Tag: content

Six principles of doing video better

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There’s been a massive growth in online video consumption in the last two or three years. According to the latest stats, half of us are regularly watching video on mobile devices.

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And the trend is set to continue. No big surprises, then.

But the definition of video is changing: we watch video on a plethora of platforms, in a number of different formats.

We watch disposable 15-second clips, filmed in portrait and covered in scribbles and doodles, on Snapchat and Instagram. We watch two-minute semi-professional instructional videos, product reviews and comedy skits on YouTube. And we watch live streams on Facebook and Periscope.

Video has grown sideways as well as upwards.

This trend brings a problem for the content producers: saturation. As organisations cotton on to this trend, they shift their focus to producing video content, and social media users become overloaded, swiping and scrolling past your carefully-crafted video.

So there’s a need to adapt. These are some of things I’ve been doing to adapt. You might find them useful too.

My six principles of doing video better

  1. Make shorter videos. Vine may be dead, but short viewing times are here to stay. They say a photograph should say one thing – it should have one idea to communicate. Video needs to be the same.
  2. Subtitles. People are watching with the sound down, so bite the bullet and sub your videos if they’re for social channels.
  3. Make it about people. If you can, make it about your audience. Who are they? What do they want? Tell them a story that answers those questions, and I guarantee they’ll engage with it. This graduation video is an example of it working for us.
  4. Do less, but better. Stop posting badly-edited, shaky smartphone videos, and invest in a decent bit of kit. Even a basic camcorder on a tripod will get you better results. Look at how the most popular YouTube vloggers do it.
  5. Make paid-for promotion a part of your strategy. If your videos have a call-to-action, or you’re trying to achieve huge online consumption of your content, stump up for a bit of advertising. You don’t need a huge budget to reach new people on social, but you do need a budget.
  6. Make it for the platform it’s being distributed on. Someone looking for pretty things on Instagram wants a very different experience to someone searching and browsing YouTube.

These are principles I’ve adopted over the last few weeks, and they’re working for our social channels. During graduation fortnight we posted eight graduation-themed videos on our Facebook page, including a live broadcast from Sheffield City Hall.

Those videos generated a combined organic reach of 185,000 over two weeks, and a couple of the posts generated a ton of comments from users who wanted to share their own pride in being a Sheffield Hallam student, graduand or alumnus.

We did OK for likes, comments and shares on Twitter too.

Lastly, it’s important, as always, not to get too dazzled by the technology. As communicators, we’re sometimes driven by output, and there’s always a danger of us falling into the ‘we need a *insert output*’ trap.

So start with the goal, then move onto the audience, platform and output. Keep asking why. If you’re sure video is the right medium for the story, you’ll get a lot more out of it if you plan the video. You don’t need to storyboard it, but you should definitely think about these things:

  • Concept – what’s your ‘elevator pitch’ for the video?
  • Narrative – how is the story told? Down-the-line, over-the-shoulder, voiceover?
  • Locations – what do you know about your locations? They bring with them a whole range of challenges.
  • Pace – how many shots will you need in the edit? How fast do things move?
  • Technology – what kit do you need to make it happen?

I hope that gives you some food for thought. I’m always keen to hear how people approach video, so let me know your own tips for creating engaging video content – in the comments, or over on Twitter.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Using data to tell a story

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In my last blogpost I looked at ‘peak content’ and shared some tips for creating shareable content for use on social platforms. One of the most popular pieces of content shared on social is infographics. The great thing about them is that they’re an excellent way of using data to tell a story. Newspapers have long been creating them in print to illustrate stories, and the Guardian and the FT both have dedicated data journalists and designers that have created some great infographics in recent years. Done well, they prompt a discussion or conversation (or sometimes an argument).

The Guardian datablog is a good place to start to seek out some nice examples of infographics and data visualisations. It may be a few years old now, but their infographic on Government department spending in 2011 (below) is a fantastic example of what a good infographic should do – using data to tell an interesting story in a visually stimulating way. Yes, it’s busy, there’s a lot of information on there, but for politics nerds and designers it’s quite something.

