Recognizing Good Video Moments & Content Opportunities

Adding video to your content marketing strategy isn’t easy. As with any part of your content marketing plan, however, sometimes finding those opportune moments to create video content that can delight your audience is as easy as being on the lookout for a few simple signs. We’ll discuss one such sign this week on “OMG! Video Marketing Strategy! Huzzah!"

Last week, we had the chance to sit down with Jen Knoedl and talk about the many reasons video testimonials are a great way to get started with adding video your content marketing strategy. Jen shared from her expertise and gave us some highlights that she covered in her digital book on video testimonials and we got a huge take-away right off the bat about capturing moments of authenticity.

As a result, we decided to make this week all about looking for those moments.

How do you find them?

Where do you look?

What do you look for?

How do you know you’ve found a good video moment and authentic content opportunity?

This week we’ll be attending ContentJam, a fantastic content marketing conference in Chicago put on by Orbit Media and StoryStudio, and we hope to ask some of these questions to a few key folks speaking at the conference.

When it comes to content marketing, often there can be no greater opportunity for sharing meaningful content than around conferences, trade association meetups, networking nights, and other “IRL” (In Real Life) events. So this week’s contribution to the OMGVMS series will actually take place on Thursday, November 5th, from ContentJam!

I had a great conversation about that very fact with Andy Crestodina, one of the organizers of ContentJam and a great source for expertise in the discipline. We were discussing my plan to interview a leading YouTube expert (and speaker at ContentJam) Amy Schmittauer--host of the wildly popular SavvySexySocial Video Blog--as a part of the OMGVMS series.

I had been lucky enough to see her presentation at the 2015 Inbound Conference in Boston, put on by HubSpot, and I knew that she would have some very important lessons for anyone seeking to add video to their digital content, ourselves included, so I set out to make sure we could connect. Andy wisely pointed out that smart marketers see conferences as a place to create content, not just consume it.

This is an important step in recognizing those good video moments, and a good piece of actionable advice for folks in any industry looking to add video to their content. Are you going to a conference any time soon? Will you have the chance to sit down with some subject matter experts and document some of their thinking for the benefit of the customers you seek to delight? Consider taking the time to coordinate creating some quick, useful video content!

Now--what does that content look like? How do you go about creating it? In our case, we have set up a pattern of creating content around a theme - #OMGVMS. This weekly series about adding video to your content strategy was set up to take place in the #BLAB universe using a webcam, but it could have just as easily been broadcast live via YouTube, Periscope, LiveStream, or any of the other platforms popping up to meet the ever growing demand for video content.

For our purposes, since there isn’t much wiggle room in a conference day, we’re going to make some video content whereby we attempt to capture some of Amy’s subject matter expertise in a bit more of a spontaneous way based on the day.

The content should still be available asynchronously (i.e. you can watch it in your PJs any time after it’s done) but it won't be a fail if we decide the events of the day keep us from broadcasting it synchronously (going on live right now).

These two words, synchronous and asynchronous, are two very important concepts to keep in mind when you are looking to add video to your content streams.

Determine for yourself what needs to be live vs. what can be offered on a “tape-delay” (see how dated that looks?) basis.

Use your understanding of the value of real-time content to your audience to help you make the call about which is required for each content opportunity.

Ask yourself, does the actionable information you are providing to delight your audience contains time-sensitive information or not?

If not, maybe it is better not to add “LIVE STREAMING” to the already long list of things that can go wrong producing video content.

Don’t let that list of possible conundrums spoil it for you, though!

Remember, everybody has to start somewhere! Even though you may have some technical snafus in your content early on, the key to success will always be the same. Do your best to delight your audience with useful, timely, palatable content.

As for the upcoming Episode 2 of “OMG! Video Marketing Strategy!” you’ll have to tune in this Friday, November 6th on BLAB and I'll be trying to curate all sorts of learning from #ContentJam as well. We’ll do everything we can to make sure it delights and is useful, timely, and palatable.

Also, be sure to join us for #OMGVMS the following week at our regular day and time, Wednesday November 11th (eleven, eleven!) at 11:30 am. We’ll be talking with David Hunter, a Chicago area corporate video professional, about maximizing video production quality, why improv can help you do better video, and more!