Video has quickly become an integral component of every business’ online marketing campaigns used on websites, across social platforms and to share and spread news too.
Why? Video simply goes further than content alone ever can, telling a story and allowing an audience to gain a better understanding and form a connection with your brand. It appeals to the natural make-up of the human brain, with the visual cortex accounting for more than half the brains cortex.
When it comes to agencies using video in PR strategies to help brands gain coverage and boost their visibility online, video becomes the perfect medium for storytelling. Your audience can consume news and information about a brand without having to use any real brain power or comprehend large chunks of text. What’s more, turning your once text-heavy press releases into engaging multimedia pieces is far more effective at grabbing and keeping the attention of your target audience, no matter their demographic.
You can’t argue with the facts and data shows that businesses using video as part of their online strategies grow their revenue 49% faster year-on-year than those that choose not to adapt and integrate the medium into their techniques.
Besides the fact that video is proven to increase the engagement businesses receive and benefit their online reputation, it lends itself to commonly used digital PR tools and practices. Press releases, articles, social media posts, case studies, and more, are all examples of ideal places to include video and hugely enhance your results.
Your audience is far more likely to share and engage with press releases including a dynamic and interactive video than plain text, helping your campaigns to gain momentum and optimising the results achieved in terms of visibility.
While digital PR is centred around generating visibility and building a strong online profile for a brand, gaining backlinks to your site is also key. Without gaining links, you will miss out on the authority and rankings that can be achieved. Video allows you to take your SEO one step further, with videos ranking in their own right at the very top of the first page of search results. Using video in your articles therefore opens you up to more ranking opportunities and the chance to gain far more traction and visibility in search than content alone.
Planning is key if you want to create video content that adds to your content and states a clear message, rather than just being there for the sake of it. Your PR videos should be centred around what it is you want to achieve, in line with both the short term goal for your current campaigns and taking into account your brand’s long term KPI’s. While it's important that your videos are concise and don’t overload your audience by portraying too many points, the messages your brand is putting out there must all tie in together, especially while trying to strengthen your online presence.
On top of making sure that your video gets a clear message across and spurs your audience on to engage or share, it needs to be something your audience will enjoy watching. Think about the type of video content your target audience tend to consume.
There are a number of ways to utilise video and help your brand or clients or brand to gain invaluable coverage and attention online. For example, would your target audience react well to:
It’s essential to make sure you are appealing to the right types of people if you want your PR campaigns to take off.
While you don’t need to have a huge budget to record or create your own videos for PR purposes (a smartphone and microphone can suffice), there is a certain level of audio and video quality to aim for if you want to generate an audience and gain coverage from high-authority sites.
If your brand plans to utilise all that video PR has to offer and incorporate video into digital strategies for either you or your clients, making sure you have a high-quality setup is key. A reputable DSLR camera, external microphone and a decent set of artificial lighting can be all that’s required to record sit-down interviews or, for more dynamic videos, there is a huge range of camcorders or go-pros to suit varying budgets.
It’s important to dedicate sufficient time and resources to the recording and editing of your videos. With the aim of PR being to generate attention to your brand, your videos need to be powerful and pristine before you start using these to reach out. Once you have spread the word and shared your video content with journalists or publications, it’s too late to make any changes. Make sure your message is clear and your videos complement your strategy, or you can risk damaging the results of an entire campaign.
Despite video quickly becoming one of the most consumed forms of content online, many people actually watch their videos in situations or environments where they can’t have the volume turned up or on at all. For this reason, using captions to highlight the key points opens your videos up to a much wider audience and prevents the exclusion of those that might be watching their videos while out and about or at work.
To make sure you are using video to your full advantage as an integral part of your digital PR strategies, you need a video streaming and hosting platform that can allow you to do this securely and reliably. The Zidivo platform is aimed at brands or agencies, whether you are working on a singular campaign or need to be able to manage multiple video marketing strategies using one user-friendly interface.
It doesn’t matter what size of business you have, from solopreneur marketing professional to a huge corporate; there’s a way for you to get started with video marketing straight away. And you don’t need a big budget, though if you have one, of course, you can well and truly run with this. Many people simply start off filming with their mobile phone and then update their equipment and their budget for advertising as they grow. But whichever way you do it, it’s important that you start.
The reality is that a well scripted and produced video actually requires an enormous amount of work! Despite the fact videos may last less than a minute, they can take months to get right if you're new to video production. Not every business has the budget to bring in experienced professionals, so if you are considering writing your own video script, we've got some top tips to help you get the right results, as well as a handy step-by-step guide that ensures you don't miss anything out.
