3 things for brick & mortar businesses to do to quickly get online

3 things for brick & mortar businesses to do to quickly get online

3 things brick & mortar businesses can do right now to get online

From Google My Business and local search, through to social media and website build…

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It’s hard to know where to start as a physical business getting online, making digital and brick and mortar work together seamlessly.

You may have been content to plod along with your physical shopfront until this year. I don’t blame you; if you get regular business and you’re happy, then you don’t really need to think about change. But coronavirus has taught many, many businesses this year that you have to plan to get ahead of the curve – even when you’re currently comfortable.

So now it’s time for change. 

The most beneficial change is to get your business and products online – where people can still shop for what you’re selling – but how do you do this?

If you’re intimidated by going online, don’t be.

It’s not only surprisingly easy these days, but it’s the step towards a future that means you’re not tied to selling only to your local population. It gives you the ability to branch your business out without having to heavily invest in more physical locations and staff costs. 

So here are three things you can do super quickly to get your business online.

 

Google My Business For Shops & Service Providers

 

Google My Business is a platform that slots seamlessly into Google’s searches. It’s like your online shopfront in the sense that you’re able to update and display your opening hours, reviews, images, and links to your website. When people search for things like “Italian Restaurant in [Location]”, Google will list the most relevant results.

If you’ve set up your Google My Business correctly and you have some solid reviews, that’ll be your business at the top. It’ll also display where you are on the map so that people can find you, as well as any business contact details so that people can get in touch.

It’s also suitable for service-based businesses. If you’re a tradesperson who goes out to people’s houses, or a lawyer who doesn’t need to hold meetings at an office, then you can still list yourself on Google My Business but tick the “I deliver goods and services to my customers”. This means that if you’re working from home you don’t get people turning up all the time.

The next thing to be aware of with Google My Business is that you have to list your business as a category that already exists. This isn’t usually a problem for retail businesses as they tend to fit into neat categories (Shoe Shop, Tech Shop, Grocery Shop, etc.), but for complex services, such as multi-skilled tradespeople, it might be a bit more difficult.

A good thing to do here is to see what most closely matches your offering, then search each of those categories on Google to see what your competition might be. Certain categories may have a lot of competition compared to others in your area. 

For example, you could list yourself as “Carpenter”. But if there are lots of other carpenters in your area and you actually focus on restoration woodworking, listing yourself as “Antique Furniture Restoration Service” is likely going to get you more of the clients you’re after.

Make sure your business address matches everywhere!

Your online business address is what’s used to match reviews to your business. If it’s listed as variations of your address then there’s a good chance that your reviews will get diluted or that Google will downgrade your business’ rank because of conflicting information.

So if you use abbreviations of street, road, boulevard, etc., then make sure it’s listed in exactly the same way on each online listing for your business.

Once this basic information is set, you need to include as many photos as possible.

If you’re a restaurant, here’s your chance to show people how delicious your food is. Don’t skimp here. Hire a good photographer and make sure the photos of your food are amazing – it’ll be the first thing people see and it’ll often be a deal-breaker.

The same goes for any other products, show your physical shop, let people know what they can expect when they come in, what kind of products they can expect to find, etc.

If you’re a services provider such as a carpenter, include pictures of jobs you’ve done. Again, make sure they’re good pictures and they show off your skill. This is the easiest way to get work by “word of mouth” because now everyone can immediately see the quality of your work without having to rely on friends of friends.

 

Get a website built

 

If your Google My Business is your online shopfront, your website is your online shop. It’s where people can find out everything about you, your business, and your products or services.

If your business requires people to come into a physical space, then here’s your chance to convince people why they should come in.

Make sure your website is fast, mobile-friendly, looks great, and is easy to use.

You want to make it as easy as possible for people to understand what you’re about and get in touch with you. 

If you sell products, then a website is the perfect place to host an online shop.

Using a service such as Shopify or WooCommerce does add a little money to your overheads but it also means that your business can be ‘open’ to customers 24/7. It also removes all the stress and expense of having to manage the code and security for an online store on your site. You can either implement an e-store section to your website, or link to a separate e-store. 

Either way, make sure you have great pictures of your goods and make sure you get a great copywriter to write your product listings. Very few products sell themselves in person, let alone online with one photo and “This is a rubber chicken” as the description.

 

Make sure you’re active on social media

 

The third most effective way to get your business online is to make a profile for the large social media platforms. Depending on the nature of your business, you may want to focus your efforts on only one or two of them.

