• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 22, 2014

Marketers must approach the creation of video as an experience to tell the story, Mike Monello, partner and chief creative officer at Campfire, said Thursday during his OMMA Video keynote.

Monello outlined four principles to build experiences with the audience at the center, fostering self-expression and drawing from communities.

1. Put the audience at the center of the experience. Don't surround people, but develop the story so people become the hub or the center.

2. Don't tell a story. Give them the experience so they can share one. Rather than tell a complex story, allow the people to touch the story themselves and make it their own.

3. Foster self-expression. Allowing consumers to develop their own story from their experience makes it unique.

4. Create with communities, not for them. Use the content to connect the like-minded.

For example, Florida businesses create immersive experiences to draw millions of people to the state by enabling visitors to take part in positive events they can take back home to tell family and friends. The story is passed from the creator to the subject to the contacts. And those who can relate pass it on to their contacts.

People share to create status, define a collective identify, and strengthen a bond. Although some people will share to create a relationship with a brand, it will be very few, Monello said.

In the newly published book Content Marketing Strategies For Professionals, authors Bruce Clay and Murray Newlands explain how creativity creates credibility -- not only for the brand and the person telling the story from the experience, but also in the algorithms of search engines identifying and indexing the content to spit out in search results for others to see.

Putting the consumer in the center by building the experience around them might mean creating short six-second videos on Vine that connect with a larger campaign. Led by MediaPost Editor in Chief Joe Mandese, a panel of experts began the following session debating the worth of short-clip content and the possibilities to hook, keep, and deliver the message to consumers who increasingly have a shorter attention span. All agree that it makes creation increasingly challenging to gain and keep someone's attention in two or eight seconds.

Panelists also said the types of messages that work in short-form content aren't the same as television, the rules for television are not the same rules for online video, and it's important not to be afraid. The jobs and tools are different, said Tom Cotton, co-founder and partner at Protagonist and ExactCast.

Don't be afraid to fail, said Neil Katz, editor-in-chief and VP of content at The Weather Company, who added that it pays off to use Vine and other short-form video to test the content in small markets across America before taking larger pieces national.