HARD DAYS: Two things The Beatles can teach you about tips for making effective short form video

My Mum once did something astounding when she was younger. She blew out the Beatles.

She was about 20 and working in Liverpool city centre in the early 60s when a friend asked her to come see this new band that was playing lunchtime concerts at The Cavern club.

Off my Mum went, but half way down the steps she halted hit by a wall of sweaty heat rising from the subterranean club.

“I’m not going in there,” she said, “it’s too hot and smelly.”

And by those slight chances history passes you by.

For the past three years I’ve co-delivered workshops to show comms people how to plan, shoot and edit effective comms video. I come back to The Beatles to give two tips because people are switching off your video far quicker than you’d like them to.

Beatles video tip #1: Make your video like a pop single

In the UK, 71 per cent of the population have a smartphone and research shows we check our phones on average more than 85 times a day. So as we scroll we make snap decisions on what to watch and for how long for.

Your audience will make a decision on whether or not to watch your video within a few seconds. Surprised by this? Pick up your smartphone and go scrolling. You’ll quickly come across a video auto-playing. How much did you watch? A few seconds? And then you scrolled down to the next?

Did you watch with sound? On Facebook 85 per cent of people don’t.

The Beatles came from an era when singles were king. So, they made records to be singles. They needed a hook straight away. They needed you to listen.

When I think of The Beatles’ ‘Taxman’ I think of the count in and the riff. For ‘Twist and Shout’  I hear the guitar riff and John Lennon singing ‘shake it up baby’. Think of any Beatles song and within five seconds you’ve got a hook. You need to think of this when you are making a short form video. Put your best content right at the start. Make people watch. If you save it for the end chances are it’ll just be you.

Beatles video tip #2: John Lennon and the Beatles are bigger than Jesus

When I was a reporter I found hard news easy to write. Put who, what, when, where, why, how in the intro for a hard news story and you have a ‘clothes line’ interview. Dead easy.

I found writing a feature much harder. A feature is a more expansive think piece where you can be more creative.

The best tip I came across for writing a feature was simply this… put the best line in the intro. So the first line of the John Lennon interview should be:

“We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”

So, put your best visual content at the start to get people to stop scrolling and watch.

I’m @danslee on Twitter and dan@comms2point0.co.uk. If you hate missing out on the good stuff subscribe to my weekly email here.

Pic credit: Tyler Merbler / Flickr

 

 

 

UPDATED: What are the best lengths for social media video?

All video is no the same… it really does depend on what channel you are looking to post it to.

Where your audience is should frame what channels you are looking that.

In turn, those channels should have a big say in how long your video should be.

So, if you are aiming at people on Facebook, 15 seconds for video that is likeley to drop through the timeline is best. Longer than that and your audience is likely to be evaporating.

Here’s an update on the optimum times.

Notes and queries on the research

YOUTUBE: The maximum length of 15 minutes can be increased to 12 hours through a straight forward verification step.  Optimum length is much shorter.

FACEBOOK: Facebook maximum length against Facebook’s own suggested lengths for ads. INSTAGRAM: Maximum length was increased from 15 seconds to 60 seconds with research via Newswhip suggesting a much shorter length. TWITTER: Maximum length of 240 seconds   is comfortably within Hubspot’s suggested 45 seconds.

SNAPCHAT: Maximum length is a mere 10 seconds but Hootsuite suggest five seconds is the sweet spot.

PERISCOPE: A maximum length and the sky is the limit but there is no research on what the optimum length of a live broadcast is.  FACEBOOK LIVE: Can run for 240 minutes but 19 minutes is best say Buzzsumo.

LINKEDIN is the new kid on the block with native uploaded video. Five minutes is the most you can upload and there is research that the best length is 30 seconds.

Other platforms

There’s a number of other ways to present video I’ve not touched upon. VIMEO has fallen behind in recent years but still has fans and you can upload via VIMEO LIVE with a premium account. You can go live via YOUTUBE LIVE but there is little accessible guidance for the amateur. FLICKR can take video of up to 1GB but will only play back the first three minutes.

360 & VR Facebook and YouTube in particular are chasing this new way of shooting video but there is little out there on maximum and optimum upload times.

I’m @danslee on Twitter and dan@comms2point0. If you hate missing out on the good stuff subscribe to my weekly email here.

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr

LIVE ALIVE: Four ways how to use Facebook Live to reach your audience

It’s a fascinating time to be a comms person… new tactics emerge and old ones fall away.

But like anything, your decisions should be driven less by the shiny and what will get you results.

So, Facebook Live. It’s something I’ve been fascinating by for some time.

