The Outlier Marketer Show
Need for Micro Video Marketing ft. Navanee Viswa
With every digital platform adapting its own version of short and bite-sized video features, its high time for us, marketers, to understand the effective usage of that better.
Navanee Viswa is a Video Marketing Strategist and a creator who enables brands to capitalize on organic video marketing for growth. Navanee Viswa explains to us what are micro-videos, the elements of a micro-video, and the best practices in making the micro-videos for your brand in this episode.
Transcript:
Navanee: So, happy and excited to connect with you and talking about micro video on this wonderful platform, Pravin, today.
Pravin: Good. So, Navanee, for the benefit of all our viewers today. How would you define or categorize micro videos?
Navanee: Any videos which has very shelf life, very less shelf life, like Twitter fleet, Instagram stories, even on LinkedIn now, recently, they have brought in stories, all of this are by definition, micro videos. But there is a little more to it. If you post a very short video, even on any of the social media feed, it can be considered as micro video. Why? Because it is only on the feed. The moment it goes out, it is not retrievable, unless someone takes an effort to come to your profile and check those videos. So it is also a micro video. If it is less than a minute, it can go a little bit more than one minute, even two minutes. I would consider two minute videos on feed as micro video.
Pravin: Lovely. Thank you, Navanee. Now, my understanding this far and the kind of micro videos that I was looking at, were in the two to three minute range, also putting up in YouTube. Because I am not yet a part of the tweet-story-fleet generation. I am still part of certain aspects. But it does matter when we look at the specific target grouping. And Navanee, at this point, I have to tell you an episode that happened less than a couple of months ago. When I was interviewing a YouTuber who wanted to get back into corporate life. And when I asked him do you read? He said, "No, Pravin, I know you've written a lot of books. But, my generation, we want really short two minute videos. If you have a few such videos then you can share. I'll be happy to learn." So, as marketers, you and I, Navanee, have to fine tune and convert whatever we're doing to span across these different target groups. What has your experience been in micro videos or micro video editing from your clients?
Navanee: Micro videos, assets... I think I have a little different opinion when it comes to micro videos. It's not supposed to be edited, it is supposed to be authentic and live as much as possible, as close to your real part of the life. You can add a little bit of edit to enhance the experience and to disseminate the educational part, happen even better. Only to that extent editing is better. To add the hard texting, to add branding element, all of it. It needs to happen so simple and so fast. Even the video to be shoot in a very minimal setup. So that is where the micro videos plays, I think, an interesting role.
Pravin: Lovely. Now, do you think when we look at different generations those in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, do you think the 30s and 40s and above generation is adapting the micro videos or not? What has your experience been?
Navanee: Yeah, so far the 20s are dominating in this area. As usual, 30s, 40s are struggling to catch up with 20 as far as that story part is concerned; the micro videos are concerned. Still there are a lot of 30s and 40s, camera shy. But 20s, no, they just go, that is what micro videos are calling for. You just have to be authentic and go out and publish all that you want. You being authentic in front of camera and your audience.
Pravin: Wow, to be authentic, which is what they want to be. Present the real them. But Navanee, a question here. And this is more from a personal experience part of it that it took me a long while to jump over the privacy barrier. Now, of course, privacy is a fallacy, but I still don't want my entire life to be in full public view across. But the 20s seems to be, they seem to be having it in their DNA, what are your thoughts there?
Navanee: No, there needs to be a clear demarcation. I would suggest that and I will recommend that regardless of what the 20s would like to go ahead and publish about their life to the outer public world. And well, 30s and 40s will be too tight to not share anything, and 20s are too open to share everything, or almost everything. So maybe we have to draw a very nice balanced line between these two and share all that we want.
Pravin: Right. Now, thinking like an entrepreneur or a marketer, can I plan these micro videos? If I have to create an awareness for this specific target segment that you and I are discussing about: the 20s to maybe early 30s, how do I plan for it? How do you plan for it as a creative videographer?
Navanee: I think there needs to be a little bit of a thought process in how do we go into deliver this video? How do we want to present ourselves in this quick video? So, those kind of thought process will control ourselves in front of that camera. So every preparation subconsciously definitely works. That brings out the best.
Pravin: Oh, Navanee, absolutely. So when I had to get involved in some of the book marketing for my new book, I had to give it over to the 20s. And they used Instagram to spread the word and get it through, a completely new audience. When you look at it, and there was a conversation in one of the entrepreneur WhatsApp groups asking us, do you have mentors who are in their 20s? And it appears that based on what you are telling and what we are seeing, I will need to quickly go and get a couple of mentors in the 20s to learn more about the new rage of micro videos that are coming in. How do you think the growth is going to be on the micro video front, your opinion?
Navanee: I think the 20s will still dominate that field. 30s and 40s will try to catch up. But they will definitely catch up. There are a lot of people who model themselves to the current scenario of the technology, of the social media platforms. I think you are one of the person who model as much as possible, not up to the extent of 20s, what they could do. But you're a really unique personality who try to bring in and adapt platforms.
Pravin: But Navanee, you and I and the most of us do not have a choice. For the 20s, it's inherent. It's there. For us, we need to try doubly hard to get involved in it. And as a marketer, we cannot leave anything so. Clubhouse has come in, of course, it's not a part of the micro videos, what we're talking about. However, newer aspects keep coming in. How does one keep enhanced? How does one keep experimenting, Navanee?
Navanee: I think it should be part of our life. Anything, any platform or any new technology comes in, we have to get our hands dirty and see whether it suits us or not. And then maybe a little bit of bruises here and there. Maybe a fracture, it's fine. It's all part of entrepreneurship and marketing.
