5 Ways to Create with Your Community

As the demand for video content continues to grow, it’s easy to place production on a pedestal. Freelance videographers, professional gear and expensive editing studios are all essential to good shoots, right?

Wrong.

Now that we know that videos shot on an iphone have as much impact as a $100k effort, it’s time to rethink your content strategy and start creating with your community. Thankfully, with intuitive user-directed content tools like Cinebody, it’s never been easier to dive into the action and create a constant stream of video content. Here are five quick ways to start producing community content that can match even the slickest big-budget productions.

1.) Passive content

User-directed content is a great opportunity to gather content, feedback and insights from your community without necessarily having immediate plans to publish it. Try offering a simple incentive, such as a discount code for their next purchase, to get people involved and think of fun, simple content to request – mini reviews or video selfies with your product are both popular. With people able to quickly start filming, you’ll soon learn who’s interested in taking part and spot the naturals in front of the camera.

2.) Q&As

Interviews are easy to create, promote your culture, and put a face to your brand. User-directed content keep files organized (perfect for when you just want to edit a few simple clips for social media), so you can quickly produce an individual profile piece or cut together montages of different people answering the same question. Illegal Pete’s found Q&As so successful it even interviewed its founder.

3.) Day in the Life

Choose an influencer, ambassador, employee or community member and ask them to film their typical day. Once you’ve given direction about the story or campaign, people are always keen to show off what’s it like in their world. For internal comms managers, this is a simple – and quick to produce – way of demonstrating and reinforcing strong company cultures.

4.) Event-based content

From conferences to annual meetings, live events offer a unique opportunity and environment from which to gather compelling video content. Simply ask your people to film their experience of the event – before, during and after – and you’ll quickly elevate engagement. You can also create quick recaps to further promote the event in question.

5.) Collaborative Content

With a well-chosen incentive, any community can be persuaded to gather content – even if they’re spread around the world. For crowdsourced music videos, the incentive is as simple as giving fans the opportunity to be featured in their favorite band’s material. This type of content can be achieved by any type of brand. All it needs is a simple, well-communicated brief and a clear vision of the creative you want.

By using Cinebody to create with your community, you’re also building a creator team of people who can easily contribute to other video projects you may have planned. So it’s time to stop overlooking the talent and potential at your disposal: create with your community and start reaping the rewards of speed, authenticity and sound economics.