Tag Archives: social media

I’m constantly amazed at the innovative ways people are using video, although in this case I guess I shouldn’t be.

I shot an interview last week at Prophet.  They call themselves  “a strategic brand and marketing consultancy.”

Anyway, I interviewed Andy Stefanovich, and his book Look at More is all about innovation. After we finished, he and the company’s social media guru asked if they could have a copy of the raw interview. My client was along for the shoot and didn’t have a problem with it, so I said sure.

Their response, “Great. There was some real Tweet-able stuff in there.”

What a great idea! The interview was probably about 10-minutes long. The video will be less than 2-minutes. A lot material that would normally end up on the cutting room, resurrected for social media.

Talk about a great way to generate content.

–Tony Gnau

One of the most frequent questions I get from clients is… how long should my video be?

There are all sorts of theories behind the answers. Yes, that’s answers with an “s” at the end. I don’t think there’s a single magic formula that’s always right, but I do think there’s some guidelines you can go by depending on where you’re showing the video.

• Social media campaigns… try to keep the video to 60-seconds or less. Social media equals super short attention spans. Give this audience something sweet and to the point to share.
• Your website… 2-3 minutes tops. Ideally, 1-minute 30-seconds. In this case, the viewer has sought you out and wants to learn about your organization. This means you get a little more time to communicate your message. Not too much time though. They’re still web surfing, so they’re just a point-and-click away from leaving your site if they lose interest.
• Live events… 5-minutes or less. Here I usually shoot for something in the 3-minute range. This is a captive audience, so you can flush out your story more than you can with a web video.

–Tony Gnau

I love that the airlines put out a lot of videos. I don’t always love their videos, but this is a billion dollar industry that clearly gets it. Travelers are watching so they give them video content.

Today, I get to share one that I like from Virgin America. If you travel at all, you know about Virgin. They do everything they can to cultivate their hip image and they posted a video oozing with style yesterday on Facebook.

It actually serves as a valuable lesson. Lots of businesses have videos produced. A frequent problem is that they stuff them with too much information. Yes… too much information.

Audiences tend to subscribe to the “less is more” adage. Virgin does a great job here. The video is simple… a day at their terminal inside San Fransisco International Airport.. and the message is clear. It’s all about the airline’s style. Watch it once and you know this is an airline with its own unique style.

Virgin provides a really good flight plan to follow.

–Tony Gnau

I watched an “About Us” video yesterday on YouTube that was produced for a non-profit. It was more than 7-minutes long! The crazy thing? That was the short version.

The organization has a “full-length” version that’s more than 16-minutes. Yikes!

Now, I don’t know their motivation behind these videos. Sometimes videos are produced for a live/captive audience and then posted on the web as an after-thought. But folks… even for that… 16-minutes is REALLY long.

The length of your video is mostly dependent on where you’re showing it. If its main purpose is for a live audience, I say keep it to 5-minutes or less. If it’s destined for your website, 2-minutes or less. Social Media? Try to keep it to around 60-seconds.

Now, there’s no rules here. We’ll occasionally find exceptions. Just remember, people are busy and many have short attention spans. Keep your videos short and sweet.

–Tony Gnau

CBS’s Steve Hartman is my favorite features reporter. He also happens to be one of the generous journalists whom I consider a mentor… offering a young reporter all sorts of critiques to improve their storytelling.

Every year Steve follows around Secret Santa. You can see the 2011 story and a few from past years at the following link to cbsnews.com. All of them are AWESOME!

Here’s the thing to keep in mind while you watch them… you have generous people like this working at your company. Whether they donate their time or money, your employees are giving back at this time of year… so help them.

Producing a video that highlights their efforts can help their cause. Your business can share the video with its followers, the employee can share it with their friends, and the benefiting charity can share the video with its supporters.

Today’s video serves as your reminder to spotlight the people doing good at your company.

–Tony Gnau

Southwest Airlines recently posted a video that’s supposed to give us a look behind the scenes of a day at Dallas’ Love Field.

Okay, that’s fine, but here’s the thing… so what? Why as an audience member should I care?

I feel like this is the classic example of a video where someone simply said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we gave people a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in a typical day at the airport?”

I love the sentiment, but as a marketer and audience member I demand more. “Wouldn’t it be cool” isn’t a reason to go through the time and expense of producing a video. This video does give us a behind-the-scenes look, but how does it benefit me as a traveler? It doesn’t.

If you want to stretch it, I suppose you could say it demonstrates how hard Southwest team members are working for the customer… but that’s a real stretch.

Whenever you’re working on a video, keep asking yourself… why should the audience care? If you don’t have an answer that’s going to ultimately further your brand… you need to refocus.

–Tony Gnau

Wouldn’t you love a million hits on YouTube!? Of course you would, getting your videos in front of as many people as possible is the goal of many businesses.

Reality check… it probably isn’t going to happen… and you know what? It’s okay. You don’t need to get your videos in front of as many people as possible. You just need to get them in front of the right people. Prospects who are interested in your products or services.

Find that audience, give them quality storytelling, and your videos will do their job… even without a million hits.

–Tony Gnau

What works for the web doesn’t always work in a TV commercial. That’s my conclusion after viewing a series of videos produced by the NCAA.

The series is called, the Buick Human Highlight Reel. The videos feature former NCAA athletes who are now making a difference in their communities off the field.

I came across the series while watching last weekend’s Big 10 Football Championship game. There was a commercial promoting the series and encouraging people to go to the website to watch the videos.

I jumped right on it, but here’s the thing… there’s a bunch of videos… all of them about 5-minutes long. It was overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start, and I found myself only watching pieces of the videos.

Then I “liked” the NCAA on Facebook, which is ironic since I pretty much can’t stand the NCAA, but that’s another blog post. Once I started getting the NCAA on my Facebook Wall, the series started making sense.

I still think the videos are a tad too long.  Okay, way too long, but getting them sent to me in small doses via social media made the series much more manageable to watch.

TV sent me to the series, but it didn’t hold my attention. It took social media to really grab me and reel me in.

–Tony Gnau

Courtesy: Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines posted a really cool story yesterday on its blog. It’s about a customer who tweeted during a flight about a terrific flight attendant. They promised to always fly Southwest if the airline would do something nice for the woman.

By the time the plane was on the ground, Southwest officials were at the gate waiting for the flight attendant with a present from a local bakery.

GREAT story! Things like this aren’t going to pop up all the time, so businesses need to have their antenna up to spot them. As much as I like the blog post, this had the potential to be a GREAT video.

Now, Southwest’s people had to think fast on their feet to do what they did.  Unless they had a veteran video producer on hand, shooting a good video might have been too much for them to handle here.  The lesson for PR and marketing teams is to be on the lookout for these opportunities. They might not always deal with such a quick turnaround.

Using a quality storyteller to creating a video in situations like this would be a great way to connect with an audience… making them feel like they were part of something special.

–Tony Gnau

Why video content? Simple. Short of transporting prospects to your place of business, video is the rare medium that allows you to actually show people what you do.

It can provide a behind-the-scenes tour of your company that may even be better than the real thing. Reasons why…

1. you get to control the message and get it right every time.
2. you ensure your business looks its best.
3. you can take people to places that might normally have restricted access.

Throw in the fact that prospects can take the tour without ever leaving their office and you have some pretty good reasons to create video content.

–Tony Gnau