Video is the #1 type of content that marketers want to be doing more of, if they had more resources to make it happen. Businesses of all sizes, across industries and segments want to get in on the action—and no wonder, considering the higher audience engagement levels that come with video.

In this panel discussion with Brightcove and FS Investments, you’ll learn tips from video experts and creative leaders on how your teams can create more video content without sacrificing the quality.

Transcript

Tess:

Welcome to our webinar. Today we’re going to be talking about how we scale video creation efforts without sacrificing quality. So, I’m really excited for this discussion. I’m going to get started, and we’ll just jump straight into it. Like I just said, we’re really excited about this session. I’m Tess from WordPress VIP, and I lead the content team here. I’m responsible for various video projects, but you are not here to hear from me. You’re here to hear from our wonderful panelists who are going to be here talking about producing more marketing videos.

So, we’ve got three experts in video. We have Melissa Venditti, a senior video producer at FS Investments. So Melissa has a background in producing, editing, and videography across a unique range of video formats including digital, social video content, on air, digital promotions, live event coverage, educational content, digital signage, basically the whole gamut.

We also have Adam Jensen, Director of Broadcast and Digital Content at Brightcove. Adam is a socially conscious creator, media theorist, and veteran of the streaming entertainment industry, very exciting. Then we have David Bowman, our design director here at WordPress VIP. Prior to leading design at WordPress VIP, David worked in design agencies. He also blogs, and he creates a lot of videos about his family’s journeys in their self-converted bus.

So, just a quick note before we get started about the GoTo Webinar platform. If the presentation is too big for you and you prefer to see the speakers larger, you can minimize the presentation. You can tweak that on your side. You’ll also find some other parts of the interface like a question box, and we’ll have time for some Q and A at the end. So please put your questions into that box during the session, and we’ll be able to get to them at the end.

So, that’s all the introductions out of the way. Again thank you everybody for joining us, and just to set up our topic a little bit further. In our recent Content Matters Report, we found that basically everyone wants to be creating more video, but many people feel like it’s really resource intensive. So, this here is a graphic from our report.

I really love this report because it shows video as this kind of Everest. This kind of huge mountain to climb, and it speaks to the level of resources that people feel that they need in order to create it. So when you’re looking at the other forms, you’ve got reports, and ebooks, and things like that, and you just need this writing and designing equipment. If we’re talking about this mountain climbing metaphor, I’m going to take it there.

So to summit this video, we need special boots. We need clothing. We need breathing apparatus for the thinner atmosphere at the top, and we need a guide to get us there. So it costs more and it takes longer than other forms of content, but today’s session will bust that myth. So, we’ll talk about real actionable steps that you can take to create more videos with fewer resources and not lose sight of quality along the way. So I’m not saying that we’re going to be helicoptering to the top of Everest, but I’m just saying that we’re going to be making it a little bit easier to get there.

So before we jump in, we have a couple of polls today. So our first audience poll, what we’d really love to know from you is what are your goals with video this year? So we’ve got a few options here in the poll, and I’m just going to leave it up for a few moments to give you a chance to answer.

While you’re doing that, thank you to Elisa for reminding everybody that you can access our full Content Matters Report in the handout section in GoTo Webinar. So if you’d like to see more amazing charts just like that mountain one, feel free to jump in there to the handout section to do that. Okay. So I’m going to leave the poll up for a couple more seconds, but get your answers in because we’re going to close it now in a sec.

All right, let’s close the poll. Okay. So, here our results. So it looks like a lot of people just want to create more video content, but there’s definitely a good portion of people who would like to improve efficiency and improve the quality of that video content. So, that’s really interesting and leads us into our next topic for the panelists or our first topic for the panelists to discuss.

I want to start this at a high level. Even when you’re summiting Everest, you might have different goals. There’s different camps you can get to. So I’m really interested to know, what are each of our panelists video content goals, and how if they fit in with the goals of our audience as well? So, let’s start with you Melissa. I can stop talking for a little bit, for sure. What are your goals for video content this year?

Melissa Venditti:

For FS Investments, it’s really like any good brand, we really want to raise brand awareness. We’re a relatively new investment house, only been around since 2007. We’re going up against behemoths like Bloomberg and TD Ameritrade, and we’re really trying to get ourselves out there as subject matter experts. Also, video for recruiting purposes show how great it is to work here, show what the benefits to employees too. So, it’s twofold. It’s both internal and external.

We really want to build ourselves as a brand, build our figureheads as a brand. We have several advisors and market analysts who are kind of the face of our company. We’re trying to promote them as subject matter experts and really just elevating our brand, getting our name out there and providing education, showing what can be done both on the advisor side and the investor side, and really honing in on our audiences and figuring out what they want and giving that to them.

Tess:

Awesome. Adam, what about you at Brightcove?

Adam Jensen:

So at Brightcove, we’re really focused on empowering creators, marketers, brands, really anybody who wants to work with video to share information or to connect with audiences to give them that platform and give them the tools they need to go out and do that. So we like to think of ourselves as the experts within video and within video technology, so that you can go be the expert you need to be in your specific sector.

For us this year, our content goals are really focused around how can we empower people by showing them the options that are available for the different types of video creation, the different outlets for distribution, and the different ways that you can tell a story or remix existing messages and materials. So, we’re very much kind of pulling back the curtain and showing you how to create really good video by creating them ourselves.

Tess:

Okay, cool. David, what about you?

David Bowman:

I feel like I should be asking you this question since my team works with your team to-

Tess:

Right.

