OnYourMark, LLC Blog

This month’s Pro is Christian Kocinski, Video Developer at OnYourMark, LLC. Christian offers advice for planning your corporate video.

When you decide to do a corporate video, you need to think about what you want your video to represent. Your company of course, but besides that… what about your company are you interested in showing? Do you have a particular product worth mentioning, or is it a service that you provide? In either case, what is your main focus of your video?

When you start to develop ideas, the best place to start is your website and current marketing materials. Your video should help enhance your website and existing fulfillment materials. Your video can have a similar look and feel as your website and literature, making them go hand in hand. Look at the most important information presented on your website and print pieces; this information should be referenced in your video.

Once you have gotten your ideas put together, start organizing your thoughts. Create an outline of what you want to show and the order it should be shown in. Starting on paper, brainstorming and creating a flow of ideas will help to solidify your plan before a camera crew is hired or tape starts rolling. We’ll work from these thoughts to develop your script and shot list. This way everything will fall into place throughout the entire process.

The first few minutes of your video are the most important. These moments of the video will determine whether the customer will move on or keep watching. It’s important to grab viewers right away. Once you have them hooked you can start to show them specifics, go into greater detail and show examples of why they should select you or your product. Starting with an overview of your company gives viewers or prospective customers a chance to learn a little bit more about you.

Breaking down your video into sections is a great way to create a flow. Ease one section into another to keep the viewer’s attention level up. If your video spends too much time on one section, or one specific thing, the viewer may start to lose interest. Breaking your video up into smaller sections will help eliminate this.

Once you have your outline, decide how long you would like to spend on each section of your video. Keep in mind your ultimate time goal. If you only want to make a five-minute video, decide what items are worth keeping and what items can be cut. What items do you want to spend more time on, and what items do you want to spend less?

From there you can begin to write the voice over. We’ll help! The outline and voice over script are a starting point for deciding what shots will be taken. Devote time to carefully planning the voice over, or narration, and to reviewing our recommendations. We use a stop watch to determine if you are over or under your time goal. The more you do in pre-planning, the more time and money will be saved in the end.

Overall, always keep your goals in mind. What do you want your video to say about you? With that and early planning, you can have a successful corporate video.

See Videocracy.com.

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Kate Hodgkinson, Marketing Assistant Intern at OnYourMark, LLC. Kate offers tips for incorporating blogging into your marketing.

Our blog at Videocracy highlights industry trends, new video services at OnYourMark and personal anecdotes from our videographer.

The term BLOG is derived from “web log” which is viewed by many as an online journal. These days, it is usually more time efficient to type one’s thoughts rather than taking the time to write them down. Log in, type, post: that’s all it takes.

Did you ever stop to consider the benefit of blogging as a marketing tool? The ease of logging in, typing and posting could be applied to your business’ marketing plan to return great results. Did you know there are people today who get paid JUST to blog?

Using a blog as a marketing resource has the potential to set off a chain of important events. By using a blog that is rich in keywords, it can be found through search engines. When reading your blog, potential customers should not feel pressured to buy.

Your blog should be somewhat informal, as if they were reading a post from a friend. Make viewers comfortable with your company by helping them feel like they’re reading something that wasn’t copied and pasted from a company brochure. Your blog MUST have great content. You want them to read all of it rather than skim through it quickly, don’t you? Intrigue them - give them enough information to make them curious enough to click on that link to your website. At this point, whether they buy or do not buy, your marketing has proved successful in getting potential customers to your website.

Tip from Keith Klein, Author of WebForging: Great selling means making it easy for buyers to buy from you.

Recent blog posts are featured on the Register Success homepage, adding current content to the site.

With your blog increasing traffic to your website, there is now the potential to increase sales. Make sure your website is updated and doing its job! They’ve clicked on your website link for more information, so be sure the information they’re looking for is available and as easily accessible as the blog was.