You need to have a Facebook page because this platform is the most-often used for finding information about businesses (other than Google My Business or your website). It’ll let you set up a dedicated page for your business that people can follow and interact with you.

It’ll also let you get more information about who’s interacting with you. This is all anonymised, but if you have thousands of interactions then it’s helpful to know things like the general areas they’re from, the education level, and so on.

But before you get to all the techy marketing things, make sure you follow the rule for all online listings when setting up your Facebook page:

  • Make sure your address is the same as your Google My Business address
  • Make sure your business page looks great
  • Make sure it’s easy to find the information that you want people to find

If you have a very visual business – like, say, being a cakemaker – then also having an Instagram account for your business is a great way to show off how beautiful your cakes are. It’s a primarily visual platform so great photos of beautiful cakes are likely to do well.

Twitter is the last of the big three. It’s great for keeping up to date with what’s happening because the main point of Twitter is to post and share how you’re feeling and what’s on your mind. This might be flipping burgers, it might be a currently-contentious political issue.

Twitter is primarily a platform for conversations, so if this suits your business then consider focusing your efforts on Twitter.

 

Go forth and prosper

 

Everything about your online listings doesn’t have to be perfect. So don’t spend years trying to make every possible pixel fit. What’s important is that you have a presence. You can always fiddle with a website once it’s live, but fiddling with your website before it’s live means people can’t get in touch with you at all.

If you’re tired of fiddling and need some advice, get in touch. We’re always on hand to help.

George Moulos

George Moulos

Digital Creative

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How To Add Pixels To Your Website (Facebook, LinkedIn & Google)

How To Add Pixels To Your Website (Facebook, LinkedIn & Google)

How To Add Pixels To Your Website From Facebook, Google & LinkedIn

making what seems crazy complicated, nice and easy!

How To Add Pixels To Your Website From Facebook, Google & LinkedIn

making what seems crazy complicated, nice and easy!

Adding tracking pixels to your website

From tracking activity on your site to offering easy remarketing options for your ads, Pixels, as it turns out, aren’t just the latest Google phone or those tiny squares that make up digital images. Who knew? 

Pixels are an important part of an effective digital marketing strategy, particularly if social media advertising is a strong branch of your overall plan. 

There are pixels for a variety of different channels, from social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, to Google-centric platforms like Google Ads. Which pixels are the most crucial to your digital marketing strategy is dependent on the platforms that you already use and where your target audience are hanging out on the world wide web.

Now, before we start getting ahead of ourselves, let’s cover what a pixel is, how it works and how it can be used.

Getting to grips with tracking pixels

Pixels are essentially a tiny handful of code or a ‘tag’ that, once implemented on the backend of your site, allows you to gather insightful information about the users that visit your site and the actions that they take while they’re there. Tracking pixels can gather information from a user’s visit like what pages they visited, what time they visited as well as what type of device they used and what operating system it uses.

But that’s not the only information that they’re limited to!

Once you’ve set up your pixel, you can then use standard event tags to track actions taken on your site such as “add to cart”, “form submission” and “complete registration”. You can even create your own custom event if there isn’t a standard event that covers the specific action on your site that you want to track.

Once your pixel and events are set up, whenever someone visits your site and these actions are completed, the pixel will fire and record this information. You can then track and report using this data. You can also go a step further with advertising based pixels like Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Ads and create audiences of users who have completed these actions or users similar to them who are likely to complete these actions too.

So, now you know what they are, let’s get started on how to add those pixels onto your website. 

Facebook Pixel

The Facebook pixel furthers the scope of Facebook Advertising as pixel can be easily integrated and used as part of your targeting. 

Start by visiting Events Manager on Facebook Business Tools, then click “Connect Data Sources” and select the Web option, then select Facebook Pixel and click Connect. After naming your pixel, enter your website’s URL and click continue

Once you’ve created your pixel, you need to add it to your website’s code. Thankfully Facebook offers you three different routes to install the Facebook pixel to your site with plenty of instructions for each option, making the process seamless. Our personal favourite is the Partner Integration option, for which we use Google Tag Manager as it works well with other google centric platforms, but you can find Facebook’s other Partner Integrations right here. 

Once it’s all set up, you can set up your events to measure actions on your site and then test that your pixel is working before you start using it for your Facebook ads!