David Bowman:

… make our video content. At least from our perspective, I think that our kind of video goals and video strategy this year is it hangs pretty close to the goals and strategy of WordPress. WordPress as a technology is really focused on democratizing the ability to publish and making it so that anybody can share an idea really easily, traditionally in words.

WordPress is traditionally a blogging platform, but with our video content, we really want to open that up in a similar way to our team. So providing tools, so that our subject matter experts on our teams. We’ve got a lot of smart folks on our team that we really want to get their ideas out into the ecosystem that surrounds WordPress. That’s kind of the goal, is to provide them with the tools so that they can go and get their ideas out in a new format.

Tess:

Awesome. Well, I’m glad that we are here talking today about how we’re going to achieve all of those goals. So speaking about getting that video out and making sure that lots of people have access to it, I want to dig into this idea of agility. I think that for creatives, at least I know for me. That when I think about putting video in the hands of more people and being agile with video creation, I get nervous.

I get nervous about our brand, about quality, about making sure that we’re all meeting a bar of consistency before we put out scrappy videos, I guess out there. So I’m really interested to know how others are thinking about this, and just how to make sure that there’s that governance, that quality products being put out.

So Adam, what are your tips on maintaining this quality and still being agile with that video creation, and getting more video content out like 65% of our audience want to today?

Adam Jensen:

It’s an incredibly important place to focus on, especially given how much more content I think our audience wants to be creating. What I like to say is pre-planning and pre-production is going to be your best friend. The more time and effort you can put into thinking holistically about the message you want to send first off, and then the ultimate audience you’re trying to connect with. You then can do a really good job of crafting the story to fit the ultimate audience and the platform they’re going to be on to consume it, and then therefore what do you need to do with the actual production of your video to make sure it serves that purpose.

So a lot of times starting with the actual message you want to send, and then maybe thinking about, back to your really great graph of the different mountain ranges towards the Everest of video. What content and messaging have you already created that’s going to bring you past that summit higher up towards the video, so you can get there quicker? So I think that’s one of the things to think about is you’ve already done a lot of the legwork, if you’ve already started the company and you’re already marketing the company. Start there, and then connect directly with an audience.

Tess:

Awesome. Nice job weaving it back to the chart as well.

Adam Jensen:

[inaudible 00:10:34].

Tess:

Melissa, what about you? What tips do you have here?

Melissa Venditti:

Start small. Honestly, I’ve been a one-woman band for the majority of my career. You can find that white unicorn of somebody who shoots, and produces, and edits. There’s a lot of very simple tools out there that you can use to be that person. Honestly, the easiest one is your phone. It shoots in 4K. You’re not really going to need 4K most of the time, but you have high quality there. So I go on Instagram, go on TikTok, see what other people are doing.

Imitation in my eyes is the highest form of flattery. You get really great ideas, and why you don’t have to rip it off verbatim from them. You can really take that and make it your own. Then once you use those smaller apps like InShot, or Vimeo, or all those editing software, even within TikTok or within Instagram, you can build on that. Then, you can start using Final Cut Pro, which is actually a great bridge into other things.

I use Premier, and getting into that higher quality stuff. So, just getting started is the hardest part. You got to start somewhere, and then you can take it and build it from there.

Tess:

Cool. So just not being afraid of putting out things that you’ve shot on your phone, I guess?

Melissa Venditti:

It’s okay.

Tess:

Getting over that.

Melissa Venditti:

Others do it. We wouldn’t have YouTube. We wouldn’t have TikTok. We wouldn’t have Instagram, if people were afraid to shoot with their phones. They’re huge, so it makes so much sense.

Tess:

For sure. David, what about you? What are your tips here?

David Bowman:

I feel like I’m just going to say a lot of what has just been said. That I think my advice like Adam would just be to do the thinking work upfront. So if you’re going to embark on any content creation exercise, you got to make sure that you’ve got something worth saying and that it’s going to do what you want it to do from a business perspective.

So sitting down and saying, “Okay, cool. Who’s my audience? How do I want to reach them? What do they care about?” Going out and doing that work, doing that research to just understand what you want to say and what unique thing you can bring to the conversation, that to me is 90% of the work. If you can do that and come up with something good to say, then the format and the production value matters so much less.

There are so many examples of this like Melissa was saying, that you just video shot on your phone. Look at influencers that are now being paid by brands for their audiences because they’ve attracted audiences that like these vertical phone videos that they’ve been shooting. People are making stuff that is garnering such an audience that brands are now paying them for that audience, which is an indication to me that this line between a brand and an individual content creator just doesn’t matter as much anymore.

As we’re approaching that at WordPress VIP, I take an attitude of like, “Tools, not rules.” I come from a branding background, and so the brand consistency is paramount. That’s what was drilled into me in school. Now that we, out of necessity have to democratize the means of production, we got to send the software to all of our content creators, making sure those tools are good and that those tools are going to present as many good options, and as few bad options as possible is what we’re doing.

So, consistency comes from making a nice kit of little graphics that folks can use or providing them with a good tool that really lets them create the kind of video that you want them to create. That’s where it’s going to have a nice positive building effect where folks like using the tool, and the kind of videos they like making with that tool or the kind of videos you want them to make.

That depends a lot on the brand, on where you work and what kind of video you’re interested in making. We’re in a golden age for this stuff. There are so many cool accessible tools that we can use. It’s pretty sweet.

Tess:

I think that’s a really good point because something like TikTok, you’ve got those guardrails there of their editing platform that you can only do certain things with it, but that means that the output is consistently pretty decent. So I think what’s really striking to me on this topic, what all of you have touched on is the importance of pre-planning and having the strategy. Because when you have that strategy to fall back on, we see this all the time in our content creation. You need to have that foundation of the strategy before you even get started, and once you have that, it has the same playbook for what they’re creating.

