Most video production company owners (or freelance filmmakers) don’t understand the true power of content marketing and how it can positively effect their business, their brand and their bottom line.

I’m going to discuss blogging (or content marketing, as it’s now commonly referred to as) and how you can use it to:

  • attract new clients.
  • build you brand.
  • close sales for your services.

There are lots of ways to establish and reinforce the appearance of your video production company, and at the same time attract new clients, and we’ve discussed many of these at Filmmaking Lifestyle.

Whether you want to improve your social media optimization, have an attractive and functional website, expand your networking goals, set diverse promotional strategies, we have you covered.

However, there’s one method of lead generation and branding that we consider special and particularly effective for video production companies. In fact, it’s kinda ironic that I haven’t yet written an article about this method, because the whole of Filmmaking Lifestyle itself is filled with this method.

And that, of course is content marketing.

So What Exactly Is Content Marketing…and Why Should I Care?

Content, if used right, is what drives the majority of online spending. Whether it’s a write-up on your favourite tech blog, a review on Amazon, or a product placement video on YouTube, content is driving sales more than ever before.

Content marketing can be any of these things and more:

  • a blog post.
  • a video.
  • a podcast.
  • a social media post.
  • an infographic.

According to the influential LeadersWest Digital Marketing Journal, 42% of consumers look to blogs for buying decisions and 52% say that blogs have influenced their buying decisions.

The power of content marketing is probably best emphasized by comparing it to traditional marketing.

Most forms of traditional marketing could be described as outbound.

This is where you’re making an outward push to get new leads.

Classic examples of this are making cold sales calls to prospects, knocking on doors, putting flyers on car windscreens, etc.

Would you like to learn how to get more video production clients? Click the image below to get your free, downloadable guide to getting more video clients and growing your video company!

   

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is a more modern form of marketing that is more pull in nature – you create content that allows prospects to find you.

This form of lead generation is far more powerful, and is what most of the internet and social media is built upon.

Let’s look at an infographic from Nicole Karl’s that shows us a breakdown of the facts and figures involved in content marketing:

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Why Content Marketing: Some Good Reasons To Share Your Experience

Besides the good fun of writing and sharing your knowledge with potential clients and with other people that work in your industry, writing articles is proven to bring in more business and to help establish your brand in the market.

Even if you don’t write the articles yourself, it’s certainly going to benefit you get your thoughts and ideas out there.

Why?

You might write articles to…

Let’s jump into these concepts in a little more detail:

Boost Search Engine Optimization

Posting substantial amounts of written material will definitely bring people to your website or blog, even if they are not looking to hire a video production company.

This, in turn, will give a certain status to your website and if you write your articles from an SEO perspective, this will boost it up in search engines. That means that you can slowly grow your profile to such an extent that you can ranking for keyword phrases about video production services. Your site will come up closer to the top. In other words, blogging and writing content will drive search traffic to your site.

I’m going to go in-depth on a future article about video production SEO.

Branding

Whether people reading your articles are potential clients or not, developing your image online by sharing your knowledge via text, images and (of course) videos will definitely help promote your brand and make you increasingly popular.

As we’ve discussed previously, this is the ancient art of building up a brand identity and crafting your message to your target audience.

Attract Clients

Content marketing, if done right, should be the best way to show your clients how good your work is, how professional you are, and how much you know about your business.

Don’t forget, you’re a video production company, so include as many good examples of your work as you can without being overwhelming.

I’ll tell you more about how to create your content in a minute, but first…

What Do I Want To Talk About? Choosing Subjects For Content Marketing

What you choose to talk about in your content is just as important as how to choose to talk about it. With that said, here are some ideas:

Profitable Subjects

Choose subjects that not only might interest your readers, but also focus on profitable keywords. What does this mean? Let’s dive into SEO for a second and discuss some keywords you might consider when writing a blog post for your video production company.

Let’s say you own a video company in San Diego in the United States. You figure you run a video production company, so writing about video production might be a good idea.

Correct.

With your SEO knowledge, you know that writing about video production related topics (using keywords) is a good way to rank within search engines like Google. You then consider this and choose the keyword ‘video production service’ to write about.

