Consultants are always talking about “deliverables,” a term used to describe the final product provided to their clients. Consultants understand that business people are loath to paying for mere advice even if that advice is critical to their business, but they are open to paying for something tangible like a deliverable. The so called “deliverable” is usually a nice thick report bound in one of those fancy expensive folios that may contain some useful strategies and tactics but quite often is filled with platitudes and generalities accompanied by colorful graphs and charts of equally dubious value. As a consequence, business consultants, have a generalized reputation that lies somewhere between politicians and used car salesmen.

Somewhere along the evolutionary development of the Web entrepreneur a lesson was learned, unfortunately it was the wrong one. Deliverables are good; useless unusable stock solutions, even if wrapped in a nice shiny package, are bad.

The How-To Video Strategy

How-to videos have become an essential marketing strategy for featuring product knowledge and market expertise with the goal of creating confidence in a company’s ability to deliver what they promise.

Let’s say you are an expert in something. It really doesn’t matter what it is because there is a market for educational and instructional material for just about anything from guitar playing to poker, from makeup application to origami, from drawing lessons to app development.

Tapping Into The Knowledge Deficit

In today’s fast paced environment tapping into the knowledge deficit is one of the best ways to grow your business. One common business tactic used to exploit how-to opportunities is to provide teaser videos so that people get a taste of what to expect. Anyone interested in learning anything has watched his or her share of teaser videos, but all too often these videos only lead to frustration and a quick click of the mouse onto the next website offering instructions.

I’ve heard many experts fret about giving away too much information without getting paid for it. After all, why would anyone pay if they can get it for free? And here’s where the whole idea of deliverables comes in, but first let’s stop thinking like a consultant and start thinking like a marketing executive. What’s important is not the deliverable but rather the usefulness of the material provided. Let’s call it “the take-away:” the knowledge learned that improves one’s ability to perform and at the same time inspires confidence in your company’s ability to provide worthwhile instruction in the chosen field.

Commercials Aren’t How-to Videos

If you’re an expert in a particular area you should be able to giveaway all kinds of tips and tricks that your potential clients can use without running out of ideas or instructional expertise. Providing interested site visitors with a fancy PDF report, PowerPoint slideshow, or series of less-than-helpful teaser videos all obvious attempts to merely sell the real stuff will only turn people off. Commercials should not masquerade as how-to videos.

Web business is not like brick and mortar business. On the Web you are distanced from your audience by the great digital divide that creates a natural reluctance on the part of your visitors. This remoteness is the biggest obstacle you have to overcome because it creates a natural fear of being cheated. And the best way to solve the problem is to offer something of value that demonstrates your reliability and expertise, and inspires confidence in your ability and desire to deliver what you promise.

The Four How-To Video Elements

Even if you intend to provide useful instruction to your website visitors, you can still get it wrong if you don’t understand the four basic elements of giving instructions.

1. Create Expectations

Tell people what you’re going to teach them. This lets them know what the video is about and what they can expect to learn. It also implies what they aren’t going to learn so they won’t be frustrated after watching five minutes of something they’re not interested in seeing.

2. Provide Useful Instructions They Can Use

Provide appropriate instructions so that the audience can actually implement what you are teaching them. Don’t leave out or skip over critical steps because of a fear of giving away too much. These teaser videos don’t have to be a complete course in whatever it is you do, but they should be complete as far as the particular tip or trick you are providing.

3. Alert Them To Common Errors

The most common mistake made in providing instruction to people is not alerting them to common mistakes. Make people aware of the usual signs that what they are doing is going wrong. This will inspire confidence in your ability to teach and to deliver something that is truly useful. Nothing is more frustrating to a potential client than to think they have followed your instructions and the result is just not right.

4. Summarize

Remind your audience what you told them in simple memorable terms so that they feel they’ve actually learned something that they can take-away and implement on their own.

