Being involved in Social Media for the past few years I am constantly watching folks doing amazing things with video. From the mundane to the cutting edge. The benefits of video to PR is obvious, however it’s something that we have not been doing enough. When I was on the agency side I would get frustrated that clients did not see the immediate benefits of video or, more likely, they saw video as a highly-produced advertisement for a product. In my opinion the best use of video is to quickly communicate, in a stronger and clearer manner than text, information. This could involve company news, an industry hot-topic or simply just for fun.
Last week I finally got my hands on a Flip cam and started filming during our big corporate event last Thursday. The event was an internal opportunity for the company to hear what was going on in the industry, preview our new website and unveil new messaging and branding. Throughout the day I had the Flip cam going and thought it would be good video to use internally at some point or put together a fun video for colleagues to view. Half-way through the day however I realized that some of the video I was using was directly related to news we put out the next day. Our CEO was talking about the news, what it meant for the company, the industry and more. The dim light that is my brain responded and I thought I could edit this together as a follow up to the news and provide the video on our blog for media, analysts, users and people in our industry.
It wasn’t simply the fact that he was talking about news and it was timely, instead the reason the video would work for our community was:
The video is a bit rough and I’m an extreme novice in doing all of this, but it is fun and extremely effective. Check it out on the corporate blog and let me know what you think and leave any suggestions for better use of video or production here at my personal blog. I appreciate the help!
The next time you are planning a news release, think about how video can help media and bloggers get a better perspective on the news. Hell, it might even keep you off a black list.
–Kyle Flaherty
5 Responses
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Kyle,
Glad you got the Flip– a really handy tool. And I love your example of using video. Maybe you stumbled on it in a way, but that just underscores that it’s the message over the medium, isn’t it?
Doug
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for the link.
What you’re saying in this post is pretty clear to me…
Heading over to check out your video.
–Steve
Thanks for stopping by Steve, you’ve been one of the ‘inspirations’, although I don’t plan on getting in front of the camera if I can help it.
Doug, you are correct sir. I’m thinking for our next news release to simply make it a headline, subhead, intro graph and video…
/kff
Well done!! I am very glad to read this post.
Continuing the Discussion