The Startup Videos » Video Marketing

Vmaker: The best alternative for Loom

sangeerani — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 15:51:38 +0000

Screen recording videos has gained a lot of popularity. It’s not difficult to understand why — screen recording videos are easy to create, it’s much cheaper to produce a video than compared to other video creation tools, and there are a lot of screen recording tools available online. Speaking of which, there is one tool that has become almost synonymous with screen recording, and that is Loom.

Loom has taken the world by storm by gaining more than 7 million users worldwide. From marketers to developers everyone has realized the power of creating screen recording videos for daily communication. Loom has also positioned itself well in the market. The product is easy to use, the pricing is to the point, and the website looks very welcoming.

However, there are a few grey areas that is important to be aware of. In this blog, we will be covering a few concerns about using Loom, and how you can get over them by using a better alternative. If you’re using Loom already, then this blog will have a lot of takeaways for you. If you’re one of those people who are starting out with screen recording or at the evaluation stage, then this blog will be a great resource for you too.

In this blog, we will be comparing Vmaker with Loom. This will be a thorough analysis starting from the free plan to the paid plans.

What is Vmaker

Vmaker is a free screen recording tool that allows you to record screen and video for unlimited duration. Vmaker has coined the term “Video chat, without a chat,” which means you can use screen recordings to chat with people, but in an asynchronous way. This keeps the conversation more thoughtful, and less stressful.

Vmaker is a product of Animaker Inc., one of the fastest growing creative companies in the video making and animation industry. Animaker has more than 10 million users worldwide, and with Vmaker, they are optimistic on stretching their reach further.

Coming to the crux of this blog, here’s how the Vmaker is a better alternative to Loom.

Free plan comparison: Vmaker vs Loom

Loom offers a free plan for users. It’s great for those who want to test drive the tool, and then take the decision. However, there are a lot of limitations to it which automatically pushes a user to upgrade to a paid plan. Vmaker, on the other hand has done a great job in designing the free plans. There are no hidden charges or caveats, and no pressure on a user to upgrade to a paid plan. They can continue to use it because most of the premium features are available for the free version too.

Let’s look at the following table to see how Vmaker’s free plan is better than Loom –

Summary

The free plan offered by Vmaker has the right set of features to encourage users to create screen recording videos even when they’re in the free plan. Normally, the DND mode and video editing features are available only for the paid plans. By offering these features in the free plan, Vmaker is miles ahead of Loom.

Alright, so that was the free plan comparison. Let’s check how Vmaker and Loom fare in the paid plan comparison. In the following section, we have compared the pricing along with the features offered in the paid plan.

Paid plan comparison: Vmaker vs Loom

Summary
That was the comparison of the starter plan of Vmaker and Business plan of Loom. By paying a dollar less, you get features that are interesting and can make your videos more sharp.

Now, let’s compare the highest plan of Vmaker, and the business plan of Loom

Summary

The Teams plan of Vmaker which is the highest plan, cost $2 extra as compared to Loom. However, features like recording scheduler, unlimited creators and workspaces, justify the premium amount. This plan will do great justice to teams that collaborate together to work on different projects. Talking about Loom’s business plan, it falls short from becoming an effective tool for team collaboration

Verdict

The verdict is clear. The comparisons are right in front of you. Vmaker offers a better bang for the buck. It has the right set of features, and its friendly pricing has a lot to offer for anyone who is willing to make screen recording videos. The free plan is probably the best in the market, and it is the biggest head turner for Vmaker. The Starter and the Teams plan, has advanced features which will appeal to those users who have been making screen recording videos for some time now. It’s about time that these users migrate to Vmaker for a better experience, access to more thoughtful features, and higher return on investment.

7 Quick Ways to Grow your YouTube Channel!

sangeerani — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 09:06:41 +0000

Growing a YouTube channel is just like nurturing a seed. It takes time, continuous effort, patience, and a little extra care!

And of course, it can’t be achieved overnight!

But there are a few things which can speed up this process. And in this article, we will cover the top 7 things that will speed up your growth on YouTube.

1. Research before you start creating videos

Creating video content takes a lot of time and effort. So, you might want to ensure that you are not wasting your energy on a video topic that has very little or even zero search volume.

