An image of a camera with food on it and the title of the 232rd episode on the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, 'Repurposing Video.'

Welcome to episode 232 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Brita Britnell from Food with Feeling about repurposing recipe videos.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork chatted with Kingston Duffie about building engagement. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Repurposing Video

If you make recipe videos, you know how much work it takes to shoot, produce, and share these videos. And once the video is made, you’re done with that footage forever.

Or are you? In this episode of the podcast, Brita from Food With Feeling talks about repurposing the video content she creates to give it new life and get more engagement from her audience.

You’re doing all that work; don’t just archive that video content and forget about it. Repurpose it. And today, you’ll learn how. Enjoy!

A quote from Brita Britnell’s appearance on the Food Blogger Pro podcast that says, 'Just because it doesn't go viral doesn't mean it's not a valuable video for your business.'

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How she balances clients and her blog work
Why she’s okay with slower blog growth
How to approach video work
How you can repurpose video
Why it’s important to post different videos on each social media platform
How she charges for video work
How roundup videos work
Why watch time is important on YouTube
How Pinch of Yum is repurposing video
Where you can repurpose video

Listen to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast below or check it out on Spotify:

Resources:

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

If you’d like to jump to the comments section, click here.

Transcript:

Alexa Peduzzi: Hey, hey and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks for making the show a part of your day to day. I’m Alexa and we are just so excited you’re here and we’re just so excited you’re here for one of the final Food Blogger Pro podcast episodes of the decade. That’s just crazy to me. But this is such a good one and I think you’re really going to love it, and it’s all about repurposing your recipe videos.

Alexa Peduzzi: So, if you make recipe videos, you know how much work it takes to shoot, produce and share these videos. Once a video is made, you’re pretty much done with that footage forever, or are you? In this episode of the podcast, Brita from Food with Feeling talks about repurposing the video content that she creates to give it new life and to get more engagement from her audience. You’re doing all that work. Don’t just archive that video content and forget about it. Repurpose it, and today you’ll learn how. So, without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Brita, welcome to the podcast.

Brita Britnell: Hey, thanks for having me again.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So, I’m really excited to have you back on the podcast. It’s been a fun season for us here on the Food Blogger Pro podcast because we are at the point now where we’re able to have guests back on. We have a little bit of some breathing room before episodes-

Brita Britnell: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s a great little check-in period. So, before we get into it, I want to hear a little bit about your story, and talk about how you came to this season in your life where you have built as an entrepreneur, as a creator, you’ve built this business, where you’ve not only understand blogging and how to build a blog and food and recipe sites, but you also understand video really well. So, for those who haven’t listened to that episode or maybe did, and it was a couple of years ago, so they need to refresh. Can you share a little bit about your story and how you got into video?

Brita Britnell: Absolutely. My story hasn’t changed a ton, but it has grown, which is really excited, so I’m kind of excited to share that, but-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Brita Britnell: Again, my name is Brita, I blog at a blog called Food with Feeling, which is a largely vegetarian based food blog, and I’ve been there, I think about, I’ve had my blog for about six years and then have a very similar story to a lot of people, which is I really hated my day job and I wanted my blog to be full-time, but as is the case and I think it’s important for people to know, like it’s a slow process and that’s okay, but I was anxious and I was really ready to quit my job.

Brita Britnell: So, at the time actually Lindsay from Pinch of Yum, I saw her hire somebody for video, hire full-time videographer and I feel she was one of the first people that I at least heard talking about doing this. So, I reached out to her and I said, “Do you think that this is something other bloggers are interested in?” At the time I didn’t hear of anyone doing video for hire and she was like, “Actually I do. I think it is.” So, I tried out some video and then I emailed Lindsay again, and she referred a few clients, a few blogger friends that she knew, and that’s how I got started doing video for other people and I was very fortunate that it blossomed very quickly. So, I took on a few full … I say full-time clients, but clients who I was working with regularly. It was about three years ago and I’m still working with those same clients today, which is awesome.

Brita Britnell: I have been very fortunate to find a great client base, people that I do videos for and on top of that, since then my blog has really grown. I focused really heavily on different aspects of growing my blog. So, I’m at the point now where my blog is a full time income, but I still do have the video works. As my blog continues to grow, I’m slowly transitioning away. Like I say dropping, which sounds so harsh. I hate to like lose any of my clients, but I am transitioning away from two of my clients and kind of plan to continue to do that over this year.

Brita Britnell: Another thing is that since we last talked, my husband has been able to quit his job and he works with me full-time. He’s taken over all the video editing and he does a lot of the kind of boring back end book keeping stuff that I hated doing.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Brita Britnell: So that’s been really awesome.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. There’s a few things that I want to point out and make sure to highlight and I can do that as I listen to you tell your story and I think these are things that are important for other people to hear that listen to the podcast. Number one, you in a very humble way, talked about how great it is to have these awesome clients, but I think the reason that we’ve seen that people have … people who continue to work with them is because they continually deliver. They’re reliable, they show up, and so I would like to shine a light on that because if you didn’t do those things then as nice as those people you work with are, they just couldn’t justify from a business perspective continuing to work with you.

Brita Britnell: Sure, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So, I think it’s important for people to think about as you are, whatever your side hustle is, like do whatever you can to deliver and over deliver and respond to emails and follow-up in a timely manner and produce good product and help people even when there might not be anything as an upside for you. I’m sure that in your relationship with those other people you have done that, so I think that’s important to point out.

