Using Video To Bridge The Digital Gap

In this day and age, it’s so easy to lose touch of the humanity behind all these keyboard warriors and armchair detectives. Messages get mixed and intentions get misunderstood. Sometimes our typing fingers get worn out before our ideas can get expressed. Either way, there’s not enough text in a qwerty keyboard to bring back the human touch when communicating big ideas over long distances the way that face to face communication can.

Yesterday I started my day with the intentional goal of testing out more “warm” means of keeping in touch with my online friends and colleagues and the results were so amazing that I’m going to share them with you as just a sampling of the ways that video technology can help you make social media.. well.. more social.

A day in the life of a digital marketer through visual media:

First, it’s important to note that I realize I use social media at what is considered a “power-user” level. That means I use the hell out of it, pushing, pulling, bending and often breaking technology until I work out exactly what services actually provide a value to my everyday life rather than just feeling like so much noise.

Each day I start by saying “Hello” to my followers on Twitter. I start there for a few reasons, but the biggest being that Twitter is the platform that really helped launch my social media skills into the stratosphere. Granted, I don’t have quite the following that a lot of the better-known users have, but the followers I do have are personal friends and professional acquaintances that I have worked with and known for years. We keep up with one another on a regular basis, and I occasionally will throw a video greeting out instead of cold text because I appreciate when others do it too. For a platform to work FOR you, you have to give in what you want to receive.

 

Now, while my Twitterverse is a mix of personal and professional contacts, my Instagram is 99% personal and pretty pared down. Here I’m more comfortable sharing the otherwise minute moments of my day through stories and posts that help paint a fuller picture of who I am. I’m still a little uncomfortable with the fact that stories only allow responses to come in the form of direct messages… I feel like this CAN lead to more creeper-like interactions than other forms of sharing, but I’ve been playing with it a little by sharing updates that are in no way “behind closed door” moments. Usually these are just my morning greenhouse and garden questions which have led to me learning so much more about my friends that also grow their own food. I guess IG Stories are a way to raise a flag and say “Hey, I’m into that too! Talk to me about your passion cause I want to hear it!”

Yesterday was an especially busy video day, but so rewarding too! After I got my day rolling I scheduled and shared a one-on-one Google Hangouts session with one of our LWC members to go over some amazing free tools that she can use to organize and kick start her budding business. I spent almost 2 hours going through tutorials, and sharing my screen so she could see how I use those tools in a productive way. While I can’t share a video of our session, I can say that without the ability to use video, it would have been so much more difficult and time consuming to teach these things and provide her with the resources that I wanted to give. Google hangouts are available to anyone with a Gmail account, and are an integral part of how I work with colleagues over long distances.

After my Hangouts session I was so jazzed up about the power of video communication that I finally bit the bullet and “went live” in our own Legendary Women’s Club facebook group. This is a new territory for me, but I loved the ability to see people interacting in real time as I explained, a little more in-depth, how the group evolved to where we are now, and what I hope it becomes moving forward. Once I was done broadcasting, the video was automatically available for viewers who couldn’t tune in while I was live. You can see the Facebook video here, or launch your own by starting a new post and choosing “go live”. In the near future I will be using FB Live to host panel discussions inside our group, so please drop me a line if you have a topic you’d like our members to explore, or want to co-host a session with me!

Of course, these are just a few of the video communication tools I use on a regular basis. I also use Skype and the newly-released Discord video chat to communicate with my kids that have moved off to Arizona, and I have tested Tango, Snapchat, and several others.. but these are my go-to handy favorites.

Now I leave the question to you… How do you use video to connect with people online in your personal or professional life?

To see some of the handy blogging tools I keep close by when I go out in the field, check out this collection on my Kit.com profile!

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