Making Videos That Work Socially

Where you are publishing video can have as many production implications as the industry standards. The social channels we find online are no exception. None of these tips below can help terrible lighting, a poor script or a boring personality (unless that is your goal). But they can help shift your thinking about how video fits into your online community more effectively. And in an online community “effectiveness” is measured by both the social momentum it builds through likes, comments and shares as well as people taking the video’s key action (sales, conversions, new behavior, watching, etc).

Avoid Only Two On Video

When making a video that is going to be made for and distributed into a social channel avoid only having two people on video. When there are two people on video it gives one person the load to carry all the non-verbal interaction for the audience. With one person the audience is obvious. With three or more people the social interaction on video is immediately more natural and approachable by your web audience. This is important because video published into social channels isn’t like TV or even Hulu where it is simply consumed. In these social environments video is expected to be something we interact around and even shift perception on through the comments. (The exception to this, in my experience, is when there is great chemistry between the two on video. Usually they are good friends or just fit well together. In this case chemistry is actually more important than content.)

[UPDATE: There was some confusion on this so I did a followup video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnjS5Ab-7jk]

Don’t Wear a Tuxedo to a Pool Party

Your web audience is going to view your video in a familiar setting. They interact with you in their living room, coffee shop, or on their laptop in their dorm room. At most they might invite a friend or two to come and watch the video with them. Keep that in mind for what you wear on the video, your non-verbal interaction, your expectations of what they are going to do (Dora the Explorer is brilliant on this), the size of the room, how far from the camera you seem, etc. Just like you want to dress appropriate for a party you are invited to; position your social videos to be best received by your audiences viewing environment.

(This is actually a skill many people in event programming already leverage effectively. You don’t want to have an event for fifty people in a room that fits two thousand and have the speaker on a high stage. Start thinking the same way for video you plan to distribute into social channels.)

Information is Boring – Change their Intent

Don’t waste people’s time doing a video that is just an update with new information, write that out. People can skim what has been written to find what is important and move on way faster than you can in a video. Don’t make your audience sit through a rambling post of information that they will have to then.. write down, to act on. Instead realize the huge opportunity in video is to make a personal connection with your audience that can focus on changing their intent to behave differently. Ask: How do I connect with them? What behavior do I want to encourage? How can I shift their intent to do that? How am I doing that? What is the “heart” behind that change? Do they need to laugh to get there or cry? What is going to motivate them? What is the challenge?

Give them Social Options for the Tool/Platform

Two words can help solve this for you; “comment below.” Know where the comments, or like, or share options are on the platform you are distributing the video into and mention those social actions within your video. This is a way of setting social expectations around the video and teaching people new to the tool how to use it. I know this might seem obvious but even in vibrant online communities just simply stating these options greatly increase the activity around the video which helps it gain momentum in those networks.

What about you? What changes have you found yourself making for video you are posting online?