Ahead of Trump’s speech to South Korea’s National Assembly, North Korean officials authorized to speak to CNN said the risk of war had never been higher.

« Over decades of bilateral confrontation, never, ever has the situation on the Korean peninsula been this acute with the real military confrontation and risk of another Korean War looming over the horizon, » officials told CNN’s Will Ripley.

While North Korea will be closely watching and listening to President Trump’s words, the regime is downplaying the impact of his speech on their actions.

The officials said: « We don’t care about what that mad dog may utter because we’ve already heard enough. »

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The hardest part of video marketing is getting started, but don’t let your doubts keep you from reaching your audience. Here are some of the most common worries keeping businesses from video marketing and how to conquer them.

1. I’m not funny or creative

Here’s a secret — not every brand has to be funny and not every video has to be overly creative. Instead of thinking of video marketing as entertainment, think of it as a way to inform. You know your product; you know what you do. Focus on your message — that’s how you reach the customers who are the right fit for your business.

Still have writer’s block? Sometimes choosing the specific type of video you want to make can help you organize your ideas. Here are a few videos that are easy to make and tailored for social media.

Share blog teasers.

Drive traffic back to your site with highlights from an interesting or high-performing blog post. Use text to convey the blog post’s main points, then add a few images or video clips for visual interest. Keep your video under a minute and share on social media, as HubSpot did in this video.

Feature promotions and special events.

Is your business doing something new? Spread the word! Whether it’s a big sale or a customer appreciation event, creating a video lets your audience know what you’re doing, when it’s happening and how they can participate.

A promo doesn’t have to be long — just a few seconds is plenty. For example, when my company wanted to promote our Social Video Marketing Summit, we created a 25-second video that showcased our speakers and gave viewers the info they’d need to attend. No fuss, no muss.

Create a product video. 

Often the best sales technique is just showing what you’ve got. Grab a few images of your products, add your tagline and voila! You have a video catalog or a product intro. See how Brooklyn Grooming introduced its new product with just three images and a little text.

2. I don’t have images or video clips.

You don’t need a pro to produce content for your marketing videos. As a business, you probably already have more than you think. Look for photos of your products, your logo, images from events or pictures of employees. Even if you don’t have any images at all, you can still make a video. Here are a few options:

Create an all-text video. 

For shorter videos, sometimes plain text is enough to cut through the clutter on social media. The clean, image-free look is both easy to read and offers just a little bit of mystery, especially if you’re teasing an upcoming event.

Adam Richards

Adam Richards is a semi-retired business professional originally from Bangor, Maine. He spent the majority of his career in sales and marketing where he rose to the marketing lead of a Fortune 1000 company. He then moved on to helping people as a career counselor that specifically helped bring families to self-sufficiency through finding them rewarding careers. He has now returned to Bangor for his retirement and spends his free time writing.

This blog will be about everything he learned throughout his career. He’ll write on career, workplace, education and technology issues as well as on trends, changes, and advice for the Maine job market and its employers.

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Everyone knows that content is essential to attract, engage and convert customers online. We’ve all heard the expression, « content is king. » While this may be true, it’s important to consider the medium involved. Right now, the king of content is clearly video.

The Reasons Behind The Rise Of Video Marketing

The popularity of video marketing may not come as much of a surprise to you. That said, there are some compelling numbers that explain why marketers will continue to use video in the future.

1. Video increases organic traffic and conversions.

It’s not by a small amount, either. As reported by Adélie Studios, companies that use video marketing see 41% more organic traffic than those that don’t. More than just bringing in traffic, video helps convert those visitors into customers. Home pages with videos see 20% more conversions. Landing pages see 80% more.

« We have seen video content be very powerful for e-commerce clients where products have a high touch and feel value, » said Joe Laratro, a local colleague and founder of Tandem Interactive, a digital marketing agency. » Google AdWords constantly makes conversions from YouTube content more likely with better ad units that can overlay e-commerce content. »

2. Viewers retain information better than readers.

When someone views information via video, they retain 95% of it. That number is all the more incredible when you consider that only 10% is retained through reading.

It’s worth noting that completion rates significantly increase when viewers are rewarded. That can involve anything from providing the wifi password to other digital content.

3. The market wants more videos.

The public loves video just as much as marketers do. In fact, 43% of people hope marketers will use video even more in the future. Businesses are focusing on four common video genres: explainers, product demos, how-tos and testimonials.