Bjork Ostrom: The other thing that I think is really important to point out is you had this problem and the problem was the work that I am doing is not work that fills me up. Like it’s not fulfilling work, and in some ways it probably was the opposite effect where I’d guess that it kind of drags you down a little bit. I think that’s a serious problem that a lot of people face in their day to day work and career. Sometimes what can happen is we can glam on to one idea and say, “Oh, my way out is going to be this. It’s going to be starting a blog and building that up and doing that.” Where that’s where we talk about, we believe that you can do that and 100% possible to do that, but what you did it’s an important path to point out which is, it’s a little bit of a hybrid.

Bjork Ostrom: You said, I want out of this specific thing. I want freedom over my time and the work that I do and I’m going to be creative in how I do that by first doing client work and working with people, helping them in a lot of ways, build what they’re doing, building their blog, but then also not completely giving up on what you’re doing and doing this combination whereas I hear you talk about it now, you’re starting to then focus more and more on what you’re doing, but you’re able to quickly solve your own problem of getting out of a job that you really didn’t like by transitioning to something that was not entirely just working on your blog, but it allowed you to get more freedom and flexibility in what you’re doing.

Bjork Ostrom: So, I think those two things, number one, the significance of doing good work for other people, and number two, making it a transition and not a completely black and white either or is a really important part of your story. So, was that something you had planned on doing all along? Did you know like, okay, I want to start with client work and then slowly build my blog up, or you’re intentionally kind of doing that along the way?

Brita Britnell: I definitely was. I will say I wasn’t as intentional as I should have been and I attribute this back to the very first client, whoever said like let’s do it for the next six months I want at least a video a week. I still work with her and I think, I just keep going back to this. I think the fact that I just have these great clients has made it easy to stay with the videography. I definitely have done it longer than I intended, and part of that is that I love it. If my blog went away tomorrow and I just had the videography, I would still be very fulfilled in my career, but it was the money was really good, and then when my husband quit his job in order for my blog to be considered full-time, it really needed to be two separate-

Bjork Ostrom: Two incomes, yep.

Brita Britnell: And on top of that, all of our benefits and everything. So, it was a little daunting, but now we’re like … so, I feel like my blog and I think it’s important for people to know that my blog has definitely grown slower than I think it could have.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Brita Britnell: But also I was okay. I’ve been okay with that because I’m not like a huge risk taker when it comes to these things, so it’s been nice having this safety net. You know, all the people who have experienced the latest Google algorithm. My blog was definitely hit by it and it’s nice having this income diversification because we could live off … like if my blog … again, if my blog went away, we could live off of the income from the client with, and that is very comforting to us right now.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, totally. It’s similar in … for Lindsay and I, it’s one of the reasons why we said, “Okay, what does it look like to have a membership site?” Like it’s still something online. But Food Blogger Pro is kind of a diversification for us as it relates to Pinch of Yum, which is a content and ad network site, and so I think you’re wise to think about, hey, if I am the CEO of my company, what is my company? Well, it’s the work that I do every single day. How do I want to establish a company with a strong foundation?

Bjork Ostrom: One of the ways that you do that is you’re not reliant on a single customer, and in a lot of ways a blog, at least a content blog in this niche, we can be reliant on a single customer, which is our ad network. Like that’s the main thing that is paying us and producing income for our business, and so wise for you to think about how can I diversify and make sure that if one of these goes away, then I can have this other thing available and can fall back on that.

Brita Britnell: Kind of a side note, I would love to throw this out there because I’m certain, I know that there’s a lot of people listening who have this goal of making their blog their full-time income and I feel it’s important for people to know that I failed at a lot of things before I made the videography work. I tried really hard to do like local food photography and like brand food photography and I tried quite a few different things that went nowhere for me. I want people to know that it wasn’t I just did a video and got a bunch of clients. I failed for several years to do anything before the videography worked.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, absolutely, and what you find is that, and Kingston who is the founder of Engagement Suite. Yeah. Slick stream was on the podcast recently and he talked about this concept of fast moving waters and the more that we do this, the more that I realize that’s an important piece of the puzzle. You need to figure out not only how can you do something really well, but how can you find the fast moving water and put your boat or canoe or kayak or whatever it is that you are getting in. How can you put it in that fast moving water?

Bjork Ostrom: Because the rolling that you’re doing is going to have a much bigger impact if you’re in fast moving water, than if you’re in water that’s slow moving or even if you’re going upstream. I think sometimes we get into an area where we’re going upstream and I think probably in some ways what you experienced is you experienced putting with starting to do video work, you experienced what that’s like to put your boat in fast moving water where it’s like, “Oh, not only am I capable of doing this really good rower when it comes to doing video work, but also this is an area where there’s a need.” So there’s no formula for that, but I think conceptually it’s important to think about as business owners, as content creators, what is that fast moving water?

Bjork Ostrom: So, at this point, it’s fun to hear that little update, to hear that you are kind of making that transition and slowly adjusting. It was very similar story for Lindsay and I, we did this like super slow change. We’re like full-time, and then three quarter time, and then half-time, and then we were eventually like we have two full-time jobs, we just need to make the jump and make this transition, but we were very slow in doing that. But you’re continuing to do video and you have this expertise and you have a lot of insight. That’s one of the great things about working in a specific area is you start to develop really strong opinions and you also develop really strong vision as it relates to how to do it well.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that we’re going to be talking about today focusing in on is as it relates to video, how can people be smart about the video that they’re creating? Because it’s one thing to just say, “Hey, video is important. I need to shoot video.” Okay, great. That’s awesome, but then how do you choose a concept … I talk about a lot. How do you juice that? How do you fully take that video that you’re creating and use it in multiple places? Because I think we can get tunnel vision and just focusing on one thing like, “Oh, I’m creating this and it’s going to live on my blog, period.” Well there’s a lot of other purposes, a lot of ways you can repurpose that and use it on other places. So, can you talk about how you started to get into this subject, how you started to think about it and the why behind it?

