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Top 5 Free Video Tools for Producing Internet Marketing Videos

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A Tools Review by
Rahil Muzafar

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Who Says Your Marketing Video Can’t Be Cool?

Whether you’re making

  • a video commercial
  • something funny for YouTube and hoping that it will go viral
  • a video tutorial
  • or a video for any other purpose

And the video requires some sort of editing, you don’t need to pay for editing anymore. The advancement in the technology and a number of user friendly video editing software means that it is quite doable at home even if you have no understanding of how video editing works. Anybody with a little bit of creativity can produce compelling, share worthy, and interesting videos by using these intelligible tools and step by step guides which are freely available on Internet.

Multiple options are available for mixing up still pictures to create a meaningful video, joining different video clips into one, adding music, audio, or jingles to your recordings, and of course, adding titles, text overlays, and credits to describe your company or products. Sounds pretty convincing? Keep on reading to find a list of 5 freely available tools that you can use for making a video and make the most of this cost-effective marketing medium.

1. Windows Movie Maker:

This, as you already know, comes with the Microsoft Windows, without any kind of additional charges. It is a very basic, easy to use, and a beginner’s level software that can be used by just about anybody for producing some impressive projects and editing home made videos. The best thing about Windows Movie Maker is that it has a very familiar interface that syncs well with the overall user experience of Microsoft Windows, which means you will be able to get on with this tool in next to no time. A simple, yet powerful tool to create and edit videos, add audio, and many different effects, Windows Movie Maker is the perfect starting point for your video marketing campaign.

Wax:

Slightly more complicated than the Movie Maker, but still pretty easy to understand, Wax provides a great platform for creating professional looking videos with flexibility and special effects. The special effects include 2D and 3D, and it has a multitude of options for both professionals and home users.

Zwei-Stein and ZS4

This tool is one step ahead of the basic ones (even though it doesn’t appear to be when you first look at it) but once you get going, you will find that it’s an incredible video compositing and editing tool, offering some very unique options as compared to the features provided by other free tools. In fact the features are exploitable by both an average user and the pro. Zwei-Stein lets you edit a large number of videos, putting forward a staggering number of special effects. Both Zwei Stein and ZS4 are free for personal use and available for download on their websites.

Blender:

Blender is not really a video editor, but it totally deserves to be in this list. This one is actually meant for 3D content production and even though 3D animation may take more time, but it’s a great way to stand apart from the crowd. The interface will take some time before you can get used to it, but once you get a handle on the hotkeys, you will find that your effort were totally worth it. Blender lets you create unparalleled animations, and has a plethora of features that seem to offer more and more every time you get a little creative. There are a number of tutorials and lots of websites dedicated to the tips and tricks for 3d enthusiasts. Blender offers a number of tools that will make your task easier and there’s no limit to what you can do with this software.

Jaycut

This is a web based editor, which means you don’t need to download or install anything on your computer, Jaycut gives you the freedom of editing anywhere on the internet with some handy options available for web based software. It provides the functionality similar to the Movie Maker, and includes features like recording audio or video straight from the application. You can publish your videos direct to YouTube or save on your disk; in fact you can save the video on their servers to access it from any computer with Internet access.

So, what are you waiting for? With so many free tools and a platform like YouTube at your disposal, you have got no reasons but to utilize video marketing and publicize your products, create buzz, engage customers, and much, much more.

,

Rahil Muzafar

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This post was contributed by Rahil, and this piece of information is not the only thing he has to offer, you can also benefit from Hostgator coupon code and eleven2 coupon code at his website.

Thanks! Rahil!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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5 Mentors Everyone Needs

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by Patty Azzarello

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Rockclimber

Building your career without mentors is like climbing Mt. Everest without a guide and a Sherpa.  Sure, you can attempt it but why would you?

Mentors can have a bigger impact on your success than virtually anything outside your own efforts.

If you rely on your personal talents and energy alone, you are at an extreme disadvantage to those that get help.

We all need mentors that help with:

1. Imagination
2. Reality
3. Connections
4. Learning

1. Imagination

Where do you get your ideas? Who challenges your thinking in a positive way? Big imagination is required to do your job in a stand-out way. What fuels your imagination?

Most of my biggest successes have started from other people’s ideas, challenges or inspiration. Whether it’s how you solve problems, or create new opportunities, you can’t do it if you never think of it!

Mentors can help a lot, because they typically have a very different perspective.