So to your point David of like, “It almost doesn’t matter what the production values are, what the output is like, as long as it’s coming back to that strategy, connecting with that same audience.” It also really helps to provide fool-proof, I guess tools that have those guardrails. Similarly to a website when you’ve got your theme, and you can only select from certain color options and things like that when you’re creating.

So tools I think, everybody who does video loves to geek out about tools. I know I do. So, it’s kind of a meaty topic when we love talking shop as video creators. So we mentioned about putting these guardrails in for tools. We also mentioned that we don’t want to get too highfaluting about our production values. So if this is the golden age for tools, what are the best tools and services that you’re using to make better videos faster? David, I’ll go to you first since you mentioned tools just before.

David Bowman:

I think if I’m geeking out on tools, I use a couple of things. So I grew up on Adobe Creative Suite, so if I need to do heavy video editing, I use Adobe Premiere now. Surprisingly, I didn’t expect this that as I matured as a designer and a creator, that I would start using more consumer level tools. I found myself using Adobe’s mobile apps a lot more.

I really like apps. I get a lot of value out of apps like GoPro’s editing app that does some cool algorithmic editing for you already, that gets your cut halfway there and you can do it on your phone. Being able to edit where I’m capturing this stuff really makes things efficient. Also it’s interesting, if you’re coming from the streaming industry probably have opinions on this, but I’ve been taking a lot of cues from streamers.

I use Zoom all the time. I record Zoom videos of myself talking, like screen sharing and stuff. I do that all the time. If I just want to get something out and like, “Hey, this just happened. I want to talk about it.” That’s the easiest way to do it, and it’s a low production value but it’s super easy. Get it out super fast.

There’s more complex stuff you can get into there but on a base level like pop open Zoom, record a video. It does it for you right there. The quality is not great but it gets it out.

Adam Jensen:

It’s a great point, David. I really like that. I think that’s something to really think about with tools is you can start very basic with tools and that’s a great place to start. As we said, you have your phone. You have an internet connection, and then you have these apps that already exist for distributing your videos and also creating your videos. That’s a nice place to start.

What’s really great about starting there is it allows you to stay authentic to your message. The better that you can stay authentic, the more you can utilize these tools to scale and to do larger things. So, I always like to say that you can start with your phone. You can then start to explore things like open source technology. So I’m a big fan of OBS software like Handbrake that allows you to do captioning, even changing your audio formats, your video formats.

All of that can be super helpful to get you to the point of where you’re actually wanting to scale and maybe look at something like a Brightcove, where we’re providing tools at a larger level for mid-scale, large scale companies, but it takes a place to start. A lot of times, cutting your teeth on these open source software or just exploring what’s available on your phone is some of the best knowledge sharing you can do for yourself and your organization.

Tess:

Nice. Melissa, I’ll give you an opportunity to geek out about tools as well. What do you like?

Melissa Venditti:

I’m a big fan of Adobe Suite too. There’s just so much interconnectivity between all the programs and everything. In the past couple of years, I’ve really delved into After Effects, and I’ve become a huge fan of templates. While I’d love to start make a lot of that from scratch, a lot of times I just don’t have the time for it. There are so many great marketplaces out there where it can be, if you have the most minimal knowledge of After Effects and programs like that and you want to really get into the heavier stuff and the more complicated. Not complicated necessarily but the more pro programs, just dug Envato Market and Motion Array.

There are so many wonderful ones that you literally just change the color, plug in it a little bit of text, and it looks like you’ve spent $5,000 hiring out an After Effects artist to create this for you and gives your brand a real professional look. Even if the quality of the video you shot isn’t that great, if the graphics are good, it just elevates it that much more.

In terms of apps, I’ve used InShot. I’ve used Vimeo. I’m going to try out GoPro because that sounds really cool. Of course the Adobe Suite, all the Adobe programs are super great. Even within TikTok and Instagram, you can do a lot. I’ve been following a lot of influencers now that do their own essential transitions and stuff within while they’re shooting.

So say they’re walking along the street, they’re holding camera along the ground and they pan up. Then the shoot starts, and then they pan down again. Then the next shot starts, they’re coming back up. So, you don’t have to create that. You don’t have to know how to create that in post, you can do that within your in production while you’re doing it, as long as you have that plan ahead. Like everyone’s been saying, having that plan, and having that storyboard, and having that idea of what you want to do will also elevate it because you’re prepared, and you know what you need to get so you don’t have to do that editing later.

Caption-wise too, Adobe is great for that too but YouTube has that already embedded. So there’s a lot of places you can add in captions, which is another huge component to it because it not only gives accessibility for people who have hearing issues or whatever the case may be, but just for somebody who can’t have audio. Somebody’s sleeping. You’re commuting. You’re sneaking a TikTok video at work. You want to keep that sound off, so you want to keep those captions on.

Tess:

I love that. I think I use captions all the time. I’m so happy that videos are now standard with captions because I’m often around the kids or something like that, and I don’t want to be playing audio from my phone. So I’m also interested in, as we’re talking about captions. There are services that will write captions for you as well, if you’re not liking the auto-generated ones as well as those tools. I’m interested in services that you can access like that, like writing captions, or music, or those kinds of things.

Adam, do you have any tips on those kinds of subscriptions to music libraries or anything else like that, that you’ve used on top of tools?

