Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Videos

#LeadandLift | Episode 36 | Corey Piper

As an entrepreneur in the digital space, we need to create and publish videos to attract clients. Many of us, including me, shy away from it simply because we lack the skills. Yet, due to COVID, we’ve all had to go virtual at some point, and now we’re hearing from the top influencers that publishing videos increases conversions.

Simply publishing a video isn’t necessarily going to make an impact. So today, I introduce you to award-winning filmmaker, Corey Piper with Piper Media Group, who uses his passion to help companies attract attention with intention and shares with us the Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Videos plus some additional tips for how to increase open rates and easily personalize client videos along with explaining why videos are important for your brand and how making videos can grow your business.

The Journey of a Young Boy to Corporate/Commercial Video Producer

Corey Piper’s passion for video production started as a school-ager when a fellow classmate got a video camera. Corey and his buddies all went nuts over it filming everything they could. The camera would go with them into the woods where they recreated movie scenes.

Creating videos transformed from a hobby to a passion when Corey convinced his school teacher to let him make videos on the subject matter rather than writing papers like his other classmates.

From there, Corey’s life adventure took him into the military where he left videography behind him. But when a passion is genuine, it’s deeply rooted within yourself, and about 10 years ago, the filming bug caught up with him so he started making movies. He didn’t just create your standard, run-of-the-mill movies, he created award-winning movies.

When COVID arrived on our doorsteps, changes occurred for many people, including Corey. He decided to take his skills and help people enhance their videos so they can shine brighter on the many available platforms that still allowed people to connect and build relationships, even during quarantines and shut-downs.

Corey Piper: Why Videos are Important & How Videos Grow Your Business

Videos allow businesses, coaches, authors, and in general, all people, to build camaraderie or even build social capital with people before even meeting them. In his own experience, he’s posted videos people have watched and followed and those videos allowed the viewers to accept Corey as a peer, an influencer, and a guide even though he’s never shaken their hand or even talked on the phone with them one single time.

Prior to the digital marketing age, a brand had to have other people talk about it to spread the word. Now, you can talk about yourself and your brand allowing your audience to view you, connect with you, and establish a relationship before you even know them.

But there’s a difference between the brand video Piper Media Group creates and a video you create yourself and post on social media. The difference is the production value.

Corey believes there’s nothing wrong with taking your cell phone, looking at it, and talking to it, but those videos are built for timelines. Meaning, you record it, publish it on social media, your audience sees it and engages with it, then it goes away.

When you engage with Piper Media Group for a brand video, they build video and content meant to stay. The video is created in a way it will always and continually represent you for a longer amount of time than what you’d produce for yourself.

Corey’s brand videos are produced, tested, and use science to attract attention. Basically, there’s a method that Corey and his team have mastered and are willing to share with you. This method supports their slogan: Attract Attention with Intention.

According to Corey, attracting attention with intention is very real. There’s a science to interrupting a person’s flow to grab their attention, deliver something meaningful, then ask the person to do something with your call to action. 

Easy Tips & Tricks from Corey Piper for Increasing Conversions 

Corey found a very interesting practice of simply putting the word “Video” in the subject line of an email to increase open rates. He experienced an increase that’s led to being a tremendous success in his business and outreach. Just including the word “Video” in the subject line can increase your chances of the email being opened by over 200%. This translates into a lot of business if you break your numbers down like that. So include the video in the body of the email and insert “Video” into the subject line to open a lot more doors than any other cold email will do.

Additionally, Corey attracts personalized attention from the get-go along with establishing a relationship with the viewer without having to physically meet and greet the individual. He does this by holding up a dry erase board with the individual’s name on it as the cover of the video. Just another part of the scientific method involved in attracting attention.

By specifically creating the video for the individual person, they stop and think, “Wait a minute. He has my name in the video!” and this helps Corey break through a lot of the noise in the industry.

