Love from, a video production company.
So, you’ve convinced your boss to invest his hard-earned money into producing organic content. Now it’s time to stop talking the talk, and start walking the… you know the drill.
In a reasonable person’s eyes, you can’t guarantee that this strategy will gain a following and engage your audience, but we’re not reasonable people.
For a company like ours to succeed, we utilise years of experience, industry veterans and large-scale (and high-budget) production tools to guarantee that in a volatile business landscape, the clients’ content has the highest chance of success.
In our eyes, we don’t wing it and create organic content that we hope get x number of views and y% engagement rate, to then blame it on the algorithm when it, well, doesn’t.
We view it pseudo-mathematically, “Fast-paced editing will increase the contents chance of reaching its goals by 20%, dynamic subtitles 30%, an engaging host adds another 10%” etc…
This is the reason companies like ours exist, we’re able to understand the math that does not yet exist, and apply this knowledge to our teams’ skillset, creating content that engages the audiences of brands such as Red Bull, Buzzfeed, Microsoft, Rolls Royce, the RAF and so on…
So for the reason of simplicity, here are X things you can do to maximise the chances of your organic content succeeding.
1. Goals
Who is this content for? Who are you reaching? What metrics are you measuring?
This is where you decide your Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs for short), and settle on your measurement tools for success. Whether that be the engagement rate, reach, like count, and so on.
This will help you in the type of content you create. For example:
- If you want to reach as many people as possible, you look at what’s trending.
- If you want people to watch the entire video, you focus on fast pacing.
- If you want to receive as much engagement as possible, you focus on starting a conversation with your audience about a topic they are passionate about.
- If you want to generate sales you can highlight your brand USPs.
The list goes on indefinitely, but feel free to mix and match, such as focussing on making your video both as engaging as possible whilst highlighting your business USPs, that’s two birds with one stone.
But be warned, too often you can focus on making the content so sales focussed that it can become detrimental to your brand, or the other way around, trying to accomplish so many KPI goals at once that it fails to achieve any of them.
That’s why companies like ours exist, we know how to strike that balance, but that’s enough about us.
Focus on a few core measurable and attributable goals and make sure you smash them instead of trying to accomplish everything with one video from the get-go.
2. Distribution
This part is pretty simple. Is it for an Instagram story? YouTube? Instagram? Will the social post be a one-off or a part of a series?
These factors can and will drastically affect the content, you may have to shoot the content vertically or horizontally, adjust the length of the content to appeal to the algorithm, change your KPIs and can affect the core idea of the entire video, as a BTS documentary will be far more suited for YouTube than TikTok.
3. “The idea phase is the cheapest part of video production, and the part people typically spend the least amount of time on” – Kevin Smith
All too often people think “first idea, best idea”, just to hit a big ol’ wall. The ideation stage is the easiest, cheapest part of the process, so if you’re looking to burn a metric ton of cash and motivation, gun it!
But if you’re like us, take your time, think about your resources, your skillset, the brand and come up with as many ideas as humanly possible, if they’re rubbish, that’s completely fine, in fact, that’s amazing!
No, really, it is. It means that you’re one step closer to the idea that works. A part of the ideation process is figuring out what you’re not going to make.
If you’re still struggling, just try to stay in a relaxed and creative state of mind, from playing with Lego to word association, it may feel counter-intuitive, but it does work.
4. As the great Quincy Jones once said, “No paralysis through analysis”
Once you have that one great idea, the idea that 9 out of 10 people agree with, run with it. “But what about that one person out of ten who doesn’t like it?”, well then you have three options.
Coming in at number one, that one person is THE decision-maker. In that case, go back to the drawing board. “But they just don’t get it!” And that’s completely fine, use this as an opportunity to paint a more accurate picture of what they are and are not looking for.
Number two, they point out a very valid reason that your approach won’t work. In this instance, don’t respond with an answer just because you have one, make sure your answer is the right answer. If you don’t have the right answer, you are running with a bad idea and everyone is too polite to tell you so. Back to the drawing board.
Finally, number three. The sales executive (for example) doesn’t know why, but they just don’t like it. Here’s a question, do you really think the Red Bull team of 12,000+ employees believed in every idea the company has ever done? No. But that’s fine because 9 out of 10 of them liked it. With organic content, there will always be the one out of ten people who dislike the content, that’s completely fine. So long as nine out of ten people do like it, your already making better content than 99.999999% of brands out there.
