12 Free and Useful Videos for Creative Business Owners
Welcome to part five of our round-up series, where we cull through all the supposedly ‘helpful’ and ‘inspirational’ resources online and on social media to bring you our selection of what we think is actually helpful and worth your limited time. We’ve already rounded up essential newsletters, Pinterest accounts, freebies, and Instagram accounts.
This month we’re bringing you 12 free and useful videos for creative businesses. They cover tips and strategies on everything from DIY PR, to social media, time management, e-commerce, and photography.
When learning to DIY media outreach in house there’s no better person to get tips from than an editor. In this candid and fun conversation, Brenda Forman of Merlot Marketing chats with Carisha Swanson, Market Director at House Beautiful.
Carisha emphasizes something we also talk about all the time -- homework. If you don’t understand the specific point of view of the publication you are pitching and haven’t read the recent work of the specific editor you want to reach out to, your pitch will fall flat.
What the interview covers:
Pitching and lead times for digital vs print
How to pitch an editor like Carisha
What your pitches should include
How to format your pitch email
Carisha’s PR pet peeves and how she vets pitches
Email sign-up conversion rates, conversion rate optimization, return rate… As small creative business owners we’re balancing so many tasks designing and producing our work, that nitty gritty technical business-side metrics can sometimes fall by the wayside.
In this super straightforward video Creative Hive founder and handmade business guru, Mia Pak, walks you through concrete ways you can determine how your business is doing and what specific steps you may need to take to take it to the next level.
Business metrics covered in this video:
Sales conversion rates
Email sign-up conversion rates
Traffic and marketing
Reviews
Return rate
Business sustainability and profitability
Founder of YOGAMOTIF, and Website Consultant Alecia Dawn Young explains the fundamentals of choosing the best e-commerce platform for your creative business. In this video, hosted by Bridgeway Capital, Alecia talks through five different e-commerce options, covering metrics like price, hosting, shipping and payment capabilities, and more.
Web platforms reviewed in this video:
Shopify
Squarespace
Wix
Square
Weebly
You’ve likely found yourself in the Youtube rabbit-hole looking for actually useful videos and tutorials. That’s why we created this short list of 12 videos we think are helpful. If you’re looking for more fully vetted free and paid courses, head over to the course curation platform Terrain.
In the workshop we selected from Terrain’s long list of videos, Mai-Kee Tsang, podcast-guesting strategist and founder of The Sustainable Visibility Movement, talks how to utilize podcast appearances to boost revenue if your referral well starts to run dry.
What you’ll learn:
What podcasts can do for you business
How to find the right podcasts for you
Best practices for podcast pitching
Pitching dos and don’ts with examples
Sometimes there’s nothing like a good pep talk, especially when it’s packed with actionable no-fluff advice that will help you create systems for your biz.
In this video Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft and small creative business thought leader, talks efficiency and productivity. Like, how to show up at your desk with direction and make an impact with the time you have.
What you’ll learn:
Tips batching social media content
How to organize your time on paper for yourself and online for your team
Why you should prioritize your biz newsletter (we second this tip!)
How product-based businesses can strategically use DMs
Encouragement to take time for yourself
You probably already knew that the biggest time of year for consumer spending is the holidays… What you may not know is that the holidays are also the time of year with the MOST media opportunities for product-based businesses, and that’s why we (Wolf Craft!) put together this on-demand workshop all about holiday gift guide press.
What you’ll learn:
Why the holidays have 5x the amount of press opportunities
Why gift guides should be your media outreach priority if you sell products.
How gift guide press can supercharge your end of year sales goals
When to start pitching gift guides
5 of Nora’s insider publicist tips
Instagram is such an important tool for creative businesses, but optimizing what you do on the platform to grow your business can be confusing and overwhelming.
In this video Isis Breanna, digital sales expert, talks how to use the platform to make more sales. The talk is hosted by Later, our favorite social media scheduling app.
Pro tip: if you aren’t already pre-scheduling social media posts in an auto-posting app like Later, now’s the time.
What you’ll learn:
4 tactics to make more sales
The P.A.I.D. equation that’s been proven to boost revenue from social
What omnipresence is (and why it's important for your sales)
How to create, and leverage, brand loyalty
Strategies to increase demand
Katie Johnson and Ilana Griffo are independent artists who’ve made a significant portion of their income licensing their designs to large companies for products ranging from paper goods and greeting cards to fabrics and clothing.
Katie and Ilana have joined forces to found Looimer, a business dedicated to teaching other artists and designers what art licensing is and how you can incorporate it into your business to create additional revenue streams.
What this video covers:
What the art licensing industry is
How to create a strong licensing portfolio built to sell
How to find and reach out to buyers
The biggest mistakes they see when it comes to licensing
As productivity expert Matt Ragland says, it can be difficult to “slay the procrastination dragons.” In this video Matt walks you through a task organization method called Bullet Journaling, covering six specific journal layouts he uses to map out and track super productive weeks. What’s better, in the video description he links to additional deep dive tutorial videos about each of the six methods he covers here.
This video’s “how to’s” include:
Plan with GAP = Goals, Actions, Plan
Block and track your time
Organize weekly recurring tasks and goals
Setting up a master task list
Reviewing with WARP = Wins, Aspirations, Results, Pivots
Tips to fight distractions
Social media changes all the time. It can be difficult to keep track of all the new features and updates, and more importantly what they can do to grow your business.
In this video Katie Steckly, founder of content creation firm Creatorly Media, lays out what the 5 types of Instagram content are and how each can contribute to your growth. She talks about why your feed content should feel like a magazine for your brand and why reels are the most important content to grow your account.
Instagram features covered in this video:
Reels
Stories
IGTV
Feed posts
Live streams
If you take your own product photos, Photoshop can be super useful to remove that pesky dust you may not have noticed during the shoot or adjust the tone of an object in the background.
Rachel, founder of Two Loves Studio, is a food photographer and although this video was created with food photographers in mind there are a lot of great tips and techniques for product photography too.
What the video covers:
5 mistakes you’re making in Photoshop
4 must-have Photoshop techniques
A deep dive on how to adjust colors
Time management is one of the biggest struggles for so many of the creative business owners we work with. So, last but not least another time-management pep talk from Ali, a junior doctor working in Cambridge, UK. In this video Ali covers the 10 principles and ideas he uses to manage his time as effectively as possible.
What this video covers:
How to use the “hell yeah” or “no” principle to decide what to say yes and no to
How to leverage artificial deadlines
Tips to protect your time
How to use Calendry to cut out back and forth scheduling correspondence
A simple and beautiful manual to do list