Pravin: So, has any of your clients ever come to you and said, Navanee, can you go ahead and do some micro videos and let's make it viral?
Navanee: “Let's make it viral.” Yeah, that's the thing. People are always inclined to make things viral. But what statistically comes down is consistency and volume of content. So that is where my advice and my suggestion always goes to our clients, my clients. Okay, whatever you do, make it regular, make it consistent. We are here to support you all that. Let's fix a calendar, publishing calendar. And we'll stick to that. You give me the approval for publishing calendar. We will ensure that everything goes live and gets published on that particular time. So consistency is absolutely working together.
Pravin: You've already pre answered my next question, which is people come and say, “Hey, I did it five times. Nothing happened. It's a failure, micro video does not work for me.” So how would you answer that?
Navanee: When you do 100 videos or 1000 videos, one video might get viral. That is not because of you, that is because of so many factors beyond your control.
Pravin: But have you had experiences or have you analyzed or observed experiences where this micro video has not taken off at all for a particular client or campaign?
Navanee: No, micro video assets, it cannot be part of outsourcing content, the video part. The video needs to be created as perennial, their repository content. That is where we position ourselves and we do our business for our clients. Micro videos as such, it is meant for social media. And it needs to be shared for social media. And those are not time sensitive content. It does not have to be retrievable content, it does not have to be stored as a repository content, like YouTube, it is a repository based content, video repository. Create content which can be watched even after two years, five years for that particular brand.
Pravin: Right? So it makes absolute sense. We've got one question that's come in, what are the components that go into making a micro video?
Navanee: Components of micro video?
Pravin: From what you have said, Navanee, what I'm given to understand, a mobile phone is good enough for us to go and get cracking and get it done. Now further to your previous answer, I'm going to convert this slightly into short form video. We've discussed micro videos, but you said there are a lot of clients come to you for short form videos. What are those? Is it that they give you a huge chunk and then you slice and dice it?
Navanee: That kind of content, that kind of video can be extracted from that large part of webinars and other discussion. Those kinds of things can be created from that large part of longer duration videos. That is meant for social media and redirect from that video to your original video which is on YouTube, where you're building your brand channel. So that kind of things can happen with the help of this webinar videos. Because webinar is handled or designed for a different purpose. Your brand channel has different objective. The micro video or the short form videos, which is going to be on your social media feed that has got a different objective. Because once the feed goes, it's life is almost over. It has taken from there to another platform.
Pravin: Thank you, Navanee. You’ve hit it on the head because that is where I'm coming to. Because the bulk of clients says, “Hey put video as all video.” “It's a video only, no?” not factoring in that every channel, every different element needs to have its own thought process and planning that has to go through. Brilliant! Brilliant! Do you have any questions specific to this? Because I'd love to look at it from a marketing standpoint.
Navanee: I would like to know about what is your this kind of live streaming, how long you have been doing, what is the future plan of this live. Because live session is recently launched and step by step. It is not for all users. It has been launched phase by phase and for user based invitation. So those kind of things. They have a lot of scrutiny in place, I guess. So, what is your future plans to bring in? And live is almost like micro video. We can call it is much more powerful than micro video because it is authentic, it is real time. We cannot take anything. Whatever we talk is live, it has been watched, it's been absorbed by your audience. So there is nothing to hide.
Pravin: Absolutely. How and why it started? I cannot claim any credit for it, Navanee. I have a Raagul Ram, Sidharth and Malathy, as a part of my team who take care of my personal brand and they were the ones who put it through. But what is the plan for it? It comes under the wider ambit of The Outlier Marketer Show, wherever there is unconventional aspects, wherever there is non-traditional or even to a certain extent jugaad or piccollage, that is what I would be focusing on. Because every interaction for example, every time we interact, Navanee, there's something new that you share, that's something new that I can learn and I can take through. Even from our interaction here, 20s want to be authentic, that they want to put it through; you cannot engineer virality, you can put the elements and time it; and it happens, it happens. Consistency continues to be the key. So rather than just doing once and saying, “Hey nothing happened!” there has to be a plan that more consistent you are, your tribe builds and therefore it comes through. So those are all the aspects, Navanee. To me If you ask me, why am I doing LinkedIn Live? To learn. And the way we planned it also is a bunch of questions. So that hopefully some of them can become short form videos and maybe even micro videos that we can slice and use it again.
Navanee: Two things, Pravin. I think we have to answer the question of components of focus in making micro videos. That is one thing and I will come back to that number two, which I will be connecting with what I am suggesting to my clients regarding these micro videos.
Pravin: Please, yes.
Navanee: okay
Navanee: Components of focusing in making micro video: talk about one area, select four to five keywords of your domain and never cross those domains. Keep it real short. Keep it real short, two minutes max, out. Don't go beyond that. Those keywords, four to five keywords, choose a little wider, which gives you bandwidth to touch base a little bit here and there. So for us, video marketing is one wide area, but our competitor is paid advertisement. So I will have a touch base on that. So those are a couple of things to focus on when we may start making the micro videos and be consistent, regular volume. Now, complement with consistently you cannot do only consistent videos you have to focus on volume. Now these question boils down to quality. Quality is not any more an option. It is table stick. what you bring to your customers, your audience, all of them, definitely matters. Quality is table stick. That is all.
Pravin: Beautiful. That brings us to the 15 minute mark here and I would like to wrap it up. Thank you very much, Navanee. It's been a pleasure having you on and I look forward to continue to interact and learn. Super, super, thank you.
Navanee: Thank you, Pravin.
Pravin: Lovely, Navanee. And thank you for all the viewers and listeners who signed on. Welcome to The Outlier Marketer show.