Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The 90 Second Video - An Open Letter to Chris Oliver of CCO Productions


The 90 Second Video - An Open Letter to Chris Oliver of CCO Productions

The Last Day to vote…
Before the Blog Post - We Need your Help!
Chris Oliver is a Writer, Director, Editor and Videographer. His company is CCO Productions and he does excellent work.  905-269-3871 www.ccoproductions.ca 

Chris has produced the following video that features my business. It is entitled “A CFDC Success Story - Murray's Story – Ontario” or found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaFY4HQEnQc


As you will see this video is about my personal connections with the Northumberland CFDC and how much they helped me with the starting up and running of Misty Hollow Carving. In 2008 my dream to launch a business became a reality.

This year and in these few short days, until May 23rd, this next Wednesday, there is a small competition taking place.  This video that Chris produced will be possibly shown (as the winner) at the National AGM of the CFDC (Community Futures Development Corporation) from across Canada.

How can you help?
The voting process happens by you click into YouTube on this video and LIKE it.  In order to VOTE for this video you need to click on LIKE. BUT in order for the LIKE to be recorded – YOU MUST BE LOGGED INTO YOUTUBE!

How can you Log In?
1 -If you already have a YouTube Account – you will be able to Click “Like”.
2 - If you have a Gmail account – you will be able to Click “Like” as well (YouTube recognizes Gmail and is connected to it)
3 - Don’t have that – then simply get a Gmail address from the Gmail people – it is free and one of the best email programs going. You do this by using your present email address in the registration process.  It is a GREAT BACKUP email program – i.e. have all your present emails forwarded to your new Gmail account – YOU WILL NEVER LOSE AN EMAIL AGAIN! AND IT IS FREE!!!!

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Today’s Blog Post
The 90 Second Video - An Open Letter to Chris Oliver of CCO Productions

Good morning Chris…
As you know today is the last day for the “Like” of our video to be registered with the YouTube people.  I am like a person on “Dancing with the Stars” or “Canada’s Got Talent” waiting for votes to come in from across the country to help me win!

As of a few minutes ago the "Like" is now at 63 out of 365 views.  The higher number of views is the Grub Box which is 412 just now - but that includes the number of times that I checked on my competition (Ha!) The Grub Box seems to have only 17 Like.

What I have learned from this simple exercise is that "Age" is the barrier as well as "Ability".  The double A problem is big in this area.

A number of my supporters apologized because they wanted to support me but they didn't have a Gmail account nor a YouTube registration. These were the Baby Boomers and the Post Baby Boomer group. Some had heard horrific stories about the YouTube videos and how dangerous they were to take up all your time... and if they registered for it people would be sending them all kinds of junk mail.

Some tried  for days to get a Gmail account but couldn't figure out how. No kidding! Their kids had set them up when they were home but were not there now... nor coming again for a month or so... there was no one to help them.

One man called me completely perplexed.  He asked me if I could walk him through the process of signing up for Gmail.  He is my age.  

When I worked in Hong Kong he was in Thailand. I studied Cantonese and Mandarin. He studied Thai and became proficient in that language - speaking it fluently along with reading and writing. YET when he tried to decipher the letters to prove he wasn't a Computer - he became so frustrated that he quit after a dozen tries. The Sound bites that you could listen to was impossible... yet he can hear Thai easily.  He finally sent a Help request and they have not yet responded.

I called him Long Distance to another city in Ontario and stayed on the line for over an hour!

Some folk sent the information on and my emails were forwarded to their friends who them quizzed them on this and what it was all about.  They wanted to know why they should do this.  They wanted to know why and what was to be won... THEY COULDN'T UNDERSTAND at all.

At least three sent it to fairly large email lists that they work with.  But on their lists are very busy people who seldom check their emails as often as I do.  They might do a catch up once or twice a week... or less.

Many, many folks only operate with Facebook now an even more are so caught up with Tweeting and Pinterest that they never even check their emails... or Facebook.

So having said all that I question the reasoning behind getting Like through YouTube... except maybe - the group that CFDC has targeted was the unemployed who sit on their computers with nothing to do... and they should be down at the CFDC office getting help.

What did happen was that my Facebook Page was lit upon a huge number of times with complete strangers checking me out. I have a second page dealing with Misty Hollow Carving - showing my carvings etc.  The stats for the "Misty Hollow Carvings by MurrayLincoln" has had a surge forward that is hard to understand... definitely the biggest boost yet.  I occasionally have about a half dozen to a dozen friends stop by some weeks when I post my latest carving... i.e. Golf Balls.  

This week`s the results arrived today - Hokey Mokey it was a whopping increase 700% of people talking about my page... and 21,900% increase in Weekly Total reach!!!

CFDC may have gotten more people listening to the story told about them but not near as much as I did.  The 700% and 21,900% is simply over the top.  The comments now are being passed among friends on the Internet and also in our city.

Whether our Video wins or not - I am a WINNER with this simple exercise.  The results of this week will be huge.

The launch of my "Misty Hollow Digital Image" product is about to take place within two week’s.  The company that is doing this used the video as tickler to introduce me as well.  The folks that will see it will be opening their emails this week. They are very busy people to say the least and they are right around the world. I think that list is about 16,000 people or more.

If they did look at all the video they would have seen the two small cards peeking out at them.  Bingo - the people saw them... in fact all people that make cards and do Scrap Booking caught them. They contacted me personally in the past few days.

I want to say Thank You Chris. All your hard work and effort to make a super video or 90 seconds in length is now paying off.

Wahoo!

~ Murray Lincoln ~

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