Internet Marketing Tips, Tricks, & Hacks #1: "The Imperfection Connection"

Or for coming off as completely amateurish or just lazy.

I guess it depends on your target audience.

This actually translates into most areas of IM too.
When I first got into self-publishing I used to spend days.....DAYS...trying to get a book cover to look "perfect".

Over the years I have noticed that if I just get it done as best I can at that particular time then I can always come back later and try to "perfect" it.

Funny thing is 9 times out of 10 the books with my "less perfect" book covers performed much better than the book covers I spent ages on.

So yeh....you can't be perfect. You can do the best you can and then leave it at that...otherwise you may be wasting valuable time for nothing.

Steve,

I agree with some of what you're saying . . . but honestly . . . the video you're using as an example is not primarily about you and your liberation.

I personally believe you should have your customer's interests and wants foremost in mind in your products and marketing ... and to me ... that suggests giving him/her the very best product you can create.

I have purchased so many "sloppy" products, ebooks that were never proofread, glaring errors that were not cleaned up that could easily have been fixed - I think the "one take wonders" you mentioned are mostly a cop out for lazy product creators.

In my book, customers and their needs/desires/value always comes before my own feelings of liberation.

Where I do agree with you is in cases where "must have perfection" actually halts a product from coming to market.

Steve

The point is a valid one - always be yourself. However, that doesn't necessarily translate to sloppy videos. There is a fine line between the 2 that you have to figure out. If you look 'fake' in polished videos, that's not good, but if you look 'real' in sloppy videos, that may not be good either.

This is so true to most of us. I've been like this before as well, especially with the way my site looks. Overthinking or overdoing is not necessarily a bad idea but it also takes a lot of your time, which you could have spent with other productive things.

The lesson I'm able to pick from your post is that it is better to just get your message out rather than worry about polishing it again and again, which could make you miss the right timing

Derek Halpern is the master of this....he includes some out-takes and mistakes.......BUT....

....his completed video is always VERY slick and professional.

Frankly I don't have time to watch a buffoon laughing and not being able to get their message across and forgetting what they wanted to say. I just want them to get to the point and keep me engaged with valuable content.

There are far too many people out there making videos who really should't because they are not very good at it and they don't have anything substantial to say to warrant a video.

PS. Just seen your above post. We are singing from the same hymn sheet

I agree with you on this. Looking unprofessional
can make everything seem more "Real" and
trustworthy...but there is a limit.

There are certain people (I'm not going to
name names) who charge massive amounts
of money for things they have obviously barely
put effort into.

Taking old rehashed information that your
audience has seen a dozen times and turning
it into a barely edited PDF that you charge $99
for is criminal.

And if you do this don't expect
people to buy from you more than once.

As for me, it's hard to take the perfectionism away! I am very keen as to making my content neat and pristine. BUT, I believe I'm doing the right thing.

It works well for me. I believe content is king, so I have to make sure it's free from the basic grammar and spelling errors. I mean, it's not hard to make that "perfect" right? LOL

But, my character and stories reflect in what I write. That's what makes it true, engaging and of course, realistic.

A few years back I got to work with an executive media trainer who was teaching a group of corporate vice-presidents how to be more effective on camera. The number one piece of advice was not to try performing on camera.

I think this matches up with the perfection idea. The basic logic is that the more you try to control your performance, the less authentic you appear to the viewer - and authenticity is more important.

That said, it is still important to be well prepared and spend a little time cleaning up your recordings before publishing. Authentic and sloppy are not the same thing.

Andrew

This might have been the case a few years back, but today's tech makes it much easier to create a good-looking video.

And don't be fooled. Many of those apparently "unprofessional" videos you see have probably taken more effort and thought to produce than most of the more polished and slick ones.

Hi Steve,

I think it depends on whether you are doing a live cast presentation or a pre-recorded and edited piece of content.

When live and interacting with an interviewer or engaging with attendees via chat or when doing a live presentation you get a different effect than when producing something for replaying or another purpose.

People do engage with a live presentation differently than one that is pre-recorded.

An audience watching something pre-recorded expects to see a more polished performance.

There are several other things to consider.

If you look at Cialdini's Influence for example. He talks about the idea of commitment and consistency.

If you start out in a pre-recorded video with an un-polished performance you are setting yourself up as being someone who might be inconsistent.

The fact you might be appealing to someone and generating a feeling they like you because you are like them may not be generated if "they don't like your amateur approach"

The other thing to consider is creating some authority.

Is having people giggle or think "oh they are just like me" conducive to creating authority?

Yes in a live sense you can engage with an audience and bond through shared experience and the like-ability route but with pre-recorded you need to be more polished.

It doesn't have to be perfect but if you don't get it right the viewer might be laughing at you not with you.

There is a balance to finding your own on screen persona.

You only have to look at any performer or digital marketer who had done video to see how they have progressed.

The best can make you eat out of their hands by manipulating what appears to you to be "imperfections" when in fact they are perfectly choreographed presentations performed to influence you in a certain way.

Best regards,

Ozi

Really good point. Actually when I get a video and if the creator is super smooth and"perfect" it just seems less grniune.

I like to hear the pauses and stuttering and what not. You know the Marketer is not reading a canned script and that he know this stuff backwards and forwards from his own
mind .

Thanks and again good points,


-Robert Andrew

With perhaps rare exceptions you should appear professional. Being branded as a buffoon may only be effective or appropriate within narrow demographics.

There's a difference between obsessing over every um, ah and shadow, and cleaning things up. Not just video, either. The same applies to audio only or text only.

I've suffered through videos where some bozo "being real" wastes 3-5 minutes looking for a tab he thought he had set up, and then looking for the page online. A simple snip and 'welcome back, we're in order now' would have been just fine.

The same goes for audios. I've no beef with the occasional ah or um or sneeze - stuff happens. But spending several minutes with host and guest giggling over some inside joke they choose not to share is annoying.

And don't get me started on transcripts with every verbal tic included.

If I'm paying for content, with either cash or my precious time, I expect the provider to put in enough effort to edit out the easily fixed problems.

That's not to say people should be worried about every tiny miscue. The human mind is a curious thing. It tends to fill in gaps or misunderstandings with what it believes should be there.

I once did a speech for a Toastmasters group where I deliberately sprinkled in a variety of malaprops. These club speeches have an evaluator who is listening for things like this. My very experienced, hyper-critical evaluator caught about 10% of my deliberate fluffs.

So I'd say, imperfection is fine, but lazy and/or sloppy is not.

This is really great advice. I usually had to do a few takes on what I wanted to bring across to my audience, but lately I just do one take, mistakes and all. Now my next step is to do my first FaceBook live. I will get there. What a wonderful forum. Thank you!

Andrew, I love the 'wave your hand' tip. Simple and elegant.

I use a little toy that makes a chirping sound when recording audio. When you load the audio into the editor, the chirp makes a spike in the sound wave.