Writing one good blog isn’t enough. A key factor to blogging is constantly updating. In order to build credibility you need to appear committed. Do you have a new product you’re excited about? Do you have upcoming events? Blog it! Make your blog one that people will come back to and read. Establish yourself in the blogging community. If readers post comments or responses to your blog, answer them and let them know they’ve been heard. This gives you bonus points in the customer service spectrum.

Not only can your blog drive web traffic to your site and establish your company name, but a good blog opens the doors for “viral marketing” as well. First, you gain the benefit of free (or inexpensive) marketing through your blog, and then you gain the benefit of completely free marketing through blog readers! Friends or colleagues are discussing something related to your company, someone has read and been impressed by your blog, and they speak up. A customer, or potential customer, has just expanded your audience at no cost to you.

So after all this talk about how successful blogging as a marketing tool can be, you wonder “How do I write a good blog?”

• Write your blogs in your own distinct voice - Sound like a human, not a machine.
• Make them interesting - Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? Don’t give away every detail of your company in your blog. If they have all the information right there in front of them, why would they want to explore your website? When all else fails, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart)
• Update it constantly - Respond to comments from readers, keep them up to date with new occurrences, check in to reiterate your message.
• Make sure they’re rich in keywords - Identify your target market and think of terms they would search for. This will ensure you’re getting the right people to your blog.

For more info, be sure to check out OnYourMark, LLC’s blogging resources!

The Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Blogging

(General Resource for New Bloggers)

www.corporateblogging.info/basics/corporatebloggingprimer.pdf

WebLoggers.org

(Online Community for New and Experienced Bloggers)

www.webloggers.org

Blog Tutorials

www.onyourmark.com/view.php?id=190

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Ellen Rohr, Operations Manager at OnYourMark, LLC. Ellen offers resources for obtaining digital images without infringing on copyrights.

Photos and images are essential to a website. They add interest, excitement and brand awareness. Here is some important terminology to know about photos:

Copyrighted photos are exclusive to their owners and cannot be used without the owner’s permission. Most photos found on the web will have a copyright. The World Intellectual Property Organization has extensive information on photography and legal issues.

Many of us turn to Google’s Image Search or Flickr to find photos. While these sites can retrieve photos on any topic, the photos are usually copyrighted. Google Images photos are pulled from websites across the Internet or posted by users. They belong to the photographers, users, webmasters, site owners or companies that own and operate the websites. Google even posts a warning on its results pages: Image may be scaled down and subject to copyright.

Images found in a Google Image Search are from websites. Consult the website’s copyright policies or contact its webmaster before using the image!

Flickr’s Community Guidelines specifically address use of copyrighted images:

Don’t upload anything that isn’t yours.
This includes other people’s photographs and/or stuff that you’ve collected from around the Internet. Accounts that consist primarily of such collections may be terminated at any time.

RULE OF THUMB: If you didn’t personally take the photograph, chances are you may have to ask permission before use.

If you do find an image on the web and want to use it, check the website’s copyright policies. If nothing is posted, that does not mean there is no copyright on it. The absence of a notice in works published on or after March 1, 1989, does not necessarily indicate that the work is in the public domain. Use the site’s contact form or an email to contact the owner. Often photographers are happy to share photos… as long as you ask and receive permission. Even if you use the photo and cite the source, you are risking copyright infringement if you have not received permission to use it.

Public Domain images are uncopyrighted, uncopyrightable or have a copyright that has expired. Stock.XCHNG and PDphoto.org are popular sources of free images. Photographers post their work to these sites and allow others to use the photos. While the image use is free, some photographers will ask to be notified or credited if their image is used in a public work. More free photo sources can be found at myBackgrounds.com or in theBubbler forums under Tons of Free Stock Photo Images.

Royalty Free photos can be purchased for web or print use. The purchaser can use the photos as often as allowed according to the source’s license terms. Some licenses allow up to a set number of uses, while others allow unlimited use of the photo.

iStockphoto, Getty Images and Photos.com offer royalty free images for sale. Prices and subscriptions vary widely. iStockphoto charges more for high-resolution images; a better investment because they can be used in print and on the web. Photos.com is a subscription service. Users can download up to 250 photos per day and subscribe for as little as $99.95 for one month.

