The Art of Making Videos – Part 2 : How to distribute your film effectively (and cheaply!)

If you’ve just stumbled across this blog post – welcome! This is the second part of our ‘Art of Making Videos’ series. You can catch up with Part 1 by clicking here. 

Today I’ll be showing you some tips on how to distribute your online video. If you read Part 1 of this series, you will know that the most important aspect of making a video is understanding who it will be shown to. For example, if you want to promote a ballet performance by featuring exclusive interviews with the principle dancers, you would first need to build up a picture of the audience who you hope will end up watching the clip. This can be done through profiling your audience using tools such as Mosaic.

The importance of understanding your audience means that you can adjust the mood and tone of your video. A good example of tailoring a video to suit the end user’s needs are the ‘Super Me’ series of clips, commissioned by Channel 4 to inspire young people to develop better self esteem:

 

Understanding your audience also means that devising a distribution plan becomes an easier and more effective exercise. But before you begin planning, ask yourselves the following questions:

- Do we have an idea of where our target audience will spend it’s time online?

- What are their likely web habits?

A really simple way to help you answer these questions is by searching for and collaborating with popular independent blogs and ‘twitterers’ who are vocal within your artform. Develop relationships with them and don’t be afraid to ask them for advice in exchange for providing exclusive video content for them to host on their own websites and pages. There are, of course, other ways of publicising your film.

Video hosting sites

The easiest and most common way of publicising a video is through uploading it via a social media site such as YouTube or Facebook. These sites contain a wide range of viewers, many of whom will already be aware of your organisation. It is usually free to upload and watch videos on these sites, although there may be some restrictions such as length of films and quality. YouTube also allows you to build a ‘homepage’ where you can then stream your videos- much like your own TV channel, and provides you with some fantastic Google Analytics-style tools to show you exactly who is watching your clips. Other websites, such as Myspace, also provide a free video hosting service, but be aware that each social network site attracts a different demographic (Myspace attracts a predominantly young demographic, for example).

Labelling

If you do decide to host your video on a social networking style site, the most important factor to take into account is how to label your video. In the case of YouTube for example, you are required to give ‘keywords’ that sum up the content of your film, so that people searching for similar clips online can find your video easier. It’s never enough to just provide your organisation name as a keyword- be as precise as you can about what the clip shows. If it’s a video showing an interview with some principal dancers in a dance production, make sure you mention who those dancers are, what they are performing in, as well as summing up in a few words how you would describe the interview.

Hosting your video on your own website

This may not be as daunting as it sounds. If you don’t want to use YouTube as your video provider then there are now many free open-source companies who provide software that allows you to integrate a video into your website. I will be featuring some useful links in the next part of this series.

The current state of Twitter

If you use Twitter as a way to get in touch with your organisation’s audiences then this snazzy infograph might get you up to speed with the current state of Twitter. If you were ever puzzled by Twitter, or weren’t exactly sure who actually uses it (and what for), then this infograph is for you!

How to fundraise using Twitter

Mashable have posted a really useful guide on fundraising using Twitter here. If you are considering new ways of funding for your organisation, then take a look at their top tips!

Some tips to beat blogging stage fright!

Rather than add this as a comment on my last post about blogging top tips, I thought I’d post again as it’s more visible both to search engine bots and real users trawling these pages, plus it helps keep the SEO of the blog up by adding new posts – there you go, another tip for you!

Thanks to @markmcguinness for tweeting about this useful post for blogging beginners – How to Create Your Own Blogger Stage Fright – and then Kick Its Ass (by James Chartrand at Lateral Action).

And Twitter, that’s a whole other topic to get stuck into “why”s, “how”s and “when”s. Check out what we’ve blogged about twitter by using the tag cloud.

Why blog?

Ok, I’ll be the first to admit it – I was the AL blogging champion and it’s been longer than I care to remember since I last posted anything. It was a busy autumn! And then a lazy December… And as we all know, the longer you put something off the harder it is to get back on it. But here I am! And hopefully I’ll continue to add lots of useful content in the coming weeks (rather than just  be lazy and tweet it – we’re @audienceslondon on Twitter by the way!).

