How to Develop In-House Video Competency, Part 4: Content, Marketing, and Engagement
In this 4th segment of our series on developing in-house video competency we'll look at content production and strategic issues surrounding it: How much content should could you be creating and what types?
Content creation is my favorite topic, whether it’s full, professional production or DIY/user-generated video, or anything in between. Everyone is trying to figure out how to do it well, one of the first steps in starting to do content creation well in a corporate or office environment is assembling the desktop setup we discussed in Part 1 of this series and illustrated in this figure. Although desktop-based video production provides a simple and straightforward way to get started (and one accessible to almost anyone with a laptop and a message to communicate) with internal video, your first in-house video setup doesn’t have to be a desktop. It could be anywhere in any room that provides an environment that fits your brand and the kind of videos that you want to create.
Content Strategy
Figure 1 (below) illustrates the range of content you could be creating in a comprehensive video strategy. It's not just about the one-hit wonder video--say, the corporate profile/identity video--it's about putting all of these pieces together. You should be publishing video daily. Maybe twice a day, or three times a day. If you have a great video capture and creation system, you can work with people in multiple locations that can be producing content for you all the time, while you moderate and approve that content and push it out. Don't feel like you need to limit yourself to creating video within one team or a couple of people. Think bigger than that, and aim to create the range and breadth of content illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Pieces of a comprehensive content strategy. Click the image to see it at full size.
How much video produce depends on what stage of adoption you're at. If you're sort of a newbie and just diving in, poking your toe into the pool and just trying to figure out what's this whole video thing about, start by generating one video per month (Figure 2, below). Think about an editorial calendar that defines what you produce each month. Then ask yourself, what are the elements of video and the content that you’re going to be creating?
Figure 2. Stages of video adoption.
Related Articles
This final installment of our 5-part series on in-house video is focused on outsourcing. What functions or roles should you consider to outsource to vendors after you bring much of your video competency and production in-house?
In this segment of our 5-part series on best practices for in-house video operations, we'll focus on cloud-based technologies for multi-point content creation and distribution.
In this second segment of our 5-part series on best practices for developing an in-house video operation at your organization, we'll look at staffing needs and the level of investment you should anticipate as you build your video program.
In this five-part series, we'll examine all the elements you need to consider when developing an in-house video competency at your business or organization, beginning with studio setup in Part 1, then moving on to staffing, investment, gearing up,, content and marketing strategy, and concluding with the elements of a video publishing program that you should continue to outsource.