We talk a lot about how important it is to romance your audience with engaging content that allows them to get to know you and your work better.

The big goal here is not to sell your work today, but to create fans that follow you more closely until the day comes when they have a need for some art and choose yours to buy.

With that in mind, the timelapse video may be one of the most effective examples of romance content yet, and with a new app from Instagram they are easier than ever to capture.

What’s a Timelapse?

Timelapse videos are recorded over a period of time – even hours – and then played back at high speed in a short video.

Check out this example from Paula Manning-Lewis:

A post shared by Paula Manning-Lewis (@manlewis69) on Mar 8, 2017 at 10:26am PST

Timelapse videos are perfect for romance content because they’re just so interesting to watch.

In under a minute, your audience can glimpse your creation process – seeing a portion (or the entirety) of a piece come to life in front of their eyes.

Capturing, editing, exporting, and uploading these types of videos used to be expensive and require knowledge of cameras, software, and more.

Now it’s as easy as point and shoot with your smartphone.

How to Easily Create Timelapse Videos

You need 3 things to create your own timelapse videos:

• A smartphone
• A timelapse app
• A bit of free space on your phone to store the video files

That’s it!

For this demonstration, we will use the timelapse app Instagram has created: Hyperlapse.

Hyperlapse is currently only available on iOS, but if you are on an Android phone there are plenty of alternatives:

• Microsoft Hyperlapse Mobile
• Framelapse
• Lapse It

Now, let’s create our own timelapse video!

To start recording, tap the circle at the bottom.

While you’re recording, you’ll see a timer on the left that shows how long your recording has been running in real time and a timer on the right that shows how long your finished video will be once it has been sped up.

Keep in mind Instagram limits videos to 60 seconds long.

Tap the circle again to stop your recording.

After recording, you can adjust the speed of your final video by using the slider.

You can increase the speed all the way up to 12x. Pick the speed that works for your video, and when you are happy with the result, click the green check mark icon on the top right to save the video to your phone’s camera roll.

Your video will be exported and will automatically be stabilized to give it a cleaner, more cinematic look.

Distributing Your Timelapse Video

Now it’s time to share!

Share your timelapse videos on your Instagram feed, and/or as an Instagram Story.

You can also throw these videos onto your Facebook Page and Blog. Or perhaps keep them exclusive to your Instagram account to urge your fans to follow you there. It’s all up to you.

Next Steps

Once you start having some success with timelapse videos, you’ll probably wonder how you can take them to the next level. Here’s what you can do:

Buy additional equipment

There are a few extra pieces of equipment you could acquire should you want to add an extra boost of production quality to your videos:

• A phone tripod (for ultimate stability)
• A kitchen timer (to pull off this awesome 360-degree pan technique)

Use timelapse videos to sell your work

Consider posting multiple timelapses of the same piece so that your viewers have a chance to see it come to life over a series of days or weeks.

Then, when it is completed, make a big announcement that they can buy prints of that image on your website (and/or the original!).

Other tweaks on this strategy include offering your Insta followers an exclusive discount code, or making the piece a limited run to add scarcity to the mix (“get a print while they last!”).

This can be an incredibly powerful way to generate an emotional connection between your audience and your work prior to it going up for sale.

Conclusion

To review, the 3 main benefits of creating timelapse videos:

1. You can tell stories about your art process through video alone; eliminating any language barriers
2. Engaging videos help people recall your brand, increasing purchase consideration when a spot on the wall opens up in their home or office.
3. It’s an easy way to pump out romance content since you’re simply recording what you would already be doing anyways.

All in all, timelapse videos are a powerful, cutting-edge form of romance content. So get out there and wow your followers!