We’ve been asked a few times recently how we create these episodes, and have been getting some great feedback on them, so thought we’d share some ‘behind the scenes’ info with you. Watch this to find out what equipment we use, along with a few other tips!

Transcript:

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Baranov TV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

Now, today’s episode is actually prompted by some feedback that we’ve been getting over the last few weeks, which is really great, and it’s all around these episodes of Baranov TV. We’ve had quite a few people that I’ve seen over that period saying how impressed they are, how much they enjoy them, and asking questions about how I produce them and what process I go through.

So I thought I’d just take the opportunity today to talk you through.

To start off with, there are two pieces of kit that I use.

This is the first one, which is just a standard iPhone. This is an iPhone 6s. And this, which is a tripod. It’s one of those that kind of moves to lots of different positions and will hold my phone in place. Obviously I’m not recording this episode on the iPhone, so I’m hoping that it’s going to work okay!

And this essentially is my kit. This tends to sit up on a cupboard door, or propped up somewhere. If I’m out and about, then it is just nothing more advanced, as you can probably tell from watching the episodes, than me holding the iPhone at arm’s length and talking to the camera.

So why did I start doing these?

Well, because I did them with our last business, and they were very well received. When we started up again, I had quite a few people asking me whether I was going to start doing the videos again. It was sort of almost driven by clients, really.

• We started to do them initially because it was something that we’d seen elsewhere, and as all best things are, they’re swiped and deployed.
• We started to do very brief videos just to explain to people what we do and how we do, but we found they really helped to encourage people to talk to us.

It built the relationship.

And for us, that relationship is really important, so that people know that they can trust us. It obviously also helped us to explain difficult issues, or things that are slightly more involved, than to try and send an email out.

We got better engagement, and they’re much more accessible than reading something just really dry on an email.

So as I’ve explained, I use a tripod and my iPhone. I then, once I’ve recorded the video on my phone, I send that through to my Mac, and I do the editing, which is really actually very straightforward, in the Mac standard, which is iMovie. There are lots and lots of different things you can use, different packages, but essentially, I just chop the beginning off, and chop the end off, and I’ve had our graphic designer create me an opening slide and a closing slide just with our contact details. I just top and tail the recording with those two slides.

Once I’ve done that, that gives me a finished MP4 file that I then send, or I upload to a website called Rev.com. I send the video off to them, and they send me back within 24 hours, my caption file, which I can then use to give subtitles when I upload the video either to our website, to YouTube, or to Vimeo. I use all three because the website doesn’t host the video. That video’s actually hosted, the ones on the website, on Vimeo, which are much more user friendly than YouTube. Because YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet, we actually also upload our videos to there as well, which is why I always say at the bottom of our email that if you want to subscribe to our channel, you can do through YouTube.

So that’s YouTube and Vimeo to go onto the website.

Then what we do is I also add a blog post to the website, and then I put the transcript of the video underneath, which gives me SEO value on that as well.

So that’s a whistle stop tour of why we do our videos, and how we do our videos. If you’ve got any questions, then please do get in touch; I’m really happy to talk you through the process. It does take a while to really understand the nitty-gritty and the process of actually producing them, but once you get that sorted, they are actually quite straightforward. The most difficult thing is taking the plunge and doing the first one!

I’m really used to doing it now, but I know that I either sit here or I stand on the high street or wherever I may be, and it’s me talking to my camera. I forget that I’ve got all of you as my audience, and that’s actually something to get used to, but it’s actually a lot easier than you might think!

So I would strongly recommend give it a go! Please, if you do, then by all means include me on your circulation, because I’d love to see some of them. In the meantime, if you do enjoy them, then please share them, or just let me know. It makes it a lot easier to sit here and talk to a camera! Anyway, I’ll leave you with that thought.

Have a go, and I’ll see you very soon.