It’s not lost on me that by writing a blog that offers ideas for search engine optimization I am actually improving or optimizing our website in the eyes of the search engines. It’s good to note that I am a video production professional, not an SEO expert. I see nothing but benefit for everyone involved if we randomly post marketing ideas or inspiration for content creators. I dream up lots of our marketing ideas from our experience in creating video content for our clients. Of course many of the content creation ideas we would offer involve video production, but after all, video production is our craft and our passion. We want more video projects and we love video for business and marketing.
One idea we have recently been using to help clients create blogs or text for web pages is to record interviews with business owners or content experts within an organization. It is a very easy process. We set up the camera, lights and microphones and produce exclusive video interviews based on a number of open ended or conversation prompting questions. Once we get the subject comfortable and they open up and feel comfortable the responses become exactly what you’re looking for. And if the interviewer can keep the questions short and sweet, but still being relevant to the general topic of the segment an editor can easily create a five minute blog video from the recording.
Spending a half-day recording interviews with key people in an organization can produce lots of good content. Of course the more video you record means more post-production or editing work. While it may not be necessary to over-produce or spend too much time editing it is usually worth at least adding a title card style open and some lower third graphics to identify the person being interviewed. If multiple cameras were used during the interview then the video from each needs to be synchronized and cut together. The audio needs to be properly mixed down or “sweetened”. Many media production professionals would argue that this is the most important part as sound is 50% of your video.
The next step is to post the entire interview to YouTube, preferably the organization’s channel. This is where the attention is drawn, the eyes and clicks come, and the objections start forming. At this moment the PR person in all media professionals comes out. Why should a bunch of random comments about our company be posted online? Should legal review what was said? Let’s all review the video over and over to be sure everything discussed can be shared. I have experience in crisis communications and one important thing about understanding how to manage a PR crisis is knowing how to avoid one in the first place.
Here’s the reality. There are nearly a billion videos on YouTube. There are paid and promoted videos on YouTube that don’t get views. Nobody wants to watch a five minute interview when they could be watching a tour of a multi-million dollar house or the top ten moments where someone breaks character on Saturday Night Live. The reason we are posting long length interviews to YouTube is for the transcription. The words in text form. While posting the video to YouTube has a side benefit of potentially improving your domain’s standing within the Google ecosystem and may trigger the algorithm to favor your site over others, the primary purpose here is to give your content writer a powerful tool to create a blog. Once the video is posted to YouTube their servers start to understand it and create a transcription. If you toggle the timestamp button and copy the transcription to a document you will have a list of text.
This is where the writer comes in. Professional writers need content and information. They need the interview. Your website and your social media posts need text. Search engines such as google like text. Writers like information directly from the content expert. A professional writer can extract the important information from the transcription and craft a blog or text for a webpage. A company handbook could be improved. Technical manuals can be updated. New pages on the organization’s website can be created. A writer who has a good grasp of an organization’s policies, procedures, character and values can become the voice of the organization. Video interviews become a tool for a content writer. A good content author that acknowledges the system who is also supported by an organization can make a big contribution and have a tremendous impact on the performance of a website.
Record video interviews. Make simple edits. Post them to YouTube and use the transcription. Our websites and our social media channels are hungry beasts. Feed them text and they will grow.