Why?

Because if no one is searching for that topic then how can you expect to get more views for your video!

So, before you even work on the script or title, do an extensive research for selecting the best topic for your video.

This will help you ensure that your content caters to a larger audience and thereby increases your chances of getting more views.

The easiest way to do that is by leveraging the auto-complete feature of YouTube search

For example, if you have a food channel and you want to make a video on salads. From the search prediction, we can see that salad decoration tops the list. So, instead of talking a lot about salad making in your video, you can rather talk about ways and tips to decorate salad.

Apart from this, you can also use the following tools to do the keyword research for your video.

1. Google keyword planner – Google keyword planner is a part of the Google Ads interface, which allows you to just type in a keyword and find its search volume and related keywords.

2. Google trends – Just like Google keyword planner google trends is another free tool that helps you find out some trending video ideas.

If you are just starting off with your YouTube channel make sure you cover only a specific niche. Because YouTube defines the genre of a channel based on the type of content it has. If you put content from the different niche on your channel, YouTube won’t rank your channel for anything.

2. Create a hook within first 10 secs of your video

According to VideoNithch, approximately 20% of the people who start watching your video will leave within the first 10 seconds.

Also, a view is counted only after a person watches it for 30 seconds.

But there is a catch in the number of views displayed on YouTube!

When you upload a video on YouTube, views are counted as it is till 300 views but after that YouTube verifies the number of views with the help of a secret process (of course!) and then displays only the unique legit views.

And this is the reason why sometimes you see a discrepancy in the number of views shown on your video and in your YouTube analytics section. The same process is applied to the number of likes as well!

Now that you know how YouTube counts the number of views, let’s get into how can you create a hook that will make people stay on the video for longer than 30 seconds!

The best way to do this is by building curiosity at the very beginning of the video. You can do that by having a short intro about your video which tells your audience what they can expect from the video or just by asking some mindblowing questions that will make them stay on your video.

These hacks are very effective and are already used by a lot of YouTubers and SEO experts like Brian Dean and Neil Patel.

3. Rank higher by including keywords in the title and description

The cutthroat competition starts the moment you post your video on YouTube. Usually, the first hurdle that comes in front of YouTubers is ranking the videos at a higher position for a specific search result.

So, how do you make YouTube give preference to your video over others?

Well! The answer to this question is by helping YouTube understand what your video is all about. To do that, you can simply start by including the right keywords in your video’s title and description.

Make sure you spend enough time on this as it will do it’s magic only when you do it the right way!

To truly optimize your video for a particular keyword, we also recommend you to say the main keyword in your video itself. Now that YouTube is automatically generating subtitles for your videos, they are able to track what you are saying in the video and with that YouTube can understand what your video is about.

To make things even easier for YouTube to give preference to your video, try adding your main keyword at the beginning of your Video title. However, to prevent cropping of your main title, limit the number of characters in your video title to 50.

For the description, use the first 124 characters wisely to include some keywords as these characters will be shown along with your heading in the YouTube search result.

4. Win CTR battle with clickable thumbnails

Now that you have created an amazing video and published it, the next challenge would be making viewers choose between your video and thousands of other videos which are listing for the same topic.

The best way to ensure maximum clicks on your videos is by creating an enticing YouTube video thumbnail.

The YouTube thumbnail is the first thing people will see when they come across your video and by having an enticing thumbnail, you can improve the video’s CTR(Click through Rate) to a great extent.

In fact! YouTube itself reports that 90% of the best-performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails.

In a world where people take only a few seconds to decide whether to watch your video or not, your video will be judged by its cover!

And this is why thumbnails can be your trump card when it comes to winning the CTR(Click Through Rate) battle.

Creating a clickable thumbnail is a fairly easy task. You can create an enticing thumbnail by using a free YouTube thumbnail maker app like Picmaker.

To know more about which thumbnail type works better on YouTube and how to quickly create a professional looking YouTube thumbnail, check out this blog: “How to make a smashing thumbnail in 5 mins!”

5. Improve average watch time of your YouTube channel with playlists and end screen annotation.

It is no secret that YouTube ranks your videos based on average watch time.

