Ask-A-Ninja Editor Teaches You How To Do Online Video Well – The Damien Somerset Interview
on Apr 3, 2009 - 7:34 PM PSTThe full program
This is an audio program. Listen and/or download it here:
A few lessons from this program
Want to know how to do online video well?
Learn from Damien Somerset, he’s a legend in web video. Damien edits Ask-A-Ninja, the most successful online video series. And he’s the producer of ZapRoot, the most successful online green video series.
He recorded an hour-long, data-packed program full of specific techniques you can use right now to improve your online videos and grow your audience. Here are a few edited exceprts from the program.
Be accessible
Accessibility is what’s changed. You are not a success online if you do not reply to your comments, And reply to your messages. Do things that feel like, they are targeted directly at your audience. You have to be there. You have to be there like they’re there. So have to engage them on ALL of the platforms you want to be successful on.
Pick your platform
If you are a startup and you have a show that has no viewers, you want to cast your net wide–as wide as possible. And then you can start paring down the platforms that you’re successful on. If you’re kicking ass on DailyMotion, you want to stay there. You need to optimize your time, so if you’re not doing well on DailyMotion, you should stop spending time on it.
Know your power
If you’re a big show, you want to go to targeted platforms and say, “I’m this big show. I’m a big deal. Are you going to put me on your front page? If so, I’ll come to your platform. If not, have a nice day.” Ask-A-Ninja doesn’t focus on all the platforms any more. Now they try to bring their users to their site. They can be thrifty about where they’re spending their time and efforts.
Relate to other videos
If your videos do not relate with others that are popular–in an effective way–or are targeted enough to the topics of your video, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. If your video is about earthquakes, it’s title better have the word “earthquake” and it better relate well to other videos with earthquakes. Before you title a video about earthquakes, go search YouTube for earthquakes and see which titles are effective and which aren’t. There are keywords that have been proven effective in that category already, so use that knowledge.
Promote cleverly
Easter is coming up. You know it’s coming. Make an Easter video. Also, we build into our shows ways that we can talk about things that are going on in pop culture at the time. That is not what a lot of people are doing. People are making things and they’re like, “Oh, I made this thing and let’s put it out in the best way I can.” If you know where your video is going, what time it’s going up, and you know what people are actually looking at already, you can be so much more effective.
Track your audience
In the show description, add links to the topics you covered–and measure the click rate. In ZapRoot, people love automobies. They love auto stuff. They’ll click through auto stuff. They engage heavily with auto stuff. But I don’t know that unless I have numbers to tell me that. If you just put the hyperlinks in there, you’ll never know who’s clicking through.
Be sustainable
You have to make your web series as sustainable as possible. If you set the bar too high for yourself, you are going to fail. And the long street of web video is littered with these people. Doing a show every day is incredibly hard and will take up a lot of your time. You need to come up with a method that is sustainable.
Your turn. Do you have any advice about online video? Add it to the comments.
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April 4th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Sustainable production schedule is key. When you don't see a large viewership at first you start to think “why am I even doing all this work if no one is watching?” and you slowly do less and less videos.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
To be honest, I'm struggling with that one myself.
I want to get to 1 interview per day, but editing takes for-freakin'-ever.
But I'm working on it. In time, I hope to get much faster.
April 5th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Hello Andrew,
I do not have a comment yet on this specific program yet but I wanted to tell how much appreciate your site and the AMAZING videos you have in here. I am starting to listen to them and I am blown away about the quality of the people you are interviewing and more importantly the quality of your questions to them. It is just amazing to watch. You seems to know exactly what your viewers would die to ask these people and you do just that! You are able get out from those successful entrepreneurs/experts a tons of info that frankly I never hear/see elsewhere. You are even able to get them to tell you their revenue numbers!
Thanks a million for the best info on entrepreneurship I have seen in years!
Good luck.
Mo.
April 5th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Wow. Thanks Mo.
One of the reasons I ask the same questions my listeners would ask is that
I'm the same person they are. If I were a professionally-trainer journalist,
instead of an entrepreneur, I'd probably hunt down different information.
The other reason I ask these questions is that people like you keep telling
me what they want to hear and know. The more I hear from listeners and
readers like you Mo, the better I become.
Thanks for helping!
April 6th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
This is “why” i recommended videos of the interviews, cos its more engaging to be able to see the person.
But i understand its alot of work on a regular basis.
April 6th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Damien is a very cool guy. Glad I got to meet him in LA a couple years ago.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Thanks for keeping me on it!
I'm working on the full videos. I'll start with one or two this week, and
then I'll start offering full videos of all interviews. I'll even go back to
past interviews and repost.
Just need time. Videos are murder to edit and upload.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Isn't he?
I'm going to ask KATG to let their audience know about this.
April 7th, 2009 at 10:12 am
are the videos of the interviews on your site or just the audio
April 7th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
There are videos. I'm going to start posting them soon.
I've been posting audio only because this started as an audio podcast, but
now I need to see it as a video show.
Thanks for pointing it out Myron.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Hey Andrew,
This interview came at a perfect time for me! We are currently in the planning stages of our online video marketing initiative and its great hearing from Damien (an expert in online video) who really tells it like it is.
I loved this interview because it not only provided me with some great information regarding online video, but it inspired me to take some real action after watching it. And I think I can attribute that to the great questions asked by you. So thank you!
I can't wait to see who your next guest is :-)
May 27th, 2009 at 3:12 am
This video brought up a point that I've thought about since coming to this site. I like the full audio/video thing higher, and its annoying to scroll down to find it.
Maybe other people like the introduction more, but Id rather jump right in. Especially with the newer full video stuff.
I don't know if this would be best for new users, but as soon as I came, it was always about finding the full version on the page, because I want all the content you've created, not to waste time on a teaser and then re-watch. I think your content is good enough to just jump right in, and dont need to spend time on a teaser, but thats me.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
You're right on this. This is why I love getting feedback. I had no clue
people felt this way.
This week I made this exact change to the layout. I might even go back to
old programs and change them too. Like I said, you're absolutely right.
Thanks for telling me!
http://mixergy.com/why-i-killed-mixergys-t...
June 9th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Andrew- The audio file is not linked properly. It's missing.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Thanks for catching that! If fixed the link. Somehow the .mp3 extension on
the file disappeared.
Andrew Warner
Founder, Mixergy.com
June 10th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Thanks for catching that! If fixed the link. Somehow the .mp3 extension on
the file disappeared.
Andrew Warner
Founder, Mixergy.com