Meeting people in person is so incredibly important. When I sit down with a potential client, address a crowd of folks in person or just spend time with people I’ll be working with in the future, it builds a relationship that lasts and creates a bond that enables far greater communication. Once we’ve spent time together face-to-face, both parties feel both a connection and obligation to one another, and I’ve been blessed enough to spend time with people whose company I enjoy.

I’ve met people from all different walks of life, people are just amazing:

• Entrepreneurs
• Analysts
• Film Producers
• Pastors
• Venture Capitalists
• Dozens of SEOs, SEMs, Web Developers, Designers & Support Folks
• Directors & Executives from various companies
• Real Estate Developers
• Teachers
• Coaches
• List goes on

I know that I’m incredibly privilege to build connections like these, but I can’t recommend it enough. Not only are in-person meetings excellent for relationships with clients, they’re also valuable for anyone that you might be working on a project with or simply people who share common interests & goals.

On the flip side of this – every serious problem we’ve had as a company with a client has come from people that I haven’t met in person. We have several contracts with folks that we haven’t yet met, and not all of them have created problems. But, of the three times in the past 2 years that we have had contract disputes or the antagonistic issues, all three have been with clients I’ve never sat down with.

What about your experiences? Do you travel much? Do you find that strong bonds can be built without in-person meetings? Have you had trouble with “faceless” contracts?

Welcome to ‘Laferme Creative’. For all your Web and Media needs. I am located in Folkestone, Kent. My aim is to  bring to Life whatever your ideas may require; Video Production Filming, Video Editing, Website SEO, Web Marketing, Website design, Web Creation, Email Campaigns or Ecommerce. Call today on 07841 571 201 – or drop me a line through the contact form and let me know how I can help.

Here are a few of the reasons why online video is important

1. Online video is important for search engines

Video is important with optimising your website for search engines like Google. There are lots of ways video helps with this. I go into greater details about this in my other blog posts.

2. Online video is important to get onto YouTube

YouTube is now the second largest search engine behind Google – an important fact to remember! If you don’t have a video you can’t be on YouTube and you can’t reach any of the people who are searching on this huge website.

3. Online video is important to get external links

By having video on other sites you can link traffic back to your site by using external links.

4. Online video is important to get useful keywords

The keyword “video” outranks nearly any other keyword you can think of. For an example run this test. Go to / and type “video” into the top spot. See how many words you can find that have a larger global search rate. Post answers in the comments. PS when I tried it, “video” even outranked “porn” and “sex” although after some searching we found “lyrics” a tiny bit higher. For website keywords “youtube” and “facebook” are pretty much neck and neck.

5. Online video is important to social media/viral marketing

Social media often thrives with video. It is easy to share a video and a well created video has a lot of potential to go viral – more than a blog post and far more than a website! Videos can be shared via Facebook, Youtube or even good old email!

6. Online video is important because it is often the user’s preference

Many people prefer to watch video than read text. It is a quick way of getting media rich information about what they want to know. They may turn off from a text/image only site.

7. Online video is important because video is emotional

Video material can often pull on people emotionally more effectively than text or even a photograph. Music, expression, tone of voice… all these things connect with us. Emotion is an important marketing force.

8. Online video is important because video gets remembered

By combining sight and sound video reaches us on multiple levels and as a result “sticks” better. Scientists have found the more senses that information engages the more of it is retained (see graph). It’s important people not only view but remember your content!

9. Online video is important because video can be the most appropriate medium

Some things just work better as a video. Things like testimonials from clients. It’s one thing to have a printed paragraph of someone singing your praises but to see and hear a normal person enthusiastically ooze about your brand… that’s an entirely different thing!

10. Online video is important because with video you can be a star and build connection

If you can appear on a video and a viewer hears you speak, sees your body language and senses your passion, she will feel connected to you. We invest energy into celebrities and personalities because we feel that we somehow know them. Simply by being viewed online you will be building a connection with the individual and earning some important loyalty from them, even if they are unaware of it!

11. Online video is important because video can create an interactive world

Video is more and more commonplace online. People are familiar with it and consume a LOT of it. It can be hard to compete without an equal footing. Text and images will always be the mainstay of a website but in all likelihood you have that already. By not utilising video as well you are probably missing out on a lot of searches and clients you might otherwise have reached with your marketing efforts.

These are my tips in (SEO) Search Engine Optimisation
A Website without SEO is like a tear drop in an ocean, so it is a vital component of any website. As a company or indivual trying to get attention to your audance, it’s important you understand how SEO works. Here are some easy steps that will immediately improve the SEO on all of your web sites, including media content.

