By Cynthia Freese, Director of Artist Relations, Artists Sunday
As more artists join the Artists Sunday movement, we are always looking for new ways to feature them and help them build their customer base and generate more sales.
We are currently featuring Artists Sunday artists regularly on our Facebook page and this fall we expect to feature artists in our nationwide public relations campaign as well.
With all this in mind, we want to take a moment to share tips on how to create an excellent introduction video about you and your work. We’ve outlined tips and best practices and at the end of this blog post we’ve included some videos we like.
First, some quick tips:
- Speak clearly and not too fast.
- Show your energy and confidence.
- Wear something you feel comfortable in.
- Plan what work you want to show in advance and have it staged so you can easily move the camera to capture the work.
- If shooting indoors do your video when the light is best!
- Record in a quiet place.
- Having someone help you might make the whole process easier.
Next it’s time to draft the script for the video. You can start by making a list with all the topics you plan to talk about in the video.
Start with a short introduction and end with a call to action.
Keep in mind that people’s attention span for this kind of video is just around 1-3 minutes. That means that your script should not be longer than 400-500 words. Many of our artists’ videos are longer and that is okay.
You can have music playing softly in the background while you are showing your work. If you do use music, make sure it’s not something that will cause you to speak faster. It takes practice speaking slowly.
If you are working alone on your video, print your script large enough to be seen from a distance. Having the script will help keep you from filing in the quiet spots with those nasty annoying “Ums.”
Use highlighters for things like pause here. One trick I use is: I add a note in a different color that says count to 30 slowly ( in your head) while people explore with their eyes. I have also used music as a guide for when to stop and start my script again.
Ending with a call to action
A video without a call to action is a video without a purpose.
Yes, you want to sell your work but please remember that this is an introduction video. I like to think of these as the place where we start to educate the customer on what we do.
“Shop now” or “Call us now”, are not the best call to actions for an introduction video. Best to try to make it less aggressive for the customer; A soft sell.
Sell without trying to sell. Redirecting them to your website , Facebook page or Instagram account is a great way for potential customers to learn that you have more to share with them.
Maybe make a 2nd video on your process or showing off different styles of work and invite them to view it if they would like to learn more about you . If you have a website you can always close by sending them to your home page.
People are more likely to convert into customers later on if you are not too pushy with trying to make a sale right from the start.
Your call to action messages should be placed at the very end of the video and should be clear and easy to follow.
You can reinforce the call to action by having a text/copy overlay (titles is what the video software terms it) in your video which repeats what you are saying in the video.
This can be as simple as printing the information out and holding the camera on it at the end of the video. Make sure to focus on the screen long enough for people to read it out loud. Some of our artists will read it out loud slowly … Visit www .Artists Sunday . Com the spaces between each world is a count of 1,2,3 this way if some wants to write down your information they have time without having to rewind to get the information they want.
Lastly and most importantly have fun! We want you to be able to use these videos as tools to help you build your customer base.
Here are some artists videos we like:
