Sunday Video Challenge #1

Every Sunday, starting today, we're going to post a short, easy, Sunday Video Challenge for you to consider adding to your social media video-centric content publishing strategy.

So, let's start with an easy one...

Here's a video that showed up on my personal Facebook timeline today.

The messaging is not something I'd use for the Video Buddy brand but the idea behind it is what caught my eye.  So if the video doesn't come off as a wow moment for you right away, stick with me.  I have a strategy that will make sense in a moment.

Have a quick watch (it's less than 30 seconds).  After you watch it, I'll explain my take on why you should adopt some content like this for your social media timelines.

Whether this particular video appeals to you or not isn't the point.

THE POINT is that this video has over 500,000 views, over 12,000 shares, and 32,000 long-form comments!

12,000 people shared this video!

It's a simple video less than 30 seconds long with an easy formula that you can follow and duplicate to attempt to increase interaction on your own social media pages.  

I'm not saying that you'll get as many views, shares, likes, and comments... but with persistence and the right messaging, you can certainly increase whatever interaction you have now with simple call to action videos like this that's relevant to your audience and your brand.

For example....

Let's say you have a coffee e-commerce store or your own coffee label that you sell, what if you had a simple video like this that said:

"I drink coffee for your protection" (Top part of the video)
Image or, better yet, a video of a hot cup of coffee with steam (with your logo in the bottom right corner of the video)
And then at the bottom, the call to action:  "Share this with someone who needs this reminder" 

Done.  Easy Peasy.

Will it work?

I have no flippin' clue if it will or not.  It's just a quick, off the cuff example of something you "could" do.  It's simple enough and easy to see if it will.  

Obviously, you'll want to put a little more thought into what and how to make these kinds of videos to get interaction with your posts so here are a few ideas to make it easy for you.

Planning Tips:

Planning Tips:

1. Don't be "Promotional" in your top text message.  If it feels like a commercial, people aren't going to want to share your video.  Don't try to sell anything except the interaction.  Your payday is the amount of likes, shares, and comments you get.
2. Choose an appropriate image to reflect your top line question or statement.  
3. Have a clear, specific call to action at the bottom of your video asking your viewer to engage with you in some way.

Re-write and re-purpose static memes

Going back to the coffee niche idea, you could Google Search "coffee funny sayings" to get some inspiration for your top line text.

Don't steal the phrase you find.  Just use it for idea boosters.  Maybe change the wording up a bit to fit your voice.  

Here are a few meme's I found with a simple Google search:

Once you have 10-12 ideas that you think would be a good fit for your audience, take a moment to change them up to make them unique...or even combine some phrases for an even better video meme.  Don't get lazy on this, make unique content (people will notice).

Next, Find Appropriate Images & Video Clips for the body of the video.

Once you have 10 - 12 top line text ideas that will capture your target audiences attention, it's time to add the body of the video.

What you'll do is look at each of the text ideas you came up with and search for images that will amplify what you said.  

Swinging back to the Coffee example, you might look (or even shoot yourself) a cup of coffee with steam rolling off.  Or maybe a couple pieces of vector clip art animated in a creative way to demonstrate the saying.  

You can get ideas by looking through royalty free video & image sites like iStockphoto, VideoHive.net, Flickr, places like that.  

If you have your 10-12 top line sayings prepared FIRST, you can easily scan through the portfolio of images and clips to see if anything pops out.  This is much easier than trying to think of an exact concept you want to display and then looking for that specific thing.  Many times, by doing it this way, you'll find even better images and videos that you never would have thought of if you tried to plan it all out in your head first.

Doing it this way will energize your own creativity and make this exercise a lot more fun and easy to do.

Call To Action Ideas:

Make a list of 10 call to actions you can put at the bottom of your video like the example above.  Here are a few ideas to get you started:

None of these call to action phrases are profound or magical.   However, they all encourage every viewer to interact with your post in some way.  And that's EXACTLY the goal of your video - To generate interaction with your brand.  You want that interaction to extend your reach and visibility on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or wherever the video is posted.

Write a few of your own to brainstorm and test.  The examples I wrote above took me about 3 minutes to think up and type out.  

Don't think too hard about it or it will become a chore and you'll not doing this exercise at all.  Nobody's watching yet, so relax and write.  You can always ditch the ideas you don't like later.  

So, just come up with 10 of them and use the ones you like.  If you only use four of them, so be it.  At least you have some actionable call to action phrases that you didn't have just a few minutes ago.

Set a timer or an alarm on your phone for 5 minutes and just do it.  I bet you come up with more than 10 with focused effort.  Do it now while you're thinking about it.

Final Step

By coming up with 10-12 ideas, then finding images and video clips that will go with them all FIRST, you can now put them all together in one editing session.  When you're done, you'll have 10-12 pieces of content that you can drip out over the next month or two and you've only spent an hour or so planning it out.  Maybe another 2-3 hours editing it (depending on your skill level) and you're set.

If you're handing this off to an editor to put together for you, you'll have a nicely prepared set of assets that they can use to quickly put together for you and they can focus on making it "pretty" rather than focusing on thinking about what images or video clips to use.