Brita Britnell: Yeah, and if I can insert something really quick first. I would love to briefly talk about the why of video and being very intentional when you make a video. Because one of the questions I get the most often is, what’s the key to a viral video? How do I make a viral video? My response to that is always, you don’t want every video to be viral. Like as much as it would be nice to get millions of views on every video, I feel like I’m a lot more sane when it comes to the videos on my blog and even my clients and I are on the same page with this, that not every video is going to be viral and that’s okay. So, when you go to make a video, I like to approach it looking at several different, like why are you making the video? I like to briefly break that down.

Bjork Ostrom: True.

Brita Britnell: One of them is that you want to grow your social media, you want a viral video, those are awesome. But there are other ways, reasons to make a video as well. One of them could be to increase engagement on social media, engaging your audience that you already have. Maybe that video is not going to be viral, but it’s really going to connect with the audience that you have and just build a stronger community, and I think that’s really important instead of just more and more and more followers.

Brita Britnell: Then another reason that I like to talk about is that brands are wanting it and it’s been slowly creeping up as a great way to boost your SEO. Then I like to also look at some videos that just being generally useful to your audience. So, maybe it’s going to be a super boring video, but to the people that need it, maybe you’re showing how twist your hands when you’re crimping pie dough, you just have to see that happening in a video. Maybe that’s super useful to someone looking at your blog posts, who’s trying to crimp pie dough, but that it’s never going to go viral, maybe it actually does terrible on your social media, but it’s so valuable within your posts, which again is acute to Google, is just overall very helpful to your audience, and I think it’s really important for people to think about their videos in that light. Just because it doesn’t go viral doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable video for your business.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I think because stats and metrics and numbers are so easily accessible, I think we can … with anything that we do, we can lean in that direction and say, “Oh, this is good because it had more views,” or “This is good because you know it had this many shares.” What I hear you saying is good is dependent on the purpose of the video and there’s different buckets that you could slot a video into. One of which is sure, pure metrics, pure data, how many impressions and how many people can view it. Great. Another bucket could be, is this specific piece of content informing and helping people understand something a little bit better conceptually.

Brita Britnell: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: That might not be something that millions of people view, but if thousands of people view it and it helps them make the recipe a little bit better, you’re probably gaining trust, so you’re a site where it’s like, Hey, I know this site to be a site where I can go and it can be informational helpful content. I’m going to have more success with this recipe if I go here. Because you know, previous experience has been good or maybe people are more likely to stick around a little bit longer. So, they engage with your content once they’re there because they see a video, and point being video isn’t just shares and likes and views in order to get more shares, likes and views, you can swap them into different buckets.

Bjork Ostrom: So, one bucket being data metrics impressions, another bucket being informational, helpful, how to. Would there be another bucket that you’d say would exist or those are the primary two ways that you’d look at it?

Brita Britnell: Yeah, those two and they have branches off of those, but yeah, informational and then ones that are more just fun and engaging. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, totally. So, let’s go through this idea of recording a video. So, I think it’d be easiest to actually look at how you treat video as it relates to your own site or in an ideal world, let’s say if you didn’t have any time limits and had bandwidth to do, execute dreamworld, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Execute video in a way where you are unrestricted by time limits in regards to repurposing and putting it in other places, how would you approach it? What are the ways that we can be thinking about taking a specific video and repurposing it or I’ll back up on what I was saying maybe even more helpful? What if you do have time limits and restrictions, how can you be most strategic in taking the asset of video and using it in as many different ways as possible to have the biggest impact as possible for your blog and for your brand?

Brita Britnell: Yeah. I’m really excited about this because at this point having done video for almost four years, I have like … I have hundreds of videos from just my own blog and it felt like I was putting so much time and effort into recording these videos, putting them up on my blog and then that was it. If it’s a good video, I re-share it every three or four months or something and it almost just felt like a waste. Then on top of that, this past few I’ve really, I’m still working on it, but I’ve really wanted to get into YouTube and growing more of a dedicated YouTube audience and channel, so that’s how I got into the idea of repurposing footage.

Brita Britnell: I definitely didn’t invent this. I’ve been seeing a lot of people doing it, but I approached it as I have this footage that I can use and what else can I do with it? How can I get a little more bang for my buck? I saw some people doing it where you take the footage that you already have so you’re not doing a lot of extra work, and you’re using that hands down footage for YouTube.

Brita Britnell: Now, I’ve been doing this in two different ways. One is I will stand in my kitchen and point the camera at myself and say, “You guys welcome to my channel. My name’s Brita. Today, I’m going to be showing you how to make these delicious vegan muffins,” and maybe I’ll stay, it’s like one minute of recording, maybe total because I ended up redoing it several times. It’s 20 minutes but and then I do an outro. “Thanks guys for watching my video. That’s how easy it is to make these muffins.” Then I take this footage that I already have, maybe I shot it years ago and I put that in the middle of the intro and outro and then I record a voiceover.