A royalty-free image from PDphoto.org

Royalty free and public domain photos do not guarantee exclusive use. If you purchase an image for your website from iStockphoto, your competitor can also purchase that image and use it. The only way to guarantee exclusivity is to have custom photography done by a professional photographer.

The bottom line is simple… read disclaimers, terms of use, licensing agreements and copyright policies before using any photo you find online!

Links Mentioned in this Article:

• wipo.int/sme/en/documents/ip_photography.htm
• images.google.com
• flickr.com
• flickr.com/guidelines.gne
• sxc.hu
• pdphoto.org
• mybackgrounds.com
• thebubbler.com/modules.php?name=Forums
• istockphoto.com
• creative.gettyimages.com
• photos.com
• videocracy.com/photoservices.php

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Mike Weinand, Web Application Developer at OnYourMark, LLC. Mike explains what Web 2.0 is all about.

Web 2.0 (pronounced “web two-point-oh” or “web two-dot-oh”) is a concept that means different things to different people. To designers, it means new, more modern graphics for websites. For developers, it means focusing on interactivity. For users, Web 2.0 means participation.

Web 2.0 is the transformation from browsing the web to participation in the web. New technologies allow web content to be decided by its users. Instead of proprietary sources providing news, content or search results, Web 2.0 is driven by user submitted stories. Blogging and RSS feeds allow users to send and receive content faster than ever. Consider the differences between these Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 sites:

Web 2.0 sites implement new technologies such as AJAX to make the user experience more enjoyable. One example of this is Google Spreadsheet, which allows multiple users to edit the same document at the same time. Cascading style sheets (CSS) allow web designers to use colors and images more effectively on the web.

Web 2.0 affects online advertising and internet marketing. Instead of paying per impression when advertising online, it is now possible to pay per action. Advertising avenues such as pay-per-call are being tested. Marketing websites via blogs, forums and other social networking methods bring word-of-mouth advertising to the web.

Is your website Web 2.0 functional, or making strides to get there? There are many things you can do to bring your site into the Web 2.0 world:

• Redesign: Does your site look outdated, or does it not match your current literature and print media? It may be time for a face lift.
• Content Updates: Use your website’s blog to post company news, press releases, MSDS, industry articles and more. A big part of Web 2.0 is keeping your site current.
• Video: If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth? Show your products in action and provide tutorials with online video.
• Social Networking: “Tag” your site with tools like Digg and del.icio.us. Offer social networking on your website via forums or user-updateable photo galleries.

The web is no longer a one way street, and we are always happy to help you take your website to the next level.

Links Mentioned in this Article:

• britannica.com
• wikipedia.org
• google.com
• del.icio.us
• cnn.com
• digg.com
• doubleclick.com
• google.com/adsense
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)
• docs.google.com/
• facebook.com
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-per-call

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Kristen Day, Web Developer at OnYourMark, LLC. Kristen offers tips to make website content and image additions faster and more cost-effective.

Recently I attended a luncheon for the Health Care Public Relations & Marketing Society on effective print advertising. A segment of the session was devoted to the best ways to submit content and images to your graphic designer. While many in the audience were surprised to learn that Microsoft Word often hinders quick print production, I couldn’t help but smile. Many of the do’s and don’ts in the print world also apply to websites.

Website Content

At OnYourMark, LLC, we ask for website content in a digital format. Why? When we receive a digital document (Word documents, text files, PDFs), we can easily extract the text and format it for the web. When we receive a hard copy, we have to add additional time to type the content, proof for typos and then format it. We would much rather spend our time and your money making fantastic websites, not typing!

If you have existing printed literature, first seek the original electronic files. If you can’t get those, have a staff member type the content before submitting it. We can accept many formats, but plain text or rich text files (mycontent.txt, mycontent.rtf) are the easiest to work with. Microsoft Word documents (mycontent.doc) have many default text formatting features that often mangle text when it is extracted from the Word document. While we have both Macs and Windows machines in our shop, a shop with Macs only will not even be able to open a Word file. Plain text, rich text and PDFs are friendly to both Macs and Windows workstations.