Not so fast!

Whilst that is a related keyword, it’s too general a keyword to make much impact in your SEO efforts. Not only will there be a huge amount of competition for that keyword, it’s also not a targeted keyword.

   

Instead, let’s go with the keyword ‘video production service prices’ to write about. Whilst the keyword ‘video production service’ would have a lot more searches, it’s not as much of a buying keyword as ‘video production service prices.’

This new keyword is the kind of keyword that has purchasing power behind it – someone might be using this keyword because they’ve thinking seriously about investing in video production services. They used the word ‘prices,’ after all.

It’s all about thinking about how people use the search engine to find what they want.

Maximise The Long Tail

Now, we could get even more targeted and also attach your area to the keyword. So because you are based in San Diego, we’ll use that in the search term. Now your article keyword looks like this:

‘video production service prices san diego.’

This time we’re truly using what’s called the long tail ― that is, search terms (keywords) that are more detailed and longer. Yes, they’ll be less searches for these keywords on Google, but there will also be less competition.

A great content marketing strategy is to utilize the long tail by writing lots of articles that maximize location specific, descriptive buying terms and building your SEO strategy around that.

With this method, you build a site that’s full of targeted articles that get people coming to your site who are:

  • from your location.
  • targeted to your services.
  • ready to buy.

Don’t be afraid of giving ideas to the readers that might mean a hire in the future. For example, an article like this, on how to make the perfect celebrity endorsement video should have famous people knocking your door down any minute.

Branding, Once Again

As we were saying before, branding is a great reason for using a content marketing strategy. So your excellent sample videos, or examples of your unique way of working, or colorful pieces on your most recent accomplishments, are all great topics for your content.

It’s not just about random blog posts or talking head videos that say a little about your company. Everything should have a purpose and be a part of an overall strategy.

Lots of people wonder what their company has to talk about. “We just make videos for schools,” they say, “What have we got to talk about?”

Lots!

I’ve never met a business that doesn’t have something exciting or interesting to focus on and tell a story about. As someone who makes promotional videos for businesses, this is my job. As a video production company, you should be used to telling enthralling stories about companies that captivate attention and present the business in the best possible light.

Examples, Examples And More Examples

As long as you’re not just writing about what your cat had for breakfast, most topics are fair game.

Like I said at the start, content marketing isn’t just about writing blog posts, although most of this article centered around that kind of content marketing. Content can be anything from written blog posts, to videos, to audio podcasts, to social media updates, etc etc. Use your imagination.

Some ideas for what you might want to talk about on your video production company’s website (or social media):

  • Talk about that latest project you just completed last week.
  • Discuss the video production (or filmmaking) industries at large.
  • Talk about general concepts in video production, like camera choices, shot decisions, getting the best audio, etc.
  • Write helpful guides for potential clients.
  • Get certain questions regularly from clients? Answer every question you get and turn into into a blog post.
  • Work with a certain type of client regularly? Talk about a topic that really hits home with them.
  • Create case studies that cover projects that you have successfully completed.
  • Talk about something controversial that might go viral.

There’s really no end to the potential topics you could cover on your video production company’s site. These are just a few ideas. The scope is huge!

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Show And Tell: 9 Tips For Creating Rocking Content Marketing

There are many ways to face a blank page. Now that you know want you want to talk about, here are some tips on how to make sure your content is rocking:

Research

Make sure you read all that has ever been written about the subject you chose… just kidding, this isn’t scientific writing!

You don’t have to read everything, but make sure that what you’re writing about it accurate and correct. You don’t want to make yourself look stupid, and you certainly don’t want to create misinformation in the industry.

Make sure to check some similar sites that might have written about the subject and feel free to link out to resources and guides that offer exceptional value to your visitors.

Make Lists

Catch your readers’ attention by making short statements, and put them in a list. Have you noticed that the last twenty articles you read online are titled something like “20 ways to…” or “5 basic principles of…”?

Well, that’s not casual. Many people prefer to have content broken into sections, so they’re easily digestible. Yes, walls of long text are a thing of the past. And rightly so!