Step One: Find and Stick to Your Keywords

Find a few keywords or phrases that describe your web site. Included them, and words related to them, whenever it’s natural to do so, use them in sentences, in header, headlines, and in links.

Step Two: Content is King

Your aduouance, people don’t search for design, they searching for specific products or services. If your site doesn’t have that product or service that people want, no one will look at it.

Every page on your site should have some content with your keyword in it. Each page should lead with a relevant H1 tag with one of your keywords, and the first paragraph of text should be a summary of the rest of the page.

Step Three: Correct Code is Searchable Code

Build your sites in a text editor, and write clean, human-readable HTML. The HTML should follow the conceptual structure of the page, navigation first, followed by the H1 tag, then the first paragraph, etc. Try to use descriptive tags when possible. Use UL for lists, P for paragraphs, H tags for heads and subheads, and STRONG for bolded text.

This can be checked at W3Markup Validation Service
Step Four: The Home Page is the Most Important Page

Your home page is the key to your site being found by search engines. It should summarize the rest of the site, and give a clear, compelling reason for a user to look at the other pages in the site.

Step Six: Out bound Links

Search engines like google pay a lot of attention to the links on your site, and the words used in those links. Dont use “click here” for a link. The link text should describe where the link will take theperson

The more relevant the links on a page, the better and more findable the page becomes. Don’t go over the top, and don’t link to anything irrelevant.

Step Seven: Inbound Links

Without any inbound links at all pointing towards your site, it will not rank very well, The search engines expect people to link to things those people find to be of value.

Rule Eight: Title Tags

Every page in your site should have a title with the site name and a short description of the page. About 60 letters total. Include a keyword. Remember that the page title is what appears in search results. Make it Relevant.

Your navigation links should have title attributes that match the titles of your pages. This looks like <a title=”name of page” href=”link”> It’s a small thing, but it will give you a significant SEO improvement.
Step Seven: Pictures and Alt Tags Matter

Every image, picture or media your site should have an alt tag. specially images that are relevant to the page.

Step Nine: Meta Tags

Meta tags that really matters now is the description tag. Search engines may use it to provide the text under the link to your page in their results. Make sure it describes the page in a way that explains why a user searching for your content would want to look at your page, include key words, but dont go crazy, long dictionary list of many keywords, Those days are gone.
Step Ten: Have a Site Map

Make sure you have a site map. This is an xml file that describes the structure of your page. Site map generater

Contact me for friendly, professional advice on your next media project.

Working from home.  PRO:  The major benefit  is that you can do it from the comfort of your cozy office.  You can formulate a routine that works with your lifestyle and avoid the constant interruptions inherent in an office setting.  Bonus: appropriate attire includes pajamas and you’ll avoid the morning commute!  CON:  You will  face constant distractions like young children and babes, Jobs that need doing around the house, food shopping, and most of all work does alway leave.

Set your own schedule.  PRO: If you want to go to lunch with friends, sneak in some time at the gym, or take in an afternoon movie, there is absolutely no reason you can’t schedule it in.  The flexibility is what draws most people to at-home work.  CON: You are solely responsible for how your time is allocated.  That means you have to be diligent when it comes to setting work hours and sticking to them.  If you thought you could earn a living by rising at the crack of noon and working for a couple of hours in the afternoon, you were dreaming.  And there is no one to blame but yourself if you can’t pay the bills.

Variety.  PRO:  The great thing about being a freelance is that you will enjoy a constantly changing palette of subject matter.  This means that you will most likely be learning new things all the time and you can avoid the boredom of expounding upon the same topics all the time.  CON:  Freelance requires you to be a  jack, I’d like to say a master of  all trades since at any given time you might have to tackle a vast array of different needs from client.  It all depends on the work that comes your way.  For an individual who is not comfortable with research or has a hard time elucidating subjects on which they lack expert knowledge, this can be an extremely challenging and stressful aspect of the job.
Multiple clients.  PRO:  Since you are basically your own boss, you can take on as few or as many clients as you wish, and only accept repeat business from the ones you like, ensuring less stress and good working relationships.  CON:  One problem with taking on several clients is that you are bound to get some bad apples.  You will have to deal with people who are demanding, irrational, and disrespectful, and you must remain professional throughout if you don’t want to risk a negative review.

Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license. The program was written from scratch by Mean, but code from other people and projects has been used as well. Patches, translations and even bug reports are always welcome.