Don't make a video - that might be a strange statement from someone who makes videos for a living, but in today's social media world you have to look at visual media production in a different way.
I guarantee at some point you've scrolled past endless articles on how good video is at engaging people, there are so many "studies" they are hard to miss and despite some increasingly wild claims on how effective it is, video IS certainly a very useful tool. However it can also be a comparatively expensive one, so what's the best way to get as much value as possible out of it?
For most films, the production process normally involves gathering lots of footage, interviews, graphics, audio etc. This creates a library of material that is used to make the final edit. Over the last few years that final edit is usually something quite short (video length is another subject I'll cover in another blog) so a lot of material ends up on the "cutting room floor"
Most of the time lots of this material is very useful, for example the first "content" version of any edit I do can have 30 or 40 minutes of great material in it which is then whittled down to just 2 minutes - so why not use that extra content elsewhere? This is where a video content strategy comes in.
Social Media is a hungry monster, it needs feeding regularly and by regularly adding video you can keep it well fed with quality and engaging content. So by planning on making video content instead of just a video you can get the maximum value from your budget.
As well as a short, high impact, video you can make a longer more detailed version with more content for the viewer that want's to find out more. You can also split down other footage into short clips that can accompany social media posts.
All the content you create can also exist in a single video library that is keyworded so in the future if you need supporting video content for social media, presentations, pitches, shows etc it is easily retrievable.
This need for content and the realisation that there is a lot of wasted footage in the video production process has prompted me to start a new social video agency Symphony Digital Media where we will help Companies make the best use of their budgets for video with the maximum impact, feel free to contact us if you'd like to know more.