Brita Britnell: So, I take out the text and I slow the whole thing down to a more natural pace and then I insert footage or insert audio that I’ve recorded, which again is very easy to record, that’s just-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Brita Britnell: Okay. Now, you’re going to take the baking powder and mix it in with the flour and the salt and then you’re going to set that aside while you mix your wet ingredients and then all compiled together it looks like a really awesome video. It feels very fresh and completely new content and all together it’s very minimal work compared to filming an entire video where you’re remaking the muffins in your kitchen and shooting new hero shots and everything. Doing that was just a little rough evolutionary to me and I loved it.

Bjork Ostrom: So, let’s talk through that a little bit.

Brita Britnell: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: So, to start, one of the things that you had talked about is we’re coming from the understanding that the video footage that you’re shooting is hands and pans, like basic idea of you have a camera overhead and what most people see on Instagram or maybe see it on Facebook, like video of a recipe that’s maybe sped up, so it’s going a little bit faster and text overlaid on top of that.

Bjork Ostrom: So, point being a lot of people are shooting video like that and probably have that footage, for sure have that footage if you’ve gone through and already shot that, but it doesn’t need to just because you shot it with the intent to do a one-minute video on Instagram with text, music and sped up, you can actually take that, repurpose it and use it on another platform like YouTube.

Bjork Ostrom: So, my question would be what’s the reasoning for not just putting up that same video that you had on Instagram or Facebook and then just putting that on YouTube. Why are you going through the process of changing it and tweaking and making it a different video?

Brita Britnell: Yeah, and this is a little bit of a new concept to me that I’m still wrapping my head around, but it’s basically just the idea that every platform is very different, and every social media platform with their different algorithms want to see different things and what works on … what I’ve found, what works on Instagram just does not work on YouTube. I feel like if people want fast videos where they like don’t have their headphones in they’re not listening to any audio, they go to Facebook and Instagram.

Brita Britnell: But when people go to YouTube, most of the time they really are looking for more personal connection. They have got their headphones in ready to listen to what you have to say, and that’s why I’ve found that to creating these look more personal videos where I’m jumping on the other side of the camera, maybe actually putting a little bit of makeup on and getting out of my pj’s just one minute, it’s like personal connection that people are looking for when they go to YouTube.

Brita Britnell: So again … and similar seems to go the opposite way. If I do a video for YouTube and try, and post it on Instagram, it doesn’t seem to work as well because people don’t always want to turn their audio on, they see me talking and they’re, I can’t hear so whatever. I’m just going to keep scrolling.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. Yeah. It’s the analogy that I’ve heard is kind of social media platforms as parties, and parties are … you get this generic term that you could use like, “Hey, I’m going to a party tonight.” Well what does it like? Is it a really formal party? Are people wearing a tux when they go and dressing up or next week I have a friend and he’s doing a lumberjack theme party? Okay. So everybody shows up and they dress like lumberjacks.

Bjork Ostrom: In social media being the same way, where the conversations you have, the way that you address people, the feeling, the vibe of that area is going to be very different depending on which platform it is, and like you said, and this was actually a conversation that I had with somebody who does growth internally for YouTube. So, I was on a call with her and she’s like, “Hey, we’d really love you to essentially try harder for Pinch of Yum’s YouTube account.”

Bjork Ostrom: And we’re like, “What does that mean and what does that look like?” She said exactly what you said, which is it needs to be personality driven. There really has to be somebody behind this-

Brita Britnell: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: Who leans into being the face and the brand of that channel. So, what you’re saying is you don’t need to go through the process of shooting an entirely new video. You can actually take that footage and you can go back and you can record 20 seconds of an intro, 20 seconds of an outro, and then a voiceover and you can put all of that together. So, a couple different pieces within that. Can you talk about anything on the front end or the back end with those intros and outros that you are really making sure that you hit things that you want to make sure are included? Now, this is specifically for YouTube content.

Brita Britnell: So, honestly I’m still kind of figuring that out. I did a mastermind course with Tim Schmoyer. Have you had him on the podcast?

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. Tim’s actually been on a couple times. So, those would be two episodes-

Brita Britnell: So, you actually need to-

Bjork Ostrom: We’ll link up in the show notes. Yep.

Brita Britnell: Yeah. So he’s a YouTube guru and he helps people grow their YouTube. So, I tried kind of … a lot of people come to him when they’re stuck with their YouTube. I came at the beginning of starting my YouTube channel because I wanted to do things right. So, he helped a lot and he’s in like the mastermind that I did with him and they just really help you define your … and he’s all about having kind of, blinking on the word that he used. But basically like a catch phrase for your blog, why are people coming to you and why should they care about what you have to say.

Brita Britnell: So, I try and give that in the intro of all of my videos, I am trying to make easy plant based or plant-based easy and approachable. Like that’s why they should come and that’s why they should care because it’s going to be easy and it’s going to be approachable and hopefully they just enjoy watching my videos as well. Then for the outros, something I’ve been doing, and this is almost repurposing backwards from what we’re talking about, but as I’m filming videos specifically for YouTube, so like new videos, I’ve also been taking a little bit of time to record extra outros.

Brita Britnell: So, I’ll record just one bit at the end that I slot in. So, I’ll say like, “Thanks for following along, like this video and subscribe to my channel.” Obviously those words are very specific to YouTube. Then, I’ll also get just one phrase that I’ll cut the YouTube language out and then insert, “Please give this video a like and follow me on Instagram,” so that I can use that same video on Instagram, but it’s got the proper terminology there.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Brita Britnell: That’s almost maybe diving in a little deeper, but that’s been really helpful for me. It takes literally 10 seconds and then in editing again just an extra minute to you have to export an extra video, but that’s been really nice. It’s been a way that I can repurpose that footage again. But then besides that, for the intros and outros, I’m them really pretty simple for those types of videos.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it, and then the other component that I think would be new conceptually to a lot of people is the idea of a voiceover.

