Believe me. I get it. As a small business owner, you are constantly asking yourself, “What types of marketing should I be investing my time and money in? Print, radio, TV, social media?” This is what you need to ask yourself: Who is your audience? What are you trying to achieve? In February 2017, as I was trying to think beyond my short-term marketing objective (selling scooters) at New Scooters 4 Less. As the Chief of Everything, I asked myself these questions and ended up throwing myself a curveball…
Who is the audience?
Anyone who will listen. Customers. Entrepreneurs. Scooter dealerships. Scooter distributors. Small businesses. Large businesses.
What am I trying to achieve?
Being the Scooter Capital of the World.
I know. It even sounds nuts typing it. But, I have an intense drive and ultimately thought to myself, “If we are going to be the industry leader and influencer, we need to start acting like it.”
My answer: vlogging (video plus blogging). Why? Leaders lead, and I feel it is our responsibility to make the industry better by sharing our expertise with others.
Now, before I summarize the lessons learned over the last year through this process, it is important to know a few things:
- Video is important. If you end up taking only one thing away from this article, let it be this: If you are not using video to grow your business, you are making a big mistake. The solution may not be “vlogging,” but I think every business should invest in video in some form or fashion such as promo videos, Facebook Live, etc. There are a ton of ways you can incorporate video into your marketing plan, and there are several terrific local media companies that offer video services. At the very least, you have a phone that records video. Use it.
- Although I think every business should incorporate video, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone has the personality to be on camera.
- When I commit to something, I go all in. Investing in cameras, mics, other equipment and a full-time videographer is probably extreme for most businesses. I understand that. I don’t expect or think that you should necessarily do the same. Remember, my objective is Scooter Capital of the World. For me, it’s a large investment, not an expense. (Again, what’s your objective?)
Think vlogging may be right for your business? These are the lessons I have learned over the past year creating my vlog, NS4L.TV.
The challenges:
1. The camera freaks everyone out. You know what is stranger than meeting another business professional you haven’t met before for a cup of coffee? Try showing up to that coffee meeting with a camera. Yes. I’m that guy. Then, you have patrons of the coffee shop squinting and staring at you thinking, “Who is that?” Servers at restaurants don’t want to interrupt your filming. People duck the camera. It can be very awkward, especially at first. Today, it doesn’t even phase me as it has become part of who I am. Others are becoming more comfortable with it, too.
2. You have to commit. Most of the time, you think to yourself, “That (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.) thing is important. I’m going to do that.” You proceed to start an account. You make a few posts for a month or two, but then you stop. Why? No immediate results. You tell yourself it’s not working when the truth is you haven’t put in the time or commitment. It’s going to take a lot of patience. The same goes for creating a vlog. Keep at it, and stay consistent.
3. Transparency makes for great content, but it is difficult. Ever thought about recording your every move and putting it on the internet for your competition to see? That’s what we do. However, I remind myself why we are doing this. We want to be the scooter capital of the world and the industry’s largest influencer. We share what we do and how we do it with the world, including our competition. As an entrepreneur, I want to have significant impact on this community and in the lives of others. Transparency makes the story real, but it isn’t easy. The good news is that at the end of the day, you control the edit and can choose how transparent you want to be.
4. Captioning is important, but it isn’t fun. 85 percent of video on Facebook is watched in complete silence. For this reason, it is important to include closed-captioning on all videos. At first, my team and I were captioning video ourselves. This proved to be very time-consuming and ate into our production time. We’ve since started outsourcing the captioning to a company called Rev (rev.com). Rev charges $1 per minute of video and has sped up production time quite a bit.
By no means is creating a vlog easy, but if you can get past the challenges, there are some terrific benefits.
The benefits:
1. You hold yourself accountable. There is absolutely no better way to hold yourself accountable as a leader than to record your every move. In one of the first vlogs we released, I watched an interaction I had when I asked one of my team members to help me and thought, “Dang Collin. You could’ve at least said ‘please.’” Reviewing my interactions with team members, customers, business professionals and others has made me a stronger leader. You will learn a lot about yourself in the process. In addition, you know what happens when you start sharing your goals with the world through video? You hold yourself accountable to accomplishing them.
2. You’re storytelling. People connect with stories. Entrepreneurs connect with the struggles I go through in building a business. Future customers connect with me and build a relationship with me before they have even met me. They feel like they already know me and want to be a part of our story. (Yes. I have sold scooters because of the vlog, another short-term benefit. I freaked the first time a parent told me, “I just completed a marathon of your vlog, and we look forward to buying a scooter from you this fall.”)
3. Recruiting. Your vlog will become a recruiting tool. I’ve had individuals see the vlog and message me looking for an opportunity to join our team. It’s a terrific way to expose potential team members to our mission, vision and values. We also send applicants the vlog during the application process so they can get a feel for whether or not our environment is right for them.
Ultimately, the greatest benefit is that it’s working. We’re having influence and impact in the lives of others (specifically in our industry). Last week, another dealer emailed me and said, “I love your vlogs and have gained a lot of respect for your dealership since you started them. Because of these videos and the stuff we’ve seen and heard, you are exclusively the dealer our company recommends at UF.” Granted, it’s only a year in, so we still have a long way to go. So many people have asked, “What if you invest all of this time and money and nothing comes of it?” Well, I will have the greatest documentary of failure to share with my grandkids one day. That alone will make it worth it.
Want to incorporate more video into your business today?
Here’s a great place to start:
- What’s your expertise? The more niche, the better. Create a “show” around that niche. This is how you will provide value to your audience.
- Use what you have. Pull your smartphone out and press record. It’s 2018. People don’t care if your video is made with your hand out in front of your face (See NS4L.TV Episodes 91 – 95 from my trip to Italy. One-hundred percent was filmed on my iPhone).
- Schedule its release. Example: every Wednesday at 12 p.m. The more consistent, the better. Your audience will start to expect the release.
- Keep it short. I’ve experimented with several different lengths of video. The video has to be really good to keep someone’s attention for longer than a couple minutes.
- Need a little guidance? Email me. [email protected]
Follow my journey of making Gainesville the Scooter Capital of the World at https://NS4L.TV.
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Collin Austin is the COE – Chief of Everthing – at New Scooters 4 Less (a Gator100, Gainesville Area Small business of the Year, Purpose 20 and Impact Award Recipient). You can reach Collin on Twitter at @realcollin, Snapchat @ns4lcollin and on Medium @collinaustin.