Ok, well maybe Zoom is a ‘new normal’. Who’d heard of it before March 2020, and now it’s a household name? It has certainly made lockdown all the more bearable. . . and made it’s founder Eric Yuan, a few extra billion dollars too.
Just looking at why Zoom has had such an explosion in popularity, aside from its functionality of being the best video communication platform out there, is that it quickly and easily allowed us to visually communicate with people, (be rest assured we've tried all the video platforms available and Zoom is always the most reliable and stable for our business needs). Seeing someone’s face, their body language and simply having a moving image can be so much more engaging than just hearing a voice or reading text.
And that is why video has been a chosen tool of the most successful marketeers for so long.
It’s a superb tool for quickly engaging with an audience and when you match interesting, relevant imagery in a video to a cracking story, the results can be amazing. The old adage of ‘facts tell, stories sell’ has never been truer.
So, if video is such a powerful tool and 99% of us have a device that can shoot video, why aren’t we all filming away and hearing the business phone ring? Well the key to any successful video production is ensuring that the content is engaging to a relevant audience.
Just the fact of having a ‘video’ is not enough and YouTube is littered with some beautiful films that have very few views because they don’t engage with a specific audience. And it is real, tangible, and measurable engagement that is the real key here. Not just ‘likes’, ‘smiley faces’ or ‘thumbs up’ but real engagement where people are prompted to comment and then act after watching the content we have created.
Absolute paramount importance should be placed on the planning phase. It doesn’t matter if it’s content that will be captured on a mobile phone in your office or you have McCann New York producing a block buster for you, you must plan out the process from start to finish.
Here is my list of things to consider:
Make sure there is a clear view of why you are creating your content and what the outcomes need to be. In a nutshell, we want our audience to be prompted into positive action once they have seen our content.
The more specific you can be here the more effective your content will be. Your audience is not just users of YouTube or Facebook, be more specific and imagine what your ideal viewer – your next customer looks like. Where will they be searching & browsing and what do I need to say to engage with them.
Will it be pushed onto them through paid social media promotions or will they find it on the home page of our website? When we pull in content ourselves, we are in a different mindset to when something pops up on our social media feeds, so the content has to be created with this in mind.
Gone are the days when you popped a video on YouTube and watched the magic happen. To make sure your videos work hard for you they might need to be published on multiple platforms, tagged accordingly, shared and blogged about.
This is usually where most people start the process, but we always have this as one of the last pieces of the puzzle. It’s fine to see videos out there and think ‘that would be a great fit for my company’ but know the other elements before you start taking off lens caps, firing up the iPhones or getting Mr Spielberg into your office.
Again, it doesn’t matter if you are creating content for yourself using a mobile phone or you are working with an out-sourced production company, by following the above steps your content will be in great shape to deliver positive, commercially successful results.
So get started!
Rob Hallam is a father of two and whilst his work has seen a lot of travel around the world, he is proud to have lived in the Rossendale Valley all his life.
He has worked in the TV and Video industry for the last 21 years and after cutting his teeth at ITV and GSB, setup Bigtank in 2005.
Bigtank is a team of passionate, warm creatives who work across the UK producing engaging and effective video content for clients of all shapes and sizes.
Big Tank is a member of Boost & Co – a group of public and private sector organisations that can help Lancashire businesses grow.
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