Maximise your audience with fast turnaround content

In today’s day and age, we are all constantly bombarded with images, videos and adverts. Smart phones and tablets enable us to access a world of entertainment and information in the palm of our hand. As consumers we want information and news which is up to the minute and timely. This is more relevant than ever in the world of video where yesterday’s video is yesterday’s news. If you want to maximise the audience for your online video you need to publish it at exactly the right time. Usually this means immediately.

Last month we conducted an experiment to confirm our theory. At the start of March, Edinburgh was hit with a deluge of snow one night. A good few inches had fallen overnight but the forecast predicted that it wasn’t going to last. The following morning we got up before sunrise and headed to the Pentland hills. We set up in position and waited for the sun to rise over the snowy city. The skies were clear and sun was bright. The city looked beautiful with its light dusting of flakes. By 7.30am we had been filming for 30 minutes and were on our way back to the edit suite. We hastily cobbled the footage together, incorporated a music track and uploaded the film to Youtube before 8.30am the same morning. This was when the experiment kicked in. After a few carefully placed tweets we stood back to watch how far and wide the 60 second film would be shared.

Steadily more and more people started watching the link as word got out that there was footage of Edinburgh covered in the snow that had been filmed that very morning. STV picked up on the film and published it on their website, pointing out that ‘Swift Films move fast’. Swift by name, swift by nature. In under 12 hours the wintry footage had had over 3000 hits on Youtube. By that evening the snow had vanished and the interest in the film was waning. Had we not published the footage on the same day, interest in the film would have been severely diminished.

In contrast, we produced a short film on New Year’s Day 2015 about Edinburgh’s Loony Dook. For the uninitiated, this is an annual event where revellers shake off their Hogmanay hangover by going for a ‘dook’ in the waters of the Firth of Forth overlooking the Forth Bridges.

The Loony Dook film was shot at lunchtime on New Year’s day. Due to travel commitments it wasn’t published on YouTube until January 3rd by which point interest in the event had severely diminished. We had missed the boat. There was still a bit of interest in the film, but feasibly we could have expected to have had 10 times as many hits on YouTube if we had published the film on the same day. Other footage and photos had started to appear of the Loony Dook 2015 and our film became one of a handful. We learnt a valuable lesson here; be fast and be first.

So how does this relate to producing video content for your business? If you’re thinking about producing content to showcase an event or occasion, you will have far greater interest in your film if you publish it as soon as possible. The audience demand and interest for your film diminishes the more time that passes after the event. If you want to go viral, do it quickly. But do ensure that the the quality of your video content is not compromised by the speed at which it is produced. Your audience will only share your content if it’s genuinely interesting to them.

Be strategic about when you publish your video content. Themed content can be produced in advance of significant dates in the calendar (such as Valentine’s day, Easter, Halloween, Bonfire Night, St George’s day, Christmas etc) but published on these key dates in order to obtain maximum audience interest.

If you’d like to have a chat about producing a fast turnaround online film, please don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss any ideas.