PDFs usually work well for submitting content, but we are not always able to extract text from a PDF file. If a PDF was saved as one large image, the text in the file will be flattened and behave just as a photo would. If the PDF was saved to preserve the content as text, we can easily remove it. For extensive PDF documents, such as technical manuals, it may be best to put them online as a PDF instead of a traditional HTML webpage. When the PDF document changes, uploading the latest version is faster than updating HTML pages by hand.

If you do not have digital content available, or the time to type it, please submit your content anyway! One of the biggest hold-ups on websites going live is the webmaster waiting for content. We will work with you to get the content web-ready.

Website Images

Whenever possible, digital versions of logos and photos are best. If you only have prints of your logo or photos, we can scan them but quality may be affected. When a page is scanned, we have to take the resulting scan and crop it to grab the logo or photos we need. In the case of a logo or an image that shows a background behind it, tedious hand-editing in Photoshop is often needed to remove the background. One of my favorite areas of graphic design is photo or logo restoration, but it is definitely time consuming!

If you do not have a digital version of your logo or have an outdated version that was done years ago in MS Paint, it is worth investing in logo recreation. A version of your logo done as a vector graphic can be reused in print, on the web, as vehicle graphics and more. Vector graphics are made up of points that define lines and curves, allowing them to be resized without losing proportion or detail. Having a vector graphic available for all of your vendors also aides in the consistent use of your logo and branding.

For digital images, we can work with high resolution and low resolution photos, though higher resolution images are preferred. Having descriptive file names on your images is also handy. Digital cameras usually name photos with numbers (000_012.jpg, 000_013.jpg). Renaming the files with descriptive text helps you (and us) know what the photos are about (blue_widget_628a.jpg). We have a tutorial online to help you with creating filenames (onyourmark.com/tutorials). If you have a handful of small photos, emailing them to us will be fine. For a large catalog of digital photos, mailing a CD is best. It is also best to submit the individual photo files, not to insert them in a Word document and submit that!

Making a high resolution image smaller preserves detail.	Making a low resolution image larger distorts the image.

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Ryan Klein, Systems Administrator at OnYourMark, LLC. Ryan offers ways to research new technology online.

Learning about technology online can be a tricky task. This is not for the lack of information on the Internet by any means, but the lack of direction on where to look. Over the years I have stumbled upon some pretty in-depth sites to learn about the latest and greatest in technology. They range from a general overview of a technology or product to a detailed writing and background with future outlook.

Product and Software Reviews
If you are interested in learning about a new product or software, the manufacturer’s or developer’s website is the place to start. To highlight these points, here are two examples. If I was looking for information about the upcoming Apple iPhone, I would first look at Apple’s website (www.apple.com/iphone). If I was looking for information on Microsoft Office, I would look at Microsoft’s website (office.microsoft.com). Manufacturer’s and developer’s websites will most often carry the technical specifications of the product along with all of the positive reviews.

For very good, (usually) unbiased opinions, CNET (www.cnet.com) provides technology reviews on manufactured or developed products. CNET’s staff of very intelligent writers that break down the ins and outs of a product in language that is comfortable for everyone (not just the geeks in the crowd). A very helpful tool on CNET’s website is the rating system they use. Not only does the writer have a rating, but the community chimes in and rates the product or software according to their real world experiences.

ZDNet (www.zdnet.com) is a bit more on the technical side, giving the ins and outs of an item but also a history of the product and its technical features. I go to ZDNet when I am looking for the latest news in the larger networking and technology fields.

Ars Technica (www.arstechnica.com) gives some very long and almost painfully detailed reviews, coverage, pros and cons, suggestions and much more. It is based around a news site but does do reviews on current ‘hot items’ that have been much talked about. I strongly suggest going to Ars Technica if you are looking to not only learn about technology but to learn about the current state of technology, the tech community and its effect on the world.

