We live in a world dominated by digital screens, they’re in our homes, in stores, on the street, on public transport, in planes, in our offices, and of course in our hands. So it is no surprise that video is one of the best ways to engage with an audience as there are so many options available to get their attention and drive engagement.
Video is social
Social media is dominated by videos, Instagram, once used only for photos is now populated by user videos and brand videos. Its IGTV offering has already proven to be extremely popular as has the Stories feature. In fact, video posts on Instagram receive 38% more engagement than image posts. Social media influencers on Instagram were fast to adapt to video and those who embraced it as part of their strategy saw their ‘Likes’ and engagement increase as a result.
Using video as part of a public relations strategy today is an essential consideration and there are so many opportunities to capture and create content from product launches to announcements, events, presentations, and speeches that can then be spread across multiple media outlets from broadcast to online.
One size doesn’t fit all
It’s important to not only understand your audience but also the platform you plan to post your video on and ensure you have already considered your strategy for how to shoot and edit your video content to suit each format. For example with IGTV you need to remember that it is a portrait (vertical) format, whereas with Facebook you opt for either landscape (horizontal) or square and with YouTube landscape works best.
Team effort
Most of us are carrying a powerful video tool in our hands each and every day, our smartphones. So it is now much easier for the PR team to capture some behind the scenes and making of video content while your main video team are focussed on the prime content. Skilling up some team members to competently shoot video is not hard, arm them with a few add-ons for their phones and have a specialist give them a few lessons and you’ll have additional footage to fill some gaps to release on social media as either ‘behind the scenes’ or ‘making of’ content.
So when your planning your next PR campaign it makes sense to see how video can be incorporated and used to maximum effect.
Joseph Henry is the founder and CEO of Vivaldi Public Relation Agency.
He is an expert communicator and influencer who has been helping leading companies achieve their strategic objectives in Asia for the last 20 years.
