3 Keys For Your Video Strategy

3 Keys For Your Video StrategyLast week, I attended the 2013 Best Practices in Video for Communicators Summit put on by Ragan Communications… thanks for the invite Jenny Fukumoto! It was mainly geared towards HR, PR and marketing people, but I looked at it as a chance for some professional development. My biggest takeaway was a terrific reminder as to the importance of video strategy.

Most of the speakers talked about strategy, but the person who really stressed it was George Wright. You know him as the man behind the hugely successful video campaign for BlendTec blenders… Will it blend? Side note… he concluded his presentation by pulling out a BlendTec and blending a tape measure. Pretty cool!

Anyway, he talked about the strategy behind that campaign, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Video strategy in a nutshell

Here’s the typical scenario you’d like to avoid… someone at your company gets excited about something at the business and shouts, “Let’s make a video!”
 
Great… I’m onboard, but before you get too pumped-up there needs to be a discussion. Otherwise, you might produce a video that nobody sees and accomplishes nothing.

  • who’s your audience? This question isn’t a surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly. I write about it often, but it’s for good reason. Knowing who your audience is will provide you with a guide through the entire production process. Anytime a question about the video comes up, ask… who’s our audience? Why should they care care? How does this impact them?
  • what’s your goal for the video? Is it just brand awareness? Are you hoping to improve sales? Motivate your team? There are any number of reasons to produce a video. Make sure you have a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish. Doing so should give you a way to measure whether or not the video was a success.
  • how will you deliver the video? The answer to this is probably tied directly to your audience. An internal HR video might go out as an email memo or as a post on the company’s intranet. A marketing video might be sent via an email campaign and/or social media. Once you figure that out, makes sure you have a plan for when and how often you’ll promote the video. Sending a single email won’t cut it. You have to create a distribution schedule.

Now… back to BlendTec. Their target audience… employees. Yup, the series was originally an internal campaign, but there was more to it than that. The goal was to get the BlendTec team excited, and they told team members via email that they were welcome to share the videos with friends and family. They hoped social media would take over from there.

Tens of millions of views later… do you think that strategy worked out?

Talk about your strategy before you start every video, and you’ll be happy in the end with the result.

–Tony Gnau
Tony Gnau is a three-time Emmy-winning journalist. He is also the founder and chief storytelling officer at T60 Productions. T60 has won 12 Telly Awards for its work over the last eight years.