Adam Jensen:

So, I think it’s interesting. If you go and search, you’ll find a lot of different libraries that are out there. I’ve used everything from sound crate too. When looking for imagery and visuals, Getty Images, Shutterstock. Once again, there’s also a lot of really great open source public domain libraries that have been built up as well that can help you find different elements to really make your videos pop.

So, I think that’s something to think about. As you move past tools, you start to then move more into what is that creative flare that’s once again coming back from your planning and the authentic message you’re sending. That you then can tap into whether that’s libraries, or I would really encourage people to start thinking more about the creator communities that you are already a part of. Whether you’re on social media, you’re already working with these entities.

By working with creatives to fill in the gaps where your plan and your tools don’t fully meet is a great way to not only upscale the value of the videos you’re making, but it increases your branding, increases your connection with creator communities, and it levels up your whole community of creators yourselves. So, it’s like all tides are lifted by the ship.

Tess:

I love that. A good way to keep the consistency as well as you scale, I guess is to work with say the same composer or something and have them do various pieces for you in different videos. Before we move on, Melissa, David, anything else that you wanted to add on this topic?

Melissa Venditti:

There’s a lot. There are so many great music libraries if you’re just willing to start small. Envato Market again, is a great one where they have AudioJungle. Epidemic Sound is one I’ve used before. There are so many. Even with them adding sound effects to your video, adding a whoosh to your logo as it comes in, or as you’re transitioning, gives a depth to video that also elevates the quality too that you don’t even realize.

Giving it that sound depth and almost that sound design that you don’t need any professional to do, just throw something on there, make sure it’s not blown out and make crazy loud and knocking anybody else out, but giving it that depth and that element to make it more professional.

David Bowman:

I think maybe just note on hardwares. We haven’t really talked about hardware very much. I use three cameras, I have three levels. I’ve got my iPhone, which is probably the one that gets used the most. I’ve got a GoPro that gets used a little bit more if I want to do something that wants to be moving around, needs a little bit more like a camera that stabilizes like GoPro does. Then I’ve got a Sony mirrorless camera that I use if I ever want to do something nice.

These cameras, you can get used ones and they are so accessible now that you can get a full frame sensor mirrorless camera that can shoot 4K video, and you can get near pro level. If you’re just shooting interviews and stuff, pick one up on eBay and get a decent lens from it, and you can do really pro stuff when you want to do it. The tools have become quite accessible as far as hardware goes, which is cool.

So, you got options. You’d be more agile or if you really want to up the production value a bit, it’s a lot easier to do it now as a small team or an individual. There’s also audio. I feel like maybe we’ll talk about audio later but audio is a whole another thing too like capturing good audio. For that, I have a couple of mics that I use in different scenarios.

Tess:

Audio is definitely a big one. Audio is more important than video really-

David Bowman:

It is.

Tess:

… in terms of quality, right?

David Bowman:

Yeah.

Tess:

Bad audio quality [inaudible 00:26:49].

David Bowman:

People will forget bad video before they forget bad audio.

Tess:

Right, for sure. Cool. Well, I loved geeking out of that tools and thank you for bringing the hardware conversation in too. So, everybody wants to spend more money on hardwares. I know I do. I’m constantly building up my library of cameras. Okay. So, I have another audience poll to come to next. So, everybody get ready. What we’re interested in is the actual creation of videos, so do you outsource video creation or do you have an in-house team?

The next topic that we’re going to be talking about is how to scale these video creation efforts. So, we’re interested in what’s happening with our audience. We’ve got some answers coming in now. Thank you for that. I’ll leave it up for just a few more moments. So whether you outsource your video creation or you have an in-house creative team, still getting some responses in. So, I’ll give it just a few more moment. Okay. We can close the poll, so let’s see what everybody said.

All right, so most people are using a mix of both. Probably not surprising there because you do need a few different people or there might be different projects, but looks like more people have in-house creative teams rather than outsourcing, which is very interesting. Okay. So let’s now lead into the same topic with our panelists, and it’s all about how to scale.

So we’ve talked about how important it is to plan, and the tools that you’re using, and making sure that more creators get their hands on those tools while still maintaining its consistency. If we’re all wanting to create more videos, just wanting to do more, then how can we make sure that we’re scaling most effectively? So Melissa, I’m going to hand over to you for this one first.

Melissa Venditti:

I’m a big believer in doing what you can and hiring out the rest. I know what I don’t know. For the sake of time, and expense, and everything, sometimes it’s just better to bring in somebody who knows what they’re doing. We do some educational animated videos here and about Bitcoin, and about different financial terms and explaining them. It’s wonderful YouTube videos, but I’m not an animator. So, we brought in somebody to help along in the process.

They bring an element of quality to it that I wouldn’t be able to do. They also do it a lot faster than I can. So, it’s a balance. You have to know what you’re able to do, what you’re not able to do. Finding freelancers can be easy, that easier than you might think. Upwork, Fiverr has wonderful animators, and artists, and editors from all over the world, all over the place. You may even find a connection within your city and start using somebody on a regular basis, but it’s a great way to connect with creatives anywhere.

Tess:

Awesome. Adam, do you have anything else? What other tips do you have about making sure that you can scale video creation?

Adam Jensen:

Well, I’d say first off, I’m happy to see as you mentioned the mix results in our poll because I think that is really important. Melissa was saying, it’s great to bring in an expert in something outside of what you are doing so that it lifts up what you’re doing, but it also increases your community. You’re also able to transfer knowledge. I think when thinking about your internal team, the value of an editor, and even just as the one hire for your video team, an editor can do wonders and magic. They don’t get enough credit for how amazing they are. Well done, Melissa.

