Some say that the amount we speak to each other is in decline, especially with younger people. Have you ever seen a teenager without a mobile in their hands? Have you gone one day in the last month without checking any of these? Access to information and communications isn’t changing, it’s already changed and our language and messages have gone along for the ride.

Gone are the days when words were sacred, to print something required some sort of commitment to it. It costs after all so it had better be good. To print something for a mass audience, even more so. Nowadays though talk is cheap and messages are cheaper. People are bombarded by communication in an all out assault on their time and thoughts. Industries are becoming less about digging up coal with shovels and more about sending the right words to the right people, which somehow makes money.

The effects of this I think are both good and bad. Bad for the Thespians in this world but good for customer experience. The reason is that now companies can finally relax. Relax and say “morning tweeps, how’s your coffee?” and “sorry this isn’t working for you, we all try to keep it running as best as possible”. Consumers are used to informal messages because they’re often quick and this informality builds trust and relationships because they’re honest, real, as if you were sitting next to me. Not strictly worded releases for public consumption bulletin types.

And what this means is that if you’re talking old school to your customers, they see you as removed, the old man who likes to polish his shoes every morning, from another era and unless you’re selling penny farthings, that’s not good for business. They might not consciously think it, but they most probably do.

But ah yes, what about those who prefer proper and strict, who find it trustworthy and dependable. I say have your cake and eat it. Be proper and dependable when it needs to be thorough, be respectful, be succinct and don’t say things you don’t need to just to be friendly. Knowing your tone has always been about knowing your audience because one size doesn’t fit all. I am not for one moment saying that you should be sloppy with your communication. Just be relaxed. Small business’ you are agile and charming, use that to your advantage and big business’, we know you have shareholders to keep happy and that means being super professional and proper, but give in an inch, and your customers will love you a mile.

So here’s an opportunity to gain more rapport with your brand. Play to your strengths and know that if you were ever going to say things in a colloquial way, this is it! Do it now before the wordsmith’s backlash comes in a years time.

To write “copy” or to produce words to sell something is a craft that doesn’t require an English degree (in fact, perhaps that’s the worst place to start) but it does take some careful thought and consideration. Put effort into writing and you’ll do just fine if you know that you can do it.

The fact is, copywriting isn’t writing a book, it’s not wowing people through your knowledge of language or clever spin on words, it’s making what you want to convey as simple as possible to understand. Knowing a couple of things and knowing them well will help you convert your audience into your followers and most importantly, your customers, but all of those things come later. The main thing to remember is that you can become your target audience and you can sell to them, then, go easy on them, intrigue them and charm them and then do it all over again.

Rule 1. Become your target audience. Know who your selling to, not just “segment X of the demographic” but, Phil from Bournemouth who has a mortgage, doesn’t care about what you sell but does care about getting a cat. Put yourself in their place, get to know them and don’t simply sell to them, enlighten them and recommend them to your product or service which ultimately they would have bought anyway, they just didn’t know about it.

Rule 2. Become their friend or as close as you possibly can be as a brand and intrigue them, make yourself interesting, don’t think about what you want to sell them, think about what they want and if that means they’d be better off with whatever you do, then let them know. Always however let them take the opportnity to buy, and buy quickly and easily. A nice tool I learned was “KFC”, not to eat before sitting down at a keyboard but, Know, Feel and Commit. Give your reader the knowledge to back up their rationale for buying, let them know the benefits of you. Let your reader know what they should feel, calm and safe about your product, frustrated at the current situation or greedy enough to get more and finally, let them take it.

Rule 3. Don’t be an English professor. Write to be read, not to underpin the gracefulness of the English language. Commas, full stops and even sentence structures are tools to create the atmosphere you want to create and tone of voice you hear in your head. Use them to your advantage. Write as if you’re speaking to someone and they’ll read as if they’re being spoken to. Don’t on any occasion spell words wrongly however, strangers are protective, critical and harsh. Spell a word wrong and your faith is gone.

So there’s enough to get started, I believe it to be the most effective way to communicate with potential and existing customers. If you’d like more knowledge to help your understanding, get the book Write to Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting and check out Copyblogger.com‘s Copywriting tips .

If creativity is something you strive for (and a lot of you should even if it’s not your job), try to enact these things but don’t take it as a quick fix to coming up with great ideas. Do your own thing, feel confident in your techniques and… well, be creative.

Before this I’ve spoken about “white space” of time in video, now I’m going to talk about capturing the audience by becoming engaging, by hooking your viewer as soon as possible. They may seem to be completely opposite but by understanding the fine balance between them, you can understand how to make that perfectly capturing and comfortable video that will get you the results you want. The reason I find is because video is about being organic, natural and keeping a rhythm (if you don’t believe me, find a popular video you like on YouTube and play a song over the top of it). It’s about artist flare and imagination and now, with the web, it’s about science, attention spans and creating a vehicle to increase hits.

