How To Use Transparency To Build An Audience Through Web Video

One of the most overlooked, yet most powerful ways to build an audience with web video is through the use of transparency.

And by transparency, I mean giving people a behind-the-scenes look at your business, life or both.

All too often people want to appear as a “big business”…as if they own a suite of corporate offices in a high-rise building.  But that’s not what people want to see or hear when looking to purchase products or services online.  Not these days…and not with big name businesses currently crumbling left and right.

Rather, more than anything else, what people want online these days is someone they can trust.  Someone who is real.  Someone who actually responds to their emails…and…someone that they can depend on as the goto-guy (or girl) for whatever they need.

And that brings us back to transparency.  Use it with video and there’s no better way to build that trust, to let people know you’re real and establish yourself as that go-to person.

An excellent example of transparency in action is Shama.TV.  This site was put together by my friend and Internet marketing consultant, Shama Hyder.  On this site, she’s not selling anything (she has other web sites for that).  Instead, she’s using video to give people a transparent look at her life and business.  And by doing so, she’s quietly building a relationship with her audience.

Or in other words, you may not know her personally, but you end of feeling like you do.

And that’s all it really takes.  Because when the time comes where a person needs a particular product or service…and you’ve built that relationship with them through transparency…you are the one they are going to think of.   You are the one they are going to contact.  And you are the one they are going to buy from.

Not to mention the power of referrals through transparency…where maybe a person in your audience never buys from you…yet they recommend you to other people that they know.

And with video, it’s so easy.  To achieve transparency, you don’t need a fancy production or a carefully crafted script.  Instead, you just need some short, simple videos where you share tidbits about your life and business.  Just like Shama is doing here.