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December 2015

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18
Dec
2015
SEO – Keyword Tagging and Why It’s Our Best Friend
Posted On December 18, 2015  By Jennifer Blessing Miceli  And has No Comment

Search Engine Optimization – Keyword Tagging and Why It’s Our Best Friend in the world of PHOTO + VIDEO

As a photographer or cinematographer, you could have the best gear, the most creative blocking, and the most beautiful images – but you’ll never sell a single photo or video if you don’t use effect keyword tagging so potential buyers can’t find your media.

This is where keyword tagging comes in – your aim is to create tags that will make your clips appear in search engines everywhere and that lead people to sites where they can purchase your photos and video clips. Keywords are not only important for finding media, but they’re usually the only descriptor (besides the thumbnail) that a buyer has to evaluate the content of a specific photo or video image. This is why keyword optimSEO Perfect Companyization is so crucial to anyone selling creative media. Before we actually look at keywords themselves, know that improving SEO starts with the title and description of your image or video.
The first way to increase SEO (search engine optimization) is to vary the metadata over multiple sites. This may seem counter-intuitive, as it may seem like you should create a nice title, description, and keywords for the media and then put that exact information everywhere. However, if this is done, search engines will weed out all clips with the same information and return fewer results for that clip to the searcher. If the information is varied slightly between sites (like changing the title by a few words), the clips will return more hits on different searches – thus having a higher probability of being seen and, therefore, purchased.
Another great way to increase SEO is to add no less than 40- and no more than 60 words in the description of your media. This method, curtesy iStock’s article on how to improve SEO, is the best way to give potential buyers the most info about the video clip or photo. Your description is the narrative of the media – it should utilize as many adjectives as it can to describe color, time of year, and the general feeling of the scene. It should be the introduction to the media – and it should make the potential buyer want to click on the image or press play on the video. After a good title and description, your chosen keywords are the crown jewel of your SEO. The best way to use them efficiently is to keyword a wide range of nouns. Since the definition of a noun is a “person, place, thing, or idea,” this leaves opportunity to describe many different parts of the photo or video:

What/who is the subject? What is going on? Where is this scene taking place? What is the weather like? – all the answers to these questions are possible keywords for the media.

While some sites and stock houses put a cap on the number of keywords, it is also a great idea to use at least 50 keywords (but also no more than 50) per image when keyword tagging. This way, you can aim for the perfect balance of keywords for your image while not using every word in the English dictionary as a keyword (which could disappoint buyers when your keywords aren’t disambiguated correctly).

 A still life fruit display of oranges, grapes, bananas, apples and pears. Photo by Miceli Productions. Title image for "SEO - Keyword Tagging and Why It’s Our Best Friend"
This brings us to a parting thought on proper keyword SEO – disambiguation. Disambiguation of keywords is the process of choosing the correct keyword context for your image. For example, when you use the word “orange” as a keyword, there are multiple meanings for that word. One could be referring to the fruit named orange, or the color of the same name. In some ways, this process isn’t crucial (since the fruit orange is usually also the color orange), but sometimes the context can be completely different. The ability to disambiguate keywords isn’t built into the workflow of most sites or stock houses (iStock being the exception with their DeepMeta program); nevertheless, it is a crucial part of keywording your media. So, be aware.
The next time you create the perfect stock photo or clip, be sure to keyword the hell out of it (while devoting time and precision to keyword choice) to get the most hits!
Here’s a Link to Great Keyword Generator – https://www.arcurs.com/keywording/
Want more? Follow Miceli Productions on Twitter for more insight, tips and pretty pictures.
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16
Dec
2015
Video as a Fundraising Tool – Our Experience Creating the Promo Video for Daybreak Children’s Rare Disease Fund
Posted On December 16, 2015  By Jennifer Blessing Miceli  And has No Comment

Video as a Fundraising Tool – Our Experience Creating the Promo Video for Daybreak Children’s Rare Disease Fund

