This is my year of video, so I've recently launched The Greeting Card Project on YouTube. It’s part of my New Year’s resolution to make a video about greeting cards each week and to post them online. By the time you read this I will have completed five short films and visited a variety of shops in the process. I will also have purchased and sent over a dozen cards.
My Motivations
This project has its roots in a terrible confession that I have to make. Despite having owned a greeting card company for 17 years, I don’t send that many greeting cards myself. I do send Christmas cards and initiatives like Thinking of You Week and Festive Friday have helped me to improve on my card sending. I just feel that I’d like to send more and get closer to what greeting card sending is all about.
When I was a teenager I used to make and send cards. I grew up in South Africa and attended a school in York away from friends and family. In those pre-internet days I would write and send cards and letters every week. I loved sending and receiving them through the post and want to reconnect with this activity.
Social media is the current form of the internet. It’s on mobile devices in our hands everyday and offers more efficient ways of communicating with our loved ones than sending cards. I’m curious to discover why the an old fashioned industry like ours remains stable with £1.7 Billion in annual sales and hasn’t been killed off by the internet.
As 85% of card buyers are women I’m also interested to understand why women in particular send cards and how they affect the quality of relationships. I love people and am very active on messaging apps and social media, I do feel like I could feel closer to my friends and loved ones and am interested to see if card sending will help me to feel this.
Why YouTube?
My ten year old son is a big fan of YouTube and watches it daily. In fact he doesn’t watch any live TV. He’s not alone. Almost a third of people on the internet use YouTube which now has over a billion users watching millions of hours every day. More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices and they reach more 18-34 and 18-49 year olds than any cable network in the US. In 2016 the number of hours people spent watching videos on YouTube rose by 60% year on year.
Other companies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat also offer video content. Facebook alone generates 8 billion video views per day. That’s double the video consumption on Facebook in early 2015. Video posts have higher organic reach than photos and Facebook Live in particular has seen impressive take up with people watching live video for 3x longer than video which is no longer live.
I like YouTube best because of its focus on video. It’s also not just a singular feed flowing past you each day like the other platforms. I find it easier to embed YouTube videos onto other sites. I like that it’s search works better than other platforms. It’s also good for categorising and organising your content.
My strategy is to experiment with the other social platforms like Facebook and Instagram in order to generate interest in The Greeting Card Project YouTube channel. I’m also incorporating feedback loops by encouraging comments to help me create better content and engagement with my audience.
Fears
Despite having the idea a while ago, it took me over 18 months to initiate this project. Some of my hesitance was rooted in fears I had, like fear of the extra work that this will mean for me, fear of being good enough and fear of failure.
I have a background in film making and know that it can be time consuming. The great thing about YouTube is that it’s very rough and ready. Production values are not expected to be high. I decided to film and edit the videos in iMovie on my iPhone 6 to keep it simple. I also chose to make the project personal to me so I will be sending cards from a range of publishers and exploring the feelings I have about the process.
I was afraid of sharing my feelings so openly. You feel vulnerable standing up in front of others. As TED speaker Brené Brown says, “the difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you it’s courage and daring. In me it’s weakness.”
I was afraid that people would judge me. That they might think less of me. Fortunately, through being active in our industry, I’ve learned that people already judge me. I’ve also come to realise that those judgements are their business and not really about me at all. So I decided to follow Susan Jeffer’s advice and ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’
I don’t know if the project will be of interest to anyone else. It’s possible that nobody will watch my videos. It’s possible that they may not be good enough. I’m not planning to be perfect from the start though. My goal is to have progression not perfection. I want to make these videos and that is enough for me right now.
Hopes
I feel that this project is what I’m meant to be doing this year and that it will open my heart and mind. It is the coming together of skills I have acquired over the years and passion for connecting people with one another. It’s a personal journey of exploration within where I will listen more closely to my feelings and those I care about in order to feel closer to one another.
It’s also an opportunity for me to get closer to some of my customers by visiting their shops and talking about greeting cards with them. I hope to receive some greeting cards this year and talk about how that feels too.
On it’s simplest level I hope that The Greeting Card Project will inspire others. I’ve already had some wonderful feedback and comments from friends since starting.
Getting Started
If you are thinking about setting up a YouTube channel yourself it’s pretty straightforward and there’s plenty of advice online for how to do it. There are a number of things worth keeping an eye on when you create videos.
Good sound is more important than good visuals. Ideally you want both. Remember to keep an eye on your sound levels and to speak loudly and clearly.
It helps if you can be engaging on screen. Try jumping around a little to get yourself into an energised upbeat state before filming. At the same time, YouTubers always recommend being yourself so that you avoid seeming inauthentic.
Keep your sound bites to 30-60 seconds at most. Also, have a variety of cutaway shots that show other things nearby so that you can break up any long bits.
My son and I have met lots of YouTubers at various gaming conventions. One of their top tips is to plan and create engaging thumbnail shots for your videos. These are the little images that people click on to access your video. The more interesting they are the more clicks and views you will get.
Finally, software developers have a term called MVP (minimum viable product) which is the most basic version of your product to launch with. From there it can evolve based on user experience and interaction. Launch your MVP first. This will keep your project lean so that you won’t unnecessarily over-engineer or over-complicate your YouTube videos.
I’d love your support with this project, so please do subscribe to The Greeting Card Project channel on YouTube and drop me line if you’d like to be involved.
The Greeting Card Project - January Review
