From Concept to Creation: How to Maximise the Impact of your Video Content

| FROM THE FIELD E11

Why do we need to worry about content?

A story is an idea you put out into the world. A story can be a case study, or a Q&A, or a product feature, or a drunken thought scribbled on a cocktail napkin and then created as a video blog for your website. 

You have to put stories out into the world if you want people to pay attention to you.

Video is one of the most impactful mediums to tell these stories because we largely engage with the world through sight and sound, and until smell-o-vision becomes commonplace online. Video is king, queen and jester.

And why do we need to worry about planning our video content?

Because producing successful content requires:

• Understanding your audience’s needs (relevance)
• Serving them content on the right channels at the right moments (timeliness)
• Bringing a specific personality or brand point of view (interest)
• And planning… whether it’s a content calendar for a quarter, 6 months, a year, or simply a stand alone project.

The good news is, there’s a simple structure for creating awesome content marketing and we’ve outlined it for you below.

Step 1: Keywords

The advice on SEO is constantly evolving, but it always makes sense to think about keywords when you’re first planning your content.

Keywords can help with search, and they also reassure your audience that you understand the topic.

To identify appropriate keywords for your brand you can:

• Brainstorm with your team and listen to what your customers are saying
• Review the ‘searches related to’ section at the bottom of Google
• Use Google and YouTube Suggest
• Find popular topics on forums and sites like Reddit
• Or check out Google Trends or Exploding Topics for ideas

Once you’ve got your some ideas, use a simple table like the below to flesh out and keep track of your keywords.

Step 2: The competition

The next step is to analyse what’s already out there. Pop your keywords into Google and see which blogs and videos are ranking on the first page.

At this point, a tool like Buzzsumo can be super useful. It’s essentially a ‘content explorer’ so you can see what content/news articles are trending for your keywords and use them as inspo!

Keep track of your competitive analysis in a simple format like the below.

Step 3: The idea generation

This is the fun bit where you get to start coming up with some creative ideas.

From your research – what types of content seem to do well for similar brands or products? And importantly, how can you make it more awesome?

This process can be done solo, or with your colleagues. One nice way to structure your ideas is into 12 content themes, one for each month of the year. For instance, if you were an organic coffee brand, you could have January focused on ‘brewing’, February focused on ‘origin of the beans’, March focused on ‘cost savings of making coffee at home’ etc.

These 12 content themes can also be really helpful if you have lots of enthusiastic colleagues with…. ahh, questionable levels of creativity. Think of it as a creative refinement process.

Many of these can be crafted with evergreen topics that will never go out of date so keep that in mind when you’re planning!

Keep track of your content ideas with a structure like the one below. And don’t forget you can always schedule your content to go out more than once. Tweaking, improving and relaunching your content is a great way to get maximum bang for your buck.

Step 4: Create your video content

This is where the magic happens, where ideas become content.

Creating effective video content is essential for any business looking to connect with its audience and drive results. But before you start filming, it’s important to have a clear plan in place to ensure that your content is both engaging and aligned with your goals.

One of the first things to consider is your budget and the level of production value you’re looking to achieve. There are a few routes this can take, depending on these ambitions and your internal capabilities.

If you’re aiming for high-quality, polished content, you’ll likely need to work with a production partner. These companies can help take your content plan and turn it into a reality, but it’s important to have a detailed and clear brief in place to make the production planning process as smooth as possible.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a more cost-effective option, co-productions may be the way to go. Co-productions involve partnering with a company like FoSho CREW, who can provide creative, strategic, and technical support while you utilise your team’s expertise and physical location to record the content. This approach allows you to create more content for less and activate the latent creative talent within your team.

You then let us take care of the rest, providing all of the post-production power to deliver content for review straight to your inbox.

Co-productions are the simplest and most affordable way to create more content, for less – by activating the latent creative talent in your team and honing it with the support it needs.

In simple terms, it means:

We partner with you across your content creation lifecycle
You use your team’s expertise and physical location – to record content
You use our team’s creative, strategic and technical skills – to edit

And we create the content together. When you have your content ready to go, it’s time to release it into the world!

You can contact us here to start your project, or find out more about how co-productions work via our From The Field blog post: How to make more video content, with less | FROM THE FIELD E10.

Step 5: Make sure the right people see your content

The most brilliant content in the world is useless if the right people don’t see it. You need a plan of how to get in front of your audience.

You could release your video content via:

• Your website (or other sites)
• Social media – including groups
• Via collaborations with an expert or influencer in your niche
• Digital advertising
• Email bulletins or newsletters

Think firstly about who your audience are, what media they consume day-to-day, and go from there. For example, an activewear brand may find its audience on Instagram and Pinterest, while a personal injury law firm may find its audience through targeted ads on Google or LinkedIn.

The key is to think about your audience first, and then decide on the best channels to reach them. With the right distribution strategy in place, you’ll be able to maximise the impact of your video content and achieve your business goals.

It can be as simple as deciding what…

Step 6: Measure, test and iterate 

To truly understand the impact of your video content, you need to track and measure your results. This means looking at key metrics such as impressions, engagement, clicks, and views, as well as how your content is progressing toward your business goals, whether it be brand awareness, sales or conversions.

A lot of content marketing can be a slow game and provides results long-term, building on top of each piece of video content.

By monitoring your content’s performance over time, you’ll be able to identify what works and what doesn’t. And if a piece of content doesn’t perform as well as you’d hoped, don’t stress. The insights you gain from what doesn’t resonate with your audience are just as valuable as the insights you gain from what does. The key is to stay flexible and adapt your strategy as needed.

It’s important to establish a system for measuring the effectiveness of your video content, testing different elements and iterating as you go along. This will help you to fine-tune your approach and create more effective content in the future.

In summary, tracking and measuring your video content performance is crucial for understanding its effectiveness and making data-driven decisions about how to improve it. It will help you to understand what resonates with your audience, and what doesn’t, allowing you to continuously optimise your video content strategy and achieve your business goals.

Tracking and measuring your content is the only way to assess its effectiveness. 

Think about this in terms of how the content itself is performing (impressions; engagement; clicks; views etc) as well as how the content is progressing toward your business goals (i.e. brand awareness; sales or conversions).

As you do this over time, you’ll get a clearer picture of what is and isn’t working. An occasional piece of content is a flop? Don’t stress. Over the long term, your strategy is as much about what you don’t do, so any insights into what doesn’t resonate with your audience are still beneficial.

And that’s it, simple as that… well, nearly. Now all you need to do is execute the plan! If you have any questions or an idea for content that you’d love to discuss, please get in touch to see how we can help. Happy content making!

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