The idea is quite simple. You post to Facebook and you have the option to create a live broadcast from your device’s camera as simply as posting some words.

But where does it fit into the landscape?

It’ll help you beat the Facebook algorithm

Being admin of a page used to be such fun. You posted something and your audience saw it, liked it, commented on it and shared it. You sat back and took the applause. But since Facebook Zero and Mark Zuckerburg’s announcement earlier this year that you’ll see less from pages and more from friends and family that’s long gone.

Right now though, use a Facebook Live broadcast and you’ll be reaching more people.

Cool.

But what do we do?

Here’s where it gets interesting because you are really not hemmed in right now by convention. We’re all learning but please, for heaven’s sake, look outside your sector to see how others are doing it.

Sure, think calls to action. But also see your broadcast as educational, fun and interesting that will build your audience for a time when you really want them to do something. A social channel that’s just one long call to action isn’t fun.

Broadcast because the value is to be in the right place at the right time

English Heritage look after Stonehenge. This collection of Neolithic stone tablets has fascinated people for thousands of years. At the moment of winter and also summer solstice the sun shines perfectly at an angle. It is a special place to be. So a live broadcast of the moment and the build up to it makes sense.

Broadcast because you’ve got something visually interesting

National Rail celebrated the longest day of the year with a live broadcast from a GoPro in the train driver’s cab of the Aberdeen to Plymouth service. This is the longest in Britain and runs through some stunning scenery.

It says that the country is amazing, that as a feat of engineering its incredible and also that National Rail understand how the internet works.

Some kickbacks emerged when it was admitted that the video was not as live but the playing of a video recording. But I get that. But then again, what would a livestreamed suicide do for anyone? Or for the organisation’s reputation if the train broke down?

Broadcast because you are commenting on breaking news

Look at what newspapers are doing. They don’t call themselves newspapers anymore. They’re media companies that happen to produce some print.

When the football fixtures were published my team Stoke City’s local media company ran a Facebook Live to run through them.  Leeds away is first up. They incorporated comments from readers – or should I see viewers – too.

The camera work wasn’t amazing. It doesn’t have to be.

Broadcast for a Q&A

Over in the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group I’m admin of, we ran a Q&A ahead of GDPR on how they may affect websites.

From the more than 2,000 members of the group we had more than 900 views and more than 50 questions and comments which was fine with us. We’re a niche but highly active forum.

If you’re a member you can see the broadcast here.  But as the stream went into a closed group we can’t embed it elsewhere on the internet.

The topics you can live broadcast are pretty wide and vast. I’ve blogged more than 30 of them here.

So, if that’s the topic, how do I do it?

I co-deliver workshops on live video skills that goes into the planning and the delivery using some handy BBC principles.

Before you go live, run a test broadcast where you broadcast only to yourself. You can select ‘only you’ from the settings before you hit post. This allows you to see if your device can be help landscape or has to be held in upright portrait mode. At a big set-piece event like an election count you’ll need to be aware that media companies will more than likely be broadcasting.

But what if my audience isn’t on Facebook?

Then don’t use Facebook, you big silly. With Twitter, Periscope is the live app of choice and instagram and YouTube have their own functionality. But the numbers behind Facebook make it important.

I’ve heard it said that people are leaving Facebook. The stats don’t support that globally although I’ve heard of people leaving the platform in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica saga. That’s fine. I get it. But until there is a better way of sharing cat videos the mass audience isn’t leaving Facebook anytime soon.

I’m @danslee on Twitter and dan@comms2point0. If you hate missing out on the good stuff subscribe to my weekly email here.

FUTURE PROOF: A collection of writing that asks questions as well as celebrates NHS comms

Here are two myths about the NHS and neither are true.

Everyone who works in the NHS is amazing.

Everyone who works in NHS comms is amazing, too.

The NHS-focussed third edition of #futurePRoof came out this week. Published to mark the 70th anniversary of the service it is a collection of 26 essays around NHS communications. You can find out more here.

This could easily have fallen into the bear trap of being a big old back-slapping love-in but the value of this collection of writing is that it does start to ask difficult questions. It is a critical friend as well as cheerleader. Denis Campbell, health policy editor of The Guardian and The Observer, is brought in to give an objective view and bangs the table about the mixed quality of NHS comms people. There are some good and some bad, he says, but it is so important there are more good ones:

“I need the former to win out over the latter for both myself and for the sake of the service itself.”

After reading #futurePRoof, it’s a sentence that I keep coming back to.

Good, honest, hard working communications that takes a leadership role and speaks truth to power is something that cuts through many of the chapters in the book.