The Bottom Line

In the final analysis, if your audience doesn’t leave your website with the feeling that they are actually taking away something useful that they can use, then you’ve failed, and you will never get them to order. The bottom line: you have to give something away, if you expect to get something in return.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Web Marketing Strategy & Tactics: The Take-Away

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Showing people what a product does is a better way to catch their attention than telling them about it. Car salesmen encourage test drives, ice cream stores give out free samples, and I’d be willing to bet that few people purchase a Hanger Cascader without watching the infomercial first.

Your digital product is also more appealing when demonstrated. And the most affordable way to show people what your software does, even if you’re also offering a free trial, is often to produce a short screencast. These five free tools can help you get started.

1. Screenr

Screenr helps share your screencast videos over Twitter. After you make up to a five-minute-long screencast using the simple web tool, a shortened link to the video is automatically provided. You can add a message and post the video link to your feed with the push of a button. There are also options to post to YouTube or embed the video in your site.

While other screencast tools, like Jing (see below), have Twitter sharing options, Screenr distinguishes itself by also creating a YouTube-like profile for each user. All of your videos are saved on your profile, and a public feed of other users’ videos makes for interesting browsing. If you like an idea that you see, you can click the maker’s profile photo to see other videos they’ve uploaded.

2. Overstream

Basic, free screencapture software programs, like Wink, do a pretty decent job at creating videos, but few of them include features that allow you to add text easily. Overstream allows you to pull a video from a supported site like YouTube or Google Video and add your own subtitles to it.

CaptionTube is another free captioning web app that you can use your Google account to log into.

3. Jing

Downloading Jing puts a sun-shaped icon in the upper-righthand corner of your monitor. When you want to grab either a screenshot or a screencast, hitting the icon opens up a tool that you use to mark the perimeter of your shot and start recording. If you’re recording a screencast, audio will automatically be recorded.

You can choose to upload videos to screencast.com, which is run by the same company. Once you’ve done so, it’s easy to share the provided URL or embed the video in your site. Alternatively, you can customize share buttons on your Jing dashboard for sharing directly to Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

The free version of Jing records in SWF format. Jing pro subscribers can record in SWF or MPEG-4 video, make unbranded videos, record from their webcams and upload videos directly to YouTube.

4. GoView

Unlike most free options, GoView provides some editing capabilities. After you record your screencast and audio using the downloaded screen capture software, you can cut portions out and add title pages. Saved videos are automatically uploaded to the GoView site, and links are provided for easy sharing.

The software is free for now while the product is in public beta. But unfortunately, its early stage of development also means that it’s available on only Windows XP and Vista operating systems.

5. Screencast-o-Matic

The free version of Screencast-o-Matic captures screencasts, audio and video from your webcam at the same time without downloading any software. Finished videos, which can be up to 15 minutes long, can be exported as MP4, AVI or FLV files, uploaded to YouTube, or saved to the Screencast-o-Matic site. A note-taking option can be used to link directly to a specific moment in your video.

Videos made using the free version have a “Screencast-o-Matic” watermark on them that can only be removed by ponying up $9 to download the pro version.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

– 4 Web Apps For Managing Job Applications
– HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
– HOW TO: Create Your Own Customized Short URL
– 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web
– 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL

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Your content’s URLs, or Universal Resource Locators, may not be something that you think about every day. Making your URLs as friendly and easy-to-use as possible is one of the basics of optimizing your website for search engines as well as vastly improving its general usability.

The base URL, or address, of your website often looks something like this: http://www.example.com. It’s what people type into the address bars of their browsers to navigate to your website. Using a relevant URL is an important part connecting your users with your offerings.

Say, for example, http://www.carsales.com, if you were, indeed, a car salesmen. That’s all pretty obvious, but how can you make your URL friendlier? Here’s two things to think about:

1) Human readable URLs

Often times, because of the nature of the programming behind a website’s functionality, URLs have a tendency to devolve into hard to read, hard to understand strings of text. The URL is used to pass information to the website’s scripts – or programs – and some developers don’t take the time to develop a friendly URL system, opting instead to pass raw data through the URL. Take for example, a web page on a fictional dog toy company’s website which lists all of their assorted dog collars. In some cases, you may find a URL like so: http://www.dogtoys.com/?catId=col&page=1

As you can tell, the URL says nothing legible about collars. That means it isn’t any help either to search engines or to actual users in terms of delivering any real meaning. Not only will search engines not be able to use this URL effectively to catalog the web page’s contents, but users will have a hard time remembering it if they ever choose to return to the web page. Instead, a “friendlier” URL may read like so: http://www.dogtoys.com/collars

That’s much simpler. Now search engines and real people alike will have no difficulty knowing what might be offered at that page, or remembering how to navigate back to it.

