Several years ago, I was leaving the office. I had on my coat and hat; I was holding my gloves until the moment right before I stepped outside. My bags were full of things to take home to work on. And I stopped in one of our account executive’s offices to say goodnight.
She was sitting there with two other colleagues and they were talking about video.
The one account executive who was not intimidated by me and had no problem giving her opinion said to me, “You travel the world telling business leaders about how important video is in telling a company’s story, yet we don’t do any of it.”
I looked at her and said, “I agree. But we sit behind our computers all day. What the heck will we talk about on video?”
(Cough, cough.) No one said I’m not stubborn or close-minded occasionally. But I am willing to listen and to think.
The Birth of FBQOTW
And that, my friends, is how Facebook question of the week (or FBQOTW, as some people call it) was born.
I set my bags down, unzipped my coat, and sat down in a chair to listen to what they had to say. Jack Bauer wasn’t happy because I’d told him we were going home so he could have dinner so he sat at the front door and whined.
But I quizzed them about what they were thinking.
This young lady said, “What do you hate almost more than anything else about selling your time?”
I responded I hate it when people ask if they can buy me a latte and pick my brain. When you sell your time, leaving your desk to meet someone for free is extraordinarily expensive. Let’s just say it’s not worth the price of a latte.
Pick My Brain for Free
They went on to suggest we let people pick my brain for free via Facebook.
This had to have been at least four years ago (I just looked – it was March 2009) so using Facebook for business wasn’t yet done. We had a business page, but it wasn’t exactly sophisticated or interesting.
I didn’t think it would work, but I committed to them I would try. I bought a Flip camera (I didn’t yet own a laptop that had a camera) and I taught myself how to use it, how to optimize the tags, how to use YouTube to enhance the views, and how to embed it on the Arment Dietrich home page, here (it’s in the sidebar over there —–> and changes weekly), and distribute it via the social networks.
How it Works
The way it works is this:
- People leave a question on our Facebook wall. Of course, that requires you like our page, but gives us the opportunity to show you why you should stick around.
- Sometimes the questions are goofy (cough, Danny Brown, cough), but most of the time they’re serious and in areas where people really need some advice or extra help.
- I answer the question via video and send it to you.
- It then goes on our home page, in the sidebar here, on all of the social networks, and it lives on our YouTube channel.
- People feel like mini-rock stars because there now is a video on the web that talks specifically to them and their challenge.
This is one of those efforts that I can’t point to a particular return-on-investment, but I can tell you people tell me all the time they saw my video on such and such and thought it was great or terrible or my hair is too long or they have something else to add.
What it does do is provide another layer to the organization. We all know people buy from people, but more…they buy from people they like and trust.
Why it Works
The weekly videos build that trust and people either like me or they hate me. If it’s the latter, the video has saved me a ton of time in prospecting and meeting with that person, only to discover we’re not a match.
So there’s the big idea you for you to steal. I’m going to leave you with this week’s video, but before I go, I ask you this…how do you use video in your business?