6 Video Your Story into Life

Part 6 of 27 Social Media Lessons From Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign

Use Video to Document and Share

Video was one of the most effective Obama tools because it brought the blog and emails to life. Real people doing real things. Obama’s campaign had the reach of a TV network for free – 1830 videos, 162,000 YouTube subscribers, 20 million views, one billion minutes of footage plus a donate button. Three key types of video were used: (1) Live Streaming (2) Campaign Generated and (3) User Generated.

Video Value

• Use bite-size chunks under 5 minutes,
• let content be remixed with soundtracks and photos,
• allow comments,
• link back to the original,
• embed on your blog and Facebook.
• Beware: Video extends the news cycle keeping both good and bad issues around for longer.

Action : Use Video to document what you do and share it via your blog.

Derived from Rahaf Harfoush, Yes We Did