So why push myself to get blogging again? Well this has been inspired by a couple of clients who have recently been in touch asking “why should I have a blog?”, “how do I write a blog?” and other general good practice questions, so I thought I’d share my experience in the hope to support others going through the blogging journey for the first time:

MY TOP TIPS

Why blog? Here are a few reasons why:

It will likely increase traffic to your website – I’ve been monitoring our web traffic through Google Analytics and I’ve certainly seen an increase directly from the blog

It’s a simple and quick search tool – a blog is an ideal place to host links to resources and contact details, whilst also easy to tag subjects and themes of information, e.g. “Diversity” or “Access”

Advocacy – it’s been a great tool for AL to show that we keep an ear to the ground about a number of subjects and work in a broad range of issues within the cultural sector

Power to the people – blogs are designed (in the majority) to enable comments and discussion on posted topics

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Blogs have great SEO (find out why here) this ensures that they appear high in Google and other search engine results pages. If your website is struggling with other sites which have similar content to get that top spot, a blog might just pip them to the post!

Some advice on how to get started:

Start internally – this allows your staff to become familiar with the blog and how it works without feeling that the world is appraising the site before you have much content!

Allow all staff to contribute – everyone has something to say, and most blogs allow multiple users to edit and post. It’s a good tool for internal relations and sharing all the knowledge that you have as a team.

Have a think about what functionality you want – multiple users? Comments? Tag clouds? There are lots of blog platforms out there so before you create your account have a dig around. Here’s a good guide to choosing your blog platform from Jennine at Independent Fashion Bloggers

But don’t forget, blogs are not websites, and can never have the functionality of your own custom built site. If you’re a small operation and don’t have the dollar to  get a website built, then a blog can be a good staring place for an online presence. That’s what I’ve been doing with my theatre company – Longshot Theatre, yes it’s real!

There are lots of sites out there which give advice on starting a blog, but personally I think there’s no better way to learn the ropes than to just get stuck in!

P.S. This is a bad example of a blog in one way – you should keep it short and sweet!!

Why do you twitter?

New research attempting to map the profile, uses and motivations in the twittering world – and the main feeling is that it’s all about the sharing. Apparently your Tweets are contributing to a collective brain. Read more about the ‘Ultimate Twitter Study‘

Musings on the LSO Digital Symposium

I’ve just got back from the LSO “All Change?” Digital Symposium. Both Anwen and I were in attendance and I think our feelings about the day are about the same – lovely to network and join in the debate as always but we really need to move on this conversation now and talk about the impacts, actions and responses of digital development. One thought from the day stood out for me in particular:

Government should have led the way in testing and researching digital content and social media, much as they tested new school learning frameworks in laboratory conditions in the 50s and 60s, we should expect them to finance and develop models for the public to engage with online media, test them, refine them and release this information to publicly funded organisations.
Although I think it might have been an interesting approach, my argument with this is that approaches to interactive social media (by which I mean not videos or podcasts, but a platform that genuinely allows the audience to participate) should be unique to each organisation due to online content’s very nature of transparency and openness.

Hmm, I could have phrased that better, but it’s been a long week!

You can view comments from the day at twitter.com/AllChange_LSO. Were you there? What did you make of the day? And can you refine my response above?!

AMA – collaboration, collaboration, collaboration (aka digital)

As my colleagues have given you a marketing perspective, a research perspective and an organisational perspective, I’ve gone for the digital perspective. In the spirit of web 2.0 and Charles Leadbeater’s The Art of With (next event 25 November at Cornerhouse) for me this is all about the opportunities to collaborate and connect with each other, with audiences and with artists.

So, first of all on the ‘with each other’ – yes, I was one of those annoying twitterers (purely a personal experiment of course – my theory being if you’ve not experienced it how do you know what impact it might have). Armed with my trusty iphone I was multi-tasking – listening, tweeting and reading.  My findings – I was not so interested in where people are as what they thought.  My conclusions – I made some connections with interesting people at the conference who I would not have necessarily met in person and useful references were sourced by active tweeters, but I was hoping for a bit more comment. Anyway – have a look at one of the various tags #ama2009, #amaconf2009 or #amaconference09 or see what I had to say at #audienceslondon. I think there are big implications for the future of conferencing too, which we at AL will have to take note of – we live in a world of immediacy… look out for the new ‘digitally interactive dialogue space’. And is anyone using the AMA wiki set up by #MarcusRomer (follow his Twitter too)? One request by twitter was to share social media case-studies… so should we do this using social media?

