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David Spark is the owner of Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build voice through storytelling and social media.

I just sent 325 personal video holiday greetings-How I did it

January 1st, 2008

This post is a follow up to my post “I just sent 325 personal video holiday greetings-The Response.”

For background as to why I sent all these videos and the reaction, please read that post first.

New media producers are constantly obsessed with how can I create a single piece of content and scale it. But what about creating lots of personalized content in an efficient manner? I’m not talking about mailing lists that begin with “Dear Bill.” Bill’s never fooled, and neither are you. I’m suggesting truly personalized content like talking directly to that person in a video. That’s what I set out to do. I achieved some success and some failure, of which I think some has yet to reveal itself to me.

Here’s what I did.

Step 1: What video mail application should I use?

There is a host of free Web-based mail programs: Springdoo, TokBox, Eyejot, and the Video application in Facebook. For my project I had a few requirements of a Web-based mail program:

• I want to send tons of videos (have an efficient interface where I can record videos in succession)
• I want my videos to be seen (easy to view and respond. No signing up with a service to be able to watch)
• I don’t want restrictive time limits (turned out my videos averaged from about :50s to 1:30s in length)

With all of these criteria, I chose to first go with the Video application within Facebook. It’s extremely easy to record and send videos to people who are already your Facebook friend. You can record up to 15 minutes (I never went that long) and there don’t seem to be any limitations on quantity. In addition, the user interface makes it very easy to record and send many videos in succession.

For those friends and business colleagues not on Facebook, I chose TokBox. TokBox has a five minute video limit, it’s easy to use, and it doesn’t appear to have any quantity limits. Eyejot limits videos to one minute and Springdoo does have quantity limits.

Step 2: Who do I send videos to?

This was where I started to limit myself. I have close to 600 Facebook friends. I wanted to follow up with people who I had spoken to in the past year, people I did work with, and people I hadn’t spoken to in a long time that I was looking to reconnect with. It’s this process of picking and choosing where I’m fearing these personalized videos may bite me back. This is why:

• By “friending” someone on Facebook I am saying that I know the person and they are my friend. I don’t actually friend complete strangers. I do know everyone on my Facebook list. By not choosing a person for a video message, I’m leaving that person out even though I’ve announced to the world that “I know this person and he/she is my friend.”
• The act of writing this blog post, some of the people who didn’t receive a video message may read this and are going to feel slighted.
• I started to rely so heavily on Facebook that I began to completely ignore all my friends and business colleagues NOT on Facebook of which there are far more than 600. I definitely gave preference to my Facebook contacts.

To give you an idea how much I screwed up with my Facebook-skewed view of my world, I got a call from a new 2007 client who wanted to touch base and wish ME a happy New Year. It was so kind of him, and then I realized, “Crap, I didn’t send him a video message.” I immediately went through my 2007 receipts and added about 20 people to my list (including him) who were actual clients that I received money from, yet weren’t on Facebook. For those people I sent videos through TokBox.

This is where I think I really dropped the ball. I’m sure there are plenty of more key people I completely missed.

Step 3: Setting up an efficient recording system

The advantage of using Facebook is you don’t have to input the person’s email address, just their name. I created a Word document with everyone’s name and simply copy and pasted names into the TO: field. I then clicked the “Send a Video” button, hit Record, recorded my video, hit Stop, Attach, and then Send. I got into such an efficient groove I could record 30 videos in one hour. I only checked the first one I sent to make sure it recorded audio and video properly.

Step 4: What I actually said in the videos

For every video, I made sure to include the following:

• In the subject line I put the person’s name first and then my holiday greeting. i.e. “Hey Bill, Happy Holidays and New Year.” (I want to make this look less like a spam message as possible.)
• In the video, I said the recipient’s name first and then my own name.
• I explained that this was a happy holiday and New Year video.
• If I hadn’t talked to the person in a long time, I said I was using the end of the year as an excuse to touch base again.
• If I wasn’t sure if the person remembered me, I would reference how we had met. (In my Outlook database I have details on past communications and how I first met people.)
• I made it personal. I talked about past conversations, past experiences, what the person is currently doing, or past work we did together.
• I let them know that I had a great year and I hoped the same for them too. (It has been great. I got engaged and my first year with my new business, Spark Media Solutions, has been fantastic.)
• I let them know how much that I wanted to reconnect in the new year, maybe even do business. (So often I have business relationships that take years to develop before we actually do any work together.)
• I was extremely upbeat during the video, smiled a lot, and looked directly into the camera not the video of myself on the screen.
• I was honest and true about my comments. I’m a horrible actor and I simply can’t fake sincerity.

Step 5: Spread out the work

I didn’t record more than 40 videos (about 90 minutes) in any one day. I spread the work out taking a couple of weeks to complete this project. I spent a total of 14 hours working on this project. I did notice that if I tried to record too many videos my performance got sloppy and I started babbling. At that point I simply stopped and picked up the next day.

While the response has been great so far, I can’t expect that all 325 of my videos have actually been watched. A few people who watched the videos honestly didn’t believe I sent a personal video and thought it was some FunWall (an application in Facebook) spam. My guess is some of the recipients assumed that and never got around to watching the video.

My other fear is that I didn’t send videos to people who have been extremely important in my life this past year. I’m sure they’ll remind me soon or I’ll figure it out and send them a belated happy New Year video.

1. I just sent 325 personal video holiday greetings-The Response
2. I just sent 555 personalized video holiday greeting cards-How I did it
3. Send personal holiday cards this year
4. One quarter of all people who friend me on Facebook don’t respond to personal messages
5. How to send Web-based video mail

Filed under: Tips, Video