LinkedIn Insight Tag

Also known as the LinkedIn Insight Tag, the LinkedIn pixel is a JavaScript tag which is the basis of conversion tracking, building audiences from your site data and website demographic for LinkedIn Ads. You can install it by adding the LinkedIn Insight Tag to your website’s Javascript code, emailing the tag to your site’s developer or you can opt for adding the LinkedIn Insight Tag to Google Tag Manager (or any other tag management systems that’s compatible). 

Simply start by signing into Campaign Manager and selecting the right account, then click the Account Assets tab in the navigation bar and select the insights tag option from the dropdown menu. From there you’ll be able to choose which set up option you’d like to use.

Google Ads Conversion Tracking Tag

The Google Ads interface uses a ‘conversion tracking tag’ but this essentially has the same function as a pixel. The main difference between this type of pixel compared to the other two we’ve already look at is that first, you need to create a conversion action before setting up your conversion tracking tag.

Once you’ve done that you’ll then have to add two code snippets, one of which is called the global site tag. This is the ‘pixel’ tag that pulls the data from your site which you can then use for remarketing. Find out more about setting up Google Ad’s conversion tracking for your website here.

 

Pixels are just one of the great digital marketing tools that you can utilise to learn more about your website’s visitors and being able to turn them into potential customers.

Want to learn more about which tools and techniques can help you improve your digital marketing strategy? Why not check out the digital marketing workshops that we offer or get in touch to see what we can do for you.

Yumna Kumran

Yumna Kumran

Snr Digital Creative

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Why Are H1 Tags Important For My Website?

Why Are H1 Tags Important For My Website?

Why Are H1 Tags Important For My Website?

looking at how correct use of tags and titles can help your websites positioning in search engines

Home » Blog

Looking at the importance of well-structured H1 tags for your website.

In the big online game of SEO, there are multiple factors that can affect your ranking – but you’d be surprised how overlooked one of the most well-known factors, H1 tags, are.

While it’s arguably easier to update on your website and requires less planning for than other SEO factors (looking at you link building), its simplicity often leads people to give it less attention than it deserves. 

Don’t fret though – read through our handy guide to ensure your H1 tags help propel your website to number one.

What is an H1 tag?

An H1 tag is typically the title of your page or post and is the first visible heading on the page itself. While it is important from both a search engine and user perspective, its main objective is the same – it helps both better understand what your content is about.

For search engines, a H1 tag helps to make crawling your website and pages more efficient, sharing more information and giving your page a better chance to appear in SERPs (search engine results pages) for the search terms you want to appear for. From a user perspective, it outlines what the content of the page is going to be about, and helps them decide if the page will contain the information they are looking for.

As an example, just take a look at this very blog you are reading. Our blog is all about understanding the importance of H1 tags, so it would make sense that our H1 tag reflects that! 

What’s the difference between an H1 tag and a Title Tag?

While your H1 tag is essentially the title of your page, it’s important to make the distinction between a H1 tag and a title tag. While they are similar in some respects, they are not the same.

While both give context as to what your page is about, the key difference between an H1 tag and a title tag is that a title tag is what appears when people search for your page in SERPS, while an H1 tag is what appears on the page itself. 

While they appear in different places, they do serve a similar purpose – they give the reader a good understanding of what they are about to read. The only difference is a good title tag can be the difference between a user clicking on your link or not, while if a user will only read your H1 tag if they’ve already arrived on your page. 

Due to having the same user intent, it’s natural that your H1 tag and your title tag will be very similar. The key thing to remember is they don’t have to match exactly – perhaps you really want to include a specific keyword in your title tag to help with ranking but now you’ve run out of space to write out your full title for the blog? Use the extra space that your H1 tag will provide.

Best practices for H1 tags

At this point you’re probably thinking though, how do I write an effective H1 tag?

The first thing to bear in mind when creating your H1 tag is length. If yours is too short, you’re simply wasting space you could be using. On the flip side though, if it’s too long, the key message in your heading may go over people’s heads. As a frame of reference, aim to keep your H1 tag between 20 and 70 characters.

In terms of what you should actually include in those 20 to 70 characters, the same rules we have already spoken about still apply – user intent. Your H1 tag should give the user the outline of what your content will be about; a promise that your content contains exactly what they’re looking for.

While you’ll likely have a good idea of what your H1 tag will need to include, make sure this is backed with some all-important keyword research. Using the right keywords in your headings can directly affect how well your page ranks, so make sure you’re using them.

Finally, make your H1 stand out! Make your title the first thing a user spots when landing on your page. With the proper formatting, H1 tags should naturally be larger than the rest of the text on your page but if they’re not, make sure they are to ensure they really stand out.

