Last updated on June 15th, 2024
On this episode we talk about 10 video marketing tools we would recommend.
Links: Soundstripe | REV | Envato Elements| Splasheo | TubeBuddy | Remove.bg | ClickUp | Wipster | Custom Thumbnails | VidTarget
HOST: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by:
– Renee Teeley of VideoExplained and ReneeTeeley.com | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
– Dane Golden of VidAction.tv | LinkedIn | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
Today, we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going to talk about 10 video marketing tools we recommend. Renee, are these the end-all be-all or are these just good tools?
Renee Teeley:
I would say they’re just good tools. I love getting recommendations from other video marketers and video producers. And I think there’s always something new that you can learn and always new tools that you can use to sort of streamline that process.
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the VidAction Podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from vidaction.tv, where we help you up your game on YouTube for business and transform your viewers into loyal customers. And vidtarget.io, where we help you drive higher quality leads and sales by reaching your ideal clients one-to-one on YouTube. We talked about that on the podcast last week. Along with, my co-host, she’s the powerhouse video marketer from San Francisco, it’s R-E-N-E-E T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley from VideoExplained. Hello, Renee.
Renee Teeley:
Hello Dane. Today, I am happy as a dog with two tails to be co-hosting this podcast with you.
Dane Golden:
But are you thrilled?
Renee Teeley:
I’m thrilled. I’m delighted. I am all of the things.
Dane Golden:
She’s all the things. And Renee, what do you do at VideoExplained?
Renee Teeley:
Speaking of all the things. At VideoExplained, I offer video production and consulting services to help companies generate leads and convert those leads into paying customers with video.
Dane Golden:
That’s so nice. You know what? I was speaking with one of my clients today and they say, “You know what? I was a consultant once. And I’m so appreciative of all the prep and good work you do with us because I know how hard it is as a consultant.” And I know Renee, you work very hard to help your clients with your consulting. And sometimes when you hear that you just want to share it because I know that your clients are thinking that, whether they say it or not. And we both work really hard to help our clients, don’t we?
Renee Teeley:
Absolutely. You know what? That was really heartwarming. Thank you.
Dane Golden:
It was.
Renee Teeley:
I appreciate that. Yes, we both work very hard for our clients. Absolutely.
Dane Golden:
We really give our best and that’s why I love joining with you on this podcast is I think we have good energy, we’re sincere, we’re hardworking and one of us is smart and that’s you. So moving on-
Renee Teeley:
I thought you were going to leave it open-ended and just say one of us is smart.
Dane Golden:
We don’t know who it is.
Renee Teeley:
We don’t know who.
Dane Golden:
And I want to remind you, the listener, that you should always know you can follow along on your podcast app with the transcript and the links. And please do share or review us. You just click, generally those three dots, if you see three dots somewhere in your app, that’s often what helps you go to the area where you can share or review us on your app. And today we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going to talk about 10 video marketing tools we recommend. Renee, are these the end-all be-all or are these just good tools? How would you position this?
Renee Teeley:
I would say they’re just good tools. I mean, I think there’s sort of an endless amount of different tools that we can recommend and other people can recommend. But I love getting recommendations from other video marketers and video producers. And I think there’s always something new that you can learn and always new tools that you can use to sort of streamline that process. So yeah, we’re just going to share some tools that we really enjoy using. Hopefully, this is not the last time we do one of these episodes. So, we’d love to know if this is helpful for you guys. But let’s get started. Let’s recommend some tools.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. I mean, between the two of us, I have a list of tools, I could possibly go on one of my lists that’s several hundred things long. But these are just 10 that I wanted to talk to you today. But let’s start with you. What is your first tool?
