I met Jonathan at Story 2012. We connected around the conversation of content marketing. His specialty is visual media. With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, visual media is on the rise. Given Jonathan’s expertise, I wanted him to weigh in on some best practices related to producing and publishing visual media.

The adage “Content is King” has never been more true. In this landscape of digital communication, sharing great content is imperative to the success of your brand, product, or mission.

Content can come in many different forms such as written words, images, video or podcasts. Each of these different types of media inherently have strengths and weaknesses. In order to build effective content strategy youʼll need leverage the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of any type of content you choose to use. When it comes to implementing video in your strategy here are three things to think about.

Show and Tell

Video is fundamentally a “show” medium. We generally make decisions based on emotion and then use the facts to justify what we already believe. Video is very effective at making emotional connections because what we believe is often shaped by what we see. So use video to tell a story and let the white paper communicate the data.

Donʼt judge a book by its cover

The reason we have sayings like this is because people do. They also make assumptions about the value of the content in a video based on the visual quality. With video, the more you spend the better it looks, sounds and hopefully is. When developing a budget, itʼs helpful to weigh things like longevity, importance of the messaging, and who the audience is.

Attention Deficit Website Disorder

Your viewer got to your content with one click and they can leave just as easily. In my experience, time for video online seems to travel at half the speed of reality. What I mean is that a one minute video on TV seems short but the same video on a webpage can be perceived as long. That means that the viewer is likely to click away if you are not connecting with them quickly. So go ahead and produce the five minute all encompassing story for your engaged viewers but then cut it up into bite sized pieces for the rest of your audience. They will appreciate being able to self-serve exactly what theyʼre looking for at any time.

What role does visual media play in your content marketing strategy? How has visual media helped you connect with more people?

JONATHAN PALMER is an award winning video Producer and Editor. He is currently the Creative Director at Red Zebra where he works hands on with clients developing marketing strategy and leading content development. You can see some of his work at www.redzebra.co.

 

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