 

And there you have it, your guide to understanding the importance of H1 tags and how to use them effectively! 

 

There’s plenty more to learn about SEO though. Be sure to check out some more of our blogs for more info, or if you’d like to learn how to run effective SEO for your own website then check out our courses.

 

Daniel Otway

Daniel Otway

Senior Content Executive

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Using Social Media for Customer Service

Using Social Media for Customer Service

Using Social Media for Customer Service

in light of many big brands leaving social media, we look into why they should maybe stay

 

There is no denying that social media has changed the way we interact with businesses online a great deal. So why are so many leading brands running away? 

Gone are the days when we would tolerate delayed responses to any complaints or queries. We are now (for the most part) ruthlessly impatient people with short attention spans and the power to quite publically throw our toys out of the pram if we are unhappy. What this means for businesses is that it is more important than ever to recognize both the potential and challenges that this offers.

With Lush announcing this week that it is removing some of its channels from social media, now is the perfect time to debate the pros and cons of using social media for customer service.

Reaching your customers through social media

With more and more time being spent on social media, it is fast becoming one of the key platforms for finding out about new businesses. Sharing, reviewing and interacting with products and posts on social media can have real sway when it comes to influencing purchasing choices. In fact, consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. Perhaps more impressive is the fact that when companies engage and respond to customer messages on social media, those customers end up spending 20% to 40% more with the company.

In order to make sure that you are reaching these customers and that they are having a positive experience with your company, it is important to think about the path that they follow when interacting with your business and ensuring each touch point is a good one.

This begins with making sure there are links on your social pages to your website and that there are clear avenues for people to contact you if they have any questions or concerns. When these have been voiced it is important that a response is forthcoming. As mentioned before, generally speaking, patience is not a strong point in today’s online world with 42% of consumers expecting a response on social media within 60 minutes.

 

The challenges of social media

This leads us to the two main challenges of reaching customers through social media:

  1. It can be time-consuming
  2. Interactions aren’t always positive

Replying to multitudes of comments, replies and complaints on social media can be a full-time job and unlike the more closed-door nature of conventional complaint management over the phone, on social media, it is there for the world to see.

Building an online community does take a lot of time and effort and combined with the decline in organic reach on social media, can be difficult to fully implement with many businesses.

Done right, social media can provide an unbeatable platform for humanising your business and creating brand advocates. At its worst, social media can be a hub of negativity directing more eyes to the bad sides of your business.

Eighty-nine per cent of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. If that statistic doesn’t get you thinking about how good your customer service system is, I don’t know what will.

 

How to navigate the tricky world of customer interactions on social media

Though it is not without its challenges, we are firm believers that businesses should be part of the conversation on social media. When big brands such as Whetherspoons take their profiles offline it only opens the door for other businesses to take their place.

With this in mind, here are a few tips to help you build an online community whilst avoiding the potential pitfalls that other businesses sometimes fall into.

Social Media Customer Service Wetherspoons

Social Media Customer Service Wetherspoons

Remember that people are always watching

One thing to remember with messaging or interacting with people online is that it is, or can easily be made public. Encourage people to private message so you can get more details about their case and keep potentially harmful comments out of the public eye.

Additional note: Even direct messages can be screenshotted so don’t think that makes you ‘safe’. Paranoid yet?

 

Don’t be a robot

If you want to stand any chance of being noticed on social media you have to stand out. One of the best ways to do this is to inject a bit of personality and authenticity into your accounts. I may sound like a broken record but Innocent is a great example of this. Their comment sections are filled with humorous, personalised messages and act as their own method of encouraging people to engage with posts.  

 

Have a system to respond to notifications quickly

Make sure that you have notifications turned on on your social media platforms so you are quickly notified if people leave a comment or message you. If the sheer volume of responses becomes hard to manage then it is time to get some help or splash out on a tool like Sprout Social which has a smart inbox to make it easier to respond to any important messages.

Sprout Social Social Media Customer Service

Sprout Social Social Media Customer Service

Promote your advocates

Positive feedback is invaluable when it comes to promoting your business. Think back to when you last bought something online. Reviews from members of the public can be much more persuasive than what a company says about itself.

With this in mind, creating a system to encourage and promote feedback is important not only in showing off your business, but also showing your customers that you appreciate their feedback.

At the end of the day, if you are doing good work on and offline, people are likely to be talking about your brand. By being an active part on social media you can be a part of that conversation when it is happening. This allows you to help shape customer impressions of your business, increasing visibility and brand loyalty along the way.

