4 Tips for Creating Shareable Video
When it comes to adding video to your small business repertoire, it can quickly feel daunting and costly depending on your goals for your project. However, just because you want to add video to your website, social media, whatever it may be, you don’t have to be constrained to the traditional methods of developing great video content.
Sure, full-fledged video production does have its place in your marketing, branding and messaging, but there are some cases in which you can produce meaningful, helpful, and shareable video.
Before we move forward, it must be stated that there are a host of definitions out there on what can be considered shareable video. And truthfully, that definition will more than likely be determined internally depending on the industry you’re a part of and the intent of your videos.
For these purposes, we’ll use a high-level definition: shareable video means that the video is meaningful enough to your audience to be shared by a third party (i.e. social media, email, etc…).
Now that we have a little primer, here are a few tips to consider when you’re looking to add video as another valuable asset to your capabilities.
1. Use What You Have
For some this means a nice DSLR camera with video capability and for others this means an iPhone. The beauty is that both will work and can provide you with what you need. Having used both in the past, you’d be surprised at the quality of the videos you can create with what you already have.
2. Take Advantage of Royalty-Free
If you’re planning on using photography or music for your video and begin searching around online, you may experience sticker shock. However, there are a huge amount of royalty-free images and music available for you use. Search creative commons or royalty-free and you should have a good jumping-off point.
With both images and music, you also want to be familiar with the licenses attached to them, as some royalty-free songs and images aren’t able to be used commercially.
3. Easy, Effective Edits
The go-to for editing these types of videos has to be iMovie. I know there are a number of other programs out there, but for what you’re trying to accomplish, iMovie does the trick. There are a ton of great editing and effects tools that can help you make the video what you want it to be, and it’s user-friendly.
4. Plan
While this doesn’t involve the nuts and bolts of actually filming, editing or adding in pieces during post-production, it’s equally as important. While there’s certainly a place for spontaneous video (i.e. Vine, Instagram video, etc…), a little planning can make or break a video. Take the time to sit down and discuss messaging, come up with a list of shots you want to capture, storyboard your shots, choose talent, and make sure everyone is on the same page. Taking even 30 minutes to talk through these can help immensely.
Of course these are just a few tips to help you gain confidence in adding shareable video to your capabilities, so start with these and see where it takes you. What else would you consider to be essential to creating low-cost or no-cost shareable video?