Here’s a truth. I love the NHS. I think it is the finest thing that Britain has given the world. But not everyone in the NHS is amazing and neither is everyone who works in NHS comms.

Everyone’s view of the NHS is shaped by their own experience

I grew-up in Stafford. My local hospital was the Mid-Staffs General hospital. When the news broke that up to 1,200 people died early across 50 months my Facebook timeline lit up with my friends’ families own horror stories. Some of my friends’ families were amongst the 1,200.

A short time after the news broke, I was at a conference where I overheard an NHS comms person attack everyone who ever criticises the NHS. It is a service that needs defending, he argued. It is a valuable service. It is. There was an embarrassed quiet when I pointed out that I was from Stafford and I genuinely wished that someone had listened to the criticism. So, while I love the NHS I know that sometimes it doesn’t work well and that shouldn’t be spun under the carpet but acknowledged and listened to.

The journalist who writes in the collection is right. We need the good NHS comms people to win the battle over the poor ones. Not just for my sake, but the sake of the service. Comms people should be the canary in the mine as well as being those seeking to explain the work of the organisation.

My family’s experience of the NHS 

At its best, the NHS is amazing, My two children may not be alive but for smart-thinking midwives. My brother-in-law almost certainly wouldn’t be here. You probably have your own story, too. Ipsos Mori research puts Doctors and Nurses as the top two trusted professions trusted by more than 90 per cent of the population and there is a reason for that.

There is much good practice in the the third #futurePRoof. An account of the NHS visual identity update for 600 organisations is a useful starting point for someone struggling with the visual identity of one organisation. Ideas on working as part of the leadership team not the comms team are valuable. The importance of data and delivering against corporate objectives can’t be repeated too often. The NHS is an institution that needs critical friends and this book is that.

It should also be celebrated for focusing on the public sector. Here, good communicators can literally save lives.

LIVE TALK: A Facebook Live on GDPR and council websites

Well, that was fun.

I’ve just completed the first Facebook Live to the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group. More than 200 people watched the live broadcast and more than 50 asked a question or took part.

If you are a member of the group you can watch the replay here.

Big thank you to John Paul Danon from Council Advertising Network and to Eleri Salter from Haringey Council for taking part and sharing some valuable expertise.

A few things really shone through from the exercise.

  1. As a platform, a Facebook Live is a good way to talk on an issue and solicit questions and discussion.
  2. There is a perception that GDPR is a scary stick to beat people with. If you want it ti be it can be. But the glass half full view is that its an opportunity to get your act together on how you are use people’s data. You are still fine to use it. You just need to make sure you’ve got permission is all.
  3. If there is a hit-list of people to be gone after by the Information Commissioner those at the top of the list are likely to be people who buy-up email lists and then spam them relentlessly.
  4. Speaking of which, it’s amazing the amount of GDPR spam I’m getting in my inbox. Which undermines the authority of the sender somewhat.
  5. You can do bright things with audience insight. It’s helping Haringey Council to better target those who may want to be foster carers, for example.
  6. As a comms person, you need to know this stuff. Or at least have a working knowledge of it. It’s pretty fundamental.
  7. You need to have permission to take someone’s picture or shoot them in a video. You need to set out explicitly what you’ll use that content for. The ‘general marketing on social media’ line won’t wash anymore.
  8. I do wish someone would hurry up and built an app that comms people can use to capture permission and then turn into a searchable data base. There’s a massive opportunity for some bright person.
  9. It’s always a bright idea to test broadcast a Facebook LIve before running the main broadcast. I did and spotted a few glitches.
  10. Responding to people who join by waving and saying ‘hello’ to them isn’t such a bad idea.
  11. The Information Commisioner’s Office will be running a public facing education campaign about GDPR. It would be useful for your organisation to build trust by getting right across that.
  12. Council Advertising Network employ bright people who know their stuff.
  13. Most councils use a lot of tools which may fall under GDPR. Don’t rip them out just to comply. Work out what you need to do.
  14. Don’t delete your existing entire image library. Mark it with ‘don’t until the GDPR process is complete’.
  15. The CIPR have got some really good resources if you are a member and Govdelivery have some useful stuff.

Big thanks if you chipped into the discussion or watched and also to John Paul and Eleri. This is the first of a series of occasional Facebook Live broadcasts from the headspace group.

SMILE EXPERIMENT: Heard the one about #gdprjokes?

Okay, heard the one about the unsolicted email from someone offering GDPR services?

I know. Funny, isn’t it?

Or an inbox full of emails asking you to re-sign-up to an email list?

