I’ve got the short video done and it is NICE! This is going really put the message out! What’s next?
Putting the message out! You are about 1/3 done. Now someone’s got to see your add. You want thousands or tens of thousands to see your add. Some of them will head on over to the site. Let’s assume there’s more than one person on your team, and that “you” have handed the add over to someone else who is in charge of distributing it, and “you” have now gone on to making some more cool products. So we’ve got the following task sets and people:
* conception and story boarding of the video
* editing and production of an up loadable product
* distribution
* quality control
There are lots of people who want to help with Tea Party campaigns. Guarantee you there are lots of people out there who can do this work of video production and distribution. They may be those who are too timid to hit the streets and knock on doors. Or not be in health to do so – hey, it’s August in Texas! They may be intimidated at the Internet, true. But this is easy stuff to learn if you take it part by part. Go ahead and make mistakes – get those mistakes out of the way! That’s learning. Conservatives have LEARNED facebook and twitter – now it’s time to go a step further.
We’ve set the short video up with embedded links to the site of interest. Next it is uploaded to SEVERAL video hosting sites, such as Youtube.com and WooTV.us. For each of these sites, there is set up a user account, and a channel. The user has “Favorites”. This means that if someone finds your product on youtube, they immediately see all your other products on the side. “Channel” is your work, so if a youtube subscriber subscribes to your work, they can get email notifications when you produce new material.
Determine what a broad set of tags is, and write it out. Have the description include a FULL link back to your primary website (in the case at hand, we’d write or say “BrodenForCongress.Com. But the full link is http://www.brodenforcongress.com.). Use a teaser line from the video audio or text in the description. Something to arouse curiosity. Upload the video, enter the description and tags. Keep a copy of these text elements in a text file because you are going to use them over and over on other video hosting sites.
Here’s an example tag line.
Tags: District 30, Texas, Broden, Stephen Broden, Black, Black Conservative
That sounds like a lot of work – why can’t I just upload it to Youtube, that’s what most people watch anyway.
Sure buddy…..Go try to do a search for Sarah Palin, and see what kinds of nonsense and smears come up. Someone’s made it very difficult to find actual video of Palin, right? Try Glenn Beck. Try Mel Gibson. Then try some darlings of the Left. They come right up, but the conservatives don’t? Hmm….
The Youtube system is liberally biased, and it cannot be considered reliable or trustworthy. What if your carefully prepared material becomes difficult for people to find in October and November? Perhaps someone types in Broden, and the search engine first five pages point to other people named “Broden”, plus smears on the real Broden?
In addition, each video hosting site has separate groups of readers. Your interest was in maximal exposure, right?
So…you’ve spent a half hour and you’ve got the product uploaded to a half dozen video sites. (plus you kept a spare copy on the local computer, and you have a directory with all the raw video that would enable making revised products).
What’s next? Twitter and Facebook.
Many people are starved for hope and real information today. They go to Internet sources (which include Facebook and twitter) to look for facts and to help separate out the propaganda, and to seek positive signs. Part of what is desirable here is for those people to not just go looking, but to go posting. They post links to your video. That’s the Internet equivalent to knocking on neighborhood doors. Enlist a group in this activity and saturate with your product. Always use your own words and opinion when you post – if it’s canned, it will sound robotic.
In other words, ask people to not be passive users of the Internet, but to spend part of their time passing interesting and captivating messages OUTWARDS. Sending links to your short videos would do this nicely.
Propagation and networking goes like this for your short video:
* Facebook and Twitter postings link to the video by using a provocative leadin. They lead people to your video
* the video leads them to the website, where there is more cool stuff that they like
* hopefully they are sold and come in to help or donate.
* even if not they may sign up for your email list (you have one, right….?)
* even if not you’ve captured their interest (and NOT ANNOYED OR BORED THEM) and you may well hook them some time later
Example of a Twitter post. Short, includes subject, locale, and the link.
Broden (Texas challenger for district 30) has got it right about Black Conservatives. Never heard his point of view before.
Stick to the subject of the video in posting, never get derailed or defensive. Never fall for someone trying to bait you into a insult fest. In the time you spent fighting an Internet troll, you could have posted 50 more links to the material. Be polite, firm, and stay consistently focused on the job.
Just as people are being asked now to get involved, get engaged, and get active, they must consider that a part of this is getting engaged on the Internet. And that requires a method, because otherwise the messages are lost, like little scraps of paper floating into the Grand Canyon.
Facebook postings
The final item in this is “Quality Control”. How do you insure that the above process was actually done halfway decently? Suppose you have 3 video sites that videos A, B, C, and D were posted to. You assign a person to check that that was actually done, that the tags were decent, the description includes a link, and so forth. This person can use the same login to make corrections if required.
Perfection isn’t required, but some management review is of course highly useful. In the six or so hours since I started writing this (on and off), the video placed on Wootv.US has been viewed 98 times.
Give people things to make them smile, make them a bit more inspired, and brighten up their day, and they’ll come back. And they’ll be quite likely to help with your campaign. All from little 30-120 second clips. Fascinating, isn’t it? In fact, why not ask them to send your clip to five of their friends before they are eligible to sign up to help your campaign? If in fact they liked it, they are only being asked to share something they liked. Then they could sign up, and have even more fun. But send the five copies out first, and earn the right to help. And you will need more people to help in distribution, right? Well, let them get started…
:)
Spendulus
TexasTeaParties.Com