Technical Documentation and Tutorials
Of course, the most commonly used form of obtaining information online today is via search engines. Lets look at a practice example of using Google (www.google.com) to learn about the Ruby programming language. When putting in search terms, you want to be somewhat specific. I searched with “ruby programming language” instead of “ruby” to avoid getting information on gemstones.

Now I browse through what Google returned to me. The first result is from the official Ruby home page (www.ruby-lang.org), the second is from Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_programming_language) detailing the history of Ruby, the creator, versions and just about everything else I want to know about Ruby. The third result is a beginners tutorial on how to start programming Ruby.

Search engines may direct you to documentation websites or forums related to your search. Documentation websites like the Linux Documentation Project (www.tldp.org) contain extensive how-to guides and frequently asked question (FAQ) pages. Forums such as our own WebLoggers (www.webloggers.org) are topical discussion boards that allow users to post questions, answers and other messages related to a topic.

If you are looking to learn about technology, a search engine combined with good results is going to be the single most effective way to learn about any subject. Technology can be a wonderful new science but extremely overwhelming at times. But, if you take your time to do some research, you can learn a lot about a lot of technologies in a very short amount of time. If you have any resources you wish to suggest to me, please feel free to email me at ryan@OnYourMark.com.

Links Mentioned in this Article:

• www.apple.com/iphone
• office.microsoft.com
• www.cnet.com
• www.zdnet.com
• www.arstechnica.com
• www.ruby-lang.org
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_programming_language
• www.google.com
• www.tldp.org
• www.webloggers.org

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Christian Kocinski, Video Developer at OnYourMark, LLC. Christian helps you select the right media for your archives.

A few weeks ago, my aunt asked me what she should do with her old floppy disks. She has many years of vacation photos scanned and archived on 3 1/2″ floppy disks and on zip disks, but her new computer doesn’t have a 3 1/2″ floppy disk drive or a zip disk drive. I had to explain to my aunt that her media was a great way to store photos at one time, but technology is quite a bit more advanced.

In the age since floppy disks, the variety of options for storing our media has multiplied; to name just a few… CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVDRW, and Flash Drives. Each type is different in its own way, so which one is best for storage? There are many different factors to consider when backing up or storing your personal files. Each type of disc available on the market today has different capacities of storage and different purposes. Here’s my Dictionary of Digital Devices:

CD-R, which stands for Compact Disc-Recordable is the most commonly used storage media for archiving your personal data files and for audio purposes. You can create your own music CDs (legally, of course) to give to your friends, or to listen in your car. CD-Rs currently have a capacity of 800MB, and can store 80 minutes of music - not for very large files.

VCD, which stands for Video Compact Disc, made on a CD-R; this is like a DVD, it plays in DVD players, but the video quality is very low, and doesn’t always play on every DVD player.

CD-RW, which stands for Compact Disc-Re-Writable, is an alternative to CD-Rs. Unlike the CD-R which can only be written to once, the CDRW has the functionality to be written and re-written numerous times.

DVD-R, which stands for Digital Versatile Disc-Recordable, is the upgraded media if you have more files, or bigger files that need to be stored. DVD-Rs have the same capabilities as CD-Rs, with the exception of music. Standard CD-Rom drives, or CD players, won’t play
DVDs, therefore it is not possible to make a “Music-DVD.” I already mentioned that DVD-Rs store bigger and more files than a CD-R; the standard capacity of a DVD-R is 4.7 gigabytes, and we will soon see that capacity increasing. Another advantage is that you can write higher quality video files to your DVD-R, which is why video is one of the primary uses for DVD-Rs.

There are two main forms of writable DVDs on the market right now - DVD-R (pronounced DVD minus R) and DVD+R (pronounced DVD plus R). The reason for the two different formats is more or less a rivalry between the two main manufacturers of DVDs, very similar to the rivalry between VHS Tapes and Beta-Max Tapes, in the early 80s.

