Most product organizations use feature videos to explain features their product supports. While using screenshots for it  have their own benefits.

Feature videos are feature(s) in action. These videos are captured by screen recorders like Windows Media Encoder by Microsoft or Camtasia by Techsmith.

Whereas a screenshot is a still image of feature instance of an application. They are easily taken by a simple PRT SC function on the keyboard.

Both can be effectively used depending on context.

Without wasting anymore time (yours and ours) let’s get straight into this.

The good:

1. Their case study looks like a story when compared to a typical case study that has been segregated into sections as challenges, solutions, and business benefits. Therefore, a reader can beautifully correlate customer’s problem and its respective resolution.

2. The case study does not hinges only on Laserfiche and their solution. Rather it talks a lot about the customer, their business, vision, challenges. They have involved the customer at various stages in the story by bringing in their testimonials and opinions.

3. While going through the case study, it appears as if its a discussion between Laserfiche and their customer. Hence, for the reader its more like an article in a magazine.

The bad:

1. They made case study too long to read.

2.Format of case study is just plain-white with tiresome ergonomics. There is no motivation for reader to read it.

3. Risk of talking only about customer’s problems everywhere. For the reader it may appear that there’s no involvement of Laserfiche in the story.

How we think Laserfiche can address the ‘bad’:
We feel that it’s important to pay attention towards visual layout of the case study. They should play with fonts and their style to highlight necessary take aways. With Google fonts this ain’t a big deal now.

Also, it can be nice idea of bringing whole case study into a 1 minute animation. Or else an info-graphic can provide the information on challenges and solutions in one glance.

They should bring photos of their customers. Video testimonials will bring the credibility to the all the text based insertions of what all customer expresses.

1.Coke has localised the commercial for each country and culture. Be it a Brit, Spanish, Belgian, Portuguese, or an Indian, this campaign is something that everybody can relate to.

2.Every picture and each word in the campaign  talks about our problems. They all evoke emotion – not just one but many. For Indians Arjun tank, welcome doormats, fence to mark borders are subjects of never ending debates and issues dug deep within each one of us.

3.Showing Google search results for more number of hits on LOVE is nice way of adding happiness quotient.

4.Their story of good over evil is more than just our festivals like Diwali and Holi and more relevant to our present day lives.

5.Indian kids singing showed Coke’s marketing brilliance of injecting hope in its true innocent spirit

Although the campaign is awesome, nonetheless it could have afforded to brew our emotions a tad bit longer. We think they could have ridden over some of the following revolutions in India:

1. Mee Anna Hajare
In times of political upheaval revolutionaries emerge to bring justice to a common man

2. Kolavari Di
They could have either sponsored it or used it as a footage to bring out the fact that Indians love music and stand united in diversity and adversities like terror attacks and poverty

3. 26/11 Terror attacks
Even in face of serial bomb blasts and terror attacks India continues to greet  5 million new travelers every year.

What are your thoughts on this commercial? What are your reasons to believe? Watch the video here.

1. Decision to transcribe or go beyond just transcribing:

Any freelance content writer can do the job. But frankly, you might be better off not using the same concept as that in the webinar. You don’t want your audience to get this feeling that they have heard the same pitch before.  Little tweaks.

Every webinar has one core message around which the whole webinar pivots. But it is also true that there are at least 2 or more takeaways that are important but not given stage time. So, they tend to become ‘hidden’ during the webinar. Use these other takeaways as the pivot for the paper. Automatically, the so called transcription will mimic a new thought paper. It is like showing the same room but from a different window.

2. Finding the ‘Best’ resource

You have 2 options – hire a copywriter or get it done internally. This decision to build or buy will be dominated on whom you consider more competent to deliver results based on what you are expecting from this exercise. The last thing your thought leader wants is to make the paper look like a written speech.

