check out the recording specs available to you to instantly bump up your video quality. (Heads up, iPhone users — make your videos even more gorgeous by changing these iPhone video settings.) Click HERE for instructions.

2. Lighting for mobile video recording

Always make sure there’s more light in front of your subject than behind them. It’s more important that your subject is lit nicely than your background and if possible, shoot in shady or overcast conditions. That’ll help keep...

We know you’re eager to know how to make a video with your phone, but if you want something really polished, you need to think about your content before you hit record. Here are three key things to keep in mind:

1. Start strong

One of the most important things is to grab the viewer’s attention near the beginning of the video. As humans rapidly devolve into goldfish, our attention spans aren’t quite what they used to be. Create a sense of engagement upfront to make people want to continue watching. Want to hold them for the duration of the video? Keep it short and sweet and get to the point.

2. Map it out

To help you get there, make sure you map out your beginning, middle, and end. Making a video is like getting lost in a corn maze, it’s not so bad if you have a plan, but if you don’t, you’ll be stuck in there munching on raw corn until it gets dark and security pulls you out. Okay, so mobile video production isn’t exactly like a corn maze.

...

It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that I watch the events unfolding in Afghanistan. I’m sure many of you feel the same. While the situations are arguably very different, I can’t help but draw a few parallels between what the people are facing there and the experience of a good friend of mine, Ramy Romany while fleeing Egypt with his family during the 2011 Revolution.

As a Christian Egyptian married to a white woman, Ramy was automatically considered an infidel by the Muslim Brotherhood who were rising up to take control of Egypt. Ramy and his family were lucky enough to make it to the United States unharmed.

Years later, my friend, Nick Nanton, who directed the documentary I co-produced for Folds of Honor, sat down and interviewed Ramy. His story was riveting, and reminded me that we all must have hope.

Although, the stories you have to tell do not hopefully involve as much drama, you do have stories, as do your borrowers. Think about how you can share those...

Zoom offers the ability for you to easily record a video and share your screen at the same time.   There are a few tricks to getting your Zoom settings dialed in so that you can show your screen and your video at the same time.  We’ve made some simple step by step instructions and created a video to help you set up your Zoom App to allow you to do a Split Screen on Zoom.

Let’s begin by setting up your settings in the Zoom App.  

1. Do Not Go To Zoom.us webpage
2. Go to Your Zoom App and Update your Zoom App Settings
3. Check on Record Video During Screen Sharing under Recording Section
4. Do NOT Check Place Video Next to the Shared Screen in the Recording under Recording Section
5. Under Screen Sharing Section, Check all Settings

Now that you have your Zoom settings in place, let’s hop on over to the Zoom meeting room and show how to show your screen.

Once you are in your meeting:

1. Click on the green Share Screen and share your screen.

2. Open your...

1. Shoot Horizontally

Computers are formatted to view videos horizontally.  If you’re shooting on your phone, make sure to shoot horizontally. This produces an overall better quality video and also allows for more of the scene to be in the frame. 

2. Shoot in 4k

If possible, record your videos in 4k. This quality was made for videos and allows for an amazingly clear and beautiful video, especially if you’re zooming in on something. It also allows for a much deeper and truer color tone. This is great because you really get the true colors that are in the shot.

3. Start and End with a Smile

Always remember to look at the camera lens at the beginning of your video and smile.  It is the first thing someone will see when they watch your video and it will help to make a connection.  At the end of your video, do the same thing.  Pause, look at the camera, smile and thank them for watching.  

Formatting your video is not difficult, you just...

If you want to create an engaging video, there are many parts at play! You need to come up with a topic, check the video quality, lighting, composition, position, etc. 

The first thing is coming up with a topic.  Don’t let the idea of brainstorming topics scare you -- It’s not as hard as it seems! Here are a few tips for creating video topics.

1. Start with your Customers 

Have you been asked the same question multiple times by different clients? Start there. Go back and think about what your customers and prospects ask most often or which questions they have unanswered that could be the basis for a useful tutorial. 

2. Think about Your Partners

Is there a new process for something in your company? Create a video walking them through the new and/or updated process! Most people are visual learners and learning the new process through a video will help them retain the information better than they would if it were in text.

3. Look at Your Products

Here...

Creating videos every week requires discipline and planning but can provide great rewards in marketing your mortgage business.   To help generate ideas for your videos, I recommend dividing your weekly videos into segments or categories.  If you have one category for each week of the month, you will be able to come up with ideas for those categories rather than looking at the whole topic of “mortgages” to figure out what video to make for that week. 

Four Course Menu

Think of it as four courses in a menu:

1. Appetizers
2. Salads
3. Main Dishes
4. Desserts

Yes, there are certainly other options and specialties, but let’s keep this simple.  You can do the same in your monthly video production:

1. Community/Lifestyle
2. Focus on YOU
3. Mortgage Updates/Program Highlights
4. Stories

By knowing “what” topic you need to create a video about, you can focus more on completing a video within that topic.  Let’s look at the first item on our menu,...