Facebook’s Foray Into Video Marketing

Another sign that video marketing is on the rise is Facebook’s active interest in the medium. For years, videos have been a fantastic way to increase engagement on Facebook. However, earlier this year, the social media giant doubled down on its investment in video marketing. Its new ad format, Collection, allows videos to play above four recommended products. Companies can either choose the products to be displayed or have Facebook pull popular options from their websites. When someone clicks on one of these promos, they are taken to a landing page that shows them up to 50 more products.

Back in March, Facebook announced that major brands including Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Sport Chek, Michael Kors and Lowes had already tested Collection. Sport Chek reported that its conversions doubled and online sales went up 28% simply by utilizing a Collection campaign that involved GIFs. Adidas also had success. Its cost per conversion dropped by 1.8 times when they used Collection to advertise a hoodie and similar items.

A New Analytic

Facebook already offers plenty of analytics to help improve your marketing campaigns. And with Collection it has added a new metric called Outbound Clicks, which will allow advertisers to see how many people click through to their websites and apps. This actionable feedback will allow marketers to create better videos in the future.

Both the introduction of Collection and the fact that Facebook values it enough to create a brand-new metric for advertisers says a lot about how important video is becoming to e-commerce. The company has long sought to improve this profit source and, with video, it may have found the opportunity it has been looking for.

A voter fills out a ballot on the first day of early voting at the Hamilton County Board of Elections in Cincinnati, Ohio, last month.

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A voter fills out a ballot on the first day of early voting at the Hamilton County Board of Elections in Cincinnati, Ohio, last month.

John Minchillo/AP

In odd-numbered years, Election Day consists of a hodgepodge of state, local and special elections.

But in an era when, to flip an old phrase, all politics is national, these low-profile, low-turnout elections might have a lot more to say about the direction of the country than may have been the case just a few years ago.

Two governors races and one president in the background

The marquee races of 2017 are in Virginia and New Jersey where term limits mean that voters are picking new governors. While both races may have begun with an emphasis on statewide issues such as property taxes and education policy, in the closing weeks both have morphed into the latest test of President Trump’s influence down the ballot.

Both Republican gubernatorial candidates, Ed Gillespie of Virginia and Kim Guadagno in New Jersey, have shed their country club Republican roots and embraced a Trump-style message about immigration and social issues, running law and order-centric ads emphasizing violence committed by Latino immigrants.

One Gillespie ad accuses his Democratic rival, Ralph Northam, of casting « the deciding vote in favor of sanctuary cities that let illegal immigrants who commit crimes back on the street » while a Guadagno ad says her opponent, Phil Murphy « doesn’t have our backs. He has theirs, » referring to violent immigrants in the country illegally.

Likewise, Northam and Murphy are banging the anti-Trump drum loudly as way to harness the energy of grassroots Democrats in what are traditionally low-turnout elections. In Virginia, Democrats are banking on that energy to help them down the ballot and gain ground in the state legislature, where Republicans currently hold a commanding lead.

While Murphy is highly-favored to win in New Jersey, the contest between Gillespie and Northam has grown increasingly narrow. The outcome in Virginia could play a big role in shaping each party’s message in the 2018 midterms. For Republicans, a victory by Gillespie could encourage congressional GOP candidates to fully embrace Trump’s style of populism next year. Should Northam prevail, it could quell the ongoing debate in Democratic ranks about the extent to which the party should nominate more liberal versus centrist candidates.

The gubernatorial races aren’t the only nationalized contests this fall. In Washington state, a special election in the Seattle suburbs has become a big money slugfest as Democrats seek to wrest control of the state senate from Republicans – the last legislative chamber the GOP controls along the West Coast. The implications could be significant for climate and gun control policies.

Trump is unpopular with much of the electorate but retains the loyalty of Republican voters. On Tuesday evening, we’ll find out which side is the most highly-motivated.

Big ballot measures

While odd-year elections aren’t typically the venue for major ballot initiatives, there are a couple that bear watching on Tuesday.

Maine: Voters are being presented with the opportunity to bypass Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s veto pen and approve an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. If the measure succeeds, it would be the first time a state has expanded Medicaid via a referendum and could energize organizers of similar campaigns for 2018 around the country, including Utah and Alaska.