Government spending 2010-11

However, it’s a bit too detailed for the average social media timeline – too much zooming in and losing your way. But if you have the time to pore over the figures it’s perfect.

An excellent recent example that worked well on social is the one below from National Parks Wales, who used some data about their parks to tell a great story about their impact on people, businesses and on the country. It’s simply done but well executed, and perfect for social. It prompted discussions about the importance of green space on well-being and the impact of global warming.

National Parks Wales

Here at Sheffield Hallam, we commissioned a designer to create an infographic for use both on social and as a handout for some of our regional stakeholders. We wanted it to tell the story of our impact in the city region through supporting jobs and driving economic growth. We posted it on Twitter and LinkedIn, and it was widely shared by our business-engaged audiences. It’s also a useful handout for staff who are working with stakeholders and want to provide them with something which demonstrates our impact.

SHU Value of Sheffield

Commissioning a designer is a good idea, but not everyone can afford that. If you want to try yourself, there are some useful free tools out there. Websites like FlatIcon have lots of useful free icons and images that you can download, and Infogram is a good online tool to help you create something from scratch. There are some good templates in software such as Prezi and even MS Powerpoint. If you do give it a go, have a read of Guardian data journalist George Arnett’s article on some golden rules and things to avoid before you get started.

Ally Mogg, head of news and PR
@allymogg

 

Content Content Content

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A few months ago I read an article by the economist Will Hutton about people in the west reaching the point of ‘peak stuff’. In the article he described how consumer demand for shiny new things seemed to be losing its appeal as we’ve all accumulated so much stuff in recent years that we’re unlikely to ever be able to use. Our kitchen drawers, cupboards, wardrobes, cellars and attics are bulging with stuff that we either bought for ourselves somewhere or perhaps were given at Christmas. Or maybe it was a birthday. Actually, I’m not really sure, it’s just there, unused, in a drawer…

peak stuff (Photograph Paper Boat CreativeGetty Images)

It hit home for me. I recently moved house and had a significant clear-out which involved no less than five trips to the local recycling centre in which I experienced the catharsis that can only be achieved when launching the disembodied parts of a knackered but well-used bed-frame into a huge skip. Western society has finally reached a point where we have admitted we have no room for any more stuff.

More recently, many online experts have begun to agree that we are approaching ‘peak content.’ There is now so much content online, it’s almost impossible to gauge the sheer magnitude of what’s available. The ITunes App Store now has 1.5million apps, and there are about 4billion YouTube video views every day.  Companies are creating and publishing thousands of pieces of content every year, and it’s increasing.

But as more and more content is produced, there remains only a finite amount that we can watch, process, and share. A recent Trackmaven research study from February shows that as content creation has increased, our engagement levels have dropped. As content competes for our attention, demand for better quality content increases. There’s too much to consume.

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Getting someone to watch a 20 second film on Twitter from start to finish is tough and in this highly competitive market it means that brands can no longer get away with using social just to post a few words about their products or services. Changes to Twitter and Facebook have allowed embedded video, and the surge in popularity of visual media enabled social channels like Instagram and Snapchat have created new opportunities for brand advertising that in the past only television and cinema could provide, but with the added ability to measure engagement through comments, shares and likes.

So, as content creators, what can we do in this competitive environment to make sure we’re creating the kinds of content that people want to see? There are four things that stand out for me. There are more of course, and you may disagree, but I think they’re a good starting point for thinking about a strategy for creating content

  • Planning – create a content plan, an editorial calendar (or both)
  • Focus on quality not quantity
  • People like stories – create content that tells a story about you, your brand or product
  • Think about your audience – take time to understand who they are and what they want

And finally, the bit that people sometimes forget before moving onto the next thing – evaluation. Evaluate and measure whether content worked. Did you want your content to do something, change a behaviour, influence thinking, or just encourage traffic to a website? Did it do what you wanted? If not, why not?

skip-hire-malton

If you don’t take this simple step, you might as well just take your shiny new content down to your local recycling centre and launch it into a huge skip.

Ally Mogg, head of news and PR
@allymogg