So now we know the nature and the conflict, let’s learn the science.

In my experience, videos lose viewers instantly. It’s not just every second that counts, it’s every millisecond. In the first 10 seconds, you’re likely to lose up to 20% of your audience naturally. If your video is for the web, then remember that a visitor will choose whether to stay on your site within the first 3 seconds, so 10 seconds is a lifetime for them. So that’s why I say videos increase the audiences time spent on your site. buying you at least 7 seconds on average is a huge advantage over your non-video counterparts.

After that, video will lose viewers less dramatically, I find around 50% of viewers watch until the end, that’s in my experience and perhaps it’s more targeted than the usual video, or maybe it’s some sort of magic retention formula I’ve created. It’s most likely to be the former.

So between that 80 and 50% loss of viewership there’s another opportunity to retain for longer and for more people. That retention will be based on how interesting your video is and how applicable it it to the viewer. An easy tip is to title it properly, if a viewer gets to it for the right reasons, they’ll be more likely to find it interesting.

The interest levels in each and every web video are very fickle, your audience will want new, exciting, changing and repeatedly engaging content. I think of the retention rate as a bit like a skimming pebble. You throw it out and 20% of the time it sinks to the bottom without a second skip. That’s your 10 second window, if it skims once then it’s more likely to skim twice and three times and so on. The more you can skim your video interest, the more people will watch it. In other words, the more to you can re-engage your audience, the further they skim along and the more likely they are to watch the whole thing.

You might want to try and change some simple things often as you edit, camera angles, people, places, titles and even colours or sound, try making 10 small videos that tie in as a main video instead of one long video that gets tiresome. Just like sentances make up a paragraph, mini-section videos can make a better video, one that skims further and engages more.

One last thing, if you can, track and analyse your own video, we use BitsOnTheRun.com to find drop off rates and viewer engagement. It also gives us more control over embedding and theming etc. Your audience will be different and unique, your videos will be as well so try and apply this logic to your results, edit for your audience and your medium and enjoy better retention!

I found an interesting video on social media in recruiting and as we look to grow, it’s interesting to know how recruiters are generally using social media to screen employees.

Making a video infographic has made me realise the importance of non-motion, time to absorb and read information. Because that’s what’s needed in an infographic.

It sounds simple enough and really, it should be. However, editing a motion graphics piece takes a long time, watching repeatedly and in the end you begin to know it like the back of your hand. The result of that it becomes difficult to read the content and absorb it as if you were for the first time. Of course having fresh eyes watching it and giving feedback is a great way to overcome this, another may be to put the music on (if you have it), and read the information out before you start editing, record the timings which seem comfortable to you on a piece of paper and use that as your guide. This isn’t earth shattering advice, but ti might just help the next time you go for an informative video. Not just in infographics, but in all motion graphics and video. It’s important to allow reflection and space, just like white space in editorial design.

Another outcome from the existience of this “white time” is something that works for me and has become a rule in my editing. Always edit to 4 bars like your editing music. Keep a rhythm and your video will magically flow better. Sometimes I’ll find a song that inspires me to create the video I want to make. Edit to that and keep it in time. Let the music show off your video, make your video show off the music. Even if you don’t use that track in the end (which you would want) due to editorial or audience or cost, it’ll make your video better. Replace it with another that fits in or don’t use any at all. Human beings are tuned into the rhythm and will appreciate the flow of the film anyway.

And fortunately for us, there’s a point to that, it’s what separates your brand from the others and if you’re consistent, it brings in a better return. I like to segment my market into 3 very important catagories to start with which can then be broken down into more.

New Business

This is the classic and the ones you’re probably most used to attracting. This is the segment that requires the closest to a pure sales technique. It’s likely they’ve signed up to your website or mailing list for some reason or another and so have already shown an interest which is all good. If not, and you’re chasing extremely cold leads, then prepare for a long road.

It’s not that you don’t have a good product or service, it’s that those willing to give out their email to you, give it out to a lot of others and from the incessant  email stream flooding their inbox, you’ll be lucky to get them to open yours, let alone read and click further. What is good is that to delete your email, they’ll have to read your subject title, think, is that interesting enough for me to spend time on? Will it require work as a result? Is it something I want? They will then figure out the source, your name and digest that information, link it to it’s origin, rate that and then decide to delete it. In short, they need to think about your brand and it’s legitimacy and associate that with the title. All to simply to dismiss it, all in the blink of an eye and I imagine we’ve all been there and done it a hundred times. The good point here is that even if your emails disappear into the bin of e-life, they’ve been noticed.