I’d say the other thing too, to think about an editor. An editor is also a great connector to all these other amazing things they can do than that other people can do too. So, they know a lot of people within their community. They also have touched other things as they’ve had to get through the editing process. So, that’s always really wonderful.

The other thing too to think about scaling is when you find something you like, templatize it, and make a bunch of it. It’s okay to make a bunch of something that works. You’ll know when it stops working because you’re not going to get the same engagement. So I think that’s the other thing too, to think about that. Once you find something that works, just keep doing it.

Melissa Venditti:

One, it creates and have some efficiency too somewhat. If you’re doing the same thing but the topic varies or something like that, and you create a series. Then, people can come back to it on a regular cadence. You create like you have that content there already just from one video and then you just build off of that.

Adam Jensen:

If you’re going to bring in an outside creative consultant or help, giving them a template just allows them to do so much more. They don’t have to worry about your branding potentially. They don’t have to worry about certain creative choices, they would’ve had to make on the fly. You back to that sort of pre-planning. If you can plan out a template, you can then move much quicker to scale.

David Bowman:

That’s kind of a lot of the strategy we’ve been taking is not forcing content creators to make design decisions because it just slows it down and causes diversions. So in making templates and tools, that’s our goal is to just help folks focus on the content that they’re making.

A heavy plus one to the value of an editor. I think we take a blended approach to our content creation too, our video creation. The most valuable people in that process have been, we found a really good editor. Finding someone that you can just hand a pile of video and they come back with something cogent that’s like, “Oh, cool. I pulled a story out of this heap of stuff I collected,” that is gold. That is so valuable to have, whether it’s someone that you are contracting or someone on your team, that’s the most valuable player in all of this if we’re talking about staffing.

What you were saying Melissa about, like we’ve all been talking about this, about just planning upfront and coming up with good ideas. All of my favorite branded video content is stuff that is heavily templatized and is just a really good idea. I think back to the earlier YouTube days of blend text. Will it Blend videos, does anybody remember these?

Those who don’t know, it’s a blender company. They make blenders and they launched a video series in the early days of YouTube called Will It Blend, where they just blended random stuff with their blenders. It’s like, “Let’s blend rocks. Let’s blend a phone. Let’s blend this.”

Melissa Venditti:

Let’s blend a phone, yeah.

David Bowman:

It was so dumb and so entertaining, and they could do those forever because it’s just stick a camera in front of this guy with a blender and he blends it. The power of that concept made so much content for them, and that’s the power of some good thinking and concept being upfront. Yeah, that’s so valuable.

Adam Jensen:

David, I love that example too because one of the things we necessarily haven’t talked about though, is a good way to scale is try to create evergreen content that also can fuel this topical viral moment. I think that the blender, that’s great because I’m now like, “I forgot about those. Yes, I know what I’m doing on my lunch break.”

Melissa Venditti:

The hot sauce when everyone tests out the wings-

Adam Jensen:

Oh yeah, hot one.

Melissa Venditti:

… progressively hotter. The meme ability with that and the shareability with just those sound bites, it’s just multipurpose. It’s amazing. It’s just so funny every time. You don’t need … Sorry.

David Bowman:

So ad agencies have been doing this forever, where you come up with a wacky concept that you’re going to hit your brand to. Now, I feel like the weight of coming up with that stuff and executing it is shifting a lot from external agencies to internal content teams, where it’s previously would’ve gone to an ad agency for some viral campaign thing that would have a video component. Now it’s like, “Oh no, that’s what our content team’s going to do now,” which is cool.

It’s hard. It’s hard to come up with a real winner but also fun. I feel like that’s the funnest work that we all want to do is being able to come up with cool stuff like that.

Tess:

Yeah, for sure. It’s interesting how this, we’re harking back to the same themes again and again. So, we’ve got how important it is to pre-plan. So if you’re going to be, I guess when we’re thinking about scaling, we’re thinking about where do we put our efforts? How do we prioritize the small team that we have? So we’re talking about spending. It feels almost like a disproportionate amount of time on the planning is really going to save you a lot later.

Then, also in that pre-production phase is creating those templates. So having designers, having maybe motion artists, something like that, creating those templates is also going to help you to scale eventually. Then at the other end, having the editor to put it all together. So it’s almost like we’re not spending as much time on the shooting as we thought we would, as long as you’ve got that concept is really solid.

I just selfishly have my own question for all of you that you’ve all mentioned in some shape or form about using subject matter experts or interviewing people that are part of your brand, or part of your company, maybe the C-suite, something like that. When we’re thinking about that shooting portion of it, how do you think about using subject matter experts in terms of how they might be on video? Do you train them for video? Is there more on the interviewer to tease out the good sound bites from them? I’m just curious about that everybody’s using. Everyone wants to use people from their team.

Then the other component of that, is that with so many of us being remote, are you finding that it’s effective enough to do that over Zoom or something like that, or would you suggest flying to them and videoing them in person? Melissa, I’m going to throw this one to you. I know this is a bit of a curveball, but I’m just really curious of how you’re thinking about the subject matter expert on video sort of thing?

Melissa Venditti:

Well, we’ve all had to transition into remote shooting in the past couple of years anyway. So, this is a prime example of when content over quality is major. We did a lot on Zoom. The quality varied greatly. Sometimes it was pretty horrible. I would ask people a lot of times if they had an iPhone. Filming on iPhone or Zoom, those were our two options because that was the most accessible to us.