Brita Britnell: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about how you go about doing the voiceover in terms of, like do you edit all the footage in real time at normal speed, so then it makes sense conceptually when you watch it and then at that point do you just like press play on your computer and then talk over it? How do you do the voiceover in a way that’s not clunky and as efficient as possible?

Brita Britnell: Exactly, and I’m glad you asked this because I spent forever trying to figure out this process. I was trying to over complicate it, but that’s exactly what I do. I take the footage that I already have edited, which is so nice. It’s already edited, the colors corrected and everything. So, what I do is I just, I highlight everything and I … because usually for a video for Instagram, you speed things up so you can get it to a minute and get it a little more fast and fun.

Brita Britnell: So, I just slow everything down to 100%, its natural speed, and then I usually just see how that looks. Sometimes stirring can be a little too much and too slow so I’ll cut that down a little bit, but then I do exactly what you said. I just click play on the video and then I start talking. I watch it through a few times so I know what to anticipate, what I’m going to be saying next. But overall I just watch it and I’ve found that I used to have to rerecord them several times, but now I’ve gotten to the point where I can do it in one take and it takes me literally two minutes and that’s been really nice.

Brita Britnell: Then I just use a super, I think it was $15 a little lapel pin that plugs directly into my computer. Some people have really fancy set-ups for this, but I just found it to be easiest. I just use a simple lapel pin, plug into my computer. I record it directly into Premiere Pro so I don’t have to import an extra file and it’s just really easy.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say lapel pin, was that the-

Brita Britnell: Oh, a lapel mic, sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. Okay. So, you’re plugging in and for those who aren’t familiar, lapel being one where you just kind of clip it onto your shirt. So, if you were speaking or at an event or something, somebody would have one of those where you just clip on. So, point being you don’t have to spend $500 on a mic, you can get something that-

Brita Britnell: At least starting now. I have a feeling I might upgrade eventually, but right now that’s been great for me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, totally. So then, at that point, after you’ve gone through, you’ve edited it, you have a good feel for it, you just go through the process of recording a voiceover for it. So, if you have clients who are either are doing this or hypothetically if they were to do it, would you then go through the process of editing it and then send it to them and then they record a voiceover over that, or how would that work if somebody doesn’t want to do video, but maybe they’re working with somebody who is doing video to help? Do you have any thoughts on how to most efficiently do that?

Brita Britnell: I started doing this because one of my clients who’s gotten to be a good friend Brittany from Eating Bird Food, she was kind of one of my first clients that asked me about this and wanted to start doing it. So, that’s exactly what she does as far as when I’m working with clients, she records an intro and an outro and she sends it to me. So then, I just take the footage I’ve already filmed for her video. I put the intro and the outro on it, and then she has some … and this is something kind of people can research a little bit more later, but she created an end card that will work well on YouTube and then like a kind of a specialized logo. I put all that on and then I send that video to her and then she will then record the voiceover and then just send me that audio file.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Brita Britnell: Sometimes, I have to speed things up or slow it down to match what she’s saying, but then it’s overall pretty easy and it’s been a neat thing. Then, if people are really curious, I just charge by the hour for how long it takes me, because sometimes if it’s … some recipes are a lot easier than others and are a lot shorter.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, which point being its hard to, whereas with a video you can maybe systematize it and say like, “Okay, we’re doing a one-minute video, here’s what it would be.” But when you get into the specifics of like, okay, and then you’re going to do this above and beyond editing where it’s could be kind of clunky or maybe it’s actually really clean, then it’s the way that you’re tracking that is a little bit different, which makes sense.

Bjork Ostrom: So, that’s YouTube. I think that’s an awesome little nugget that people can take away if they’re doing video, right. It’s a two-o-one way to approach a video, and the one-on-one would be just jumping in and doing it, right?

Brita Britnell: Exactly, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s some of the things that we talked about in the previous podcast interview, which people can go back and listen to is like, videos that can be intimidating, but the best way to do it is to get into it, to practice, to press record, to recurring theme on the podcast whether that’s pressing publish on a blog post, whether it’s recording video, whether it’s writing, photography. The best way to get better at it is to jump in and do it and start improving little by little over time. So …

Brita Britnell: One of my favorite quotes lately from this YouTuber I follow is that, it doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be great, it just has to exist, and that’s been like my motto with my blog lately.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, totally, and what you’ll realize is as you start to put things into the world, things that exist, either the benefit of pressing publish can be a motivator or the tension that you feel putting something into the world that isn’t the version that you want it to be can be motivating as well. It’s both end. One people use it, they interact with it, there’s validation from it existing and people using it. Number two, there’s this motivator of like, this isn’t good enough I want to continue trying to make it better, and both of those things in combination can be a really strong motivator. So, that’s the-

Brita Britnell: There’s one more thing with repurposing on YouTube that I’d love to throw out there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, please.

Brita Britnell: This is another something I got from one of my clients and this is I think almost even a more interesting one and this applies to several different platforms, but the idea of taking several videos and compiling them into a roundup. So, roundups are really popular on blogs like 20 Thanksgiving main dishes for vegans or 20 delicious muffin recipes. So, I’ve been doing that with a lot of success.

Brita Britnell: Rounding up might be … because at this point, like I said, I have hundreds of videos and something that always performs well for me is my vegan muffins. At this point I’ve made like 20 variations of and they all have videos, so that’s another way that I took those videos. I did it on YouTube but I also made a version of sped up version for Instagram where it was just four delicious vegan muffins that you have to try today or four easy weeknight dinners.

