40. Hands up image: Christine Schmitt via flickr
Shhh image: Brave Heart via flickr
Engage: Vegardig via flickr
Convertible: Riley via flickr
Detour: Thure Johnson
Social engagement graphic: Neil Patel
Facebook data: Locowise
Credits
Editor's Notes
Optimise Rich Content & Explore Content Creation Strategy To Stay Ahead Of The Curve & Maximise Conversions
Explore exciting content creation tools and techniques enabling digital leaders to stay ahead of the curve
Optimise your rich media to get your people engaged. What works best for which channels to make the most of your spend with organic rather than paid?
What types of content have organisations found the most engaging? What is most likely to win click-throughs and conversion?
How can you best tailor content to specific audience
How many of you make video yourselves?
How many of you are responsible for commissioning video?
How many of you are freaked out by the concept of having to do video of any sort?
If we’re going to talk about making a success of video, then we need to address the elephant in the room.
How many of you have had someone come up to you from another team and say this to you?
Get to the point. Ask people what they want to achieve, not how they do it. As Comms professionals, we’re the ones who should be providing solutions. We just want to know what the issue is, or the desired outcome.
Neil Patel surveyed 183 companies that generate at least 5 million dollars in revenue a year all the way up to $1.7 billion
This covers all social media – FB, Twitter, Insta, WhatsApp, YouTube
But engagement may not be your primary goal?
Are you attracting…?
Do you want to engage your audience – potentially with information?
Are you seeking to convert them – sign up to an event or buy something
Do you want them to advocate for you?
Different channels and different styles are required for your end goal.
For example
Where is your audience? Who does what, where?
As an example, Generation Z – ie, the post 1995 generation – is mainly on YouTube, so you’ll struggle to appeal to them on Twitter.
My teenage daughter is a great example. She’ll happily spend an afternoon watching YouTube videos and will actively use the YT homepage to find interesting content. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never ever done that!
If you don’t use one of these already, try it.
It’s a sheet with 6 boxes – you can use multiple sheets, but it helps you to plan basic frames/sequences of your video.
Let’s take a brief detour away from the specifics of what types of video might work for you…
This is the commonly held view.
And if you talk to an external agency, then it can be. I agree that the prices that get charged sound high, especially if you’re on a tight budget
But don’t jump to that conclusion…
It wasn’t that long ago that you needed lots of expensive equipment to make a good video, and it’s also true that you can still spend a lot of money on cool kit.
This lot will cost you around £100
Using something like Filmic takes your phone to another level – you can set colour and brightness levels, change frame speed, aspect ratios and a whole lot more.
Stephen Soderbergh released a movie last year called Unsane on an iPhone and which used exactly this app.
Currently it does cost £15 to buy, but it makes an enormous difference
Editing software is often free and usually inexpensive.
OK, I’m going to give you a bunch of different ideas now that we’ve either tried at TBTC or I’ve seen elsewhere.
The point about all of these is that they’re adaptable. You can take your own brand and cause and decide how to make them work or similar for you.
This didn’t work brilliantly for us, but it was worth trying. We’ve worked with Hal this year on our Big Bandana Bake video and it was more successful…
Don’t just film on landscape… We all watch things on phones now, so think about optimising for that…
People were asked what they’d say if they had one more minute with a loved one who’s died.
Urge you to go and watch it – hugely powerful.
You’ve probably all heard the statistic about YouTube being the 2nd biggest search engine.
Either through google search results or direct searches, you can find almost anything on YT.
Here’s an example of something we did when I was at Age UK that demonstrates this…
This sort of video is classic engagement. If you’re going to measure its benefit, you need to look at average length of view (which YouTube gives you), as well as dwell time when you embed this on your website.
This isn’t something that will drive conversion, but is perfect for people who are willing to spend time watching…
Again, non-charity, but Hotels.com did something really clever in one of their Captain Obvious ads.
They used captions to ‘apparently’ tell their story, but actually, the interpreter gave away an extra special deal for those people who could understand sign language.
To bolster a campaign we ran, in association with the Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce last year, we asked some supporters to tell us why it was so important.
Similarly, we got another supporter to tell us the story of his daughter.
They’re not the slickest videos in the world, but they’re real and your audience will forgive slightly lower quality, if it’s authentic.
According to in-depth research last year from Locowise, when the average video length is 55 seconds, most people only watch 18 seconds.
In our experience that’s often even lower – especially if you’re promoting content. If you’re using Facebook as an attraction or sharing platform, realistically you only have around 3 seconds to grab most people’s attention…
Autoplay is silent by default – you need to click to get volume.
78% of videos are watched on Autoplay on Facebook, so you have two options.
You either produce a video that doesn’t rely on voiceover, or you caption your video…
The ideal is to create a style that you use for each video. It takes time to add captions like this, but it’s both accessible and makes your video a better experience for the more than ¾ who don’t turn up the volume.
At the very least, use the inbuilt captioning software that the likes of YouTube and Facebook provides.
Here Parkinson’s has used closed captions within a YouTube video, but they’ve edited them properly.
Don’t let it autogenerate – the results can be unintentionally hilarious
This won loads of awards… and is an example of clever thinking can work.