It does not have to cost much to produce a high quality web video

A great online video consists of several key elements

• Presenter
• Content
• Visuals
• Audio track
• Videography

Audio is more important than video for your online presentations

Surprised? Think about how you currently produce your web videos and your web meetings. Oh, right. You do not produce them. You call into your webinar from your cell phone and hope that your prospects that you fought so hard to bring into this meeting are paying attention to you. Convenient? Sure. Does it cost you sales? You bet it does.

You may well be using better technology for producing your product videos, but why are you subjecting your live prospects to the remnants of 19th century technology.

The telephone was invented in April of 1876.

Regardless of how great your telephone device is, you are still subject to the limitations of the phone network from 1876. The analog telephone network is limited to 3khz of bandwidth. That is likely meaningless to you, but you surely know the difference between listening to a 32kbps mono MP3 and 192kbps stereo MP3. The 32kbps sounds like AM radio. The 192kbps file sounds like a CD recording to most people with the exception of some audiophiles.

Would you make a music record using your cell phone?

If a 32kbps file sounds like AM radio, what do you think a 9.6kbps file sounds like?

The actual bandwidth of the GSM codec used by your cell phone is 9.6kbps

Everything you say gets downgraded to sound quality that is far below even that of AM radio.

Consider how the people are consuming your live presentations. Are they sitting at the computer? Can they listen to your presentation using their computer?

Which of the following sounds better?

• You -> telephone -> cloud -> listener’s computer
• You -> cloud -> listener’s computer

Buy this. This microphone costs less than $25. As of this writing, it was $18!

Audio Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone

Every computer today is equipped with a sound interface. Why not take full advantage of that?

If you must dial-in, please, use Skype. The quality of a Skype call is far superior to any cell phone conversation.

Audio quality is critical to the success of any virtual presentation. There does not have to be any difference between a marketing video and a live web conference call. Use the same equipment.

Video can be produced in two ways

• Screencast
• Live action video

A camera is simply not required for a screencast. An engaging presenter equipped with sufficient audio tools does not necessarily need a live action video.

Pay attention to how TV news programs are produced. There is not a single moment on your TV screen where there is a static image. They use slow panning for images. You may want to look into techniques how to introduce that to your videos.

Still working on the video portion of this post… stay tuned

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marketing by Leonid S. Knyshov