Unfortunately it isn’t as simple to just go to the store and pick up either brand. Modern DVD-ROM drives that write DVDs will write to either DVD-R or DVD+R. DVD-R has been around longer than DVD+Rs, so therefore, older DVD players will not play DVD+Rs. If you are going to use DVDs for video purposes, it is more acceptable to use the DVD-R
format because it is more universal than the DVD+R. Both formats work well as storage media. If I need DVDs for data storage and backup, I will buy whatever brand is on sale or available. If it’s for video storage, I stick to the DVD-R.

DVD-RW is also a good alternative to DVD-R and DVD+R, they are similar to CD-RW in that they can be written to more than once.

Dual-Layer, and DVD-RAMs are other forms of DVDs you may hear in conversation. Dual Layer DVDs are DVDs with higher capacity storage, but they require a specific DVD burner, which does not come standard on most Computers. DVD-RAM is a re-writeable form of DVD, which comes in a cartridge, and has a faster burn speed then standard DVD-Rs. They also have a longer life-span as well, on the other hand, they are less popular due to the fact that they are not compatible in all DVD Players, and they cost more money, upwards of $9 per disc. These reasons make DVD-RAM less popular.

USB Flash Drives, Thumb Drives, or USB Key chains come with various capacities, upwards of 2 gigs. These flash drives are perfect for moving files from one location to another, but they have a finite lifespan. I have gone through many flash drives in the last few years, as they seem to just stop working. Therefore, I would never recommend Flash Drives for long term storage; they are meant for temporary storage or moving of files.
Portable Hard Drives, which is an external hard drive that transfers data using USB or Firewire cables, work for long term storage, but are not reliable for backup, as they can fail just like your internal hard drives can.

With today’s technology, the best form of long term storage would be the CD or DVD; any of the formats I mentioned above will work for storage, and if you keep your media in a specifically designed CD/DVD holder, free from scratches and dust, they will last a long time and keep your files safe.

The technology has not been around long enough to determine the lifespan of CD-Rs, they may be advertised to last hundreds of years, but the way that CD-Rs are made, it is likely that they deteriorate much sooner. But with proper care and attention, a CD-R can last a long time, I still have the first music CD-R I ever burned, and it still works after 7 years or so.

To my aunt, I say “Ask the Pro to help you move the pictures today!” To everyone else who is still holding onto archives stored in 3 1/2″ Floppy disks, or Zip Disks, it’s time to consider updating your files to a different format, before it’s too late. And if you have any questions, you too can Ask the Pro.

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Christian Kocinski, Video Developer at OnYourMark, LLC. Christian provides a primer on the exciting world of online video.

In order to understand Online Video technology, I believe that everyone needs to appreciate how the technology has arrived to this point. Let me give you a quick history of a topic that gets me really excited.

Motion pictures were born in 1891 when Thomas Edison in the United States and the Lumiere Brothers in Europe simultaneously invented the motion picture camera. Photography, which was in its infancy at the time, was taken to a whole new level. Film was being perfected in the early 20th century, and soon television brought film into every living room. Families eventually used this media as a way to capture their precious family moments; by the 1950s, many homes had a projector to show home movies on.

The movie projector and home movie reels served for nostalgic purposes, but film has never been a portable media. Film projectors were a bit of a hassle to set up, and they didn’t record sound. However, by the late 1960s, the first Video Tape was introduced; this new technology finally made motion pictures portable. By 1975 home entertainment had caught on and videos were being sold throughout the world. Anyone could record their home movies and watch them immediately without waiting for their film to be developed; nightly news channels could spread news to the world faster then ever before. It also became increasingly easy for aspiring filmmakers to experiment on their first films.

In response to consumer demands, technology continued to make video portable. Video tape replaced the cumbersome film reel; DVD replaced the tape. Now the iPod allows the consumer to store videos in their pockets! Many cellular telephones now come with video capabilities as well.

Adding video to your website makes this media not only portable, but instantaneous. A business owner can make a video and send it to all clients in a matter of seconds. Clients will be able to see your company in action, “meet” your employees and view your products. If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a video speaks a million.

So how can anyone add video on their web site? The most basic method uses a camera and a computer. Most digital cameras come with the functionality to take videos. Some cameras will only allow you to take a short video, while some will allow you to take longer ones. After the video has been taken, just plug your camera into the computer and edit. Edit isn’t necessary for producing a video, but it sure helps to make your video look even better.