Whether it’s because of social media, smartphones, or the Web in general, it matters not: keep your paragraphs short and to-the-point. List posts are great for this.

Setting bulletpoints with main information will also help you organise the matter in your head and will make the writing much easier. Here’s an example of a list-type article from this very site.

Yes, list posts lend themselves to sharing via friends and colleagues on social media, and they’re easy to consume and “get something out of them.”

Hypertext It

Don’t forget to make the most out of your platform. You should be linking your articles to other articles you have written, as well as helpful resources and related posts by other websites.

This makes your articles hold way more value and also shows that you’re part of the community and not trying to hog the limelight.

Spread the love!

It’s all about attention. Here’s Gary Vaynerchuk to explain more:

Textual, Visual And Audiovisual

Making the most of your medium also means making sure you embrace Web 3.0 (or whatever number we’re on now!)

Always try to embed videos and post images, either showing some of your work, or even if it’s just for illustrating a point made in a blog post. You represent a video production company, after all.

Ensure that these videos and images are always relevant to the point you’re making. You can find some really good and varied free image stocks online, using sites like FreeImages, or Pixabay.

Keep Up With The Good Looks!

As an artistic enterprise, you should always keep in mind that design is incredibly important. You’re a video production company and what you post and create on your website carries weight from a creative standout. This also means that there will be pressure on you to keep up your end of the bargain and deliver.

Visitors will be turned off by crappy design and awful images, especially if you’re running a creative company.

Don’t neglect fonts, image choices and visual style. You can read by detailed breakdown of what a video production company website needs, including a full complement of screenshots for every aspect of your site.

Hire A Writer(s)

One of the great aspects of modern internet living is that hiring someone to do little jobs like writing weekly articles for your website is easy and (reasonably) cheap.

In case you don’t feel comfortable with writing, you’re not good at it, or you simply don’t have the time, there are some great freelancer platforms like Elance, Freelancer or Upwork where you can hire someone to do the content marketing for you.

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Profread, Proofred, Proofread!

To maintain your premium appearance, you have to make sure your articles are properly written and edited.

If you write them on your own, and you can trust yourself with the task, make sure you give each article at least two extra readings before you publish it.

An insider tip: give it a few hours, or a few days before you proofread for the last time. It will give you a fresh look on the text. Here are some tips for amateur proofreaders.

Respond To Your Audience

One of the quickest and most powerful ways to grow an audience is to hear them out and respond to them. This means answering emails, responding to blog comments as well as messages on social media.

People want to be heard and you’ll build your reputation as an authority and an asset to the community if you respond to clients, prospects and fans alike!

One of the best ways to do this is to turn every question you get about your video business into a blog post. That’s exactly what Marcus Sheridan, of swimming pool company River Pools, did. He realised that he was receiving lots of commonly asked questions from clients and prospects and so he set out to answer every single question via a blog post.

All of a sudden, his pool company’s blog grew into the authority information portal for people interested into swimming pools. Not only did he generate a serious amount of traffic by becoming the Wikipedia of swimming pool knowledge, but his sales rose to unprecedented levels. Marcus credits his content marketing as the factor that turned around his business from near bankruptcy to a thriving company that saw off a tough recession.

Leverage Your Social Media

Social media is essential in our mobile and 24/7 switched on world.

Especially when blogging, one of the best ways to reach readers, besides search engines, is Social Media sharing and caring. Make sure you give the option and encourage your readers to share your articles on their  social media platforms of choice. Just like I’m about to do below!

I hope this article has encouraged you to take on the task of using content marketing to grow your business. Not only will you find you’re increasing the numbers of leads you get through your website, but you’ll also find that through inbound marketing your prospects are more ‘pre-sold’ and ready to purchase your services at the first point of contacting you than ever before.

In this way, content marketing is an amazingly effective tool for both marketing and sales.

I’ve given you the whys, the whats and the hows, now it’s your turn to make a move, and give content marketing the best you have! I hope to hear stories about how you’ve knocked it out of the park!

If you’ve found this article helpful, let us know in the comments below. Have questions, thoughts or suggestions? Drop those in the comments, too. We’d also really appreciate you sharing this post using the share buttons just below!