The worst state to be in is to over-analyse the feedback, adapting it and changing it for that one person, only to the detriment of its appeal to the other nine people, or even worse, to throw the entire idea away after working on it weeks. Paralysis through analysis wastes time, resources, and a great idea, so either run with it or find a new idea.
3. Purpose
We highlighted this with point one, but this time it’s for the consumers’ end. Why should they watch your content? What will they gain? Don’t stress about this too much, you’re not making Schindlers List, but at the very least think about what will make a viewer stick around, it could be as simple as learning something new, or because the content is entertaining, or funny. There are as many reasons for a viewer to stick around as there are ideas, but choosing one gives the project focus, improves the viewing experience and enhances the chances of the video’s success.
Once you have settled on a purpose for your video to be watched, you can then implement this into your script.
Say you’re making an educational video, start the video off by informing the viewer about what they will know by the end of the video. Or if you’re making an entertainment piece, try keeping the intro as short as possible and jump right into the meat of the content.
3. Directing
Depending on the scale, you may need a director, that director may even be you. The director is there to be in control of the video from start to finish and is fully accountable for the end product.
When choosing who directs the project, make sure they see the idea, understand its goals and what you’re expecting the video to look like, and for the love of God, make sure they are able to pull it off.
Having too many people in the mix can harm the project, the accountant wants the content to be edgier, the editor wants it to be funnier, the head of sales wants it to be more sales-oriented. The director is there to understand the brief, and to create a hive mind where everyone understands the goal and keep everything on track. One mindset, one vision will always be far more effective than twenty.
3. Scripting – Part 1
This may be controversial, but you don’t need a script in the traditional sense. Scripts are great if you are going into great detail about a topic, or if you have inexperienced (camera shy) stars of the content. We will come back to this in the next point.
For a lot of the content, you may just want to use bullet points. These bullet points will cover the contents of the beginning, middle and end of your video, and give everybody a set structure to follow. You can think of them like acts if you wish. Here’s a general layout of how a video will flow:
Act One: Set the scene
- Establish the scene and the overarching goal of the video.
- Launch a few pay-off moments.
(A payoff is where you establish questions that your audience will want to have answered, gags that need setting up and will create a sense of progression for the viewer as they “pay-off” throughout the video).
Act Two: The meat
- The process of achieving (or not achieving) the overarching goal of the video
- We witness the smaller “pay-off” moments, well… pay-off! Questions get answered, jokes hit their punchline and so on.
Act Three: Conclusion
- The viewer witnesses the overarching goal being completed.
- The consequence is presented (“Great job”, “I can’t believe that just happened”, “Wow”).
- The video is concluded with an outro.
4. Scripting – Part 2
Now you may wish to script the entirety of the video, in which case the above structure will still apply, but now we are talking about writing closer to how you would expect a screenplay to operate.
This section is just like the bullet points, but now is when you put pen to paper (or hand to keyboard) every word that’s going to be said.
You typically do this when the stakes are higher, such as a detailed description of a topic that you need to ace, when you’re working with inexperienced talent, or have little room for error.
Now I can’t teach you how to write in this article, but what I can teach you are 5 quick tips on what not to do:
- Don’t make everybody sound the same; You would be surprised how often this happens. Personality is what connects people to the content they are viewing, so when you’re viewing a hive mind, you end up with bland content. There’s no, how shall we say… “je ne sais quoi”.
- Don’t set up jokes that the viewer “had to be there” to understand. Pretty self-explanatory.
- Don’t use overly complicated language. Unless you’re Linus Tech Tips, your job is to simplify complex information to make it digestible, so get someone to proofread your content.
- Being self-aware is cool, but you know what’s cooler? Not creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be careful about how much time you spend making yourself sound bad, it’s fine to have one or two gags, but try and avoid derailing the content so often that people start to believe your jokes.
- Pacing
- Prove everything
- Test Shoot
- Set Design (Aesthetic)
- Lighting
- Hosting
- Guest Stars
- Audio
- Recording
- Retakes
- B-roll
- Review
- Editing
- Subtitles
- Colour Correction
- Sound Effects
- Visual Effects
- Call-To-Action
- Review
- Amendments
- Posting Strategy
- Thumbnail
- Title
- Body Copy
- Launch
- Response
- Data Tracking
- Review
Fuck this, next blog. lolol.
