How to learn to swim in turbulent waters?
By Juan Pablo Morales*
The era we live in today has been marked by the accelerated change in the consumption trends of streaming content. According to Interdigital, by 2022 it is expected that about 85% of internet traffic will come from online video.
The mix of video consumption and social networks, which in turn, according to GlobalWebIndex, occupy more than a third of the time that people spend worldwide on the network, continues and will continue to take ground in the marketing, communication and public relations strategies of brands, corporations and the market in general.
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, in this order, remain the networks of greatest preference of users for the consumption of live video and continue to set the trend in this same sense, as well as consumption on mobiles, which according to a YouTube analysis, corresponds to 70% of the time of online video consumption.
The pandemic has also witnessed an increase in the consumption of short-form video. In the third quarter of 2020 TikTok ranked first in the number of mobile app downloads on Google Play and App Store, followed by Zoom, Facebook and Youtube according to Sensortower. By January 2021, TikTok would already have almost 700 million active users in the world.
The clear downward trend in the medium term, the consumption of linear television and traditional media, the growing competition of the streaming offer, and all this, added to the fragmentation of audiences, the continuous reduction of user attention spans and the difficulty of finding narratives and formats that gather and rediscover a hitch of different generations in a shared environment, they make marketing more challenging day-to-day than ever. The question is what to do and how to ensure the return on investment in such a dynamic and uncertain market?
For any brand, institution, and startup, this is the time to start, if you haven't already, building your audience. This is a critical period before the competition does. It is not easy to find out which are the most appropriate channels, nor the language, however, reading the market signals is essential. For example, TikTok's penetration and growth statistics show how its numbers right now are higher than Facebook, YouTube, and even higher than Netflix, so it's arguably a channel that shouldn't be off the map and strategy.
Here is a list of 10 commandments (methodologies, tactics and keys), to be able to find a way.
1. Dedication. Producing videos that engage and actually have a result is a demanding task and requires planning. Not only from the technical but from the narrative and the visual. In any case, it is preferable to do nothing than to invest resources in something of poor quality that no one will see. There is a lot to choose from so it is key to worry about generating content that is likely to generate engagement with users that really leads the audience to share it and generate a dialogue.
2. Video production should not be the product of a single person's work, especially in a corporate environment. Planning processes, script writing, production design, location selection, color palettes, costumes, scenography, props, talent, voices, sound, music and effects, planimetry, social networks and many other things, must be the result of a creative process of a work team. But to make it easy and not get caught before the first attempt, the recommendation is that, taking into account this list, take the time to see it with the trusted team, and be with this, with whom you begin to build the language of the brand and what they want to say.
3. Frequently check social media, Google Trends and find the relationship between what people are talking about and your organization. Focusing on trends in social networks, on knowing what are those videos that occupy the rankings of visualizations, can give you ideas to adapt to your stories.
4. People don't connect with companies, or with brands. People connect with people, with stories, with similarities, with emotions, with problems, and with solutions. Design a character, design your client, if you have more and more clarity of who your buyer persona is, you will be able to tell your story and connect more easily through a well-structured storytelling. The strength and empathy of this protagonist is the focus of 90% of all the success factors of his strategy. In Money Heist, Tokyo and the Professor capture people's hearts in the first few minutes and from that moment on we all want thieves to get away with it. Don't try to sell all the time explicitly. People don't want to be sold, people want to connect emotionally with stories, causes, emotions of gratitude and humanity.
5. Focus your stories on brand values and tell it in a fun way. What was the world like before your brand and what is it like now? What was your face-to-face brand like and how is it now virtual? What would the world be like if it were dominated by its competition? These may be some of the stories that your users would like to see. Your protagonist must find in you all the solutions to your problems.
6. You don't have to be a video expert, use tools like Canva, Animoto, iMovie, and the networks' own native options to design your videos. It is not always necessary to hire an agency to take care of it. Take the time to learn how to use these types of aids and it will be very useful in the short term.
7. Find social media where your audience is located. Demographic studies of social networks abound on the internet. Take the time to think about which one or which are the most suitable, try and allocate a budget to promote your content.
8. As we said earlier, most people consume video on their mobile, personal devices. Visualization is individual, not collective. Make sure that your protagonist's eyes are always seen accurately. Remember that you are not writing a novel for free-to-air television with one-hour episodes and where nothing happens for weeks. Short contents, which begin in point, forceful, emotional and detailed are the most appropriate.
9. Make shorter clips of your videos, as a summary, use them so that they are susceptible to being shared via Messenger, Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp. Use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram groups to publicize your work. It's an easy way to make yourself known.
10. My usual invitation. Start, test, measure and correct. If you don't start experimenting, there's hardly going to be a result.
For all your marketing or communication initiatives, whether with live formats or with pre-recorded videos, some or many of these tips will surely be very useful. Surely you can have different results following this methodology in a disciplined and organized way.
If you have put them into practice we will love to know their results.
*Juan Pablo Morales is the Co-Founder of Nuevos Medios Entertainment and a media consultant.
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