So why bother spending time on it at all? Why bother with content and images and swish videos? The reason is because they look nice and you have to account for the fact that someone may actually open your email and make that whole judgement all over again for next time or, click and buy something as a result. Don’t be dismayed that your campaign didn’t work first time, the next oen might as a result of the first. So how about sending a subject like “NewFlight Pictures – We’ve got what you want!”? If they click they click, delete they delete, who cares. Well, that subject doesn’t mean anything, there’s no purpose and no legitimacy and ultimately there’s no desire to open it (except pure mystery, which worked in Lost but it won’t work for you).

Which is what successful email marketing is all about, purpose. To you, you want people to buy more of your things, to people, they want you to give them more things that they like. So do it.

Give them a good perception of your brand initially, to bypass that “are they worthy” stage. Then, give them something they want, knowledge about your world and product information (if you think they crave it?). Not about your business but about the market it occupies, trends and advice. What I’m trying to say is that, if you want to build a good brand and a good reputation, the easiest thing to do is to become a topical magazine. That’s all, be a website that your customers (who will very likely be interested in your industry as well as your products for the same reason) will want to go to for their natural inquisitiveness. Send them that information, “NewFlight Pictures – How to Succeed at SEO” and they’ll be delighted that you took the time to do it, that your information is free and oh, you also sell stuff? Well, where else can I consider going now? If you don’t know what they want, then think what you would like, as a person dedicated to a subject to be involved in the business of it, you should think the same as them.

In summary:

Don’t be put off by harsh open rates.

Think about layout and design, make it appealing.

Think about your content to lead customers onto your site, give them what they want and tell them in the subject line.

Existing Business

So once you’ve already sold something or built an affiliation with a customer it should be easier (considering they received a good service) to sell more to them. You know they’re interested and you know they know about you. This is really the upsell. If you can, target complimentary products or services you sell, continue providing knowledge that they want (even make it exclusive to existing customers). And, here’s a good time to start introducing promotions. Whatever you sell, cut 10% off it, give a free consultation or give them a reward for helping you out. They’ll feel valuable and you’ll feel like you’ve made it on your new yacht.

Internal Customers

Don’t forget your staff or partners. Treat them as a third market you similarly need to impress, instead of them buying from you with money, let them invest time and effort. If they believe in your brand and if they know everything about the industry (not everyone cares about it as much as you do!) then they’ll pass that on in all the work they do and client encounters they have. Wouldn’t you?

There are many more strategies to use and there are some original ideas for using these rules, segmenting markets and targeting with pin point accuracy. But that will all come in time, remember that with so much free stuff floating around with little or no effort to needed to receive it, a culture of expecting things for free has emerged (opensource anyone?). Better them, make better resources, invest in them with an outlook for return, just like you would with advertising. Even if it doesn’t pay off immediately, your brand will love it and your customers will enjoy it.

As we’ve grown, our style has changed, the way we work has changed and our clients have gotten bigger. The new site reflects that and shows potential clients something different (not to mention it’s much better SEO wise). There’s lots of updating to do to get this monster with all it’s past content up and showing people what we do again, but we think this is a turning point, a new era.

The old site is dead, long live the site!

The trailer for our film “Burning Horizon”.

What we need to remember is to maintain our strong quality control, as soon as we rely on other designers to do this, we lose that control. This is no more apparent than in a recent project we came across.

We hired a freelancer, fresh out of Central St. Martins, we expected him to do a good job, work hard and then manage our client under our brand. This was an initial test to see if the network would work with us as the account managers and quality controllers. As we learned, without rules, contracts and time to manage the quality at the other end, it’s easy to lose what made us this successful in the first place. We ended up almost compromising our name and our reputation. It also cost us money to implement and we learnt fast from it. Never hire a freelancer you don’t properly know or trust.

That’s why with the new way of working, every freelancer is hired by us based on their previous work, a meeting, contract agreement and regulatory controls in pay. We will also offer the same safety to those who work for us, pay guarantees and respectful account managers, that’s our promise and it’s why we will be the most effective and efficient design agency.

We aim to be fair and transparent in our operations. Clients and freelancers will be encouraged to review each others conditions and fair pay schemes. We believe that business is made through relationships and trust, we want to build that through reliability and creativity.

We think that’s what clients and designers want.

Rachel is the link between us and the outside world. She manages our clients and our brand.

Rachel handles our PR and copywriting, she’s always knows the right thing to say and loves to find the right contacts.