Brita Britnell: This has been amazing for me. Again, I will do it where I compile the footage together, record an intro and outro and say like today I’m going to show you four of my favorite vegan dinner recipes to try, and I just record voiceovers for all of that. Obviously, those take a little bit more time because it’s a lot of footage to manage, but that’s been another really fun way to repurpose footage and people have loved those videos, and then on top of that they’ve been a great video to embed them because I’ll usually then accompany it with a blog post that is 20 vegan muffins to try, and then I’ll have a roundup video that shows you how to make four of those 20 muffins. That’s been another really just fun way to reuse my footage.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. In that conversation with the person from YouTube, one of the things that she talked about, and Tim talks about this as well, Tim Schmoyer is YouTube, if you go to the party of YouTube, one of the things that’s really cool that you want to make sure that you’re achieving, if you go to this party parties, this idea of watch time.

Brita Britnell: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: So, whereas on Instagram, it’s one minute and it’s all about engagement through comments, likes and people actually watching it. On YouTube, one of the things that they reward is how much time are people spending consuming your content. So, it’s almost worse than to have a shorter video because people can only watch so much of that video before it ends. So, if you’re able to do these kind of roundup type videos and people actually watch them, if they’re engaging and interesting enough that people watch them, then YouTube will start to favor those videos because YouTube wants people to stick around.

Bjork Ostrom: So they’re going to prefer to show a video that people like versus a video that people watch five seconds of and then leave. They can see that and they understand that, so they’ll reward the videos that people watch longer. So, it gets another great takeaway, and another way that networks, social media networks or platforms are different than one another. So, I think that’s awesome and a really good takeaway. So kind of wrapping up YouTube, a couple thoughts on that. Tim Schmoyer has a great channel on it. We have a couple of great podcasts interviews with him and the basic idea of if you have these videos, think about repurposing them into a way where you’re not just putting them up on YouTube, like we’re doing right now with Pinch of Yum, which is why that YouTube person talked to us. She’s like, you’re not doing it right, but to think strategically and to do some of the things that you talked about, to think strategically about that.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I’d be interested to talk to you a little bit about out, it’s actually something that we’ve started to do with Pinch of Yum, which is we’re breaking video out into steps and we’re starting to include that within the post content.

Brita Britnell: Oh, this is so much, I love it.

Bjork Ostrom: So, if there’s like four or five steps instead of somebody having to go in and watch a video, we just have those as auto play videos. They almost look like GIFs that will load on a site and people will start to watch those. Can you talk about … are you seeing other people do that and from your perspective as a video person, what is the benefit of doing that within post content?

Brita Britnell: So, I’m sure someone else has tried it as well, but Pinch of Yum is the only blog I’ve seen doing it so far and I just love it so much. So, it goes a quick backstory for me on my blog, everyone has talked about the importance to process shot. So, if you’re making bread showing like the different ingredient, like a shot of the different ingredients going into, end up with a lot of different shots, the process of making the recipe. I have not done those on my blog because I basically just made a decision for myself that if I’m going to have a video, I just can’t also have process shots. Like for my own sanity sake, I can’t do that.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s only so much you can do. I think that’s an important takeaway. Yeah.

Brita Britnell: I’ve wanted the process shots in there, but I just couldn’t do them. So, when I saw Pinch of Yum doing this where you are breaking the video kind of in, like you said, they kind of look like GIFs and they’re just in the content and I think that the biggest part of this is, I think it like greatly increases the user experience, and that to me is what I want to do it because I think that … I mean it’s a great way to repurpose your footage, but more than anything I really think that those little videos will 10 times increase the user’s experience because there’s something to be said about somebody having to scroll down, find the video, which it can be difficult in a post to find a video with all the ads and everything and then click play, watch an ad most of the time and then just like wait to get to the point where they’re … like they don’t care about making the recipe, they just want to see how to crimp the dough.

Brita Britnell: But there’s something about it being just like right there in front of their face in the way that contribute. I think the latest one I saw was a bread recipe that Lindsay posted and it was like 10 second clips with text in between, like texts breaking up what’s happening in the video, and I just loved it, and I think it’s a such a smart way to repurpose your footage.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So, it will link to a couple of those in the show notes that people can check out. The reason why I was so excited to have this conversation with you is because it’s the exact space that we are in right now as it relates to content in general, but also in this case, specifically video where we know we have this really valuable footage, this content, this media, whatever you want to call it. There are ways that we can … just by trying to like think smart and strategic that we can start to twist and turn and compile or decouple like we can mix this up in ways that creates additional value. It doesn’t have to be just a plain video.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s one of the things that we realized is, hey, we have these shots that already exist, and what we’re able to do now is chunk those up, break those out and present those in a post. What we found is, there’s a very small percentage of people within a blog post who come that will actually like click play and then watch a video all the way through. The great thing is that then you’re able to use that on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, whatever it is, and those are video forward platforms where that content will be consumed a lot more than within a blog post. So, then our question was what does that look like to make these pieces of content, these blog posts that we’re publishing as helpful as possible. One of the ways is to like present the steps in a way that will help people have a higher rate of success with the recipe.

Bjork Ostrom: So, we’ve started to see the significance of that by not even giving people the option to press play or not. They just automatically see it once they get into the recipe. So, from a video perspective, what does that look like? So, would you be going in, in that case, and I can talk about the general process that we use, but what would your recommendation be for people who have that footage? How do they clip that up and export that out?

