We were delighted to make a trip down to Cheltenham to film a promotional video for the Gloucester Echo. The Echo, historically a daily paper, was relaunching as a weekly, and so the editors and reporters wanted to get out into the town to let the locals know.
The crew did a great job and I think the finished piece ticks a lot of the boxes for a marketing video destined for social media. So, what are the key notes you should be hitting with your own video for social?
A memorable hashtag attached to the right content can get your content seen by a wider audience. And, as in our example, it shouldn’t be an afterthought. The hashtag, #HowDoYouReadYours, cheekily riffing on the famous slogan from the Cadbury’s Creme Egg ads, was conceived long before the video, and gave us a theme to build the video around. The aim of having a marquee in the middle of Cheltenham was to get local people involved, and the hashtag meant that there was always a question to ask people. Getting vox pops with people answering the question was an ideal way to build the video and get people involved on the streets and online.
Ok, so our video might not win a comedy award, but there are many shades of funny. Particularly when the narrative is driven by talking heads, it’s important to get people laughing and smiling on camera from the off. Don’t be afraid to be a bit daft, and if somebody makes a gaffe in front of camera, you should probably keep it in.
People need social proof - It just means using someone else’s behaviour to validate our own decisions. Social media is inherently great at providing this - People use it to learn and to see what other people are doing, to agree and disagree. When marketing products and services online, remember the basics - Ask yourself, ‘do I have anybody saying how great this is?’ Sure, it’s not sophisticated, but it works.
Finally, I’d just remind you that social content doesn’t have to be too ambitious. The important thing is to share short, engaging content, and do it frequently.
Live video may seem, at first glance, like a medium with limited applications; but the simple fact of its being live opens up several possibilities to innovate and draw in your audience.
To promote Cisco Webex and Arkadin, our live-action video used a narrative structure based on resolving the pain points of our target audience: IT managers.
With Shutterstock’s prediction that the aesthetics of the past will be a dominant trend this year, it's a perfect time to think about ways of looking to the past to inspire forward-thinking content.
For providers of specialist or niche products and services, it's especially important to use video as part of your business marketing and sales strategy
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