I’ve been emailing you recently about a couple of video marketing tools I’ve been using 

 

One of them - Content Samurai - basically creates a video for you based on a script.

 

Well based on a Content Samurai video I saw yesterday I just wanted to share a few DON”T DO’s 

 

In case you are using it or are about to.

 

The video in question was put together by or for a company that offers services to couriers

 

My partner had looked at it for her brother and since video was involved, asked what I thought of it

 

Frankly it was crap.

 

I didn’t think it was possible to mess up such a simple programme but we live and learn. 

 

How this works is that the programme comes with a bundle of stock images and video clips included. 

 

When you pop in your script the software scans those libraries and picks what it thinks is relevant 

 

Often they are but usually you’ll need to change them or use some of your own

 

In this case the user had just gone with whatever CS chose. I doubt they even checked. There was nothing awful as such but a few tweaks would have made for a much better video

 

The worse thing however was the audio track…

 

Again CS offers the choice of using a voiceover with music behind it, just voice or just music.

 

You can also use their auto generated voiceover feature. Thats what thee guys had done - badly

 

I would never use this feature. The voices are real recordings of various people saying the words and actually do sound quite good  - in a sat nav kind of way    

 

But sometimes the sentences just don’t sound natural - thats not the biggest issue though ……

 

These guys had forgotten to remove the asterisks and other punctuation they had in their script

 

The result being that the automated voice read them out as words: “Asterisk”, or “Exclamation mark”.

 

These really are rookie errors but the impression they give to a viewer is very unprofessional.

 

It’s a shame and I really hope this company is not paying someone to do this for them

 

I noticed also that they use Convertri - a fabulous page builder that is part of SFM’s Digital Business Lounge tool set

 

So they kind of know what they are doing and are using the right tools  

 

But they are using them really badly 

 

There’s actually no excuse for this as both Content Samurai and Convertri have superb training materials and support 

 

But as always, if you don’t do the training or don’t apply it your results speak for themselves 

 

 

 

Cheers! 

 

 

Dave