Brita Britnell: Yeah. As soon as I saw this on Pinch of Yum, the gears in my brain were turning about all the ways that I could use my old footage to do this with. So, I think for me what I would do is I would open up my … I edit it in Premiere Pro and that people edit in different ways, but I think that this applies to all the different editing software programs. You could open up your existing footage and you could create a new project file.

Brita Britnell: I probably would just do it all within the existing project file. Just slow things down a little bit. Probably get rid of the texts. Since you are already going to be explaining things via text within your blog posts and then just export little bits of the recipe. I think for me thinking about it, it would make a lot of sense to just export the natural steps of the recipe that you have written in your recipe card.

Brita Britnell: So like step one, mix the wet ingredients and just clip that part of it. Then step two or step four, pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix and just have like a snip of that. I think on really simple recipes like making muffins where there’s not maybe a ton to it, I would only do a couple, but then I’m really excited about this for more complex recipes where it’s genuinely helpful for people to see what’s happening. I have a recipe I’m about to post for biscuits where you like fold the dough over and then you roll it out and you fold it over again, and that I’m so excited for people within the post to be able to see what it is that I’m trying to explain via text because it can be difficult sometimes.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome, and I know for us it’s something that we’re excited about as it relates to repurposing video. We’re going to start doing more and more of it. So, my chances are it’ll come up again on the podcast. So, if you’re interested in it for those who are listening, be sure to tune in because we’ll probably do a little bit of a deep dive on that. How we do it, why we do it and little bit more.

Brita Britnell: Can I ask you a question on it?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Brita Britnell: What have you all experienced as far as page speed?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Brita Britnell: Has that brought down speed at all because that’s one of my biggest concerns I think in doing it.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally, and I think that’s the biggest issue. Before I want to talk about how we’re executing it technically, I want to make sure that we’re solving for some of those problems. The other thing that’s unique about it is, it’s not just as simple as embedding a video or embedding a gift or an image. There’s some technical backend processes that we’ve had to go through in order to make that work in a really smooth way. So, that’s a little bit of like my trailer preview snippet to say, stay tuned.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re still early on in this and figuring out how to do it at the highest level possible. So, before I give specific tips on how to do it, I want to say, be aware of it, keep an eye on it and then stay tuned in the podcast because I’m sure we’ll talk about it some specifics on it in the future. So, to come on that TBD on when we’ll talk about that.

Brita Britnell: Awesome, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So, we talked about YouTube, we talked about repurposing video, we talked about within blog posts, how we can start to think about that, and my feeling is that that’s a little bit of an … we’re on the early edge of that, but I think we’ll start to see that more and more and more as it becomes easier and as it becomes a concept that people start to use. My question for you would be, I’d be interested to hear thoughts on other platforms outside of Instagram and Facebook. We’ve started to experiment a little bit with Pinterest video. Are you seeing any other platforms that you think that people should be aware of in regards to where they are repurposing their video content? Not just how they’re doing it? I think we know Instagram, Facebook, we know YouTube, but is there any other awares any other places that people should consider like Pinterest that you can think of?

Brita Britnell: Oh, that’s a good question. I’ve experimented a lot with different Pinterest videos and trying to figure out what will work there and haven’t quite cracked it, but I’ve been doing a lot of experiments on different sizes and whatnot video. Another thing which you already said Instagram but it’s still worth noting is IGTV and I’ve been seeing a decent amount of success on IGTV and just posting videos there. As I mentioned, if I make a longer YouTube video I try, and just do like a quick one line at the end that’s more specific to Instagram. Like follow my Instagram page and don’t forget to like this video and tag me on Instagram if you may get, is one thing I always insert, and so that’s been something that I’ve encouraged people to do and IGTV really is like catering to videos.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about … I’m so unfamiliar with IGT TV and how it works. Can you talk about what that is and like when you’re posting video there, what are you even posting?

Brita Britnell: Yeah, I mean I just see, IGTV as Instagram’s version of YouTube. It’s similar, like usually longer videos. One of the best things that they’ve done recently is they’ve made it so instead of having to have a video vertical like where it’s so much is getting cut off, you can just like upload like a YouTube, like the 16 to nine orientation, and then people can just turn their phone screen, which I think are kind of used to doing anyways if they watch YouTube regularly.

Brita Britnell: So, I have been using those like longer form videos there, and what’s really neat is that you can then post a preview to your Instagram feed. So, it’ll get posted in the newsfeed that it’ll like as people are scrolling and it’ll get posted on your timeline, but people can only watch a minute of it, and if they want to see the whole video, they will click through. I’ve been really impressed how many people are clicking through and actually what. I’ve been getting better engagement on IGTV videos sometimes than they’re shorter versions.

Bjork Ostrom: So you’re taking, in that case, you’re taking the “YouTube” version that you’re creating with an intro with an outro, voiceover, slower moving recipe footage. You’re taking that and putting it on IGTV as well. That ties back to earlier you had said a note about also recording a little snippet that says, hey, follow me on Instagram.

Brita Britnell: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s not for Instagram, the traditional Instagram, you’re putting that onto IGTV.

