There are many ways of marking milestones when it comes to your progress with creating social media videos. Of course it’s nice when things are as simple as 10 million views on your YouTube “views” counter.
One key indicator is that people start expecting and looking for and even asking for your video commentaries on a particular subject. When publicists, bookers, editors and clients start asking for your opinions or writing and asking, “Have you done a video yet on (hot topic of the day on your niche)” then you know you have at least partially arrived.
Once this happens, you know that you have been successful at fusing your image and expertise with your niche and people start to have such strong associations with you and your expertise and the topic in the news.
To me, the ultimate payoff is when a prospect calls me and already knows who I am and why I can solve their problems. When I ask, “how did you find me?” They respond “You are everywhere!”
It’s not just that they found me on Google. It’s not just seeing gazillion videos of mine on YouTube. Or seeing me referenced in trade publication web sites. It’s not just my own web site or even my blog. And it’s not blurbs they see on major media sites like cbs.com.
My prospect found me on most or even all of those places because he or she spend weeks or even months researching my niche because he/she didn’t want to just call 10 random people form a directory and then be bombarded by 10 salesmen every day for 6 months. My prospects took time, effort and care to research their needs. And when I ask them how they found me they don’t know. Because they found me often, repeatedly, in numerous different sources and outlets. And they reasoned that anyone can make a good video or two. And anyone can have a website. And anyone can get on YouTube. And anyone can occasionally get in on a major TV outlet occasionally. But no one can do all of those things with great frequency and volume for years and not be credible.
Mr. Spiegel recently joined Inside Communications Radio with Mike Bako. In his interview, Richard discussed his article at CommPRO, “Secrets of Crowdsourcing Social Conversations.’ Within the nonstop news media cycle and even more chaotic social media world, businesses look for ways to capture large trending topics.
Mr. Speigel states in his article, “Big brands have been using crowdsourcing to activate consumers for some time now…many large consumer brands use crowdsourcing when developing contests. These contests act as the centerpiece of a social media marketing campaign and often help to shift the burden from creating engagement to managing it.”
In the interview Mr. Speigel expanded on the importance of connecting fans and followers within the product. His example of Toyota taking advantage of crowdsourcing through there campaign called “Toyota Sponsafier.” Spiegel “they gave NASCAR fans the opportunity to actually create the graphics package for their Toyota Camry Nascar… the one that got the most votes was literally produced and featured in a race and used as a pacecar.” The importance of connecting though fans and allowing them to see their input used has created a link between Toyota and the social media community.
To read this articles, you can go to http://blog.commpro.biz/?p=3059. For more Richard Spiegel and public relations news articles, please visit CommPRO’s website at http://blog.commpro.biz/
About Richard Spiegel
Richard Spiegel is the founder of CrowdTogether, an online crowdsourcing platform. Connect with him at rich@crowdtogether.com or on Twitter at @@CrowdTogether
My advice on editing social media videos is to do this: don’t. That’s right; I’m suggesting that you don’t bother editing. Instead, recording “live to tape” (even though you aren’t using tape in all likelihood) is the better way to go.
While editing has gotten simpler, cheaper and faster over the years, the problem for most people is still that once you start it can be challenging how to figure out when to stop. What seems like a simple trim becomes the haircut that ends up turning into a shaved head. All of a sudden every “uh” and “um” turns into a project that must be removed.
Oprah doesn’t remove the uhs and ums from her guests; neither does the Today Show. So why should you.
Your time is valuable. Rather than spending lots of time editing, you are better off shooting more video filled with interesting ideas and insights.