One of my projects in the past couple of years had huge success with just, it was for a medical conference and there was three surgeons who were talking about organ transplant within Covid during the Covid era. Their video promoting their session is only one minute long. It was the three of them talking about it on a Zoom video. I cut it together, put the logo of the conference up there, and it just blew up. Nobody cared about the quality. Nobody cared about that their audio wasn’t perfect. It was the content is what brought everybody.

I was on the Zoom with them. I directed them a little bit. They know what they’re talking about. They’re the subject matter experts. They know what they’re talking about. They have their presentation ready to go. So, I didn’t have to give them the too much in that regard but helping them set up their camera, not having a ton of space up here, try to have some decent lighting, don’t shoot in front of a window. You have a set of best practices that you’d normally give people in order to help them look the best that they can.

If somebody’s doing a standup and you just want them talk to camera, smile, please just smile. It’ll make you look better, and it makes everything better when you smile. Just little things like that, that either you learn over the years. You learn or watching other people’s videos that can elevate even the simplest shot video.

Tess:

Awesome. Adam or David, does either of you want to jump in with anything else there?

Adam Jensen:

I would just say that you’ve tapped into something that is I think a current pain point or I’d like to say opportunity to really do something cool. I can say for us, we’re experimenting with how can we connect the message with the quality of video that we need. So really saying, “Okay, this can just be a Zoom. This can just be a templated video,” and starting from there. Then the other part too, is there’s a great opportunity because we are all dispersed and that’s not going to necessarily change. Just starting to think about how can you up that game? How can you revolutionize that?

One of the things we talk a lot about with events for in particular is an event no longer has to be live, live. It’s okay to be pre-recorded. It’s okay to even let that be shown, especially if it’s about the expertise and message you’re sending, that’s the most important part. As Melissa was saying, if the message is this will help you save lives, you’ll deal with audio and video quality that’s maybe not to what you watched on Netflix the night before because the goal isn’t the same.

David Bowman:

I think maybe the one thing I’d add just on a tactical level. Some things that we’ve done as we’ve been reckoning with this problem of how the heck do you get good video when everybody is working in their bedrooms now? A couple of things we’ve done. So we shoot a lot of video with our CEO, and so got him a decent camera and was like, “Go out. Pick up a decent camera that can shoot decent video.” Actually, we’re at my desk where all of my stuff is. I would suggest-

Tess:

Show and tell.

David Bowman:

Pick up one of these.

Adam Jensen:

Yes, those are great.

David Bowman:

This is an HDMI input thing, and you can get fancy ones of these that are expensive. This was like $20 on Amazon, and this just lets you plug a nice camera. It lets me plug in this super cool Sony camera to my computer and use it as my webcam for Zoom. So if we’re going to do a Zoom recorded thing, you can level it up in a big way by just taking sometimes the camera you already have. If you’re into photography and have a decent video camera, pick up a little adapter and an HDMI cord, plug it into your computer and you can have depth of field. You can get really, really up level your video.

What we’ve done when we’ve done more produced videos is you can hook it up like that, and then art direct the person through Zoom. So you can be on the Zoom call and be like, “Cool. Move here, move there,” help them set up the camera and then have them record locally to the camera card when they actually do it. So you get high quality video, and then a Zoom recording as a backup, and you are there in the split screen thing directing them. That’s how we’ve successfully done it which is like a bit of a trick, but if you’ve got to do it, there are some stuff you can do. There are some things that can help that be better.

Tess:

Awesome. I’m glad I asked. So to wrap up the presentation part and the discussion part, I wanted to recap some of the key takeaways, and after this we’ll go to questions. We’ve got some great questions that have been coming in. So just to recap what we’ve talked about, pre-production is really key. So taking the time to plan allows you to ensure that your message is clear.

Video is a great way to repurpose content. So looking at the other content that you’ve produced, those foothills of Everest and see how a video could enhance those or how you can reuse those as video. Watching what others are doing, to Melissa’s point that imitation is the highest form of flattery. So you can spark your creative ideas by watching what others are doing, and across all different platforms.

Using templates to speed up creation is a great way to scale your efforts. After Effects templates can save a lot of time. There’s also templates just even in TikTok or Instagram, things like that. Really, just your message is the most important thing. People really care about your brand and what your brand is saying. Hopefully the audio quality is decent, we’ve talked about how important audio is over video.

When Melissa was giving the example of the surgeons earlier, even if the audio quality is not that great, it’s really about capturing that content, getting the message across to your audience. There’s a couple of recent examples of presidents and prime ministers who are just speaking to the people via a casual video on their phone. That’s just been really effective because it’s about connecting with your audience and about the message that you’re giving.

Then the final one, just start creating. If you have a phone, if you have an internet connection, you can be a video creator. There’s just so much that you can learn and gain just from starting. I think there’s this barrier, especially when we’re doing this for work that we think, “Well, it has to be really good. It has to be just like I’m seeing on Netflix or something like that.”

I think we need to break down those barriers because even if we’re a business creating videos for other businesses, we’re all just people and we all are consuming video all the time. So, we’re just used to it. We’re used to this variety of content. So just ask yourself, what are you waiting for? So I love that as a takeaway at the end of our presentation there, and we’re going to go to questions.

So quick switch here of my window, so I can see all the questions that have been coming in. Okay. Panelists, please just jump in if you want to answer this question. I don’t always know the best person to direct it to. So our first one is, with social media being so important for outreach and keeping customers engaged, how can we go about creating more video content that leads to actionable results on the website leading to ROI while still maintaining a presence on social media?

So that endless question of how does this video actually contribute to my business’s bottom line? Does anyone want to talk about that? So, leading to these actionable results with video.