There are simple editing programs that can do a lot, such as fades, transitions, titles and other effects, to give your video a little extra spice. For PC users, there is a program called Windows Movie Maker which is easy and efficient to use. For Mac users, the equivalent is iMovie, which is a standard program included on a Mac.

In order to put these films on the web, it is necessary to prepare the files into a format known as “codec,” which stands for Compression/Decompression. A codec basically squeezes the file into a smaller size without losing video quality. A few examples of codecs are Sorenson, Cinepak, H.264, and MPEG. These are all just buzz words that describe what codec you are using to squeeze your file. Each codec has a different purpose and ability. The codec that is used for web sites is MPEG-4. This codec squeezes the video to half its original size while maintaining that high quality that is desired, making it faster to download and watch.

Once these videos are edited and squeezed, they can then be featured on the web for the world to view. Any internet user will be able to view your video online, without any special downloads. PCs and Macs come equipped with their own video player such as Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Many online videos are shown in Flash format, a plug-in most web browsers have. These programs are needed to display the video once it has been downloaded from a website.

At OnYourMark, LLC, we maintain all updated capabilities necessary for shooting a high quality digital video of your company and products. We edit with state of the art equipment and output it for the web. We have high end digital video cameras to give the best video quality possible. Our Macintosh Quad Core Duo and professional video editing equipment provide fast and reliable video editing. We also have the capabilities and expertise to compress any video into any number of different formats and codecs. We offer a wide variety of video services to meet all your needs, from Video, to Audio and even Photography. We also have the capabilities of transferring old Non-Digital - also known as Analog videos - to digital formats and output them to the web.

Digital technology is amazing. If Edison or the Lumiere brothers were witnessing today’s Online Videos, they wouldn’t believe the advances we have made, and hopefully they would applaud them. I can’t wait to see what’s next in the world of video!

Links Mentioned in This Article:

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumiere_Brothers
• www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker
• www.apple.com/ilife/imovie
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codecs

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

This month’s Pro is Kathy Gaster, Web Marketer at OnYourMark, LLC. Kathy discusses the pros and cons of showing advertisements on your website.

When considering placing advertisements on your website, think about the goals and purpose of your website. If your goal is to generate business for your company and promote your products or services, you very likely do not want your potential customers to be distracted from your information with ads for other products or services.

A website that is not selling products or services might want to consider advertising revenue. Informational websites such as WisCrafts.com and blogs are good candidates for advertising. If you decide that advertising on your website is the right course of action, consider affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you place an ad for a merchant like Amazon, eBay or Best Buy on your website and earn money when a visitor to your site clicks on the merchant’s ad. Each merchant has its own rules for when it pays. Some pay per click, per sale or per lead. Check the reputation and the fine print to make sure you understand how much you will earn and when. Google AdSense is available for website publishers to display relevant Google ads on their content pages and earn money. Commission Junction’s banner advertising programs pay money based on results such as a sale or a lead.

A sample Commission Junction ad from WisCrafts.com

The amount you can earn from placing ads on your website depends on how much traffic you generate. The more people that come to your website, the greater the potential earnings will be. Getting the traffic to your website is an important part of earning advertising revenue. If you build it will they come? Not if they can’t find you. Getting a website to come up on the first page of the search engines and staying there takes money, time and effort.

Ad relevancy is also key. On WisCrafts.com, our Commission Junction ads are geared towards arts and crafts products. Google’s AdSense will analyze the content of your webpages and display ads relevant to the text it finds. If you are using Google AdSense, having keyword-rich, unique content will only help your advertising revenue (and search engine rankings).

The Internet and Internet users are becoming more sophisticated as the World Wide Web ages. When the Internet was younger, flashy ads, banner ads and pop ups were tolerated. Now computers are set up to automatically block pop up ads and people have learned where not to look on a web page if they want to avoid advertisements. Take a critical look at your site when placing ads. Are the ads distracting? Are there too many?

