In this post, we will break down how to become a video content machine and provide valuable resources for content development and marketing.
Why do I need to become a video content machine?
Today, anyone and every business can become a media company. It’s the reason that a single person can have more influence and viewers than broadcast TV shows that have large budgets and production teams. It’s the reason why companies like Sephora and Wendy’s have become incredibly successful online - they have a media company mentality and are acting like it.
“There is no reason to do anything other than act like a media company in today’s digital age. It’s just access. Never before have brands and consumers had the ability to create and consume content at scale. Because of the iPhone and the internet, and social media, anyone can produce and distribute. Just 15 years ago, if you wanted to create a commercial to promote your brand, you would need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on media and marketing. Today, you can literally use your smartphone, record a 2-minute clip, and run ads on Facebook. The cost of entry has dropped 100 fold.” - Gary Vaynerchuck
The ability to act like a media company and capture your potential customers comes down to becoming a content machine. This doesn’t necessarily mean making lots of content, but it does mean being intentional and efficient in creating content that “attracts and retains a clearly defined audience and ultimately drives profitable customer action.” And when it comes to content, video is the most valuable tool for increasing awareness, engagement, and conversions.
How do you become a content machine?
In episode 24 of “The Daily WIP,” Rollo Wenlock, the Co-founder of Wipster, discussed “How to build your content machine.” Wipster’s media review and collaboration tools have helped us streamline our own content machine for clients, so I hope that this breakdown of their video will help you on your journey to becoming a media company and reaching your customers.
THE 4 STAGES OF YOUR CONTENT MACHINE
As we mentioned in another post, video content will help you to save money, deliver more value, and provide better customer service online. But the one thing that I believe is holding many businesses back from creating video consistently is getting stuck in one or more of these stages.
Strategy.
Creation.
Media Asset Management.
Distribution (publishing, ad spend, and analytics).
Like any good supply chain, understanding all the different components involved in building and delivering a product will help you to save money and provide a better service. Rollo said something like this,
"if you can get these 4 pillars working for, that means that as a brand you can now compete in trying to get the finite amount of attention that is available out there, and capture your potential customers."
STRATEGY
Typically, when people think about content creation, they think of making something and sharing it. If you’re posting for your friends and family, or just for fun, this is true. If you want your content to be effective and evolve with your audience, you will need a road map - this is your strategy.
Everything is tied to this pillar, and it’s the “first step to getting a leg up on the competition and actively engaging your audience” (How to Develop a Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide by Hubspot)
At this stage, you will need to manage how much time and money you will be spending at each stage. Rollo recommends spending 40% of your time on content creation and another 40% on distribution. Both of these pillars work together as you begin to learn from analytics what is successful and what is not. But again, none of these two pillars make sense without a strategy.
Here are some notes to help you at this stage:
Think about what you're trying to achieve and how are you're going to get your content to do its job?
Your content calendar will become the backbone of you becoming a media company because you will need a lot of scheduled content that your audience will start to engage with on a thread basis.
A thread will help everyone relate to you and come along on a journey. You will learn how to do this better as you get feedback from your audience.
Here are three free content calendar resources from Hubspot:
CREATION
In order to compete, you need to create content regularly. It’s not enough to hire an agency to make 3 videos a year. I know this sounds challenging or expensive, but if you’re strategic, your video content will be cost-effective and have a higher ROI.
Here's how.
If you break down your content into three categories, Hero, Hub, and Hygiene; you’ll realize that not every video needs to have a big budget.
Hero Video Content
These videos have a higher production quality, but you'll only need to make a few a year. Think of traditional TV advertising. Hero videos are designed to turn heads and get your brand noticed. More importantly, though, hero videos explain to your audience who you are and how your services and products will help them.
Hub Video Content
These kinds of videos may have lower quality, but they may be more story-based, interesting, relevant, or long-form. In many ways, hub videos will form the foundation of your business online as you aim to create genuine interest and loyalty with your ideal audience, encouraging searchability, likes, shares, and followers on social media. This video from Wipster is an example of hub video content.
Hygiene Video Content
If hygiene sounds weird to you, Youtube calls these kinds of videos “help” content, and so do most marketers. Whatever you want to call this category, these kinds of videos have a quicker turnaround and maybe more about how your product works. In essence, though, help videos are the on-demand evergreen video content that seeks to address the questions and concerns of your target audience. The series, How to Asana is a great example.
By using this approach you can intentionally create more content and have a greater impact. We’ve helped clients like The Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (CIQS) use this approach to grow their influence on LinkedIn, and rank high for “Quantity Surveyor” in both Google’s “All” page and “Video” page. We created several hero videos that advertised the profession, dozens of hub videos that shared industry stories, and over the course of a single weekend, we created over 19 educational videos that would help professionals in their industry grow.
To accomplish all this though, you need to have a good grasp of the production process and the tools available to communicate efficiently. This is a large topic in its self, but in short, we use a combination of G-Suite tools to collaborate and share documents and files; an offline raid network for media editing, and Wipster for reviewing and publishing videos.
The creation process doesn’t end at the final delivery though. You should be learning from your experience and communicating at the distribution stage. Analytics will help to provide feedback for further content, strategy, or the need to re-edit already completed video content.
MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT
Media Asset Management is the ability to “administer, organize, and distribute media files” (Widen) so that each member of your team has access to the media they need to create and communicate. The bigger your organization and the more people involved in the production of content and resources, the more you’ll need to find a solution such as Widen or commit to a manual file management process. Here are two articles worth reading to learn more:
DISTRIBUTION
Distribution is all about finding out where your potential customers live and hangout, and delivering that content to them so that they can enjoy it and share it. The distribution stage includes publishing the content natively on the platform, your ad spend to help push the content, and the analytics to see if your content is working.
Check out the “The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution” by Hubspot to go deeper.
Everything that is happening from strategy to distribution feed into one another. Your strategy and calendar should fuel the creative process. All the assets used and created should be organized and fed into your media asset management system. Whoever is responsible for distribution should be able to find what they need to publish, and everyone should be learning from the analytics, which then should inform your strategy and calendar.
Making these four pillars work for you will allow you to be intentional and agile in your content and video marketing.
How can we help?
If this resonates with you, feel free to reach out. Let’s connect and inspire action together.