Integrating Short Form Video Into Your Content Strategy. Speakers: Leticia Barr and Janelle McCoy

This morning’s session is Integrating Short Form Video Into Your Content Strategy with Leticia Barr and Janelle McCoy. Since I’ve never actually used short-form video, I’m very excited about this one. I’m not the only one who raised my hand about not having used it at all.

Short-form video is only 6-60 seconds long. Most people seem to use Instagram for video, but many have already bailed from Vine.

Integrating Short Form Video Into Your Content Strategy. Speakers: Leticia Barr and Janelle McCoy

Leticia can be found:

Janelle McCoy can be found:

The Rise of Short Form Video

  • 55% of Web traffic is video
  • A short form video is shared every second on Twitter
  • Users want to consume quickly, and it allows us to do that
  • The space has been growing since 2011

Advantages of Short Form Video

  • Easy
  • Can show versus photo or writing
  • Several free apps available (Vine, Instagram, Everlast, Glmps)
  • Another meaningful way to connect with people
  • Short

Disdvantages of Short Form Video

  • Growing space, don’t know what’s happening next for your strategy
  • Some apps have limited social sharing abilities
  • Short

Instagram Video and Vine

  • Short form video sharing apps and social media community
  • Vine and Instagram are similar, so can be tough to choose one
  • Instagram has over 130 million users
  • Vine has 13 million users
  • Vine is 6 seconds; Instagram is 15 seconds
  • Instagram has filters and the option to edit
  • Vine loops videos and has better search that is limited to only video.

Pro-tip: Go to Vine, upload your videos, then add to Instagram.

Pro-tip: Look at trending topics for videos and use hashtags

The Opportunity for Bloggers

  • Another platform to grow your online community and presence
  • Increase your reach
  • Foster engagement and strengthen influence
  • Turn your writing and images into a video (tutorials, demos, teasers) to engage your readers on another level
  • Opportunity to showcase core goals of your blog

Recommendations

  • Download the apps and explore
  • Chose a cover photo that drives clicks
  • Use 2 hands to stabilize your phone when shooting, or use a tripod; you don’t want it to be shaky
  • Take advantage of multiple scenes
  • Use sound (there’s a switch if you have an iPhone)
  • Incorporate hashtags, tag users, mentions
  • Consistently post and join conversations
  • Create a two-way conversations: follow, comment, and like
  • Share, share, share (amplify your content!)
  • Target audience: what’s in it for them
  • Incorporate into your offerings to brands
  • Save the links to your short form videos before they get pushed off the page

Instagram lets you edit your videos, while Vine doesn’t offer the same flexibility.

Short form video can showcase your creativity. People can follow your video profiles to your blog as long as you link back to your site(s). You can put the links into your descriptions, too, or use video as a teaser for a larger post you’ve created. You can add branding to your videos by writing stuff on a little slip of paper, etc. These short videos are “appetizers to the main dish.”

Be the most professional self you can be on all of your platforms. Don’t use these videos to show yourself drunk, or with your kids screaming in the background, etc. If a video doesn’t work out, don’t force it. Stay true to your voice. You can do a lot of damage in 6 seconds. But you can also do a lot of good.

You have to do some planning to make sure you show what you want to show. The actual video shooting only takes seconds, but it takes a little practice to make sure you make the most of those seconds.

Tips for editing short-form video? There are a lot of Facebook groups that discuss these tips and provide inspiration. A quick Google search can give you a really good picture of best practices and such. (Ironically, you can also search YouTube for Vine compilations.)

What’s next? People are going to become more comfortable with using Vine and Instagram, more people are going to be sharing, and the quality will get better and better.

Instagram is getting ready to roll out monetization, so now is the time to practice and build your following if you want another revenue stream. There are video awards, too, so you can see what other people have done and what makes a great short form video.

New features are being added to Vine and Instagram all the time, so your wishlist of features could be implemented at any time.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.


By Christina Gleason

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.

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