So does production value matter? Do you really need to invest in quality microphones, lights, cameras, all that kind of stuff if you wanna start creating video content, podcasts all that kind of stuff, do you really need to focus on getting the best quality equipment in order to have success with the marketing and generate more clients? Now the answer is kind of yes and no.

Yes in the sense that there are certain aspects that need to be higher quality than what people standardly have by standard. So what I mean is that for anyone who wants to do video, now, I’m a huge promoter of video content for a number of reasons, first of all, video is a huge trust builder. When you see someone on video, you can see so many other forms of communication beyond just the written content, you can see their mannerisms, their facial cues, their other forms of communication and it’s very high trust building cause you can actually start to get a feel for the human being on the other side of the camera or on the other side of the business.

And that’s what we’re trying to do, we trying to generate leads, you wanna get more clients, you need to be able to build trust, that’s the only thing that is gonna get people to wanna talk to you, it has to be around building trust especially if you’re trying to get clients who you can’t meet up for coffee, with for coffee or get those face-to-face meetings. So video is really powerful for that reason plus it can be turned into so many other different types of mediums, you’ve got podcasts, you can turn it into articles, transcript, that and create articles from it.

Yeah, it’s just a really powerful medium, but beyond that it’s just such a great way to build trust, build quickly and see the human being on the other side of the business cause that’s ultimately what we do business with, is human beings. So when it comes to creating video, and yes I believe everyone should be creating video in this day and age it’s oh, and also one more thing that’s really great about video is there’s less competition. So video is powerful for three reasons, high trust-building, really leveraged so you can turn it into a lot of different things and there’s less competition.

So if those three reasons aren’t enough for you to start doing video, I don’t know what’s gonna get you to do video. Now assuming that you are interested in doing video, you understand the value in doing video, do you need to get all the best equipment to get started? Now ultimately the answer is no, except for one thing, a decent microphone, that’s the first thing people will pick up on if it isn’t good and most camera phones don’t have the best microphone, they sound really tinny and for next to nothing you can get really good quality microphones.

I can put a link into the one I use, it’s a smartLav+ Lapel Mic, fantastic quality, about $70 and I use it all the time, really good. That was the first thing that I bought when it came to doing videos. Everything past that is nice but it’s definitely not essential. Lighting beam next thing, I’ve got this big soft box thing here which helps me get the lighting right. Shouldn’t have moved that, Whoops, let me sort that out. Prove my point but I’ll show you the difference with and without lighting, so face is a lot darker and it’s gonna be a bit more washed out behind me and ideally I probably wouldn’t be filming with such a washed out background.

Now, the reason lighting is the next thing you wanna focus on if you are going to is because most people don’t realize how powerful cameras in their phones are these days. You really don’t have to take it up that extra level unless you really want to and because these things are great all it takes is good lighting and you know, the thing can start to look really high there, on high production value. So basically what you wanna do, there’s a number of different things you can do, you can look up three point lighting, that’s a really effective way to highlight the person in the camera.

But if you just wanna keep it simple, just get some sort of soft box or led light that you can mount on your computer, that lights up your face, when it’s in shadow, it just doesn’t look great and this is a great trick for when you’re doing things on webcams as well, it’s gonna make you look a lot better and just things look a lot slicker. And lastly, what you can do is you can upgrade your camera but this is absolutely not necessary most of the time because the camera on most people’s, pretty much everyone’s phone is beyond ridiculously good.

So the two things I would focus on if you’re gonna do video content would be sound first and then lighting, but the know part of the equation of production value whether you need to do it or not is that lot of people are uncomfortable getting on video and I get it am little bit that way myself but I do it anyway because I know how powerful they can be. The know aspect is that people tend to always think that it’s not good enough quality and it becomes an excuse not to create content. So the absolute most important thing when it comes to creating video content, is just getting started, just doing something. Nothing you can do the first time is probably gonna be amazing, I mean, that’s just it.

If you look at the first videos I put out, they were horrible, they were really scripted, took me 20 minutes to say one minute worth of talking and it just sounded absolutely terrible. Just do it, just put it out there inherently we’re gonna get better the more we do things. So do you need production value, high production value to stop putting out video content? Is it gonna make the difference? Yes and no. Yes you need good quality sound, but don’t let anything in regard to production quality, being excuse to delay putting out video content, even just the stuff you do with the point and shoot videos do really well because they’re very real, they’re very natural, it’s all about building trust, we wanna see the human being behind the business.

So that’s it for today for some tips on how you video, where the production value matters in video content, my thoughts around it and if there’s one thing I can leave you with today is, start creating some video content, start putting it out there, you’ll be amazed at how much more engaged your network will be and how much more trust will be established once you start doing it. And once you start doing it, don’t stop, stay consistent, everything only works when you’re consistent with it. Hope that helps, am Ryan Caswell from B2BLeads.com.

If you wanna learn more, just head to the website or reach out and ask some questions, Cheers.