A Little Video and a Big Lesson

The sub­ject of ear pierc­ing came up with my 6 year old. For a cou­ple rea­sons, I’d rather she not. But rather than be the “voice of author­ity” sure to inspire rebel­lion, I showed her this:

Need­less to say, she thinks she should “wait a while” before pierc­ing her ears.

What is to be learned from this lit­tle les­son in social media?

• Video is a very effec­tive means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Show­ing is much more effec­tive than telling any day of the week. And it’s never been eas­ier to shoot or upload. Get your­self a lit­tle cam­era like this Flip cam­era and shoot away.
• Elim­i­nate the voice of author­ity. Of course I had an agenda in select­ing that par­tic­u­lar piece of footage. But, I didn’t say a word before or after the view­ing to sug­gest my point of view. Sim­i­larly, let good video stand on its own. It doesn’t require com­men­tary, voice over, supers, etc. to be effective
• Keep it short. Most adults have the atten­tion span of a 6 year old. Make your point, and get out.
• Make it share wor­thy. Sure there were other videos of kids get­ting their ears pierced at the mall. And I did show them just to be bal­anced. But I wouldn’t post those vanilla vids on the blog. Bor­rrrring! This one’s the most share wor­thy (poor kid.)
• Give it a good title. Kylie’s ear pierc­ing trauma. Now that’s a catchy title. I know what I’m get­ting with that one. Don’t give your video a generic name when you can tell peo­ple exactly what they’ll get when they click on the video.

Related posts:

1. A live les­son in Social Media
2. The “How I Use Ever­note” Video Project
3. Fiesta Farms Video #5: Meet­ing Jessie