One of the few things in life that is incredibly powerful is video. The ability to use video in your marketing campaigns is a huge bonus and one you should try to incorporate.  

I was the biggest procrastinator when it came to video because I was scared to death of it.

What do I say? My mind freezes when the camera goes on, I look funny, I sound funny, I need to exercise, buy better makeup. The list of self insults was endless, and it prevented me from working on a video for a very long time.

Two things, in particular, made the video much much easier for me.

A formula for recording video.

Because my mind would always freeze when the camera went on, I would spend a ridiculous amount of time memorizing my lines.  These video shoots were ineffective and resulted in some horrible moments.

Eventually, I came across a formula that helped ease my mind and allow me to speak more naturally on camera. It’s called the POSER formula, and it’s used to help you present an idea. POSER stands for Problem, Obstacle, Solution, Example, and Reach.

When you are shooting a video, you want to state what the problem is that you are addressing first, followed by the obstacle (i.e., why is it a problem). Offer a solution and give an example of someone who overcame the problem. The final part of this formula, Reach, reminds you to add in a call to action in every video “leave a comment,” “subscribe to my channel,” “like my video,” “share my video,” etc.

This way, your mind isn’t searching for things to say.  After you run through the formula a few times, it becomes second nature.  Now you ’don’t have to memorize your exact lines.  Your videos will be much more natural because you ’aren’t scripted, and you will spend way less time scrapping horrible videos!

The second thing that made video easier for me was the ability to edit my videos.  When I discovered that I could make mistakes and edit them out later, this was a game-changer.

Video editing can be a breeze, especially for short videos.  It does get tedious after a while, but it’s better than doing 100 takes for a one-minute shoot.

Here is a trick for you. When you start the video, keep it running the whole time. If you make a mistake, stop and count to three in your head, then resume where you left off saying what you meant to say.  The reason you don’t turn the video off is that when you alter your position too much, and then it will look weird and edited.

Now to edit your video, there are a couple of good products out there. I’ve always been told that Camtasia is suitable for PC and Screenflow for MAC. I, of course, ended up with both of them somehow. They are both decent, and you can do edits, but I have an even better option for you.

There is a video editing suite out there called Movavi.  Now Movavi Video Suite is just for PC users. I love Movavi so much. I went out and bought a PC so that I could use it.  I know that is a bit crazy, but that’s how much better Movavi was then using Camtasia or Screenflow.

Movavi is super intuitive; it’s just drag and drop.  Plus you can add text, captions, titles, sound effects, voice-over, etc.

I started with Movavi to create short commercials and a testimonial reel. If you collect a bunch of video testimonials, you can string them together in a 2-minute video. This testimonial is useful if anyone asks you what you do, you whip out your phone and play the commercial. In the commercial, your testimonials tell the viewer exactly what it is that you have done for them.

I highly recommend you do this.

Once you’ve collected those testimonials, trim them and rearrange them to tell a brief story about you – such as part of one person’s testimony talks about the problem, then finding you, then the solution, then the transformation, then lots of thank yous!

The last beautiful thing about Movavi is its price.  If you go to Movavi’s website, the video suite costs $79, which is already less than Camtasia or Screenflow ($99). But you can get Movavi for even less. Here is the trick. Put the video suite in your cart and start to check out, but don’t check out. Don’t buy it on their website. Movavi has an abandoned cart feature, so within 24 hours, you will get an email from Movavi saying, we noticed you had abandoned your cart.

At that point, Movavi will offer you a special deal, usually dropping the price to $59, but I’ve heard of people getting it for $39.

If you don’t have a PC, you are missing out. Maybe you can borrow a friend’s? Anyway, for those of you who do have a PC, I can’t recommend Movavi highly enough if you want to do videos or even audio.

Let me know what you think in the comments!