Ohio: Voters will weigh in on whether the state and its agencies should pay the same or lower prices for prescription drugs as the VA medical system. It’s being described as the state’s most expensive ballot measure with the pharmaceutical industry spending nearly $60 million to defeat it.

A very similar measure failed in California last year but if this referendum succeeds, expect to see copycats pop up nationwide in 2018.

New York: With many Americans genuinely unhappy with the direction of the country, a ballot measure in New York state could indicate how much desire there is to blow up the political system and start all over. As part of the state’s constitution, New York voters get to decide every 20 years whether the state should hold a constitutional convention to rewrite or amend the state’s constitution.

The state’s last « con-con » was held in 1967 and produced an ambitious and highly liberal set of proposed changes to the constitution that was ultimately rejected by voters. Will the gridlocked and combative politics of 2017 lead to another convention and could it hasten a push at the state level for a federal constitutional convention?

Mayors, mayors, mayors

Odd-numbered election years are also when many local offices are decided. Among the highest profile this year is the campaign for mayor of New York, where incumbent Bill de Blasio is seeking re-election.

Among the other big cities with mayoral races on the ballot are Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Seattle.

With Democratic voters concentrated in urban areas, city governments have become increasingly drawn into the country’s culture wars over the past few years.

When the city of Charlotte approved an LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance in 2016, it sparked of a statewide, and then, national debate about transgender rights and the limits of local control. More recently, many big cities have sought to protect residents who are in the country illegally from Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Further down the ballot, a major issue in smaller communities and lower-profile contests is even finding candidates who are willing to stand for office in what are often volunteer positions.

Political scientist Adam Myers of Providence College recently told NPR that roughly 35 percent of state legislative races go, for example, unopposed and that for local races, that figure is almost certainly higher.

NEW BRAUNFELS, Tex. — He beat his wife, cracked his toddler stepson’s skull and was kicked out of the military. He drove away friends, drew attention from the police and abused his dog. Before Devin P. Kelley entered a rural Texas church with a military-style rifle, killing at least 26 people on Sunday, he led a deeply troubled life in which few in his path escaped unscathed.

In 2012, while stationed at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Mr. Kelley was charged with assault, according to Air Force records, which said he had repeatedly struck, kicked and choked his first wife beginning just months into their marriage, and hit his stepson’s head with what the Air Force described as “a force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.”

“He assaulted his stepson severely enough that he fractured his skull,” said Don Christensen, a retired colonel who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force, adding, “He pled to intentionally doing it.”

Prosecutors withdrew several other charges as part of their plea agreement with Mr. Kelley, including allegations that he repeatedly pointed a loaded gun at his wife.

He was ultimately sentenced in November that year to 12 months’ confinement and reduction to the lowest possible rank. His final duty title was “prisoner.”

His first wife, Tessa Kelley, divorced him while he was confined and was awarded the couple’s only four household items of value: a television, an Xbox, a wedding ring and a revolver.

After his confinement, Mr. Kelley was forced out of the military with a bad conduct discharge. The Air Force said the conviction should have barred Mr. Kelley from owning any guns. Instead, law enforcement officials say, he bought several.

Friends from New Braunfels, Tex., where he went to high school, expressed shock in the aftermath of the shooting, remembering how Mr. Kelley was a friendly, if awkward, teenager who grew up active in his church. His senior yearbook photo shows him smiling, with untamed hair and a Hollister T-shirt. But in recent years, friends said, he grew so dark that many unfriended him on Facebook.

“I had always known there was something off about him. But he wasn’t always a ‘psychopath,’” a longtime friend, Courtney Kleiber, posted on Facebook on Sunday. “We had a lot of good times together. Over the years we all saw him change into something that he wasn’t. To be completely honest, I’m really not surprised this happened, and I don’t think anyone who knew him is very surprised either.”

Instead of straightening out after his bad conduct discharge, Mr. Kelley began a long downward slide that culminated in the shooting Sunday.

After getting out of confinement, Mr. Kelley moved into a barn at his parents’ house, which they had converted into an apartment, according to the local sheriff’s office records.

During the next two years, he was investigated twice for abusing women. The authorities in Comal County, which includes Mr. Kelley’s hometown New Braunfels, released records on Monday that showed he had been the subject of an investigation for sexual assault and rape in 2013.

The investigation ended without the filing of any charges — Mr. Kelley’s only skirmishes in the local courts were traffic violations.