But not many know that YouTube gives preference to videos of channels that have great watch times across their entire channel.

YouTube as a company wants more people to stay on their platform as long as possible. Hence YouTube rewards the best performing channel by pushing its content to the related videos section. This again leads to a phenomenal increase in the views of that particular video.

Now, let’s talk about how you can increase your channel’s average watch time with less effort!

One way to do that is by creating a playlist of all the related videos on your channel. Playlists are a great way to increase the average watch time as it pushes your viewers to watch more than one video in a single session. Thus making viewers stay longer on your channel.

But when you are creating a playlist, make sure you name your playlist in such a way that it precisely reflects the video content of your videos. Check out this article by google to know how to create a playlist on YouTube.
The second way is to use end screen annotation in your videos. The end screen annotations will give your users a way to dive deep into your series of related content. The best way to leverage this option is to include a playlist of videos or to include a video which is related to the currently playing video.

If you notice, the annotation in the video and the current playing video are related as they both talk about the camera basics.

Check out this article by Google to know how you can use end screen annotation

6. Make your channel homepage brandilicious

Most people, after being exposed to your video will check out your channel’s homepage. If you want them to subscribe, it needs to look as attractive and professional as possible. Treat your youtube channel as a brand! The impression you create in your viewer’s mind in the first 5 seconds, matters a lot!

But, creating a custom channel art can be tricky because channel art looks different on different devices.

Check out this simple 7 step guide on how to make make a stunning YouTube channel art to get started with creating some professional looking YouTube channel art.

To create some professional looking channel art, you can use a free YouTube channel art maker.

7. Embed your YouTube videos on your blog or website

If your site or blog is getting some good traffic, then embedding your YouTube videos can do wonders for your views.

How?

Because once you embed your YouTube video on your blog or website, any view that you get on your video will reflect on your total view count. So, by embedding your video in your blog or website you are actually creating an extra inflow of more views for your YouTube video.

Check out this article by Google to know how to embed your YouTube video.

We hope our list of 7 quick ways to grow your YouTube channel helps you climb the YouTube ladder easily.

Did we miss any awesome way to grow your channel? What are your top 7 ways to grow on YouTube? Let us know in the comment section.

Top 5 Best Tools to Make Social Media Videos

sangeerani — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 06:56:14 +0000

Last week, the shower fell on my head. It was a chilly morning. First, I thought it was frozen ice. Then, I realised the whole damn thing was broken.

I called the plumber. He came in at lightning speed. So quick that he forgot to take his tools. He was the finest plumber in town, but without the tools he was as good as my Neighbour Jerry.

The only difference between humans today and humans 10000 years ago is tools.

You might be a social media expert. You might have the creativity to make content that attracts attention. You might even have the insight to understand the trends. But without the right tools, you are only 1% of what you can be.

A lot of professionals don’t update their arsenal.

We find an amazing tool. We fall in love with it. And we keep on using it for years and years.

What if your Grandpa still used pigeons instead of Gmail?

Here is the 2017 list of must have tools for social media:

Live Video Maker – Shakr.

Small businesses and big brands are turning to social media video advertising for discovery, entertainment and brand awareness.

And with the number of video ad views totaling to 28.7 billion last year, you just can’t ignore it! However, as the cost for making video ads are too expensive, most marketers were still testing waters. Shakr changes all that. It is the missing piece of puzzle that saves the day here.

Shakr aims to help Small business owners ( real estate agents, car dealers, restaurant owners) to create video advertising campaigns for their marketplace at a very affordable price.

All you need to do is pick stock images from the application and drop them in the video creator. The output is a stunning HD video for your video ad campaign. Their templates are designed by graphic designers who have worked for brands like Nike and Samsung in the past.

You can also preview the HD-quality, non-watermarked video clips and themes before buying them.

WeVideo

Another popular social media app I have come across is WeVideo. Like Shakr, WeVideos also helps you create live videos. But the best thing I like about them is that you can capture and edit your video on your mobile on the go.
WeVideo boasts of giving full creative control to the users.Their main motto is that imagination should be the foundation of any kickass video. They make it very easy to create a great movie.

With features like photo animation, voice over, and clip transformation, screencasting etc, WeVideo seems no less than a mix of professional video editing tools within a single application.

