How can you increase your output of video content, without sacrificing quality? We go over tips to make the process as efficient as possible.
Consistency is a big part of meeting your audience’s expectations. With so much video already out there, how can you ensure that your own video production is frequent and maintains the same level of quality?
When we looked at the biggest pain points plaguing content creators, quantity of video made that list.
While adding more resources (time, money, labor) would bulk up your video powerhouse, there are some things you can do to speed the video creation process.
Here are our tips to building your video assembly line.
Know The Content That Your Audience is Hungry for
What is the value you’re delivering through your video content? Do you intend to entertain? Inspire? Educate or inform?
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Discovery seeks to both educate and thrill its audience through showing off the world’s wonders. When it comes to video for social, they do this by grabbing the most extreme or off-the-beaten-path stories that they have.
Once you know the value your content will have, it’s important to be agile. You need to recognize the stories that will resonate with your audience and jump on them.
How can you find stories and content ideas quickly? NewsWhip Spike lets you create curated panels around what your target audience cares about. Or you could take a big picture look at the stories going viral right now.
The current big tech videos in NewsWhip Spike’s 12-hour view suggests a popular focus on future efficiencies.
With Spike, you can find the stories your viewers care about, and what stories they’re ignoring. This content intelligence takes away the guesswork.
You also need to figure out what your team will look like. Is it a one-man show? At UpWorthy, they have three Originals producers, three audience development producers, and four story producers that all work together closely to identify story ideas and produce social-first video content.
Know How to Best Adapt Stories to Video
Some may know the old acronym, “K.I.S.S.”, or Keep It Simple, Stupid. What stories can you tell succinctly and briefly? What is the biggest point of the piece?
Since often the best video on social is short, and only 65% of viewers will continue past the first three seconds of Facebook videos, you need to catch your viewers’ attention swiftly and keep their interest.
Find the main point of your content and focus on that, with supporting details or info.
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We recently looked at NowThis for being able to do this well. Their videos are generally two minutes or less, and start telling a story from the first image, by using the opening shot as their lede.
What’s the biggest visual of your piece? Know it and put it front and center. Want more insights? Stay ahead of social media trends by joining our 15,000-subscriber strong newsletter.
Have Your Tools Ready
Knowing what’s in your arsenal for video creation already can cut down on your video production time. There’s tons of tools available for cloud-based editing, and apps for native video tweaking. We went over some suggestions in our recent video tools blog.
Another asset to have at the ready is a media library of your own content, or other media libraries for pulling image and video. The same goes for an audio library for your background music, and someone to do voiceovers if you choose.
Create a video style-guide you can refer back to for each video. What design elements can you use to spice up your video? What about captions?
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AJ+ uses the same yellow color of their logo to bold certain captions in their video content. The black, white, and yellow are all used to add design elements to their videos, while a vignette effect is sometimes applied to clips for added emphasis.
Keep in Mind the Best Practices
Keep in mind the best practices for video. Since a majority of video is viewed without sound, you want your video to still be comprehensible while silenced. Is your video optimized for your mobile audience?
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This fun recipe video from Thrillist is short, square (ideal for mobile), and viewable without sound. It’s a simple enough video, but by using best practices, users have a better viewing experience, and are more likely to share.
Don’t be afraid to look around for tips from professional video experts. You can add more sophisticated types of video editing for a better experience for your user. Here’s a blog we found on five video tricks that can speed up editing and make for better video.
Check What’s Working
Of course, you’re not shooting video off into an abyss. You can use engagement metrics to see how well your video is performing with your audience. Practice makes perfect, and content trends and tactics shift.
By staying aware of what’s working, you can more easily adapt your video to be content that will resonate.
NewsWhip Spike makes it easy to see your engagement metrics across Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and your own website. For a way to benchmark your own video against your competitors, you can use Spike.
By looking at engagement activity for Facebook video of news publishers of the past month, we can see who saw hit the mark with their audience and dive into why. (Click for full size)
At the end of the day, quality content will still be king.
The perfect formula comes down to knowing what stories will catch your audience’s attention and having the tools ready to act and churn out video that’s concise and easy to watch.
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