If you aren’t doing all of these things, someone else surely will.

 

Want to find out more about social media, including dealing with customer complaints online? Check out our Social Media Strategy course, led by me, Ben Hawkes. Over and out!

 

Ben Hawkes

Ben Hawkes

Digital Creative

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!

Making The Most of LinkedIn For Business

Making The Most of LinkedIn For Business

Making The Most of LinkedIn For Business

the worlds professional social media platform and what you, as a business, can do on it

LinkedIn is one of the largest professional networks around, and with a growing user based of businesses and individuals aroudn the world, there is plenty to get excited about.

Whether you are new to the platform or simply looking for some tips and tricks to help make sure you are getting the most of it, we are here to help.

Differentiating between businesses and people

On Facebook, pages and people are distinctly separate – and business pages don’t directly rely on a company’s employees or business partners. At least not to the degree that they do on LinkedIn.

Some of the strongest LinkedIn pages I have seen are ones where the entire workforce act as ambassadors for the business; promoting their own work, alongside information that interests them from within the business itself.

On LinkedIn, there really is much more power given to individual profiles when compared with business profiles – and this is something owners of those pages should take note of.

Create a culture of sharing…

The award for most wishy-washy title goes too…

Following on from the previous point, if you want to create a culture where your employees share updates on their page and help to advocate your business for you, the best way is to educate and motivate them.

Keeping your staff trained on how to use their own LinkedIn is a mutually beneficial practice. It helps them to improve their own public profile, whilst providing them with tools to share your business news and updates with a wider audience.

Our advice is to host a training course to teach staff about the platform; one that hopefully energises and motivates them to use it, whilst making sure that this it is not a job requirement.

Update your profile regularly

This is a fairly self-explanatory one, so we won’t spend much time on it. If you want to be bigger on LinkedIn, make sure you put in the leg work and post regularly.

The recommended amount to post isn’t set in stone, but we would recommend at least 3 posts per week – with more time spent engaging/sharing commenting on other user’s and businesses’ posts.

Become a thought leader

An area where LinkedIn stands out is being one of the best platforms for thought leadership.

At the end of the day, people buy people, and LinkedIn is all about providing a place where people can sell themselves (Not like that. Don’t make it weird).

The best ways of raising your profile as a thought leader on the platform is to create engaging content that shows your knowledge and experience. LinkedIn articles, infographics, photos from interesting locations and interviews or collaborative pieces with other influential people are just a few of the routes you could follow to build authority.

Disclaimer: being a thought leader doesn’t mean being a know it all or a show off. No one likes a show-off, Karen.

LinkedIn ads

Honest talk now. LinkedIn ad manager used to be an absolute pile of crap.

Thankfully, after several updates, including a few in the last couple of months, LinkedIn advertising has become a much more user-friendly endeavour. If you haven’t used ads on the profile before, there hasn’t been a better time.

With the most comprehensive business professional targeting available, it should be an absolute go-to when you want to target people in certain roles/industries/company sizes etc.

Tailor posts for the platform

If you already have a pretty comprehensive Facebook and Twitter business profile and want to include LinkedIn, please don’t just roll the same strategy out.

LinkedIn is a beast unto itself and treating it the same as Facebook will be to your (and your followers) detriment.

The best way to think about LinkedIn, particularly for businesses, is as a networking event. There is a certain etiquette at networking events:

  • Don’t harass people
  • Don’t be self-interested
  • Don’t eat all the canapes

There may be fewer canapes on LinkedIn, but the fundamentals are the same. Keep it authentic, focus on the people and achievements of your business, and make an effort to get to know the people around you.

LinkedIn groups

This part of LinkedIn has commonly been abused by people’s self-interests, but there are good LinkedIn groups out there! The best thing about groups on LinkedIn is that there is usually a huge variety for almost every industry.

Try joining one with a relatively small but active audience, and actually engage with the people in it. Rather than being the person at a networking event that gives business cards to people without even saying hello, try to be the person who gets to know the others in the room and actually forms a meaningful connection.

Extra hint: Another plus of joining a group is that it allows you to add people to your network who aren’t 2nd or 3rd connections. You’re welcome.

Paid account types

Besides the typical free LinkedIn account, there are a number of paid options available.

LinkedIn premium

LinkedIn premium works the same as the free version but gives you more visibility and information. Instead of capping the number of people who visited your page, you can get much more insight into who is viewing your profile and what they searched for.