WeVideo is the one stop solution for making anything from family videos to product demos. It can be used in both PC and smartphone.

Animated Videos: Animaker

Animated videos are underestimated.

While it cannot provide the richness of a real video, it has its own advantages.

It’s not just an app for explainer videos. In addition to having a huge list of awesome features to make cool animations, it can come to your rescue:

1. If your target audience is not from your country and you don’t have the money to hire a foreign actor.

2. When you want your imagination to make all the rules.

3. When you want to incite warm emotions while showing a factory or anything boring.

4. If you are catering to a statistics heavy topic.

5. If you want to make changes later.

Animaker edges out most other apps in the same segment thanks to 2 things:

Better Visuals: More lively characters in the app with new characters coming up all the time.

A constant update of features: Last year we came up with Video Infographics and this year we’ve already brought in Animaker Decks: which can convert your video into a slide show presentation. But our landmark innovation this year would be the addition of the world’s first vertical video maker. If you haven’t already, you should check it out now.

Video slideshows – Animoto

Like the 3 tools mentioned above, Animoto also has a unique feature- Video slideshows.

It gives you a video slideshow instead of a video as an output which is recreated out of free images, video clips or music clips. Animoto has patented Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology which makes all of this possible.

The company aims to help users make professional looking videos instead of poorly made camcorder video clips. And it turned out to be true when Animoto’s Facebook application launched in 2008 had nearly 750,000 people signed up in just three days!

If you want to create a video slideshow with an attractive mix of video clips, images and music clips, Animoto is a tool you need to try.

Magisto

If you want to add a personal touch to their social videos, Magisto holds a big advantage. With their emotion sense technology, the tool automatically selects the best parts of the video and clubs it into a beautiful story that elicits emotion.

The patented emotion sense technology is said to work on three levels: Visual analysis, audio analysis and storytelling.

After a detailed analysis of the video, the tool identifies the main character of the video, the topic of the video and uses the emotion guided techniques to form a perfect story.

From personal videos to commercial ads, Magisto captures the core element of your video (the story) and makes it compelling to look at.

All with an easy-to-use interface with editing tools, captions, custom branding and pre- themed templates. Magisto has come a long way to be called a “smart video storytelling application”.

It’s a war out there. Having a good plan alone won’t be enough to stand out. You need to use the right tools as well. Remember, Iron man would be just talk and no show if he didn’t have the suit.

Animaker :First look of “The Video Infographics”.

Sruthi — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 07:13:21 +0000

Animaker, which turned up the trumps with the fame of “ an online tool for creating studio-quality videos” has a great news for everyone. It has launched “the video infographics”.

Video infographics: an introduction.

Data and statistics are an inevitable asset for everyone. (Marketers, Journalists, Teachers etc). It is a valuable insight which poses to be a foundation of every decision you take. There is a voluminous amount of data present but no proper method to relay this valuable information to the audience.

Video infographics is the new tool that surpasses the traditional powerpoint presentations and elaborate infographics. It is a combination of “video” and “infographics”, the two powerful tools of conveying information. It breathes life into the boring presentations and make information appealing, consumable and retainable.

Animaker’s Video Infographics: First look

Animaker has come all over again with new features, an extended library, updated assets, enhanced User Interface and many more exciting effects.

The latest theme has

3000+ maps

1000+ charts

30+ bgm

Unique font styles

A whole new range of Pre animated assets

Enhanced User Interface

900+ properties

Improved speed

Fully customizable

Maps:

This category comes handy for journalists. Tiled animation, icon animation, destination animation etc are the types of maps offered in this section. You can select two locations and animate it parallelly too.

Charts:

Line charts, pie charts, Bar graphs. Dotted graphs, Area map, Numbers, Currency, tables…. There is a huge set of charts available in the library section. The data can be manipulated and customized by a single click.

Pre animated assets:

Now your animation becomes easier. Animaker has included a vast number of pre-animated lines, shapes, icons that adds professionalism in your work, yet take it less effort.

Other Features:

Your video can seem more alive with a new set of inspirational and merry bgms. All genres of music files are available in the updated set.

That is not all. This is just a dime’s worth.