Brita Britnell: Yeah, IGTV, and then-

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Brita Britnell: Very solidly to that, just as there’s Facebook, there’s Facebook watch. I honestly have not done anything there, but I kind of read about people, and that’s another way like Facebook is, you can put ads on Facebook videos now or yes, on Facebook videos, but they have to be at least three minutes. So, that’s another way that you could just kind of record another quick outro where it’s like, like my Facebook page and upload that there, and I don’t know much about it, but it is another option for where you can put your video.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. You start to see with the day of research, how you can suddenly go from having one channel, maybe you’re just posting an Instagram or Facebook and you can start to see with not … it’s not like you’re too X-ing the amount of work, maybe you’re adding 25% more work to record these additional outros and maybe the voiceover, but you’re getting like three to four X the return on that content that you are recording by being strategic about thinking about the other places that it can live, which I think is an awesome takeaway and a great mindset to have as business owners who primarily create content to think about the ways that we can be strategic about using that content. This was-

Brita Britnell: I always like to think you have to really look at … I look at my … so I really focus on Instagram. I focus on growing my Instagram in the past year and then YouTube is something I’m really trying to take on in 2020 but I have learned, I think I kind of learned this from Tim Schmoyer as well too. To do those as like more or less separate entities, like on my YouTube channel and on Instagram I’ll link back to my blog, but I’m treating them as separate, almost like separate arms of my business and instead of just like one complimenting the other, I’m doing things just for YouTube, just for Instagram.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it is intention with the concept that some people hold, which is like, hey, never build your following on another platform, and that way of thinking is a little bit different where it’s like, no, go ahead and build your following on that specific platform because the understanding is if people are on a platform, number one, that platform is disincentivizing anybody who leaves it. So, they want to keep people there as much as possible, so that’s an example of going upstream. If you’re trying to get people back to your blog by putting links in your YouTube description to your blog, like that’s not what the platform wants to be doing. Pinterest is maybe a little bit different, although I think that’s changing as well. But the basic idea is, it’s better to create stuff that performs great on the platform period versus having this idea of like, I need to get everybody back to my blog to increase page views.

Brita Britnell: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Brita Britnell: I very much stepped away from that mindset and it’s been great for me because one of my goals when growing my Instagram was to make money there and especially right now, Q4 the end of the year I’ve gotten a lot of awesome brand deals where all they want is Instagram and it’s been a nice validation for me that it was worth my time to grow my just my Instagram, separating it from my blog which is what I’m wanting to do with YouTube.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. I think it’s important to say that doesn’t mean that someday down the line they can’t change something that really hurts you. I think that’s always still in play and that is the risk of what we do is we can build and people listening to this podcast will be like, yes, that was me and I hate X, Y, Z platform because of it. Like there’s always the possibility that, that can be turned off, but that doesn’t mean that you then shouldn’t build on other platforms and be intentional about that.

Brita Britnell: That’s true.

Bjork Ostrom: So, a lot of great stuff that we covered here Brita, and one thing that I love about this is your passion and interest in hustle as it relates to this and also your willingness to share along with this audience. Interesting in that at the beginning of the podcast, you talked about this reality of moving away from doing consulting and doing freelance work as it relates to video. So, we love to give people the opportunity to plug what they’re up to at the end. What is that for you? What do you want people to connect with you to follow along? What is the thing that you want to highlight here as your own at the end of the podcast?

Brita Britnell: Yeah, I appreciate that. So, I just worked really, really hard over this past year creating an in depth course, a lot of what we’ve talked about with Lorena from … she has a blog called Green Healthy Cooking. We created the video food academy just to kind of give this nice deep dive into video. We have just a free Facebook group where we’re trying to just share our knowledge because both of us are so passionate about it and can talk about it all day.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Brita Britnell: So, we’re about to start doing some really fun live videos. I’m going to walk people through like my new studio set up and if they want to follow along there. But then also I blog at Food with Feeling, which especially over the past year is just be kind of like so much my baby and it’s grown a lot and I’m really proud of it. Again, that’s Food with Feeling. I’m good with feeling in all of the places.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome, and we’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. Make sure people can check that out and appreciate you coming back on the podcast again. Great to have repeat guests and it’s been fun to watch you along your journey here. So thanks for coming on, Brita.

Brita Britnell: Yeah, thanks Bjork.

Alexa Peduzzi: And that’s a wrap. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast this week. We appreciate you and we’re just so happy to be able to share these types of interviews with you on the podcast. You know one of our goals with Food Blogger Pro is to stay up to date with the latest and greatest trends in food blogging, like repurposing video and in order to get a better understanding of the ways that bloggers run their blogs, the ways they make money and just the food blogging industry as a whole, we would love for you to take our brand new state of food blogging in 2020 survey.

Alexa Peduzzi: Now, what is the state of food blogging and 2020 survey? Well, in short, our goal with this survey is to get a better understanding of how bloggers are running their blogs. A lot has changed in the blogging industry over these past few years or even in these past few months. So, we’re really interested in understanding how people are choosing to run their food blogs in 2020. The good news is that the survey is 100% anonymous. We don’t even ask for your name or your blog URL, nothing. It’s 100% anonymous, and the better news is that the survey results will be public for everyone, so that you can learn from other bloggers and find inspiration from what they’re focusing on in the new year.

Alexa Peduzzi: If you’re interested in taking the survey, it’ll take about 15 minutes. You can do so at foodbloggerpro.com/blogging and because the survey is anonymous, we ask that you take your time and that you’re as accurate as possible so that we can get an authentic read of the food blogging community as a whole. Again, you can find that survey at foodbloggerpro.com/blogging we’re just so excited to share the results with you so that you can have a better understanding of the food blogging community just like us. Again, thanks for tuning into the podcast and until next time, make it a great week.

232: Repurposing Video – Maximizing the Impact of Recipe Videos with Brita Britnell

Repurposing Video

In this episode, you’ll learn:

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Repurposing Video

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Transcript:

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