Adam Jensen:

I’m happy to start and just kind of say, I think the first thing to think about is with social media in the same way that you’re thinking about your website. You’re investing in being on a platform, and you need to follow certain rules and standards for platforms. A lot of times, social media if you’re on there, you need to keep that page and that feed very well groomed, meaning you need a lot of videos. So that may lead you to a strategy where you want to be more authentic, you want to be quicker, and it’s not about producing larger quality.

You may then think of your website as your repository where you want someone to sit back and dig into the on-demand experience and less the flow and stream that is our social media habits.

Melissa Venditti:

I think social media is a lot more about brand awareness. People aren’t going to organically just find you on Google. It’s impossible. So you want to keep like social media is important there, so that people are going to find you and then you build that interest through the video. You build that interest through that content that you have on your site.

It can be written but make sure you add visuals. Add photos too, if videos out of the question. From there, you can link to your site. You can link to different parts of your site. You can gradually guide them over to your actual website. Check out the analytics if your videos are hosted on YouTube. See where people are coming from.

Facebook has analytics, Google Analytics, there’s lots of different … It can get scary. It can get complicated, but there’s very high level stuff, just where they’re coming from and what they’re doing there. There’s Google Tag Managers. There’s lots of different social tools that you can build upon to find out what your ROI is for all these videos, and that’s very important.

It’s a good place to know. A good place to start to see where these people are coming from to know what their thought process is and how you can get them back to your site.

David Bowman:

I think I would agree that, that brand awareness is probably what video on social media is best at. As someone who’s worked as an influencer and content creator, that’s where I’ve had the most successful collaborations with brands before is when their goals are brand awareness. We just want our name and our brand out there associated with stuff, or if we’re making content, it’s to build up our brand and our point of view. Not necessarily a hard drive to a landing page, at least in the categories that I’ve worked in.

That I think varies a lot, industry to industry. Being super clear on what your goal with that video is upfront, where it’s like, “I want this to promote an event, and I want everyone to go to that event.” So you can do stuff design-wise and technically to make that happen, or just being clear about the fact that this is for brand awareness and we’re not going to measure the success of this by click and conversion rates.

We’re going to measure the success of this by how engaged people are in the content. How much this is getting shared? What conversations this is starting? Just so that you can prove its value because I think there’s value on both sides.

Tess:

Cool. We have quite a few questions coming in, so I’m going to try and get through as many as we can. As part of the pre-planning process, is the engagement measurability part of that process? If so, are they unique differences that companies should look for versus other channels? So I think what this is saying is when you are doing this pre-planning, are you looking at the engagement of various videos that you’ve created in the past to think about that pre-planning, and should you look at things differently across different channels? Anyone want to grab that one?

Melissa Venditti:

I think it’s definitely. I think a big thing is producing video for the platform that it’s going to be hosted on. So obviously if you’re on YouTube, you’re going to be shooting like the wider stuff, so turn your camera sideways. YouTube is great for how to videos and general education videos. Social is like social being, Instagram, Facebook, it’s a little bit more entertainment, a little bit more lifestyle based. So, you want to have those square videos. You want them to be short and snappy.

A lot of it can be repurposed for multiple platforms. Formatting can be really big. Obviously, you don’t want a 16:9 video taking up a lot. It’s not going to take up as much real estate on your screen on a Facebook or Instagram. You want to prop the sides of it, turn it a little bit, which can easily be done in any of these apps that we have online.

If you really want to cater to a certain audience, you have to know what that audience wants. So like I said, YouTube is more how-tos and education. It’s a little bit more entertaining, a little more snackable, shareable on Instagram and Facebook. So, you have to keep that in mind depending on what platform you’re really trying to focus on.

Adam Jensen:

I would just add. I think it’s incredibly important in the planning phase to benchmark, even if you end up throwing that benchmark out. At some point in the process, it’s good to begin somewhere because you can then always grow from there. So, I think that’s one thing to think about.

Then as Melissa was saying, especially on social media, you’re going to have all these different formats. These different ways of telling the same story and message. Make sure in your planning, you’re getting the return on investment you need because that can become a very large resource suck in the post-production process of marrying all of these different assets together to tell the story on the platform you need to be on.

David Bowman:

Plus, a thousand to just focus more. I think if you try and make one video and then successfully deploy it to every platform you have access to, you will be sad. You will be doing a lot of production work for marginal gains at best. If you look and say LinkedIn rocks, like we’re killing it on LinkedIn and YouTube is super powerful for us. Just do those two and make content that’s tailored to working well on those platforms, that will in my experience will be better, especially with limited resources.

Adam Jensen:

Then the other thing too is just to say a lot of people build social presences, and they are available to help you with your brand. They’re called influencers, and they’re a major tool and resource into spreading the word and getting it out there. So don’t be shy, go talk to them. That’s what they’re there for.

David Bowman:

You can buy good video content. You don’t have to make it all yourself. You can place your brand in other people’s content.

Adam Jensen:

That’s a great way to test the waters as well. See what’s there or be very targeted in. I don’t need to have a full social media present, but I need this audience at this time to know this message.

Tess:

Awesome. We’ve got a few quick fire questions about tools that came in during the tools part of the discussion. So audio is super important for storytelling, and a phone unfortunately doesn’t give you good audio quality. So any quick tips for improving audio quality when you’re capturing video on a phone?

David Bowman:

Looking to see if I have my mic here. I don’t think I do. I use two mics. I use these. I use my AirPods, which are pretty good. Frankly, the ones that Melissa and Adam have on, the wired ones with the little mic record remarkably good audio. Especially if you position that mic well, it does real good. If I want to do a real video, I have a Rode wireless mic set up, which is pretty standard amongst content creators.

