Video, podcasts create attention for businesses

Having trouble getting your message heard through all the noise, especially on the web? Assuming you've targeted the right audience, there are ways to be noticed.

"There's so much noise, and the noise affects people," says Tom Trimingham, marketing manager at Burr Ridge-based Autism Therapy Services LLC. For Trimingham, whose basic audience is the "nervous parent" who has a child on the autism spectrum, a combination of photography and podcasts helps create "a realistic depiction of what people will walk into" at By Your Side Autism Care sites in Burr Ridge and Schaumburg.

Most of us don't deal with the emotional issues that families with children on the spectrum face, but we share Trimingham's need to make our websites - and therefore our businesses - stand out.

Fiona McLaren, whose McLaren Photographic LLC, Elk Grove Village, specializes in video content in the manufacturing and industrial sectors, understands.

So does Brian Balduf, CEO, VHT Studios Inc., Rosemont.

McLaren first. Imagine video of a widget moving along your company's production line as a combination of people and machines turns what otherwise is little more than a widget lump into an attractive and, more importantly, useful product.

But how do you get the video of your production line in action to potential customers?

"YouTube," McLaren says. "Google owns YouTube and gives preference to original content on YouTube in its organic search engine rankings."

There's more to a McLaren production than trailing a widget along the production line.

McLaren uses drones when appropriate, for example checking cell towers for maintenance. Time lapse photography can be effective. So can animated titles and, a branding given, effective integration of your business' logo into the video.

Although she recommends YouTube as a way to "leverage the Google algorithm but also because we're not restricted by bandwidth," trade shows and virtual newsletters are other effective video uses, McLaren says.

Balduf's primary business is developing video property tours for Realtors seeking an edge to their home-selling activities, but VHT's video approach works anyplace people want to see.

Sell antiques? A video tour of your store works, Balduf says. So does a tour of a senior housing facility - or a video visit to medical and dental offices, locations where "We want people to feel comfortable and confident."

That's Trimingham's challenge, too. VHT did a "Google-based video walk-through of our facilities," he says, but a new website, barely 30 days old, makes effective use of still photography and podcasts.

"We want to create credibility and comfort, so that parents feel they can trust us," Trimingham says.

The podcasts help because, according to Trimingham, the audio "bypasses the part of our brain that's really skeptical. We have to cross fewer mental barriers to get our message heard."

Particularly effective is a 23-minute By Your Side Autism Care interview with a parent who explains her experience with a child on the autism spectrum.

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