To fuel your imagination, look for mentors who:

  • Are 2-3 phases ahead of you in the maturity of how your job function is done.  This can be in a bigger company or a more established business or product line. It’s critical to realize what is possible.
  • Work at an order of magnitude bigger scope or geography – learn processes and techniques they use that help them do a bigger job, so you can apply those as your business grows.  Learning things from a much smaller company can also be really useful.
  • Do your job in different industries – a Ford employee got the idea for the assembly line by visiting a butchery.  Seeing how other industries solve the same problems can help you see completely different ways of doing things which are huge innovations when applied in your world.

2. Reality

It’s easy to get so tied up in what you are doing, that you can lose sight of the reality of changing attidudes, business conditions, or market landscape.? ?So look for mentors who are:

  • 10-15 years older and way ahead of you career-wise – they can help you see the things you are not seeing, navigate the land mines, work through unspoken rules, and point out opportunities to change the game that you might not see on your own.
  • In their 20’s and are a master at the web and social networking – you need keep up with how the world is communicating.  Don’t get left in the dark ages of email.  Know how to share information and engage your customers.
  • Talented business people in other functions – you get ideas not only for general leadership techniques, but “man on the street” insights about how  people in other areas view what makes your function successful.

3. Connections

Look for mentors who are In the job you aspire to.  It is important to really learn about the job you want before you go for it.  Having a mentor in that role can expose you to the real requirements, so you can practice thinking about it, or maybe even take on some projects to get real experience.

They also give you acccess to jobs like theirs when they come up, because being in that role, they get asked who to consider – and they think of you!
Also,

You are most vulnerable when you are not connected. You have less ability to execute if you do not have a strong network. Sure, you need to be building your personal network directly, but mentors can expand your personal and professional network exponentially; not just in terms of size but of usefulness.

4. Learning

Finally, you can’t have too many smart people in your life.

Spending time with people you learn from is a big part of creating success.

What are your personal learning goals? What learning agendas do you have for your organization? What do you want to be better at next year than you are now? How do you plan to get there?

Whenever you find someone you can learn from, create a reason to spend time with them.  Learn what they think. Bring them into your staff meetings as special guest stars.

Getting Mentors

Don’t get hung up on the term “mentor”.  Just buying a coffee for someone you can learn from, and getting the benefit of their time is the important part.

However, if you can formalize it to the extent that you both acknowledge that they care about your success over time, the benefits multiply. So, when you come across a relationship with a potential mentor that sparks, close the deal!? ?Check list:

Do you have your 5 mentors??
1.   Someone in the job you aspire to?
2.   Someone doing your job at larger scope or maturity, or in a different industry
3.   A twenty-something, web 2.0 guru
4.   A master networker
5.   A career guide 15 years your senior

Useful Goals:

You should have a goal of adding at least one real mentor to your life every year, and learning stuff from one really smart person once a month. How do you connect with mentors? Leave your ideas in the comment box below!

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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What Is Your Title, And Why Do I Care?

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By Terez Howard

I have a secret to share with you. After years of studying online writing, I decided to become a “professional blogger.” And you know what? I made that title up.

I was in an interview once, and I was asked what it took to be a professional blogger. I was thinking, I made that title up to tell people who I am without having to explain who I am. Now you want me to explain it?

The writer, the blogger, the candlestick maker

When you introduce yourself to someone, you say, “Hi. My name is (insert name).” The stranger always gets around to asking, “So, what do you do?” That’s your opportunity to give your title. If you’re like my husband, you say that you are a teacher and a professional violinist. If you’re my niece, you say that you are a dental hygienist. But, when you’re a freelancing jack-of-all-trades, what do you call yourself?

You have to give yourself some type of title. Please don’t call yourself a freelancing jack-of-all-trades. I will give you three reasons why you need a definite title:

  1. Your title is part of your brand. It automatically gives people a mental image of what you do. A blogger blogs, and a marketing specialist markets. It is a snapshot of your work.
  2. Your title can open doors. When you tell someone what you do, it can be an opportunity for a super short sales pitch. For instance, my husband and I took a visit to an insurance agent who asked me what I did. When I explained my work, he said that he wished he knew me a few months ago because he was looking for a writer. I am confident that he will remember me if he needs a writer in the future.
  3. Your title makes you feel like you have a real job. When you blog online, some tend to get the idea you are practicing some sort of hobby to pass time. They don’t realize you are building a business and get paid in dollars and cents. Some of my friends still seem to not understand that I actually work from home. I have a job, and here is my title. Even if they never get it, I can feel like I am a member of the workforce. It’s a boost.

