YouTube and Reprographics
By Ed Avis
You might think YouTube is a fun place to watch puppy videos, but a lot of your reprographics colleagues are using it to promote their services. The big advantage of YouTube is the visual factor – when your prospect can see your giant color printer creating a poster, he understands better how it can help him.
A couple of myths about promotional videos:
1) You need professional equipment. Wrong – even elementary digital cameras these days have video filming abilities that are good enough for nice videos.
2) Well, OK, but you better have professional production quality. Wrong again – no one expects your video to win a Grammy. As long as it gets the point across in a reasonably entertaining fashion, the video will work. Check out this video from Plotterpros, in which they demonstrate an HP DesignJet 5000. Or check out this demonstration of a Roland AJ 1000 by Express Graphics.
3) But won’t better production values help? Sure, it’s possible. Some of the videos touting wide-format printing do have better production values (or at least you can tell that someone edited them and added music), such as this one from Maxprintos.
4) No video I put on Youtube is going to compete with babies playing with kittens. Right, so if you rely on people to randomly find your video, few people will see it. Instead set your video up to play from your website. It will still be housed at YouTube, but it will look like it’s part of your website. This is easy to do, and it ensures that everyone who visits your website has the chance to view your video (without having to search YouTube for it). Look how nicely Cambridge Reprographics has embedded its YouTube video on its homepage (look at the right side of the page).
5) OK, but not many people are going to watch my videos in any case. Well, you never know. This video by laminating expert David Goetter has been viewed nearly 90,000 times!
6) Well, David’s video works because it’s a tutorial. That’s right – a video that just talks about your shop won’t get as much attention as a video about something specific, like how laminating can seal out moisture or how a small photo can be turned into a large poster. Make your videos mildly educational, and you’ll get a lot more views.
So when you’re considering new ways to promote your shop, make sure YouTube is in your arsenal.