There are changes looming with how people look after other people’s data. It’s causing a lot of people to look nervously for a golden bullet. There isn’t one, of course. You need to read some stuff on the subject youself rather than outsource it.

So, as a break from it all, here are some jokes captured from Twitter. Why a hashtag? To see if people would see the funny side of GDPR. They did.  If you can’t laugh you’ll cry. The Erasure one is my favourite. How about you? I promise not to share.

https://twitter.com/justkay32/status/988441386407129088

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the hashtag and who came up with jokes.

30 days of human comms: day #44: Gateshead Council shoots down a street light urban myth

For a while I’ve been noticing that social media admins have been drawing a line in the sand.

Rather than letting fake news drift and look the other way people have been being proactive.

‘That’s wrong and here is the answer,’ the approach runs.

This post from Gateshead Council is marvellous shooting down an elaborate urban myth.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fgatesheadcouncil%2Fposts%2F10160188959115858&width=500

The 1,900 likes and 1,500 shares shows the thumbs-up that people have given.

Class, be more like Gateshead Council.

30 days of human comms: day #43 a Down’s Syndrome campaign video

Often when I’m co-delivering video training I’ll tell a story about one of the first lessons I learned as a journalist.

“News is people,” I was told. “People connect to people.”

It was true today as it was then.

“Be human,” I tell people in organisations when I’m training them. “Humans connect to other humans.”

This crowdsourced video from Down’s Syndrome blogger Jamie McCallum could not be more human if it tried. It’s a lip synch car pool karaoke that cuts together footage of 50 mums and children with Down’s Syndrome singing to Christina Perri’s hit ‘A Thousand Years’.

The media law student in me assumes they got permission to use the track.

Take a look at the video:

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Looking on social media, the parents involved trailed the video and then shared it with their networks who then shared it on.

And that’s how a campaign is run in 2018. Involve people. Ask people to share.

My own family’s Down Syndrome story

My God daughter Darcey Slee was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome.

Darcey’s parents, my brother Paul and his wife Teresa, often say that Darcey is just like any other little girl. She doesn’t always do as she’s told. She can be exasperating, funny, tiring and charming just like any other girl.

See those Mums in the video? They’re just like any other Mum.

See those children? The ones clambering into the backseat when they should be signing to the song? They’re just like any other children.

And their mums think they’re great and so do their families.

And that’s the point of this video.

World Down’s Syndrome Day is March 21. Find out more here.

Thanks to Jude Habib for flagging this video up with me.

NEW TACK: We’re mad as hell and we’re just not going to take it any more, so we’ll be polite, human and factual… a new approach to online snark

There’s a change in the air with how the public sector is using social media. 

Back in 2008, a public body would get credit for even using the platform.

Over time, that changed. Train companies and others with spot-on online customer services raised the bar.

Trouble is, digital expectations grew just as public sector services were cut through waves of austerity. What the public sector used to do, they sometimes no longer do. That’s a tough message to explain. It’s led to a backlash of frustration, anger and abuse online and often the frontline is the comms officer updating social media. I’ve lost count of the number of people who just switch off in the evening where they used to try and help with customer service questions.

“I get told I’m an idiot 9 to 5 online,” one person who looks after social accounts for a council said. “Why do I want to switch on to get told that in my own time, too?”

My advice for dealing with snark online used to be to play the Uncle Keith card. In short, don’t argue with an idiot. To a passer-by its just two idiots arguing. Swearing? Have a zero tolerance.

But over time I’ve seen a new approach.

It’s a very human approach that draws a clear line in the sand. It calls people out when they are wrong and uses facts and humour.

Importantly, it’s an approach that very often goes down very well with people online. Using the crude measurement of likes and comments, public sympathy can be very often with the human and factual public sector response rather than the troll.

I’ve lost count of the number of times in training when I’ve showed people examples of this approach they’ve practically whooped with joy.

“That’s brilliant.” They say. “I wish we could do that.”

The reality is they can.

Of course, each response needs to be judged on its own merit. But if its factually accurate, polite, professional and maybe a touch witty too then, why not?

Some examples of the new polite, human and firm to snark

Example 1: Bournemouth Council

Take, Bournemouth Council. When they asked people to report potholes they were met with snark. Did they back down? Did they heck!

Example 2: South Somerset Council

South Somerset District Council were sent an FOI demanding to know how their council tax was spent. The response is factual but also calls upon Ancient Rome.

Example 3: Dorset Police

I’ve blogged this before, but it’s such a great example I’m blogging it again. They could have left this inaccurate piece of fake news but it was important to challenge it.

 

Thanks to Tina Stokes and Kristian Ward for this.

Picture caption: Flickr / Documerica.

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