Spring Inspirations 2010: Steve Garfield on Using Video

If you have not met Steve Garfield yet, you really should. Steve is so smart, generous with his time and a patient teacher. Steve can help you with all things video and his new book, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business, is getting rave reviews all over the internet. Steve was kind enough to take some time away from his heavy book promotion schedule and be the next interview for our Spring Inspirations Series.

Steve, your book Get Seen is a bit of a playbook on all things web video related. You discuss everything from types of cameras to get to content to shoot. What was your favorite part about putting all your thoughts together in a book?

My favorite part of putting the book together was just sitting down to keyboard and telling stories…well really typing in stories. These are great stories and examples that people can learn from and be inspired by to create their own videos

What was one thing you surprised you when putting the book together?

What most surprised me about writing the book was not the writing of the book, that I totally enjoyed, it was when I was finished. David Meerman Scott, editor of the series, told me now the hard work starts, all the work that has to go into marketing and promoting and getting the word out on the book.

We here at Hall work with a lot of small to medium sized B2B business. Is there a place for B2B companies to produce online video? What kind of content can they put together?

When I hear the question, “should a business put video on the web to talk to other businesses?” I can’t believe it’s a question. When you come down to what businesses are, it’s people, and people do businesses with other people. Video is the best method that businesses can use to show the people who work in your business, show how you’re authentic, and really gives examples of product demonstrations. Video lets people who visit your website learn what the people who work there are like. There’s so many ways and creative ways you can use video in your business.

I think a lot of businesses are scared to try video content because it seems very expensive (camera, editing software, microphones et el) . Does video content have to be expensive?

Have you read my book? The whole thing it says is that video does not have to be expensive and you can just get started with a WebCam that’s on your computer like the MacBook Pro or a flip camera or a Kodak Zi8. Video does not have to be expensive. There is a great example at http://Chevrolet.posterous.com of how they use what I’ve been calling casual video to share people’s thoughts and impressions of their new cars. It’s an amazing example of using casual video, something that’s not expensive, by a major company.

Since this is a Spring Inspiration blog series…who is inspiring you these days? Who’s blog do you have to read every day or who’s videos do you think are ‘doing it right’?

Like I said in the answer above. Chevrolet is doing it right. They are doing casual video and putting it on a blog that isn’t their main site. That’s so site visitors have the right expectations when viewing the video. They know what they are getting won’t look like corporate car commercials, but it’ll be authentic and real. Timely too!

Other than pick up your new book, is there something we should keep an eye out on from you in the future? Any fun projects coming up?

I love teaching and I’ve got a super secret project coming out that I can’t talk about. Stay tuned for that. 🙂


Super secret project! Sounds exciting! Thanks again to Steve for taking time out of his schedule to talk with us.

Want to know more about Steve Garfield and Video?

Read: Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business
Check out: SteveGarfield.com
Watch our archived webinar:

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