Miceli Productions is no stranger to creating video content for fundraising work. In the past, we have worked with organizations like Every Dollar Feeds Kids, Bread for Life, and Sunshine Kids to create photo and video content that generates an emotional connection to these causes that have a direct need for supporters. Our videos promote the foundation’s cause and encourage people to donate their money and/or time to the cause. Recently, we had the pleasure to work with a new group with an inspirational message – Daybreak Children’s Rare Disease Fund.
The Mission of this amazing organization is to support the best research aimed at the cure for rare genetic diseases in children. The organization also brings awareness to the diseases without cures and direct brings availability of treatments to those who are afflicted with curable diseases. With such an honorable cause, our intention was to invoke the feelings of empathy, compassion, and urgency to the mass public in the foundation’s latest promotional video.
Daybreak Children’s Rare Disease Fund logo

Video is a very important tool for fundraising because of the impact that visuals have on the viewer – the people in the video directly connect and appeal to the individuals watching. The old saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words – this means that people are more likely to relate to someone when they see them actually speaking, rather than when they simply read what the person said. In this way, we would put up facts like “80% of rare diseases are of genetic origin” using a creative typography animation – but it was not until we put that animation over a child buried into his mothers shoulder that we get an emotional response from the viewer. The facts can’t be disputed, but they are truly enhanced by emotional visuals for the viewer to connect to. Because that child IS actually someone we can care for, and help. Daybreak helps children every day.

Video is also great for fundraising purposes since it is a quick way to get the foundation’s point across. A quick 3-minute promo is easy to watch and gets all the information to the viewer, as opposed to having to spend 10 minutes reading a pamphlet or email with the same information. With the rise of websites like YouTube and Vimeo, creating a video to promote a cause has become almost a necessity since it has become so easy to put videos online.  Video content can reach more people invested in supporting a specific cause, and for that reason sharable video content for non-profits should be a cornerstone for outreach campaigns.

Check out our promo for Daybreak Children’s Rare Disease Fund here:
For more information on Daybreak’s mission and how to donate, check out their website here: https://www.daybreakfoundation.org/
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11
Dec
2015
Video Thanks Donors For Bringing the Most Advanced Technology to the Next Generation
Posted On December 11, 2015  By Jennifer Blessing Miceli  And has No Comment

Chase-Tallwood Building at Kingswood Oxford School – Video Thanks Donors for Bringing the Most Advanced Technology to the Next Generation

The Chase-Tallwood Science Math Technology Center at the Kingswood Oxford School in West Hartford, CT is an impressive addition to the school’s educational programs. It is a building where the students, from middle school to high school, can gather and discover a sense of community in a comfortable yet challenging environment. The staff members also agree that the way the students learn is enhanced through the layout of the rooms and the design of the study and communal areas.

The video that Miceli Productions created for this great building took a very different approach. As opposed to shooting talking heads with some b-roll of the building sprinkled throughout, we thought it would be creative and different if we used a walkthrough of the building as the backbone of the video. We accomplished this using the DJI Ronin-M camera stabilizer with the Panasonic GH4 mounted to it and walking through the building in one long, continuous shot. Needless to say, Mike F. didn’t need to go to the gym that day!

Miceli Productions behind the scenes. Photo of Michael Miceli and Mike F. setting up cameras for filming at Kingwood Oxford in West Hartford CT.

Behind the scenes #BTS with Miceli Productions at Kingwood Oxford in West Hartford CT.

While walking through the building, we sped up the scenes where we were walking through the hallways to keep the video interesting and fast-paced. We also put the talking heads in the bottom right corner of the frame. This keeps the viewer engaged as they fly through the school and listen to the teachers and students’ thoughts on the Chase-Tallwood building. We also incorporated many of the mForm titles by MotionVFX to show fun technological visuals overlayed with the classroom activities seen in the video.

This great building would be nothing though without its donors. The purpose of our video walkthrough of the building was for a donor benefit event, where the video was screened for all the donors as a “thank you” for their help in bringing the Chase-Tallwood building to fruition. Students today have a strong knowledge and understanding of modern technology. Since many students were born around the turn of the millennium, they have grown up with computers and mobile devices being the norm at home as well as at school. Because of this, they have a grasp on the way technology can further knowledge and discovery in the future. Kudos go to the donors that gave their support to bring this building of scientific excellence to the next generation of scientists, mathematicians, and inventors!
View the donor appreciation video on the Chase-Tallwood Science Math Technology Center here: 

Find out more about Kingswood Oxford here: https://www.kingswoodoxford.org/

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