Less than a year after the sexual assault report, deputies were summoned again after Mr. Kelley’s girlfriend at the time, Danielle Shields, reportedly sent a text message to a friend saying she was being abused. Deputies who responded told a dispatcher, according to the report, that it was a “misunderstanding and teenage drama.” Mr. Kelley married Ms. Shields two months later, local records show.

At the time of both episodes, Mr. Kelley’s appeals were still pending before military courts.

Mr. Kelley was finally discharged from the Air Force in 2014. He married Ms. Shields in April that year. Law enforcement officials described their relationship this week as “estranged.”

A few months after the wedding, the couple moved to Colorado Springs, where voter registration documents list his address as Parking Space 60 at a collection of trailers in a gravel lot called the Fountain Creek RV Park.

A woman living in a camper next door, who gave her name only as Susan, said a man of similar age and description lived in Spot 60 for a few months during that time.

“He was kind of off,” she said as she loaded blankets into one of the RV park’s washing machines.

He said hello a few times in passing but was never friendly and stayed only a few months, she said. She never heard any arguments from his trailer.

“The only thing that sticks out about him was his dog,” she said.

He had a puppy that he kept tied up in the sun all day outside his RV without water, she said. She also recalled an episode in which the police were called because he had struck the dog repeatedly in the head.

Records show Mr. Kelley was charged with cruelty to animals, a misdemeanor, in August 2014, pleaded guilty and was given a deferred sentence. He moved out a few weeks later, she said.

While in Colorado and Texas, Mr. Kelley purchased a number of guns at gun stores, according to law enforcement officials. On Monday, the Air Force admitted that it had failed to enter information from Mr. Kelley’s domestic violence court-martial into a federal database that could have blocked him from buying the weapon used in the church attack.

Mr. Kelley, whose father, Michael Kelley, is a computer programmer and accountant, enlisted in the Air Force soon after graduating from New Braunfels High School in 2009. Devin Kelley served as a low-ranking airman in a logistics readiness unit. A LinkedIn account in his name says he worked in cargo and distribution before his court-martial.

The account says that after the military, Mr. Kelley briefly worked as an aide at a youth Bible school in Kingsville, Tex., “helping their minds grow and prosper.”

Friends said on Facebook that in recent years, Mr. Kelley had become vocally anti-Christian, to the point where many stopped communicating with him. His Facebook page, which has been deleted, listed that he liked a number of atheist groups.

“He was always talking about how people who believe in God were stupid and trying to preach his atheism,” one of his Facebook friends, Nina Rosa Nava, posted on the site, saying she unfriended him because of it.

Law enforcement stopped short of saying religious views may have influenced Mr. Kelley, saying Monday that the shooting may have been motivated by a “domestic situation” involving Mr. Kelley’s estranged wife and her family.

Mr. Kelley never held jobs for long after the military. In June of this year, Mr. Kelley was hired as an unarmed night security guard at Schlitterbahn, a vast water park in New Braunfels. Less than six weeks later he was “terminated,” a spokeswoman for the park, Winter D. Prosapio, said Monday, adding, “He was not a good fit.”

By 2017, he had returned to a house in New Braunfels that records show was owned by his parents. The house was about an hour from the church where the shooting occurred. According to local law enforcement, Mr. Kelley’s second wife at times attended the church with members of her extended family.

The cover photo on Mr. Kelley’s Facebook page appears to show a Ruger 8515 rifle, equipped with additional aftermarket products, including a red-dot aiming sight for faster targeting and a two-stage trigger for greater accuracy.

Such rifles have been legal for civilians to own in most of the United States since the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, and have become popular among many firearms owners.

Mr. Kelley seemed enamored with the weapon. He posted a photograph of it on Oct. 29 with the caption “She’s a bad bitch.”

Law enforcement officials guarded the cactus- and rock-dotted Kelley property in New Braunfels on Monday morning, when the top of the house was just barely visible atop the tree line. A wire fence ran along the roadway.

Signs on a cattle gate at the entrance read “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog.”

Some neighbors said they sometimes heard gunfire from the property. But in this stretch of the Texas hill country, that is hardly cause for alarm.

One neighbor, who would give his name only as Doug, said he heard shots fired at the Kelley property that would set his dogs barking.

“My dogs, they would be outside, and we would hear, ‘Bim-bam, bim-bam, bim-bam, bim-bam,’” he said.