Choosing your title

Yes. You get to choose what to be called if you work from home as a freelancer. It is an easy, simple way to build your brand. Pick the right title, the one that tells people exactly what you do.

Be as specific as possible. If you blog about travel, then call yourself a freelance travel blogger. If you write press releases, then you are a press release writer. If you want to blog about and review screenplays, call yourself a screenplay blogger. That’s right. Even if you don’t have all the references, testimonials and samples to prove it, choose the title that will best describe who you want to be.

If you need to make a change in the process, do so.If you see that your type of blogging is evolving and that you are beginning to become someone other than the person that your title embodies, gently transition to your new title.

If you just happen to do more than your title says, don’t stress over it. Yes, I call myself a professional blogger. But I also write for a magazine, edit, build websites and create online content. I still call myself a professional blogger. However, if I find that the scale tips more toward another niche, I’m not afraid to make a change.

In the end, you are who you say you are. By the way, who are you, and why should I care?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger.

Thanks, Terez!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Be Irresistible: Grow with the Community Who Loves to Tell Your Best Story

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10-Point Plan in Action: The Off-site meeting

Money Can’t Buy Love

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At a recent corporate team-building meeting, I experienced a speaker’s dream of a setup. The company VP who spoke before me discussed a tactic used by the competition — how they secretly pay people to talk about them from speaker platforms and in the press.

That simple shocking story made my opening statement easy. I repeated the competition’s tactic, then I quoted Paul McCartney …

I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.

The company in the room already had a core community of enthusiasts who are fiercely loyal fans.

We talked about how love beats money and these six steps that will get people who love you together into a community and talking about you:

  1. Build your network before you need it.
  2. Share that story about you that connects people.
  3. Let them tell it the way they want to. Leave lots of room for positive mutation. People feel ownership when they contribute.
  4. Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share the message with friends.
  5. Make it so that folks feel proud, important, part of something they do together.
  6. Reward and celebrate your heroes who share what you do.

I used this presentation to organize my thoughts around those ideas.

We discussed how great marketing and growing businesses are a balance of

  • leadership and loyalty — leaders learn from our heroes, align our goals with our advocates, and attract loyal fans with by valuing them.
  • customer and company — great businesses value both customers and company. They know that without the company customers won’t be served and without customers the company can’t survive.

Today, I’m talking to another already irresistible organization about the same six steps and the underlying values inside their value proposition.

Great businesses are about one community — employees, vendors, partners, clients, customers — looking in the same direction, working together to build something no one person can build alone. Communities like that grow companies that serve customers who love them. Those customers bring their trust and their energy and are quick to share your best stories with their friends.

That’s how we get to be the first trusted source — a stand alone value that can’t be copied or replaced.

This week I met with the corporation that held the off-site. We began planning the strategy for making it even easier, faster, and more meaningful — irresistible — for the existing community to meet online, offline and even at the company. We’ll be showing them how they can share ideas, swap strategies, and invite their best friends to join them. We’ll be extending an unending invitation to become a bigger part of the living story of how a company and it’s customers grow together and thrive.

What’s your best story — the one that customers are already telling about you?
How easy are making for your heroes to meet each other and pass it on?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Pitches Are for Baseball: The Essential Difference Between a Pitch and an Offer

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Who Likes to Be Pitched, Anyway?

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Every it’s unceasing, email pitches from people who don’t know me. If you’re a blogger who has any following, I think you’re aware of what I’m talking about. If you’re just starting, you’ll be there soon. Some of them are ludicrous and amazing. I’m thinking of the one that was filled with baby bottles, squeeze toys and pacifiers — three things never mentioned on this blog in its five year history.

A pitch like that doesn’t gain any points, doesn’t open the door for more possibilities. In fact it just makes the person pitching appear to be

  • lazy
  • inexperienced
  • paid by the piece not the results
  • works quantity over quality
  • is not in a position to get such things in his or her own inbox regularly.

I bet you might have a few other ideas about people sending “pitches” to you.

Pitches Are for Baseball

The problem with a “pitch” is that it sets up the scenario of a pitch.

In baseball, a pitch is the act of throwing a baseball toward home plate to start a play. — Wikipedia

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Think about that. A pitch starts the play, which means that other people have to be in the game. If Roger Clemens, one of the best pitchers in American baseball, winds up and throws a baseball in a field of cows can we call that a valid pitch?

