Hi PH! Do you use videos in your product and marketing, and how?

Gaurav Sharma
15 replies
Hi all, I am new to Product Hunt and am working with my colleagues on a video editor (well, technically a multimodal editor) which can process video, audio, text, and motion graphics (to an intermediate level). The goal is to make it easier for everyone to make videos with AI assisted suggestions and macros in the long run. Our background is in applied Computer Vision and Machine Learning research, and this is the first time we are (or at least I am!) making a product end to end! I wanted to get to know the PH community and was curious about how are you guys using videos in your personal and professional life? Do you find it easy to do for certain use cases? harder for some other? Loom is sufficient for everything ๐Ÿ˜…? What are the bottlenecks and challenges in making and using videos for you all? Of course, I am assuming here that you feel videos are important for the future! If you do not feel so then let me know as well ๐Ÿ™‚. Also happy to connect here as well as on LinkedIn !

Replies

Jake Harrison
Yes I always use. I found an interesting thing about video. If you market your product with video, it will be easier get more reposts
Gaurav Sharma
@jakeharr That's a good point Jake! Are you making them in house or outsourcing? What are you using to make the videos?
Leena Chitnis
RuffRestยฎ Ultimate Dog Bed
RuffRestยฎ Ultimate Dog Bed
Videos are critical. The engagement of a video compared to say, a regular social media feed post, is 500x. That's a huge number, and something to consider as video-only platforms like TikTok are growing at a velocity that hasn't been seen since Facebook started. In fact, TikTok is such a threat that Instagram has retooled their entire business model to compete with them. Standard feed posts with still photos are no longer favored by IG's algo... Also, videos are easy-to-consume content. Make it short and punchy, to the point, and inject humor when you can. All while showing how your product solves a pain point/problem. Then you've got a winner on your hands. Sounds easy, but is quite challenging. Good luck!
Gaurav Sharma
@chitterz Thanks Leena, do you make videos yourself? Your company makes them? Internally?
Leena Chitnis
RuffRestยฎ Ultimate Dog Bed
RuffRestยฎ Ultimate Dog Bed
@grvsharma I hire the most skeleton of crews to shoot them, such as a DP who is also willing to co-direct with me. But I do everything else - location scouting, casting, auditioning, budgets, contracts/releases, craft services (feeding everyone), scriptwriting, storyboarding, viewing dailies, and helping to edit the final work. I don't worry about expensive permits and stuff like that b/c, coming from LA, we're all used to guerilla shoots, being careful not to expose any familiar landmarks. PS - one minute of film takes 8 hours to produce -- if you have a team. My commercial was a few minutes long and we cut it down to 2 minutes, then 1 minute, with several different cuts for social media, website, and television (Hulu ads, for instance). It took me over 300 hours to produce that, because we also did a version with voice over. You can view that here:
Gaurav Sharma
@chitterz Awesome, do you have any recent videos to share, very curious what is the end product of all the hard work you put it!
Leena Chitnis
RuffRestยฎ Ultimate Dog Bed
RuffRestยฎ Ultimate Dog Bed
@grvsharma Yup just posted it above.
Elena Tsemirava
Not yet. But as we are developing a rather complex app we will definitely create educational videos.
Gaurav Sharma
@elenat Awesome Elena, we are working on a video editor which can make high quality video production easy and quick. Let us know if you need help!
adam albo
Companies should start making videos as soon as possible. One key benefit of tape over the written word is "attitude." you get to express more than just bland information, and if done right, the audience will resonate with you, granted if done right.
Gaurav Sharma
@suchback 100% agree Adam, they help in building trust. As the saying goes, human interaction is the most important thing!
George Burmistrov
We do use videos. We have them on our main page and are currently working on replacing the screenshots in our FAQ articles to videos. And we're also working on a video for our product launch. Videos are good when they are useful, when creators put effort into it. It shows that people care for their viewers.
Gaurav Sharma
@burmistrov Thanks for sharing George, I would be really curious to know what tools are you using and what are the main bottlenecks in producing high quality videos quickly for you. We are actively working on using to reduce friction in creating and editing video content!
George Burmistrov
@grvsharma Sure :) We're using ScreenStudio to record the videos, it's a simple but pretty useful app to record vids (unfortunately, it's MacOS exclusive). You can add zoom to any part of your record, cut the timeline, you know, basic editing. It's not a professional editing tool, it's more for recording.
Gaurav Sharma
@burmistrov Thanks, I have also heard very good things about ScreenStudio. We are also building a web based video editor (https://cloudstudio.ai) and hope to reduce friction exponentially for such demo and product education videos. We will soon make our own launch video, would be very helpful if you can also give some feedback on that!