The Online Rules of Successful Companies by Robin Miller, suggests that companies “Stick to Business” and so do we. Remember that your website is there to promote your business and bring in customers, not to advertise other businesses’ products or services.

Advertising plays an important role in on-line marketing and when used correctly can help build brand recognition and bring customers to your website. Your Web Marketing professional at OnYourMark, LLC is an excellent source of information when designing your Internet advertising campaign or improving your position in the search engines. We’re ready and willing, able and eager to help.

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!

Links mentioned in this article:
http://www.WisCrafts.com
http://www.Google.com/ads
http://www.cj.com
The Online Rules of Successful Companies (at theBubbler.com, click on Amazon Store)

This month’s Pro is Kristen Day, Web Developer at OnYourMark, LLC. Kristen explains why Net Neutrality is something every Internet user needs to know about.

We’ve all heard the famous Microsoft slogan, “Where do you want to go today?” With the Internet, this question is easily answered. An Internet connection allows you to look up anything, any time on the World Wide Web.

Imagine if you were suddenly banned from looking at anything your heart desires. Consider these fictional examples:

• You type in Ford’s website and see Chevy’s website appear.
• You enter a search in Google and are routed to Yahoo.
• You look for consumer information about your Internet Service Provider’s poor service, and cannot access websites with negative comments about your ISP.
• Your attempts to view an online video always time out.

If Net Neutrality is not preserved, these fictional examples could become reality.

Net Neutrality Defined
Network Neutrality (”Net Neutrality” for short) ensures that the Internet is a neutral field for everyone. Using your Internet connection that you purchase from an ISP (Internet Service Provider), enables you to look at the smallest blog or the largest company website. If Net Neutrality is not preserved, your freedom to use the Internet as you see fit could be eliminated. Large telecom companies that provide Internet access like AT&T, Time Warner and Comcast are hard at work lobbying against Net Neutrality.

If ISPs are not required to follow Net Neutrality, your ISP could control the content you see online. If an ISP has a deal with an advertiser or content provider, it could block access to competing websites. Just like a television network, the ISP would be in charge of what you see and when you see it.

Life in the Fast Lane
Another potential downfall if Net Neutrality is not preserved is “pay-perspeed.” To some extent, Internet users do pay for speed. A customer paying more for DSL will receive higher speed access than a dial-up user, yet both can look at whatever they choose. Pay-per-speed would incorporate charges based on what you use and view online. If you do a lot of video viewing, you may be asked to pay more. If your bank is not partnered with your ISP, you may have to pay more to access your bank’s site because it not “preferred” by your ISP. Think of pay-per-speed as a “fast lane” on
the toll way, similar to the I-Pass offered on the Illinois Toll way. If you pay for an I-Pass electronic transmitter, you can go through the fast lanes without stopping. If you do not have the transmitter, you’re stuck in the slow manual lanes. With pay-per-speed in place, you may have to pay a “toll” to access certain sites or be left in the slow lanes.

Legislation
On June 8, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006″ (COPE Act), a major telecommunications reform bill. Congressman Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) attempt to attach a Net Neutrality amendment to the COPE Act failed. The COPE Act is now pending Senate approval.

How Net Neutrality Affects YOU!
Net Neutrality affects everyone who uses the Internet in any form! If your company has a website, you could be forced to “partner” with an ISP to guarantee that all users can see your website. While a large company may be able to afford the fees, many small businesses could be priced out. Even Internet giants like Google and eBay were once the “little guys.” Net Neutrality allowed them to become massive successes, which is why Google and eBay are two large companies fighting to preserve Net Neutrality.
If you are concerned about preserving Net Neutrality, here are some resources and ways to make contact:

• Visit SaveTheInternet.com to keep up-to-date on Net Neutrality legislation.
• Call or write to your elected officials, asking them to preserve Net Neutrality.
• Call or write to your ISP, voicing your concerns about Net Neutrality.
• Blog about Net Neutrality.
• Talk to your friends and family about Net Neutrality.

What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to
askthepro@OnYourMark.com!