My guess is that Roger Clemens never threw a major league pitch without knowing who he was pitching to and what sort of pitch it would be. His job was to get to the win.

My guess is that Roger Clemens approaches business in an entirely different way.

Offers Build Business

In baseball, the pitcher’s role is singular and focused. He throws something in such a way that another person needs to respnd – to catch it or hit it back. The pitcher’s job is to move that ball in such a way that it helps his team win the game. Helping the guy at bat hit out of the park would be counter to his role, his goal, and his objective as the pitcher of a great baseball team. That sort of thinking seems to have invaded the way people pitch ideas and it’s counter-productive to building business.

Business has one compelling difference.

Great businesses WANT the people they’re pitching — clients, partners, employees –to hit it out of the park every time.

So rather than thinking in terms of a pitch, why not think in terms of an offer? Here’s how changing a pitch to an offer makes it more powerful, more compelling, and more likely to succeed.

  • An offer makes us think about the people we’re about to approach. The pitcher faces a “batter” from another team. The pitcher can’t pick the next batter. A business person can choose will receive the next offer.
  • An offer helps us realize that we don’t have to present the same deal to every person we meet. A great pitcher changes up his pitch to match the batter and the conditions of the game. Great business people take that one step further. They decide who gets their best offer by also thinking about what a future relationship might mean.
  • An offer keeps us aware that the people approach can accept or reject what we have to say. The pitcher’s job is to get the batter to swing even at the most undesirable pitch. A great business person finds a way to make an offer that aligns the goals so that both teams come out ahead.

A business wants a relationship that leads to a deal. The best deals grow everyone’s business. The worst pitches ignore that simple principle.

I’m sure you can think of other ways that thinking offer gets us to a better approach to a deal than thinking pitch ever could.

Make me an offer. Persuade me how it works for me while it’s helping you. You’ll get my attention far faster than you might expect.

BTW, I wrote the person who pitched the pacifiers a quick note to say that my son graduate college in 2007.

What do you think is the essential difference between a pitch and an offer?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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5 Critical Questions for Your High Performing Team of Volunteers or Employees

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10-Point Plan: A High Performance Team

Keeping the Focus Is Fun

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Whether we work for huge enterprise or help build the economy from your home, leaders know that we can only do so much on our own. To build a business that thrives, we need to rely on employees, partners, vendors, volunteers, and customer who pitch in to help us grow. It takes a team, a community to build anything that resembles a business. A great team can build a great business.

Anyone who’s assembled a great team knows that when you get the right people on the bus you make amazing things happen. And if you’ve been part of a team like that you probably also know that money isn’t what moves a team to greatness. As Peter Drucker realized, “money is a disincentive.” People notice when there’s not enough and it brings them down, but more doesn’t improve their performance in any predictable wya.

Those right people on the bus work for less money when they can do more …
more of the things that work,
more of the things they do well,
more of the things that get more done well,
more of the things that put meaning into what they do.

Those right people on the bus work for less money when they can do less …
less of the things that don’t work,
less of the things that they don’t do well.
less of the things that get in the way of great work — the meaningless work-like, useless,
out-of-date, without purpose, policy-driven, time-wasting, relationship-breaking, stupid tasks — in other words, things that make work rather than get work done.

Getting the right team going in the right direction is challenge in time when time is at a premium. It takes more than just telling everyone “Do what you do well. Delegate to others what they do better. And don’t do what we don’t need to do.” Still, if we can get that kind of focus and momentum going, we’re well on our way to business that is responsive to customers, highly performing, and structurally sound.

Nothing beats reflection, checking in regularly as benchmark test to be sure we’re moving in the right direction. Here are five questions you, your team, and your business should be asking and answering at least once a week.

  1. What is the goal? What are we trying to do or say this week?
  2. What is the strategy that drives us? Where do we want to be by the end of the week?
  3. What’s missing from the team? Have we got the right people doing the right things? Do we have too much of one skill set and not enough of another? Do we need to rearrange things?
  4. What’s right / wrong with the process / structure / culture? Who needs resources, room, or support to do their best work? Who’s doing the wrong work?
  5. What rewards are ours to claim? How can we leverage them? Do we define, measure, and reward the outcomes we seek?

People, teams, and businesses can get off track in big leaps, but we usually lose our way incrementally by losing focus while doing what worked in the past. If you use the five questions to keep challenging your direction, you’ll find that the team soon will see every decision strategically.

How do you keep the focus to grow the high-performance business you want?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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