Another quick and easy adjustment when making your videos is to get away from the wall, put some distance between you and your background, and add some layers. Corey explained a picture is a 2-Dimensional space, but you can make it look 3-Dimensional just by putting things behind you to create different layers. He suggests putting a window around you and placing pictures, nice plants, and flowers behind you. It’s very important and makes the picture feel more alive, more real, and creates a portal into real life rather than a distant picture somewhere.  

Corey Piper’s Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Video 

For those of us, like myself, who are just starting to use video, we sometimes don’t get around to doing it because we lack confidence in having the right skills. So I asked Corey, an expert in videography, for some additional tips to share with those of us who are just starting to create videos. You can also view Piper Media Group’s video on 5 Ways to Improve Your Video Today.

1.  Turn the phone sideways

   Our eyes are placed horizontally across our faces. When we look out in the world, we see a wide view, not a tall view. In our minds, horizontally shot videos are more pleasing, more understandable, and resonate more within us. Take note that our t.v.’s, movie screens, and computer screens are horizontally positioned. There’s a reason for that. So make sure your videos mimic that unless you publish to Tik Tok because all their videos are vertical.

2.  The Rule of Thirds

   90% of visual design adheres to this rule. Divide every screen into 1/3’s by drawing imaginary vertical and horizontal lines like starting a game of Tic Tac Toe. If you put the things that are important in your video along those lines or at the intersections of those lines, you’ll have a much more pleasing effect. These are the scientifically proven focal points where your eyes are drawn to. One exception is if you’re shooting for symmetry and looking directly into the camera, being in the center is okay. For example, if you’re doing a nature shot and want to focus on the sky, you’ll want to put the horizon on the top line, making it level with that line. If you have someone talking in a frame, you want the person at the intersections.

3.  Audio Quality

   Viewers will forgive poor video, but they almost never forgive poor audio. Think about watching YouTube and some guy comes on sounding like he’s in the corner of a huge gymnasium with all this echo and terrible sound. Viewers immediately discredit him as not being professional. But don’t worry, you don’t have to spend your life savings to enhance your audio. A simple $20 microphone to plug into the phone will improve your audio quality. Click here for Corey’s recommended audio add-on in the show notes. Have better audio, get better results.

4.  Headroom/Leading Room

   A lot of people will cut the top of their head off when recording video. There needs to be a good amount of space above the head, but not so much it makes you look odd because it really will look odd. The space above is the headroom, so don’t chop the top of your head off. Leading room is a big one. If you’re not centered, not looking directly at the camera, and not going to be on one of the lines mentioned above, then you need to be looking to the open space. It’s much more pleasing and looks nice, open, and bright. If you look towards the close side, it looks claustrophobic, closed off, and uncomfortable. Put yourself on one of those lines and look towards the other line.

5.  Lighting

   One of the most important things that can separate great video from poor video is lighting. If filming inside without professional lighting, film near a window. Get the light from the sun on your face, but don’t have the light behind you, have it beside you. When the sunlight is behind you it may darken your face causing you to be unseen. Proper lighting makes you appear more welcoming and happy versus dark and brooding. If filming outside, don’t be in the direct sunlight. Shooting film outdoors at noon creates hard shadows. The best outdoor filming times are dusk and dawn — the Golden Hour — because you can shoot in any direction and it will look gorgeous. Click here for Corey’s recommended lighting add-on in the show notes.

That’s a Wrap!

So much incredibly useful information from Corey Piper with Piper Media Group!

We’ve learned adding a keyword of “Video” to an email subject line, using brand videos, including testimonials, and personally addressing an individual in the video will increase your business’s numbers exponentially.

To top it all off, Corey left us with 5 amazingly simple tricks to add when making our videos and has provided us with a list of Piper Media Group’s recommended equipment to improve our cell phone video recording quality. Make sure to check it out!

Corey’s final words of wisdom to us were that it literally takes an hour tops to mess with his list of 5 Tips to Improve Your Videos and ensures our videos will dramatically improve. So I challenge you to use the tips he shared and go make your first video.

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 Links mentioned in this episode:

• Corey Piper Facebook
• Corey Piper Website

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Chabidaye Facebook
• Chabidaye Instagram
• Chabidaye LinkedIn
• Chabidaye Website