You also get access to InMails which are a nifty emailing tool which lets you message people outside of your network. You only get a few of these per month depending on your profile level so make sure you use these wisely and not just to tell Borris Johnson he is a wanker.

Sales Navigator

The other main account type for LinkedIn is Sales Navigator. This is a tool which sits almost separately to LinkedIn, and gives you a variety of options which make it easier to find and capture new leads. You can save and track people as leads, access comprehensive searching options to find new contacts, and you also get more InMails.

It can be a little pricey, and there are options to add more people and create a business team account, but it’s certainly something to look at if you are serious about creating leads on LinkedIn.

Want to know more?

Whetted your appetite and want to know more about LinkedIn? Giant Campus offers a comprehensive course to selling yourself on LinkedIn, which you can check out here. In the meantime, join our network on LinkedIn and let us know any tips we missed!

Ben Hawkes

Ben Hawkes

Digital Creative

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!

Creating Video On A Budget

Creating Video On A Budget

Creating Video On A Budget

making video has never been easier, and you don’t have to be a whizz kid to know how

You don’t have to have thousands of pounds to make a banging piece of video content – in fact, you already have the tools necessary.

If you’ve been paying attention to the marketing world over the past few years then you will have witnessed the meteoric rise of video content. In 2018, 63% of businesses said they were using video as part of their marketing strategy, with 83% saying that video marketing gives them a good ROI.

And the stats don’t end there. Research has found that a product video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%, while you’re 53 times more likely to rank highly on SERPs if you have video embedded in your website.

Unfortunately, video has a bit of a reputation for being an expensive move. And while it can be, there are tons of tools and techie devices out there designed to make it easier for everyone to create video content than it has ever been before. Check out some of our tips for creating your own videos on a budget.

Prep is the key

Image result for video planning

When it comes to making video on a budget, preparation is the key. If you plan properly, and know what you need to achieve, then you’re less likely to end up going massively over budget, or massively past your deadline.

To start, decide what the point of the video is. Why are you making it? Is it to launch a new product, give a company update, or do you simply want to create a bit of buzz around the brand? Understanding this from the get-go will help you stay on track, and achieve your goals.

Next, make sure that your plan aligns with your brand voice. Branding makes all the difference; you want your videos to look like they come from you – even if they’re done on a budget. If you’re a lighthearted brand, then make sure the video tells that story. If you’re authoritative and knowledgeable, then the same applies.

Dror Ginzberg, CEO of online video creation platform Wochit, said: “As with any form of marketing, you need to define a clear brand style, or build upon your existing style. Is your video meant to be lighthearted and funny? If you don’t know, then your audience won’t know either.”

Top up on tools

If you want to make professional videos quickly and on a budget, there are a number of apps that can help you do just that. Clips and MoShow are two of our favourites.

MoShow is for Android and Apple, whereas Clips is for Apple users only, but both provide easy to use video editing software that can help you to create epic content. Even the most inexperienced videographers will be able to download the apps and create some interesting videos in a matter of minutes. MoShow, in particular, has a range of different templates, which means all you need to do is upload separate images or video clips, add text, filters or stickers, and hit download.

Don’t believe us? Give it a try and let us know what you make! It’s as easy as a Sunday morning, and just as satisfying.

Getting equipment

The wonderful thing about creating videos is that most people have smartphones with perfectly good cameras sitting in their pockets at all times. Tasnim Bhuiyan, head of social content for RYOT UK and Tumblr, said: “Some of the most viral pieces on the web have come from a shaky phone camera, simply documenting a funny moment or a touching, authentic interaction. The main question every video maker has to ask is “why would anyone share this?’”

If you do want to give your videos a bit more of a professional shine however, splashing out on some basic lighting and sound equipment can be a great investment. Costs for this can be in the double digits, though, so if all else fails, use nature’s best lighting source. No, not Jason Statham’s forehead. The sun.

Get resourceful

Image result for filming

Once you’ve topped up on tools and equipment, see what you can get for free. After all, who doesn’t love getting something for free?

Depending on the style of your video and what you want to achieve, you could scour the local area for locations, or rope in friends, family members or colleagues to make their acting debut and save you hiring people.

Want to learn more?

If you want a little more help and advice making awesome content, then we have a great training course at Giant Campus which helps do exactly that. Check out the details about ‘Making Creative Content’ on our website and get in touch if you want to find out more.

Ben Hawkes

Ben Hawkes

Digital Creative

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