Renee Teeley:
So, my first tool is a tool that I use very frequently and I love it. I’ve recommended this before, I think even on the show, but I’m going to do it again. It’s a subscription service called Soundstripe and it’s specifically for audio that’s meant for video. And one of the things that I love about Soundstripe and there’s many other tools out there that do this, but I like it because it’s really easy to find the type of music that I’m looking for. So, you can search by genre, but you can also search by mood. You can even set different parameters, like how long the audio needs to be. So if you’re looking for a very specific type of duration for your video, that kind of fits with what you already have, you can look for a specific duration. So, it’s really great. I love it.
Dane Golden:
What if you’re hungry? Can you look for food that relates to being hungry, songs?
Renee Teeley:
Now you’re really testing me. So I have never looked for, definitely not a mood of being hungry, but I bet you, if you were looking for a song with lyrics, which I don’t normally do for my videos, but if you’re looking for a song with lyrics, I bet you could probably put in the word hamburger or whatever it might be or even hungry and maybe something would pop up. Leave it to you to test that though.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. I ask the weird questions. Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Scotland and I talked to this guy who was working in the shop and I was being American? I was like, “Hey, how you doing today?” And he goes, “I’m hungry and tired.”
Renee Teeley:
And he also sounds like a pirate.
Dane Golden:
I’m hungry… That’s my Scottish accent. I’m hungry and tired. But I realized later he wasn’t angry, he was hungry and I heard him wrong. So, my tip, my first tool, video marketing tool is rev.com, R-E-V.com. And we’re going to have links to all these in the description, like I promised. I promised the links and you will get them. And Rev is for transcriptions. And I think in words rather than images or music and… I’m just about words. And Rev realizes that words are so integral to video on multiple levels. You can do transcripts of your YouTube videos. We use it to transcribe these podcasts. But even when I’m working with clients and we have a back and forth of editing a script, we have a new process with one client where they read the script just off the top of their head and then we transcribe it. And then we’ll turn it into a version of a script and then they reedit it. So there’s a intermediary process of just transcribing something. What do you think of that, Renee?
Renee Teeley:
I think that’s a very unique process. It’s definitely not one that I followed. So, that’s really interesting. But hey, whatever works for you. I love rev.com though. I use it for all of my videos, especially if I’m posting something to LinkedIn, because I take the transcribed file and basically burn it into the video so that the captions or transcriptions are displayed regardless. There’s no way for someone to turn it on and off, it’s just part of the video. And I think they do such a good job. And I think it’s very affordable for the service that they offer. So, it’s one of my favorite tools for transcribing and really the only one that I use.
Dane Golden:
And what is your next tip?
Renee Teeley:
So my next tip is Envato Elements. So, Envato has a bunch of different products. They have different subscription services as well. I specifically like Envato Elements because you pay one fee and you get access to all of the assets available within that product. And they have stock video, which I don’t use very often, but they have stock video, they have audio. But what I typically use it for is illustrations. And also, any type of motion graphics templates.
I’m not a motion graphics designer. I know a little bit of After Effects, but if I’m going to do something like that, it’s going to take me a really long time. And so, I like using something specifically from Envato Elements to at least give me a starting point, if not, really just the full thing and I’m just editing a couple of little things on it. So it’s great for if you want lower thirds, if you want transitions, if you want some animation to show for B-roll to kind of illustrate what you’re talking about in the video. And you don’t have to pay for each individual asset, you just pay a monthly fee, and you get access to all of it. So, I love it. I use it a lot.
Dane Golden:
Wow. I’m going to get that.
Renee Teeley:
What is your next recommendation?
Dane Golden:
It is Splasheo.
Renee Teeley:
What does Splasheo do? I’ve actually met the founder and I totally forget what they actually do.
Dane Golden:
I’m not going to tell. Of course, I’m going to tell, that’s what this whole show is about. Splasheo is a great tool created by Gideon Shalwick. And he built this tool so that you could take your videos and turn them into clips with burnt-in captions. And they do it manually so to make sure the captions are right. There’re some tools that are more automated that do this, but they have a couple of templates and you send it to them. And then within a day they send it back to you.