How do you get your website to sport human readable URLs?

Ask your SEO consultant to make sure your web pages are configured to allow them, and that they boast the most effective language and phrasing in terms of “find-ability.”

2) “Hackable” URLs

Once your website offers human readable URLs, it’s time to take it one step further. “Hackable” URLs refers to URLs which can be modified by users to deliver intuitive results. This is accomplished by arranging your website’s structure categorically, and reflecting that structure in the web pages’ addresses. For example, a “hackable” URL for a web page providing purple dog collars might look like this: http://www.dogtoys.com/collars/purple Now users can glean at a glance that this page will offer not just dog collars, but dog collars of a specific color. So what if your user wants to see all dog collars, regardless of color?

They simply “hack” off the specification at the end of the URL, which gives them: http://www.dogtoys.com/collars.

This practice not only adds more meaningful, precise language into your URLs which will ensure better search engine cataloging, but also adds meaning and intuitive navigability for your users.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

2 Steps To Friendlier URLs

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What can you use the application for?


CarWoo was created to help users find a better, more interesting way to search for a new vehicle. In the past, shoppers had to deal with many headaches when buying a new car. There were sales people to deal with, negotiations, and often a general feeling of not having the upper hand. CarWoo helps streamline the process so the buyer gets the best deal on the vehicle they want without all the stress of car shopping. The system works by allowing users to enter information about the car they want to buy. This information is sent to dealers who can respond with an offer. Dealers can view each other’s offers so they can try and beat each other out (effectively lowering the price for the buyer). The buyer can review these and send a counter offer to begin negotiating if they see a deal they like. The shopper retains their privacy so they are not sent spam or harassed by car salesmen. They get competitive prices and the car they wanted by doing most of the shopping and negotiating online through CarWoo.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


CarWoo was founded in October of 2008 by Michael Young, Tommy McClung, and Erik Landerholm. Based out of Burlingame, California, the team consists of about ten individuals, including board members Michael Yang, Doug Pepper and Dillon McDonald. Young is the current product guru while McClung is CEO and Landerholm is CTO.

What are the differences to other applications?


There are more websites dedicated to selling cars than any one user could ever visit. Most of these work in many of the same ways, helping the user search for a vehicle and find the seller. While this is helpful, CarWoo takes it a step further by allowing the user to get in touch with the seller privately. They can negotiate and work through the early stages of car buying without giving away personal information.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The CarWoo website welcomes users with a fun video that helps explain the functionality of the site. A sky blue background is highlighted by whimsical clouds along the header on the homepage. The red and orange CarWoo logo helps create an eye-catching contrast that gives the site a sense of fun. The laid back nature of CarWoo is another great feature that entices new visitors to try it out.

How does the registration process work?


A new user can sign up using one of two links at the top, right hand corner of the CarWoo homepage. One is for dealers and the other is for buyers. Users can also connect through an existing Facebook account. The buyer registration form asks for a full name, email address, and password. The dealer sign up form is a little more detailed, asking for the dealership name, contact name, email address, phone number, title, and password.

What does it cost to use the application?


Buyers can choose between two membership deals. $49 for the Plus Plan and $19 for the Basic Plan. They offer a 100% happiness guarantee, so that any buyer who is not happy with their service can get his or her money back. CarWoo does not charge dealers.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Car buyers and sellers can really enjoy using CarWoo. The site offers non-confrontational way to buy or sell a vehicle. The system works well, allowing dealers to be competitive and saving buyers many trips to multiple dealerships to find the perfect car at the lowest price.

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