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Throughout the past 10 years, personal and desktop computers, laptops have been slowly evaporating from the market. People often turn to mobile phones or tablets to reach or even to create the content they desire.

What’s making it more possible today is the price. It’s cheaper than ever to get a phone or a tablet with a tiny HD video camera embedded. Cloud-based, close to unlimited storage facilities, lightning fast Wi-Fi and 4G signals are considered a commodity rather than a luxury.

Virtually, there are no boundaries on where, how and when people interact with content. Video content is quickly emerging and the stats show that it is becoming one of the best marketing mediums out there. After all, it’s cheap, it’s accessible to everyone and if executed correctly it has the best ROI.

According to MWP, online videos are watched by 55% of people daily, WordStream says that 90% of Twitter videos are viewed through a mobile device and more than 10 million videos are watched on Snapchat daily. Peter Shroeder also claims that click-through rate of emails with videos increases by 200%-300%.

While all the numbers look enticing, video marketing is only successful if it provides real value to the consumers, when and how they want it.

Today’s fast-moving world accommodates only video content that fosters relevance, merit, and flexibility to the viewers, while they are trying to balance their on-the-go lifestyles.

How Facebook predicted the future

Video marketing is one of the best tools to execute a social media campaign, SEO exercise or to refresh website’s content and Facebook knows that. The promising future of video marketing is the reason why it spent $2 billion on acquiring Oracle’s VR. Even though the return of investment wasn’t even close to the money spent, Facebook showed a completely new side of content marketing and what it can achieve.

Facebook Spaces

3D video posts made on Facebook Spaces and shared on people’s walls are a completely new and extremely interactive way of marketing a product or a brand on social media. People are able to interact with the content by viewing it through a 360-degree perspective. The use of VR in Facebook video marketing gives a sense of participation to the viewer. A consumer can closely inspect the product without having to leave the comfort of home.

The descendant of 3D posts was Facebook’s Venues, allowing social media user base engage in real time concerts or sporting events. Adverts or social media campaigns created on Facebook Venues would interact with the audience in the most engaging way known to us to this day. By putting the VR set on and locating itself in the video, the viewer becomes an active part of the campaign. However, as strong content marketing channel as Facebook Venues is, it is limited to only those who own Oracle’s VR headset.

James McQuivey, a digital marketing expert, explains that in today’s world, one minute of video content is worth 1.8 million words. With Facebook being the single biggest social media platform, video content on it undeniably becomes one of the most effective digital marketing tools.

Facebook Watch

After doing some research, Facebook discovered that people like scrolling through their news feeds and discovering videos, but what they also noticed is that viewers want a dedicated place where more different types of videos can be found and the concept of Facebook Watch stands for exactly that.

Social media executives developed an in-app feature where people can enjoy discovering new videos every day.

Marketing today is not about promoting brands and products by producing expensive advertising. It’s more about word of mouth, from one ear to another. People are more likely to buy a product or a service recommended by someone like them, someone who isn’t related to the brand and has already bought and tried the service. Facebook Watch is a platform created for that. Community members and influencers now have space to create and share their videos with minimum expense.

The changing horizons of corporate video

It’s great to have multiple platforms to show your video content on and it’s even greater to have the kind of content that everyone loves, shares and engages with. One other reason why video is the future of content marketing is the rebirth of corporate video.

Wide Wings, a Lithuanian advertising agency, are storytellers, changing the perception of a corporate video. Instead of focusing on a product or service, the agency focuses on what the company is about and the message it wants to tell the world. Their videos are focused around the viewer. The storyline is illuminating, explorative and it shows a perspective. Their mission is to make people richer in some sense.

A clear example of a completely newfangled take on their corporate video marketing is the Filippo Loreti advert of watches. The advert is not about watches. It’s about the lack of time there is, it’s about the value of it and it’s about Filippo Loreti saving your time. Wide Wings is taking corporate video to completely new direction.

Every day we see corporate companies, startups and emerging new businesses presenting the world with powerful video content that not only builds trust in the brand or product but also tells a story, educates and calls for action. Corporate video is much more customer-centric than it is focused around the brand, it more often answers the question why rather than what and it’s designed to solve a problem rather than talk about the benefits.

The rise of influencer marketing

As mentioned above, based on consumer trends, people are more likely to buy a product or service recommended by someone like them. Someone they trust to provide an objective opinion, pros and cons, and enlighten them on how the product or service will improve their everyday lives.