Dane Golden:
And my approach generally is to make 60-second or shorter clips of my YouTube videos to post on social. And I go for the version that has sort of a title, a static title above and it’s letterboxed and then the captions below. And there’s a couple of things I just wanted to add as tips. I request that the captions be already on screen in the first second, even if the voice doesn’t start in that very first second. Because I feel that people are scrolling by so fast that that caption is going to be really, really important. And I also tend to use a clip that almost feels like if it loops, the viewer is not sure that it’s actually not the beginning again, so that they may watch it two or three times, they’re like, “I feel I’ve been watching this already before, but the way it’s encapsulated, it could be a loop.” Does that make sense?
Renee Teeley:
It does. And I’m going to backtrack what I said before. I have not met the founder, but we have emailed because I did look into using Splasheo. Because, essentially they do exactly what I do manually with my rev.com transcriptions. So, I take that and I burn it basically into the video, turn it into a square video for LinkedIn. Splasheo does that automatically, that’s the service that they offer. So, it’s really great especially for someone who is not using a program like Premiere Pro and doing it themselves or you just want to save some time. So, yeah. I haven’t used it personally, but it seems like a great service.
Dane Golden:
Because you’re a nerd, you’re a nerd. Nerd alert, nerd alert.
Renee Teeley:
Just a little bit.
Dane Golden:
And what was your next tool?
Renee Teeley:
My next tool is TubeBuddy. So, I cannot recommend them enough. TubeBuddy, for those of you who don’t know, it’s interesting. I don’t exactly know how to describe them because they offer so many different things. But essentially it’s helping with keyword research for your YouTube videos. They also have some productivity tools. So, you’re able to moderate comments through to TubeBuddy. You’re able to schedule different posts and do bulk updates to your YouTube channel. So, lots of different tools that are kind of available through TubeBuddy. And they also offer a fairly new product that’s called channel reviews. It’s through TubeBuddy and basically it programmatically goes through your YouTube channel and makes recommendations on what to do to improve it and make it better. So, really great tool. Love the company. Also, just an awesome team. So, they have a great team.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. Lovely people. And that’s T-U-B-E, like you tube, buddy, B-U-D-D-Y. And my next tool is remove.bg. I’m going to ask you to tell me what it is, Renee because I’ve told you what it is and then you liked it. So, how would you describe it?
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. I tested it out before and I don’t remember which way you use it, but essentially it’s removing a background, I think.
Dane Golden:
That’s right.
Renee Teeley:
So, you have a picture of yourself and let’s say that you just want an image of you, but you don’t actually want to go through the work of getting into Photoshop and cutting yourself out of a photo. You can use remove.com and it’ll remove the background. And then you’re left with an image of yourself that you can superimpose on a number of different backgrounds, which is especially helpful for thumbnails.
Dane Golden:
Oh my gosh. So yeah. For years, I was trying to do it myself, I would send it out to other graphic artists to do this. And particularly, this is somewhat embarrassing, but as someone who’s bald or nearly bald, having a well shaped head is the closest thing I have to having hair. If I can’t have hair, at least I can have a round head. But I can’t have it if I can’t cut it out properly. So it bugs me when there’s little jaggedys on my head. So, I insist that the people I work with use remove.bg. And it is so simple and it is so affordable. You just drag your image and it just sort of knows what to remove as a background. Usually you do it with a human image, but if you did it with a horse or some sort of image that’s in the foreground, it works for those too. And if you’re making YouTube thumbnails where you’re combining a collage of things, this can be a huge, huge time sink and removed.bg really solves that problem.
Renee Teeley:
That’s really interesting that you mention that you want basically a nice shaped head.
Dane Golden:
A beautiful dome.
Renee Teeley:
A beautiful dome, yes. So, I usually think that it’s easier for people with short hair or not a lot of hair for cutouts or a green screen or something like that because I typically think that it’s harder when you have hair, especially long hair. So, it’s interesting to know that there’s challenges on both sides.
Dane Golden:
Well, this also works great even if you have a woman with really curly hair or even like… I know frizzy is not what anyone technically has, because that’s such a negative term, but let’s face it, some women have frizzy hair.
