The Citysquares video was posted and here a link to the entry. It's only 28 seconds and doesn't seem to have received many views on YouTube, so it's hard to say if it's working for them yet. A more effective video was made by Seth Games and Anime, more or less down the street, since it features someone describing what they offer, and even offering a 10% discount for mentioning this ad. I will try to review other entries by businesses, non-profits and designers and see if it makes sense for me, or some of my clients to try this out.

Today, Anthony and I were running some errands after his Lego Engineering class and ended up in a local used bookstore – the Abednego Book Shoppe. This is great used book store with a good selection of history and children's books, and a huge selection of used christian books. (Abednego was one of the three young jewish men that survived being thrown in a fiery furnace for their faith) A few minutes after we arrived, a older man came in the store with a small prosumer video camera on a tripod with a furry microphone attached. There were only a few customers in the store, and he approached us and asked if we minded if he filmed us for a business video spot. We said okay and he discreetly filmed Anthony and I looking a various books in the kids section. He must have filmed us a couple of other times in the next 10 minutes, and he then asked me to sign a photo release so our footage could be used. I asked him what it was for, and he told me it was for citysquares.com, a kind of online yellow pages with videos of various businesses.


When I got home I looked them up and after a few google mis-hits, I found citysquares YouTube channel, actually called videographybyowen's YouTube Channel Click here  or see the video below to see his overview of the service. 

It seems like a good deal for a small business or non-profit, since it's free, relatively professional and with no obvious strings attached, other than you only have the product for online use. But to embed in your website, Facebook page or blogpost, it seems a no-brainer to look into. Since they make money - the obvious question - by leveraging the ad revenue from the site traffic your video generates, it seems a fair exchange. If nothing else it will make you think about how you want to present your business in 30 seconds, and try out video marketing at basically no cost. And they are really out there making real videos, as Anthony and I discovered. 

Here is a link to a Bank of Books citysquares video I found after signing up for the free business listing. (I think they are affiliated with Abednego Book Shoppe) 
I may follow-up this post with seeing how the Abednego video ad turned out in a few weeks, as I was told that's how long it takes to get the ad edited. I am deifnately going to let a few of my clients know about this service right away.

Blogging is a new experience, one I am just learning about and actually having fun with. This is the third blog I have started, and in part, it is a way of learning how it is done to help clients who are increasingly interested in this tool. Both Christendom Restoration and the International Theological Institute in Austria have looked into this, and the ITI started their own using WordPress (Vox Cervi) This inspired me start a blog using Blogger – Mindwalker, and then another using WordPress - Little Troops, all covering different interests. This seems one obvious way to use a blog - for a very specifically focused topic, unless you are blogging about your life for friends and family (and you can do that on Facebook all day). 

Most strangers won't be interested in the antics of your pet cat, while they might like to read about your latest hobby or philosophical insights, if they share those interests. Blogging for a business purpose should serve the audience's interests, and give them something of genuine value.... even if it is a hot tip you picked up from someone else. One good b2b blog I have discovered is NDIC's blog. They give solid information related to their client's interests in developing excellent websites. I must say that I worked with them on a project, in the role of project advisor/collaborator in developing the Sturdybilt (screen shot)  e-commerce website recently, and they did a fine job of meeting some challenging technical requirements particular to the job. (Sadly - the economy killed Sturdybilt  in October, 2011) The Design Cubicle by interaction designer Brian Hoff is another very nice business-of-design oriented blog that he has integrated into an online portfolio and marketing piece.

This blog is being created within the weebly.com environment, which makes it incredibly simple to integrate a blog into a website. I would encourage anyone with relatively simple website needs to at least look at this "web development" option. It can even provide some pretty sophisticated web elements using the same simple interface. It way well be that the future of web development and design are in tools like weebly. Of course it may create a little less work for developers, but designers will still be needed, and content, as always, is what really counts in any case.

Thanks, Ron