Video has always been a massive medium to increase brand awareness. In our business of nightclubs it is no surprise that people watch videos at an amazing rate. Nightclub promoters and owners should take advantage of this and get away from the fear that a video needs to be expensive, long and take a lot of time out of your day to create.
Gone are the days that you need to spend thousands of dollars on a polished professional video. Our demographic has become accustomed to authentic and native social media, which means there are more fuzzy and shaky videos getting attention than polished 'TV ad looking' videos.
That's fantastic news for us! This means that if you own a smartphone you already have all of the tools needed to create and upload great videos.
Where do we start:
1. Decide on a platform to use. Pretty much every social media platform offers video uploading. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine and even new live streaming social media services like Meerkat. However they are all a little bit different and require you to think about that you are producing and how it fits into the platform (how people want to watch it).
As an example Instagram offers a max 15sec video but will autoplay in the feed when someone scrolls through. Facebook has a maximum of 20 minutes but that is way too long for a social media video, unless you are uploading a mini tv episode. Facebook will autoplay in the feed as well provided that it's not too long (I'd go 10-30 seconds as well here). Vine has a maximum of 6 seconds and auto loops (you can get very very creative here!).
2. Landscape or Square shooting. For places like YouTube, Twitter or Facebook make sure you turn your phone to landscape and get a nice widescreen shot of your video. It looks more professional and also prevents that weird vertical shot with huge black bars along the side. Even though we aren't producing on a $10,000 camera with a crew you can still create an amazing looking video.
Providers such as Instagram or Vine crop your video square, so make sure you are aware of what you are shooting. It will cut off the sides and top.
3. All About Audio, or Lack thereof. While many platforms offer autoplay in their feed this also means that the audio is shut off until the person clicks on the video itself. No one likes to scroll through their news feed and have a video play with loud music or yelling. So it starts off in mute and if the user clicks the video and continues the audio kicks in. We need to think about that when shooting.
Be sure to entice the viewer in the first few seconds without needing to hear what is going on. Don't start with a bartender talking about something, they won't hear that unless they actually get interested and click. With that said...
4. Grab Attention in 3 seconds! Most people in our demographic make a decision to watch a video or not within the first 3-5 seconds. This is why YouTube forces you to watch up to 5 seconds of an ad before being able to switch away and why Facebook shows stats of people watching to the 3 second mark or the full video. You absolutely need to capture their attention in seconds. Seconds.
5. Get Creative. Here is the fun part. Think outside of the box and also think about what people do on social media. They are there to interact, share and be entertained. A few examples: don't showcase your new massive burger with a beautifully edited commercial, give the burger to someone and shoot them eating it. Speed up the video to fast motion and use that. Use user generated content a lot. Ask people to tag you in pictures and videos and get permission to use that content in your promo videos and ads. Give credit and tag the person.
Video is a massive part of our marketing toolbox and with a smartphone in hand and a few seconds of time you can increase your brand quite a bit. Be consistent and upload a lot, build that audience.