I’ve spent the last few days spent messing around with video and seeing what can be done with it and whether it could be used to good effect in web promotions. Every week we send out a newsletter, which is ok, but it’s so much easier if a user can visualise what’s going on or what’s on offer at a website – especially when if we launch a new feature or there’s something different out there in the competition world.

So slightly inspired by Fraser’s podcasts and in part looking for an angle to promote IWOOT in an innovative way the first Loquax Competitions Video newsletter was born. The result of which is below:

Now, it’s a “first attempt” (which means it’s about v1.8) but any further tweaks and twizzles weren’t going to change things too dramatically at this stage, so it has now been unleashed upon our user base (with news of our 10th birthday competition that’s revealed in the video to encourage people to watch) so the feedback (if any) will be interesting.

Admittedly the voicing could be better, it’s actually a lot lot harder than you’d imagine, and i should really have saved the outtakes, the general flow could also be improved, and there’s some minor issues with the soundtrack in that during transitions it wouldn’t play, but on the whole I’m reasonably pleased with the final video. General filming improvements will come with in time just by getting to grips with the software, which wasn’t too bad to start with but there were a few niggles towards the end, and/or finding something better to do the job.

With web 2.0 and social networking all the rage it’s important for affiliates to try and be innovative and constantly trying to find new ways to attract interest in their website. So, hopefully this experiment will work (really we can only judge it on user interest and feedback) and we can then go on and use video on a more regular basis to interact with our users in a new way.

Additional Info
The video was put together using Camtasia Studio. They offer a 30 day free trial.

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