Colonial RV’s Botticelli Scores with ‘NJ Outdoor Adventures’
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Patrick Botticelli of New Jersey Outdoor Adventures outside of his Airstream, which he takes on his adventures mountain biking and exploring historic places in New Jersey in his spare time and shares those adventures with his followers on social media, as well as tours of RV’s and campers for his personal social media channels as well as for the dealership where he has worked for 25 years. (Courtesy photos)
Patrick Botticelli of New Jersey Outdoor Adventures is a social media content creator who’s also worked in the RV business at Colonial RV in Millstone Township, N.J., for the past 25 years. Botticelli said he began filming tours of the RV’s at his dealership for YouTube in 2007.
“They were hour-long segments and were ground-breaking at the time,” he said as only a couple of others were putting video content on YouTube back then.
That led him to making YouTube videos of the things he liked to do outside of work — mountain biking and exploring New Jersey’s historical places and every once in a while he’d run into someone out camping and he’d film them. This became his YouTube channel — New Jersey Outdoor Adventures, which now has 286,000 subscribers. Each week a new episode releases featuring a guest speaker giving a full tour of their RV and providing helpful hints, hacks and tips for the RV lifestyle. Each segment is approximately 20 minutes and on average gets 30,000 views with some reaching one million, according to Botticelli.
“I have had guests like Jeremy Puglisi with RV Atlas and Janine Pettit from Girl Camper Magazine on the channel and have had many tours of unique DIY campers, several Airstreams, Roadtrek, Pleasure Way, Ember RV, Jayco, nuCamp, Advanced RV, Winnebago and more.”
He said people really liked these videos featuring ‘real people’ versus tours of empty RV’s so he started doing more and “eventually gained a really large audience.”
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Explosive Growth of Short Videos
He started doing short videos to compliment the longer videos, “And the short videos exploded! We captured a whole new audience.”
Botticelli said short vertical video content is what is used on Facebook reels, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts and is the way people view videos on their phones.
“A person can do one video in 15 minutes and share it on four platforms,” he said. “On YouTube there’s so much content you can get lost in the shuffle.”
He mentioned an RV manufacturer who spent a lot of money on a high quality video that has only 200 views.
Patrick Botticelli of New Jersey Outdoor Adventures received an award from YouTube when his YouTube channel reached over 100,000 subscribers.
“By hyper-focusing on reels I grew my Instagram from 20,000 followers to 110,000 in a couple of months. On Facebook I was stuck at 20,000 followers, now it’s up to 70,000. On TikTok I grew to 114,000 people pretty quickly,” he said.
He’s creating the short videos for his dealership as well as his personal social media channels.
Botticelli said especially for those who are in the “just looking” stage a 60-90 second video can move them further up the buying process funnel. He said if someone started shopping for RV’s and narrowed it down to 10 choices they’re much more likely to watch ten short videos versus watching ten 20-30 minute videos. Then when they narrow their choice down further they’re more likely to watch a longer segment.
He pointed out that most people “know within 8 seconds whether they’re going to continue watching” and social media algorithms make videos with more likes, comments and those that are fully watched more visible than others.
He said he’s noticed that many dealers are stuck in what was relevant two years ago.
“I think dealers really need to consider doing this,” He said. “I believe moving forward, the short video format will be the most dominant resource for customers in the research process and will be the key element for creating sales leads. We’ve noticed the videos get 100 times more views than the photos we post on the same platforms.”
“I can do one video and get 100,000 views and four sales calls in an hour — it’s a really powerful tool,” he said.
www.newjerseyoutdooradventures.com
www.youtube.com/@newjerseyoutdooradventures
www.instagram.com/patrick__njoa
www.facebook.com/newjerseyoutdooradventures
www.tiktok.com/@njoutdooradventures
Source: https://rvbusiness.com/colonial-rvs-botticelli-scores-with-nj-outdoor-adventures/
