Creating Short, Snackable Videos for Instagram and Beyond

Wondering how to film and edit compelling 60-second videos?

Want your videos to boost social media engagement?

To explore how to create short videos for Instagram and Facebook, I interview Lindsay Ostrom.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Lindsay Ostrom, founder of PinchofYum.com and author of the Tasty Food Photography ebook. She also co-founded Food Blogger Pro, a membership site for developing and monetizing food content.

Lindsay explains why short videos work and how to create a hook that captures viewers' attention.

You'll discover tips for lighting and editing your videos.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Creating Short, Snackable Videos on Instagram and Beyond
Lindsay's Story

Lindsay began her career as an elementary school teacher. She taught fourth grade and loved it. After school, Lindsay liked trying different things in the kitchen and started a food blog as a hobby. Lindsay enjoyed creating the recipes, and the game of seeing how many followers and comments she could get. Even in the early stages, she liked digging into the analytics.

The blog started in 2010, and after a year, traffic continued to pick up. Then Jane Wang, the mother of one of the founders of Pinterest, pinned one of Lindsay's recipes. At the time, Jane Wang had one of the most followed accounts and her pin was a lucky break that led to a spike in the blog's growth and led Lindsay on the path toward blogging full-time.

Eventually, Lindsay and her husband both left their day jobs to work on Pinch of Yum. They now also have a team of five people.

The majority of the content is, always has been, and probably always will be food and recipes. The blog posts include several pictures, the recipes in text, and videos. The blog has a lifestyle side too. Once or twice a month, if something significant happens in their lives, Lindsay talks about it on the blog, although not in a recipe post. The rest of the content is food with personal stories woven into them.

Pinch of Yum has about 124,000 followers on Pinterest; 270,000 on Facebook; and 466,000 on Instagram.

Listen to the show to hear what Lindsay calls the "funny/embarrassing" part of her blog's growth story.

What Are Short, Snackable Videos?

Short, snackable videos are around 60 seconds long and typically show only someone's hands as they create a recipe. These videos are like a bridge between a photo of a recipe and a full-blown cooking show. Tasty, which most people are familiar with, deserves a lot of the credit for popularizing this style of food video.

Meatball Sub Boats

Enjoy a meatball sub without all the mess with this easy meatball sub recipe !
FULL RECIPE: http://bzfd.it/2gd3OQl
FIND IT IN OUR APP: http://tstyapp.com/m/isOMiDheUF

Posted by Tasty on Friday, August 25, 2017

These videos are frequently shot from an overhead angle. When Lindsay creates her videos, she wants to make people feel like they could be in the shoes of the person cooking. The videos provide an intimate but quick look at how a recipe works and why certain ingredients work together.

A snackable video differs from a longer type of food video in both the way the info is given and the way people consume it. For example, a YouTube-style video about how to grill a steak might be five minutes long, and someone might talk about how to choose the best cuts of steak, what temperatures to use, and other specifics characteristic of a deep dive. Snackable videos, like the ones Pinch of Yum produces, are short and have a narrower focus such as a good idea for dinner or some tips and tricks.