Renee Teeley:
I have frizzy hair. I’m going to own up to it. It happens.
Dane Golden:
You do not. But what I mean is waffs of hair that you can sort of see light behind. And that’s almost impossible to do by hand unless you’re sort of a, Photoshop, a little bit better than I am. So, this tool does it in a second and sadly, it’s going to put a lot of cutout artists out of work. But a good thing is it saves me time.
Renee Teeley:
Is that a thing, a cut out artist?
Dane Golden:
I just made it a thing.
Renee Teeley:
Is that a specific job?
Dane Golden:
Well, it is on Fiverr.
Renee Teeley:
Oh, that’s funny. I mean, there’s definitely a need for it, so yeah. I’ve done my own and it’s time consuming. And yes, it definitely takes me a while and sometimes I don’t do as good of a job as I would like, specifically because of my hair. That’s a little bit difficult to work with. So, I am going to try out remove.bg. You’ve mentioned it to me before, and I was impressed when you mentioned it then, and I sort of forgot about it, but-
Dane Golden:
You told me you were using it. I think this was untrue, you were just being nice.
Renee Teeley:
I didn’t say I was using it, I said, I should use it.
Dane Golden:
What’s your next tool?
Renee Teeley:
My next tool is ClickUp. So, ClickUp is a project management tool. And I would describe it as sort of a Trello alternative. So, it’s like Trello, but with more project management capabilities. And so, I’ve used a lot of different tools. I’ve used Asana, which I know you use. I’ve used Airtable. I’ve used Jira, lots of different products out there. I really like ClickUp. It’s easy to use. And it has, at least so far, so I’m a new ClickUp user, but so far it has all of the functionality that I need to manage all of my projects with a team. So, it’s been great for me.
Dane Golden:
I’m investigating it and it’s looking promising so far. We may switch over from Asana. Not a hundred percent committed yet, but it seems to have almost all the things I want and sort of more importantly in the way that I want them. And that’s the key, is it? Do the features work in the way you use them rather than just having the features?
Renee Teeley:
Yeah, I would say something that is a pro and a con, is that you can do so many different things with it and which is great because I can get things specific to how I want them. It can also be a little bit overwhelming for someone who’s new, especially if you’re new to project management. And so, I do recommend starting with a template or watching a webinar because there is a learning curve to it.
Dane Golden:
Okay.
Renee Teeley:
All right. What’s your next recommendation?
Dane Golden:
Well, this is not quite like ClickUp, but it’s a tool for collaboration on creative production projects, specifically video. But also, you could use it for podcasts or graphics. It’s called Wipster, W-I-P-S-T-E-R. And you can think W-I-P as work in progress. And there are other tools that you can analyze a video and give, for instance, if you’re working with an editor or if you have a marketing team and you want more than one person to give feedback to the editor and so forth, you can each add comments right in the video. On this tool, you can click anywhere on the screen, you can reply, you can even add some images to say, “Hey, do an image like this.” And you can add that in a comment.
So, I really do like this tool for a number of reasons, not just because you can click anywhere, but also because you can do other creative projects. You can get other team members that just access certain projects. And one of the other bonuses, they’re based in Portland, where I live. And they’re from New Zealand, but they moved to Portland. And you got to be cool if you’re in Portland.
Renee Teeley:
So, you glossed over this, but it was one of the key things that I’m missing from the tool that I use right now. I use Frame IO.
Dane Golden:
Yeah.
Renee Teeley:
Frame.io. And it’s a great tool. I love it for most things, except I’m not able to upload an image. Which sounds like such a little thing but I frequently come across that, especially when working with my motion graphics person is that I want something in a very specific way and I want to upload an image so they know what I’m talking about. And what I typically end up doing is uploading it to a folder within Google Drive and then linking to it. But it’s just kind of cumbersome and it interrupts the flow that we have going on frame.io. So, that’s great that it’s included with Wipster.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. I’ll send you my affiliate link. So, when I said that, I think I did that. I might’ve sent a link, but I think I did upload an image into the comments. So, I’ll double check that. I know I said that. I think it does that. I didn’t-
Renee Teeley:
So now that I’m excited about it you’re taking it back.
