A couple years ago, when I still worked in TV as a social media producer, I came across a social video that a pet shelter in Atlanta, Furkids, had done.
IT.WAS.HILARIOUS.
It was a spoof of a car sales commercial, only instead of shiny, fancy cars, they had lots and lots of cats. Tired ones, enthusiastic ones, hungry ones (all of them self-cleaning!) and if those aren’t your speed, they also have dogs!
It was such a simple, low-budget concept and the video went wild.
At the time the shelter posted it, I reached out to them to ask if my station could have their permission to use it on all platforms with credit/tagging to the shelter and they responded right away with a yes. (Watch below or you can watch here. It’ll make your day.)
For the shelter on Facebook and YouTube, it got more than a million views! How awesome!
And guess what? It got an additional 39 million views when we picked it up. Not to mention their coverage by Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. The power of social media!
So, lesson number one: You don’t have to have an elaborate video setup to execute a great idea. You just need to have an idea and do it! In fact, it took minimal editing to pull this off and he shot it on his iPhone in about 30 minutes. You just never know who will end up seeing it and sharing it, and that’s the holy grail right there – that it will get shared and land in front of the right person.
Here’s what happened after the video went viral for them:
-A television station (me) noticed the video and got their permission to use it on both television and social media. My television station happened to work with 15 other large market television stations like Atlanta, New York, and LA, so we all used the video! HUGE EXPOSURE. In addition to BuzzFeed, Huff Post, Reddit, etc.
-The shelter tells me that they raised $22,000 in TWO DAYS from people all over the world and they received dozens of gifts from their Amazon wish list. Not only that, but their followers DOUBLED, and people reached out to them wanting to WORK there! They just passed 80,000 fans on Facebook.
DO THESE TWO THINGS TO INCREASE YOUR VIDEO VIEWS AND WATCH TIME
I keep talking about businesses doing more videos, but this right here is a visual representation of what happens when you have a simple and creative idea and the power of executing it on social media.
Now, how can the success of other people help you?
That’s lesson number two: If it fits your brand and it’s a video or photo going viral that everyone is talking about, yes, by all means reach out to the poster directly and ask for permission to use it on your platforms with credit/tagging to them! This allows you to insert yourself into this viral conversation with your own page. It also helps increase exposure for them. (Share the love!)
THIS ONE SIMPLE TWEAK WILL MAKE YOUR SOCIAL VIDEOS 🔥
You can message them directly through Facebook, let them know how much you love what they’ve done, and ask the following questions:
- Did you shoot it yourself?
- May I have your permission to use it on all platforms with credit/tagging to you? (This enables you to use it on your website/blog and also on social channels.)
- Is there anyone else we should credit?
Then thank them very much.
(Note: if they say they did not shoot it themselves and/or you don’t have permission, you can’t use it. But that’s OK, there’s always next time!)
This can be done for photos or videos of community events in your area, if you sell baby products and there is a mom in your area going viral with a post about her child you can reach out to her, if there’s an alligator crossing the road in a neighborhood you sell houses in…. the possibilities are endless. You can ALWAYS ASK. What’s the worst that can happen, they say no?
After I left television and had clients from different industries who I would post content for, I would still reach out to people whose content I thought was great and that I wanted to use or collaborate with. Even after I left TV and was helping to build pages that had small followings, they said YES. So, it doesn’t hurt to ask! Out of all the times I asked, only one person said no. When you’re building your content calendar, that’s great user-generated content you can put into the mix of your own!
Lesson three: If you have a video going viral or even if it’s just really cool, send the link to your post to your local TV stations. Slide it up in their FB DMs and let them know! When I was working on social media with a local mortgage broker, I pitched a tv station video of a home in Florida that was being sold with an underground bunker – those are rare in Florida – and the station picked it up. I also put together a video on social and someone from Maine saw it and called him!
Give the stations permission to use your video with credit/tagging to your company and page and they will run it on television and on their social pages where sky’s the limit. I personally loved getting tips like that from our viewers through our Facebook messages when I worked in news, and very often, I pitched them in our editorial meetings as story ideas and we would assign a reporter to it.
Video is only going to become more important as Instagram and Facebook grows, and we haven’t even discussed TikTok for businesses yet – that’s a very big deal!
Get in on the video game. It’s so worth it. Create your own, ask for permission for others.
As always, let me know if you have questions on video production or how to simply execute an idea like this one.