Everyone likes to watch videos on the web
According to official statistics from YouTube, they have” over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views.”
The statistics portal Statista notes “As of July 2015, more than 400 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute, up from 300 hours per minute in November 2014.”
Wacky cats, wacky stunts, cute cats, cute kids, offensive comedy, and R-rated content are some of the most popular methods to drive traffic. But if someone is trying to promote a product, service, personality or other business, traffic isn’t always the most important metric. Reaching the right audience with the right message becomes the goal. Cute babies might get clicks, but not business. Audiences are bombarded by words and messages. In a short attention world addicted to entertainment, videos serve as great vehicles for public relations. But videos can be expensive and time-consuming to produce.
To discover what works, an all-star panel of publicists and marketers gave us their best advice and, along with me, selected a few of their favorites. Here’s how to gain market share, reach audiences and achieve some of your public relations goals using video in a very competitive world.
“What makes a good content marketing video?’ asks Michelle Messenger Garrett of Garrett Public Relations. “It should reflect your tone of voice. And you should know the goal behind the video. What are you trying to achieve?” Garrett adds “User-generated video is a very inexpensive way to go with video content marketing–and it can be very effective.”
David Spark, of brand journalism and media consulting firm Spark Media Solutions, notes the value of emotion. “One of the big values of video is you can see emotion. So often corporate videos are devoid of emotion because they’re so heavily scripted, prepared, or they’re just spouting out marketing jargon. My favorite part of video, and what can make a great video, is when you watch people react. Take a look at the reality shows and look at how many times they cut away to reaction shots, and how the reaction alone can tell far more about what the person said than the actual words that came out of their mouth. For that reason, I like to produce funny “man on the street” videos where I purposely go out of my way to ask the question you’re not supposed to ask.”
“For example, at the RSA security show I’ve asked people to give me their password. At VMworld, I’ve asked people how they explain virtualization to their mom. And at Dreamforce, I’ve asked people “When is the best time to swear at your customers?” Watch the videos and you’ll see there are lots of people simply reacting to the question. You want to spark a conversation in the industry, these kinds of videos do it.”
Spark says big tech events can be a goldmine for user-generated video. “Very few people can absorb an entire event after the fact in real time. But, everyone would like a five-minute summary of the event. You could do that, and co-opt the event’s brand for your needs.” (Robert Wynne – FORBES)