Dane Golden:
Now I’m wondering, did I actually do that? I don’t do that often so I’m just trying to be sure.
Renee Teeley:
I will test it out. I’ll look into it because that is my biggest pet peeve with frame.io. And maybe this is something that they’re going to release soon. I know they’ve gotten some additional funding, so I’m assuming some of that went towards additional product development. But it’s just a feature that I know it seems like such a little thing, but it’s something that I need pretty frequently.
Dane Golden:
It may not do that, but you can add links to images. But I think that’s what you said before. Anyway, they should definitely add that as a feature because we’re testing this as we speak. So-
Renee Teeley:
And we’re already promoting it as a feature, so they should develop it if they haven’t already.
Dane Golden:
By the time this podcast is released, one week from today, we will insist that they have this.
Renee Teeley:
That’s right. See, we’re pushing the innovation. Speaking of innovation, my next recommendation is customthumbnails.com. So Dane, you are awesome at creating thumbnail images. I love the style that you created. For me, it actually takes quite a while for me to create thumbnails. And sometimes I don’t even know the style that I want for the thumbnails. I have some inspiration, but I don’t exactly know what I want to do. Customthumbnails.com, it’s a subscription service. Although I think they also have the option just to do one thumbnail if you want to try them out. But thumbnails are so important. It’s really one of the most important things to entice someone to click and actually watch your video. So, custom thumbnails.com is great if you are not creating the thumbnails yourself or you just want to save a little bit of time and have someone else do it for you.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, they’re very talented.
Renee Teeley:
Speaking of talented, what is your next recommendation, Dane?
Dane Golden:
Ta-da-da, it’s VidTarget.io, which is our own new platform, myself with JC. Bougle and Sophie Normand, my French friends and teammates from Singapore. And we have built a tool called VidTarget, which helps you better target your YouTube ads to the right audience using video placements that talk about the topic that you are advertising about or channel placements or keywords. It helps you save time when you’re doing your real granular targeting. And that way, with a small budget, you can have a much greater target, better return for your niche business so you don’t have to advertise to the entire world on YouTube and really hone in on who your customers might be.
Renee Teeley:
If you’re interested in learning more about VidTarget, we actually did a whole episode about it last week. So, I highly recommend checking that out. I learned a lot. So, I appreciate you sharing all of your insights in that podcast. And it really is a tool that I think a lot of people can get value out of.
Dane Golden:
Thank you. Thank you so much. And those are our 10 tools for today. My name is Dane Golden and I’m here with my co-host she’s R-N-E-E T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley. And we want to thank you the listener for joining us today. Don’t we Renee?
Renee Teeley:
Yes, absolutely. And today I want to leave you with a quote. As I once told my good friend Warren Buffet, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” So don’t underestimate the power of what you’re doing and the impact that you can have.
Dane Golden:
I was looking at this quote written here and I almost thought it was Jimmy Buffet. And I was like, “Yeah, sitting under a tree, that sounds more like Jimmy Buffett than Warren Buffet.” But okay. They’re both brilliant guys. And I want to invite you to review us on Apple Podcasts. And if you, the listener, can’t find that review button on your podcast, click that share button instead, and let your friends know that we’d also like to give them video marketing tips on this podcast. We love doing it. Renee and I do this podcast and our various other independent YouTube videos and projects because we love helping marketers and business owners just like you do YouTube and video marketing better. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.
Affiliates and/or URLs from the episode
- Renee: Soundstripe
- Dane: REV
- Renee: Envato Elements
- Dane: Splasheo
- Renee: TubeBuddy
- Dane: Remove.bg
- Renee: ClickUp
- Dane: Wipster
- Renee: Customthumbnails.com