Video Example: How to Create a Promo Video for Your Speaking

Hello, ladies! I’m back and ready for a new year! How about you?

One of my students has definitely done her homework this summer. Candy Troutman has taken many of my teleseminars and my e-course, and she just sent me the link to her new promo video, introducing herself.

Way to go, Candy!

Now, here’s what you’ll notice about this video:

1. Pictures are fine.
If you don’t have actual video, you can still create a video using still pictures and some background music and some text. Later on, once Candy has more video, I’m sure she’ll put this in. But this worked well just as it is! You can see her personality coming through, because she chose pictures with a variety of expressions and poses.

2. Pictures from Different Venues are Best
I think I counted 6 different venues from the still pictures, which gives the impression (correctly) that Candy has spoken many different places. If you’re going to create a video, and you have tons of great, professionally taken pictures from one engagement, and then some awful ones from other engagements, still use the awful ones. You want to show people that you’re not a one-hit wonder. You’ve spoken in a variety of places.

And this also demonstrates another great truth: it’s important to take pictures whenever you speak, just as you should record whenever you speak. You need those pictures for websites, for videos, for Facebook, whatever. Web pages with pictures get looked at about 80% more than web pages without pictures. So include lots of pictures!

3. Be Creative with Text
If you don’t have video of yourself speaking, you can still be creative in creating your promotional video. Notice how Candy uses the “joy” theme at the beginning. You have no doubt what her main message is, and she’s making the video interesting to watch by including joy in several ways.

4. Give an Inkling of Your Message
Candy included the “Omer bag” that she uses in her talks to show what she talks about. It makes you curious and you want to learn more.

5. Include testimonials
Excellent job of incorporating people’s feedback! Here’s why it’s always important to get evaluations when you speak, or email the organizer afterwards and ask if she’ll put some feedback in writing. That way you can use that feedback in your promotion. This was the most important part of the video, because again, it showed that Candy had actually spoken, and that real, live people had gotten much out of her messages.

It’s great to have video to share, or TV clips, or even audio clips with still pictures over them. But even if you don’t have that yet, you can still create a little video, like Candy’s, using only pictures and music and text. And it still works! Then, when you get the video or the audio, you can add that, too. And you can do these videos for free! Macs come with the ability to make simple videos, and in Windows, you can use Windows Movie Maker in Windows Media to create these videos. You simply add the music, and then put the pictures where you want them, with the text on top. It takes a little to get used to, but find some online tutorials, or take one that Windows has, to figure out how to make your own video!

These videos should be kept to 2-3 minutes, on the whole, because people just want a taste of you. They don’t need to see everything. So here’s my challenge: can you make your own video? I’d love to post some more examples! And tell me what you liked about this video in the comments (or if you have other ideas to make a great video without audio/video of yourself speaking, tell me!)