On my way to WPPI in Vegas this year I spent a week in New York with my good friend Sally Sargood.  Sally and I have been in the photography industry, and have known each other, for more than 20 years….scary, but true!  Sally has always had a deep love of travelling and a couple of years ago she fulfilled her dream to live and work in New York  and has joined an amazing company called Animoto.  I dropped by Animoto to have a chat with Sally and learn more about their company.

So who and what is Animoto?

Photographers today are looking for effective marketing and sales solutions, with minimal input of time and money. Video is one of the most powerful ways to get yourself noticed today.  This is why Animoto slideshows are increasingly becoming the way to reach people for photographers and small businesses.

Animoto is a web-based platform that makes it easy to combine photos with video clips, text, and music to create a professional HD slideshow videos.  Yes it’s that easy.

There are over 90 “styles,” or templates, to choose from that will dictate the look and feel of your video, including transitions and motion graphic effects.  Some are quite animated, but for the professional looking for a simple solution, there are also a number of cleaner styles that leave it to your images to provide the wow factor.  Once you choose your style, you then add a bunch of images and even video clips,  pick a song from our library – which includes 1000+ Triple Scoop Music songs, and within minutes you have a professional slideshow video ready to share with the world.

How are photographers using  Animoto slideshow & videos in their business?

For the longest time, photographers have used Animoto in the sales room to show the client their images at the beginning of the sales session, or by making a slideshow of wedding images to offer to the wedding couple.  Photographs set to music creates a mood and evokes emotion within people, instantly developing an attachment to the photographs.

Many photographers also claim that the client will most likely want to take the slideshow home with them, giving the photographer the opportunity to offer it as incentive to upsell.  Including the slideshow on your pricelist, in packages or as a thank you gift, also reinforces why Animoto is such a powerful sales tool. Check out this slideshow video Kelly Brown created with Animoto for one of her newborn clients, as a thank you for their business .

More recently, in a world where digital technology, social media and the internet dominate our lives and business, traditional advertising has evolved into the world of content marketing – specifically video content.  In April of 2015, it was unveiled that over 4 billion videos were being played back each day on Facebook alone. By September, this number had doubled to a staggering 8 billion video views per day.  Sue Bryce is a great advocate for using video slideshows as shareworthy marketing.  Here’s one of her behind the scenes videos that got over 100k views on Facebook

Whether you’re sharing to social media, your blog, webpage or simply playing it in your studio, a video slideshow created with your photographs is the best way to tell a story and get noticed in a world that seems to be constantly moving.