How to identify the best resource for this:

1. 1. Ask her/him to share at least ONE thought or opinion on the subject he/she is writing about
2. 2. Say something and wait for a reaction from the resource. For eg. – Say that MySQL is terribly expensive. The reaction will tell you what to do next.
3. 3. You may have no choice if you decide to ‘build’ this internally. But if you’re buying – get to read the writer’s thoughts. Not having a blog should not be acceptable. Since you’re buying – the writing should impress you. Period.
4. 4. Ask the resource to identify the other less-stressed-upon takeaways of the webinar. His/her answer will decide for you.
5. 5. Ask the writer to share thoughts on how the whole webinar will be reshuffled to bring home the point of the newly identified takeaway

3. What else to add to the paper without climbing Everest

Since you’re wanting to make the paper stand out, you might consider adding some titbits of info and stats that bring the taste in the paper. Remember – the core content will anyways come from the webinar’s presentation. These small pieces enhance the reading experience. A lot will come from the polls and surveys you have conducted during the webinar. If you have invited a guest speaker from the industry or your customer – tidbits from this section will add weight.

To make a paper from a webinar really shine out – get associated with some portals that talk about that industry. Get the news. Sometimes an industry can be overwhelming. Break down the large news items into smaller chunks and consume. Always have opinions.

GoldTip: Ask your thought leader to share all his notes and rough work he did for the webinar. You’ll be surprised at the wealth of info he’s collected.

Next time I’ll tell you what to do when you’ve overcome your challenges and started building these papers. Marketing this content is itself a pretty draining exercise!

To understand it better you basically,
re-purpose your content into daily emails, streaming video, podcasts, and content for the book or papers, etc.

Recently, J.K. Rowling repurposed her Harry Potter stories into an interactive site called Pottermore.com.

As a technology company’s marketer, you are aware of webinars. Their benefits are well documented and frequently experienced by you.

I am sure you must have recorded webinars and converted into either a podcast or a webcast. But have you considered transcribing webinars into whitepapers? In fact webinar is valuable content and a company should maximize the potential of it. By repurposing your webinar into a podcast, a webcast and now a whitepaper companies can:

1.Make valuable content available across various channels
Both web and print (You can send your whitepaper to a publishing house and if your content is current enough they might consider using. After all everybody is looking for original and valuable content.)

2.Increase the shelf life of content
in your marketing arsenal to generate more interests

3. Impress upon the same thought and your leadership
on it through different channels

4. Use its bite-sized snippets to easily share across social media channels
Tips on facebook and twitter, Discussions on Linkedin, Infographic(s) on blog

5. Experience cost savings
as compared to building new content

Since in we live in an age where information is mercilessly plentiful and where every conversation is earned, repurposing content is not all just transcribing.

A webinar holds some cool insights from viewers and customers in form of surveys and polls. The trick is to be creative. A Tech Marketer now needs to be a Creative Repurposer too.

I exist in tech marketing purely because I understand technology at a fairly microscopic level. I’m not competing with the techies out there – you guys are great – but I’m not exactly a techie newbie. So don’t treat me like one.

Message marketing is not bound by the rules of content marketing.

Content marketing restricts you to value proposition. Message marketing talks about the fun in making that product. Content marketing calculates ROI. Message marketing calculates experience. Content marketing is budgeted. Message marketing is passion.

Content marketing wants to sell. Message marketing makes you want to buy.

So what if he is the designer – we were in no mood to let him lead the design elements all the time – especially not for his own birthday.

Hence the team assembled on a secret mission to come in early on the D-day and get things ready to floor him. We redesigned his desk with confetti and balloons in less than an hour and were ready to snap the look on his face. But sure enough he delayed his own coming for a while and kept us in suspense. But boy was he happy when he walked in?

We did get treated to some awesome thai food and beer. Now that’s what we call a birthday bash!

When you send an email to 100 people with the word ‘DISCOUNT‘, and more than 50 people do not open your email, you’re spamming them.

For them, the DISCOUNT part of the story is irrelevant. You’re not doing them a favor. They’ll never get to the stage where they actually open your email. And the fact is that you’ve violated their privacy when you decided to send them an email without their approval, permission, or request.

At its worst, you could add a line that carries the word ‘sorry’. {though the way you say sorry matters – check this out}

Don’t you think you’d like to be treated the same way by your spammer?

We are now bigger and better and have a more spacious workplace. Hence on a day that we thought would bring us more success and wealth and enhance our creative cells – we performed a puja to appease the higher beings.

With the sanctity of our workplace restored we were back to our good old ways of delivering on not just our promises but some kick ass work. There’s a few things now that each one has gotten for himself/ herself. But that we’ll leave for another day.