Make most of the latest theme of Animaker’s Video Infographics. The good news is that you can work collaboratively on all the themes of Animaker to make best use of all the available options. To get started, Click here.

OrCam: Good bye to Magnifying Glasses

bhuvana — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 09:01:57 +0000

Vision is the most important aspect in our daily life. In a single day, there are many tasks to perform where vision plays the major role. People with partial visual loss find it difficult to organize and manage their everyday activity. This suffering has come to an end with Orcam.

Orcam is an intuitive portable device, which provides artificial vision to assist the visually impaired. It has an smart camera mounted on the eye glass which recognizes the text, objects and products that is been communicated to the user’s ears through a discrete bone conduction earpiece. The device responds to a intuitive gesture, a point of the finger or press of the button initiates the device to detect the product.

There are 280 million people around the world who are the victims of partial visual loss, Orcam aims to give freedom and the independent life these visually impaired people wish to live. Orcam is invented by Orcam technologies which is a start up located in Israel. Israel is flourishing with startups that come up with technically sound concepts and innovations. They pose a great challenge for other upcoming entrepreneurs in different parts of the world and global brands to be even more innovative and competitive. It’s rightly called the start-up nation.

This product signifies that, an amazing idea when molded with technology can make impossible things possible.

3 tools to Jumpstart your YouTube Marketing

bhuvana — Fri, 26 Dec 2014 09:36:20 +0000

Youtube has unequivocally become the ultimate platform for video marketers and its numbers speak about its importance for brands.YouTube is the darling of online video marketers and there is no doubt about that.

It is understood that quality content plays a major role in boosting the performance of the videos, but there should be a significant marketing effort put in to it. This is possible only when we understand what makes a video click and how to make it click. That is when Analytics comes to our rescue. YouTube has some interesting metrics but that alone would not help. Here are a few companies that can help you in online video content marketing.

1. VidIQ

VidIQ helps you to organically grow your viewership and subscribers on YouTube. Right from video SEO to identifying influencers and engaging them to tracking conversations around your brand VidIQ will take care. They help brands, Agencies and Networks in coming up with the right market research that will help them in creating relevant and appropriate content for their target audience. Their insights also take into account the engagement across Facebook and Twitter.

2. Vidooly

Vidooly is a video marketing and analytics suite that helps in building a strong base for you on YouTube. Their intelligent analytics suite helps content creators, brands and MCNs to maximize their YouTube organic views, build audience base and earn more revenue. Their services include video tag suggestions, the best time for uploads, search rank analysis, competitor tracking, subscribers behavior analysis, influencers collaboration and testing which are all focussed on organically growing your brand reach.

3. Tubularlabs

Tubularlabs’ dashboard is very simple to use and shows extensive insights on video analytics. Gives you brand and industry intelligence by identifying trending topics and videos by searching a directory of its channels and videos. Tubularlabs is the best tool to kickstart a hypertargeted video campaign. They also provide optimized marketing and sales campaign management by bringing down your costs in media planning and buying.

As part of a successful video content marketing strategy, Analytics is a great way to keep track of your performance and creating content after understanding the market pulse. A clear data on your performance will help you cut costs and increase your brand reach in the shortest time possible.

Startups! 3 ingredients for a break-through Media/ TV Campaign

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 09:33:03 +0000

In this network era, just raising an initial profile for the brand through a media campaign does not cut the mustard anymore. You should organize to build an effective mind-blowing campaign that projectiles right from creating awareness and moves right into engagement as quick as possible. For a startup business such a break-through campaign can potentially skyrocket sales in the targeted market.

There are 3 secret lessons every startup must follow for producing that sparkling campaign and sweep the market by storm.

Be creative

Decide on the right type of production- a video, poster or a tagline. If its a video, then plan whether a live-action film or animated film. Judge the need of the hour and ascertain the media match for your brand. Radio though is safe for your budget cannot perform best for you. Television is the trendy media and can showcase your product to the global market.
A single production to feed that hour. One at a time can be your keyword to win the goal.
Make your campaign lucid that conveys a clear-cut insight of your brand.
Explain how you are unique and stand out from others. Precisely, show your USP.
Replay your brand name, logo and the URL to print your brand in viewer’s mind.
Bid the customers to respond and act by a compelling CTA.

