Using Social Media to Create an Emotional Connection

One of the great things I love about social media is getting people to show their emotion and passion for a certain topic.  If the user can see that in a video or audio podcast then you have sold the audience and they will talk about your brand or topic online or offline to their friends, family and co-workers.  One topic that I’m passionate about is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I met with the Mingus family last month to learn more about their son’s diagnosis and survival with leukemia.  I worked with Heavensent Films and my bro-in-law Justin Adkinson on filming the interview.  I made sure Matt’s mom, Kat, was comfortable with the questions so I just had a causal conversation with her because sometimes the lens can be scary for people. It’s just starring you down and putting pressure on a topic that should be easy for the interviewee to speak about.  So to ease into the video I started chatting “off camera” about how there day was going, the questions we were going to ask, the weather, family, etc..It really helped both of us have a great causal yet emotional conversation for apprx. 2 hours.   Justin with his great camera and video editing skills created a great 4 minute re-cap of the conversation and really focused on the goal which was to spread awareness about the Society and raise crucial dollars for research and patient services.    The video is posted below and Justin did a behind-the-scenes blog post to see how something like this is created.  Comment below and how you use social media content to create an emotional connection.

Video Interview Tips for Social Media Campaigns

Social media evangelists and/or those that are communicating with the public via online communities need to be trained appropriately on how to respond to questions from a public relations perspective.  Opening the flood gates on all your employees to take part in social media is probably not the best idea to start with especially at a medium to large company (1000+ people). They need to be trained and get familiar with how to engage in conversations in a honest, truthful method.

In doing video interviews for social media purposes here are some tips:

• Write an outline of what you are going to talk about it (I assume those topics have been cleared by your PR team)
• Make sure you are comfortable in answering questions in an impromptu way. If the interviewer asks you a question, you better know how to respond to it directly, honestly, and all within the same shot
• Make sure with every video you do has a call to action – where do people go for more information? Make sure you know the web site url (or as Joe Biden would like to say the web site number, you know the ip address, right?..j/k 🙂 )
• Keep it to 30-seconds to 3 minutes. If the video is longer split it up into a series.
• Make sure the person you are interviewing is engaging and has a good, clear communication style. If you think people are going to fall asleep within 15 seconds of hearing him/her then coach him on how to change his style, tone, and facial gestures.
• The video should be in one continuous shot. Why? You really want the viewers to feel like they are there interviewing the person and not being coached by the interviewee. Style should be a causal conversation.

That’s all for now. What do you think? Do you have any additional suggestions for video interviews that are being distributed online via communities & social networks?  Add a comment below.

-Randy
http://twitter.com/djksar