You can go take notes from YouTubers and streamers on all of this stuff, to just it’s like a little clippy. It has a receiver that goes on the camera or plugs into your phone, and then also has a little clippy mic receiver thing that you can hide somewhere or clip on your collar. That captures actually nice audio, and those can plug into your phone.

Melissa Venditti:

There’s a lot that you can get, depending on what your needs are. You can get lapel mics. You can get boom mics, general mics. There’s a lot of articles about. I haven’t personally tested a lot of them, but a lot of them just have the plug for the back of your phone. There’s all kinds of top 10 lists and reviews about which ones are good and a lot of them are available on Amazon.

B&H is one of my favorites. It has a lot of good stuff too. They’re usually pretty inexpensive. They’re easily accessible and just plug into the bottom.

Adam Jensen:

The other quick thing I would add too is if you want to record the video on your phone and you have capability of better audio on your computer, use both and just clap when you start, and that’s your movie slate. It may sound like, “Oh, that’s a lot of work,” but it’s really not. You end up with two files. You immediately put them together in iMovie or any sort of editor, and you’re done. You have your source file, and it’s got great video and great audio.

Tess:

Great. Does GoPro come with editing software? Is it easy to learn? I think David, you were talking about that. Is the GoPro software easy to learn?

David Bowman:

Yes, it is. It is consumer software. It’s very easy to use. You can download it. You can just download the app. It does rely on GoPro’s video format, I believe. So, it’s made to be very GoPro-centric because they’re trying to sell cameras. If you have a GoPro, it’s called GoPro Quik, I think. It’ll import video from your GoPro, and it will predict how it wants the video to cut.

You can tell it to do varying levels of like, “Make this video for me, robot app thing,” and it will make you a video. Where it’s cool and where I’ve gotten a lot of value at it is it utilizes go GoPro’s little HiLight feature. So if you record something on a GoPro, you can tag in the video as you watch back like, “That’s a highlight. That’s a highlight. That’s a highlight.” It will favor those clips as it puts it together.

So what it does is it gets your clip 75, 80% of the way there in terms of done this. Then you just fix your cuts like, “Oh, I missed a word, move it back. Missed a word, move it back.” You can do it all on your phone. For kind of low fidelity stuff, it’s pretty sweet. I like it, if you own a GoPro. If you don’t own a GoPro it might not work, but if you own a GoPro, it’s great.

Tess:

Nice. I think we just have time for one more question. I’m going to squish together a few questions. So we’ll see how this goes, because we talked about the importance of pre-planning. So, there’s a couple of questions about pre-planning. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start, even at the pre-planning phase when you have to decide first of all, why am I making video? We can record all kinds of Zoom calls but for what purpose, and when might it not be a good idea to jump into making more video?

So the other question I’m going to squish together with that is tools for pre-production. So are there tools that you use for scripting, for shot planning, for project management? That’s a third question I’m squeezing in there. Anything like that where we’re talking about this pre-production phase. When might you decide this won’t be a video, and what tools can you use when you’ve decided that it will be a video? Are there any tools that you use for scripting or shot planning?

Adam Jensen:

Well, I’ll just quickly say a creative brief is your best friend. If you type in create a brief template, it’s one of those things where people have built a bunch of amazing templates. You can pick the one that matches for your needs, and you can even then therefore adjust it. So, I think that’s a great place to start.

From there, thinking of an animatic shot by shot experience where you can say, “Here’s my script in one column. Here’s my audio, and then here’s what I’m expecting from my visuals.” That’s a great way to see across the board what is the actual components of your video and the message, how is it all coming together? So I think those are really great places to start, and both of those you can find substantial amounts of templates and info on Google Doc.

Tess:

Adam, are those templates just a Google Doc template? It’s not a certain software?

Adam Jensen:

Yeah. In general, I would say any Google Office Suite is great for that sort of stuff because the other item too that you’re going to want to think about is your line producing. So opening up a spreadsheet and as you call something out, think about how much it’s going to cost you and where you’re going to get it. What that helps in pre-planning is you then have your budget.

Tess:

Nice. Melissa?

Melissa Venditti:

From a Zoom perspective, when it’s videos, never a bad idea. Honestly, I think the hardest part is pairing down. So you have a 20-minute Zoom call, I can guarantee you that there’s going to be a five to 10-second nugget in there that’s worthy of social media. That’s worthy of something.

My best friend is all the transcription apps. So, we use Rev. I’ve used Temi before. There’s Otter.ai I think, and you just literally plug in your video. Within a couple minutes or half an hour, depending on what platform you’re using, you have a beautiful Word document with everything that was said within that particular call or that particular video. You can find particular keywords that you’re looking for, find sound bites. Then from there, cut down and find exactly what you want out of it.

So definitely find, figure out what your main purpose is for this video, and then use that transcription to figure out what the best sound bites are to emphasize the point that you’re trying to make. Keep it short, keep it short, keep it short, keep it short because everyone’s got ADD now. It makes it so much better to just get to the point, and say what you need to say and get out.

Tess:

Speaking of that, we are one minute over time. We are going to wrap that up. Sorry David, I didn’t get to your answer to this question, but I want to respect everybody’s time. Thank you so much panelists, firstly for joining us and talking about this. I could nerd out about this for hours. Also to all of the attendees, thanks so much for joining us today. It was lots of fun. Have a great one.

Adam Jensen:

You too.

David Bowman:

Thank you.

Adam Jensen:

Bye. Take care.