Media Strategy

An ad that failed in grabbing the right audience attention at the right time cannot deliver its intended impact. Nor can an ad dispatched in the wrong geography can strike. So think twice and determine before posting.

Who are my audience?
Which media can give a throw?
Which channel is right for me?
Which program / slot will serve the need?
Push your sales targeting on smaller budget campaigns in mono-channels like radio. Strategize for a better reach with larger cross-media campaign that can result to a maximum exposure.
Aim to well allocate the timing by gaining the customer attention span with high frequency ads. For a relaxed,evening effect advertisement, television is the best choice and to reach to customers in morning routine, in the car or workplace radio comes to our rescue.

Hence, your pick should carefully exploit the various media to resolve the target.

FlipKart Ad

SnapDeal Ad

Track the Traffic

A few measures are there to appraise the short-term sales uplift.
TV has several tracking tools for assessing the traffic.The biggest and most obvious impact of TV-ads is the huge and instant response received. A response with a great crowd visiting the web site. The typing of the URL can serve as a single most important metric to track. If your direct traffic is not soaring up by over 80% and a part of direct traffic not jumping to a high 40’s you are answerable.
If its an out-of-home campaign like hoardings and print media then QR codes can be sort to track the trail.

Hence, we suggest you to adapt to all the 3 guidelines which can enable you to end up with that shining star campaign. Thanks for taking the time to travel with us. Leave your comments in the section below.

11 Indian Startups : TV Video Campaigns worth watching

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 12:22:03 +0000

TV video campaigns are always a big dream for startups to get covered. In India, companies like flipkart, snapdeal, Yebhi and Jabong invest heavily on TV campaigns. With millions or even billions of funding, now they are bigger than a startup. They have become big brands. But TV campaign for sure is their prime source for growing bigger and better day by day.Below we have listed some top 11 video campaigns that attracted lot of people towards their brand.

Flipkart

Snapdeal

RedBus Full AD

Jabong

Line App India

WeChat India

Myntra Full Version

GoIbIbo

Yebhi

Common Floor

99acres.com

We had made enough of research to come up with this top Indian startup video campaigns.We may have missed something interesting so do share your favorites in the comment section.

3 Fast Linkedin Sales Hack for new startup marketers.

admin — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 11:41:30 +0000

Social-selling is hot, especially for startups who have no budget. But do we really sell our stuff using Facebook and Twitter. If it is B2B then no way, you have to look into Linkedin. Linkedin is a great sales tool. No wonder, even Fortune companies close deals via Linkedin. As a startup, sales will always hit your head once your products are out. These 3 fast hacks cannot skyrocket your sales but sure will let you go in the right path to get everything done faster in linkedin sales.

“Help the people in your network. And Let them help you.” – Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

1. Connect with the Right customer but don’t jump to him!

In Linkedin, connect request is approved in 2 ways. One “I accept every request that comes to me” and the second “I validate before I accept”. Let us drop the first category, most of the decision makers come in the second category, but don’t jump to them directly.

Things that influence your connect approvals are:

Your Pic, Your Name and Your professional headline.
Do I have a common connection shared between?
Your Profile, but most of the approval happens based on the above 2.

My favorite sales guy who knows the perfect marketing tactics is Neil Patel Co-founder of CrazyEgg. You can very well see how better your headline can be.

Don’t jump to your potential customer directly. It is better to go by second level and third level before accessing them, which gives a known feel than direct jump. The best way of doing this is to identify the Influencer in the specific industry. Most of the decision makers connected with Influencers say, “PR/Media coordinates are the most Influencers”.

2. Like or comment on your potential client with a trick.

Don’t comment or like all the posts shared by your potential clients, you will be easily identified as a sales guy. Also don’t comment or like on the most viral post you may be lost in the crowd. The best way to handle is “Like- where you get the attention of the potential customer”.

3. Don’t waste your time in search

In Linkedin, we always waste our time in identifying the most valuable client or similar profile. Even Linkedin knows this well, that’s why they have this great feature “People also Viewed”. It is good to reach out relevant profile similar to your potential clients.