This is a guest post by Simon Cliffe from Branch Road.
Recently my wife tasked me with booking the family summer holiday. I have a 40-minute train journey into work, so a perfect window for doing research.
Typing ‘family summer holiday’ into Google, I was bombarded by zillions of search results recommending holidays from Costa Brava, to Malta, Crete, Mexico and so many more.
After five minutes of flicking through the various web pages, I felt overwhelmed and confused. Then for the rest of the day, I was followed around by an online advert trying to convince me to book a cruise.
Sound familiar?
For consumers, the colossal amount of content, PR and marketing messages out there can be quite a turn off. We’re busy people and we don’t have time to sift through it all. For brands, cutting through the data deluge and attracting our attention in a meaningful way, has become a real challenge. So, how do you do it?
Coming from the broadcast industry, I’m probably a bit biased, but video is one medium that really helps brands stand out. It creates a strong emotional connection with an audience in a much quicker way than text-focused content could ever do.
However, for video storytelling to be successful you need to make sure your story isn’t too self-serving, speaks to your audiences’ needs, and reaches them at the right time, on the right device.
Sounds simple right?
Here are my three top tips on how to use video to boost your Inbound PR strategy.
When used as part of an Inbound PR strategy, video has huge potential to attract and engage your audience, rather than just interrupt them. But for it to be truly effective, you need to think strategically: What is the story? Why do you want to tell it? Who are you trying to reach? Most importantly: What is it that you’re going to say that will actually make them care? Answer those questions, then you can work out which video style best fits your campaign.
Take a look at these examples to give you a few ideas:
Once you’ve determined which video style is best to tell your story and reach your audience, before you brief a video crew and pick up a camera, you need to create your amplification plan. Who will you promote your video content to? Will you gate any aspects of the content? What is your user journey? And, perhaps most importantly, how will this video help support your Inbound PR objectives?
Video can play a strong part at every step of your Inbound PR strategy, working in partnership with your other campaign content, but only if you squeeze the most out of every video. That means finalising your amplification plan, user journey, and how you’ll measure success, pre-production.
There are lots of ways to make sure you get bang for your buck when creating video content, but here are some tips to make sure your amplification plan helps boost your inbound PR strategy:
The good news is that video is very measurable, and can be measured in two ways:
Here are a couple of great examples where video content has successfully worked as part of a wider Inbound PR campaign:
We’ve discussed how video can bring your story to life in an engaging, shareable and measurable way, as well as the importance of the right amplification plan. My last piece of advice is to just go for it.
Video doesn’t have to cost the earth, so don’t be scared about that - in fact, it’s much more important to focus on the strength of the story you’re creating rather than the size of your camera or the crew you’re hiring.
Test it out, observe your results and see what works best and I guarantee that you’ll give your Inbound PR strategy a big boost.