Tackling digital from an organisational point of view seems to present a number of challenges, some of which is discussed in the Silos to Shrek Ears research report which inspired Dave Moutrey to take Cornerhouse on the journey he described in the keynote. We are charged as marketers and organisations to manage complexity, as discussed in Graham Leicester’s inspiring work at the International Futures Forum. So, how do we live comfortably with all the new opportunities – maybe it’s something about using evidence and information. Who has used the YouTube Metrics as Ed of YouTube suggested? Or entered into the discussions on the impacts of social media as suggested by Marcus Romer (everyone’s new guru… or is he a geek?). For Cornerhouse this is working out how to work an ‘Adhocracy’ style organisation.  However, the top tip is: if you can change the way you work internally effectively,  your audiences will probably go with you… wherever you want to take them.

Now to the audiences bit – as you may know, my continual quest is for some more concrete information about which audiences engage digitally and if they do, how (or does ) it enhances their artistic experience…  As Diane Ragsdale said it is not enough to facebook them, it’s all the other stuff and how relevant you are to someone that influences them to engage. Andy Ryans reiterated this, in terms of encouraging us to remember the other tools, such as just talking to people face to face. We perhaps need to be clearer for ourselves about how we use the wonderful Web 2.0, and remember according to the 90-9-1 principle of social networking maybe only a small proportion of audiences are up for full online dialogue. So, how can we best serve the 90%? Maybe we can take some lessons from the Slow Food Campaign – combine enjoyment and responsibility on all sides. Hans de Kretser’s guide to social media should be good reading (wait for the conference report) – number 1 is ‘have a strategy’. You can already find Marcus Romer’s session about using digital media here? In terms of generating content to engage audiences – do we take Dan from Innocent’s advice of ‘keeping it mildly interesting’ – perhaps we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves to come up with super-duper content, when people actually want to know how many costume changes are involved or by what route a painting arrived from New York…

There were obviously some bits about artistic content online, with the much lauded YouTube orchestra (in collaboration with LSO) and many examples from Watershed of what they’ve let artists do.  But the heart of the matter seems to be about giving up control and allowing amateur/user generated content to work alongside the professional artists’ work. Most people do know how to edit and filter to find the good stuff. And on the other hand our brands are usually strong enough as arts organisations to survive re-shaping by our users or audiences. Finally, we should not fear failure, allow ourselves to experiment and as Ed of YouTube said just ‘read up, team up and mix up’.

And as Martin Reynolds of Festivals Edinburgh said “collaboration breeds collaboration”.

Musings on the AmbITion Roadshow/Art of Digital Symposium

A full two days incarcerated within the lovely Sadler’s Wells, and all I’ve got to show for it is a rather annoying new addiction to Twitter! But only annoying to those around me – I’m loving it… and yes I know I’m a bit late to this party.

On a more serious note, it was all very interesting although I had hoped there would be a bit more about audiences, which is only to be expected working for Audiences London. I’d like the input from the experts to move on from ‘there’s all this stuff you can use to communicate in different ways, and it’s all free, so use it’ (albeit with a bit of a caviat that they’re only tools – mode, not medium) to… ‘who is it we’re engaging with, and what kind of engagement does that result in, through using digital media’. It is clear at one end that it’s working for participative activities and at the other end results have been recorded in terms of global profile. However, there’s a whole world of ‘engagement’ between those two.

Some random quotes and thoughts were… ‘websites should be based around pull and shared content’ (Hannah Rudman). Hide and Seek’s Alex Fleetwood was living example of how you have to trade relinquishing control for greater visibility.  A strong theme emerging was that if you collaborate, consult or even just open the door to others it can help to develop and improve what you do. Rohan of Missions Models Money mentioned that you’re just helping people do what they already do – which begs the question, are we really reaching new or different audiences, or just deepening the engagement of existing audiences through all this digital activity.

Ekow Eshun of the ICA kicked off the Art of Digital Symposium with words of wisdom along the lines of…  the arts have a responsibility to respond to the world around us, so you can’t claim to be a  contemporary space and remain relevant if this does not include engagement with digital opportunities. He also made a very valid defence of his motivations for integrating ‘digital’ responsibilities across the organisation, rather than having a hived off separate department. Although he didn’t get a chance to answer a question about whether he’d consulted his audiences about the ICA and its digital engagement.

And Ed Baxter of Resonance FM – who I I think I want to adopt said… ‘If you learn something share it, if you make a mistake point it out’. Which seems to me very wise and should be at the heart of any thriving community.

My remaining questions are … who is the twitterer ‘sealtree’, and would I really want to go to a ‘geek camp’… And please tell us what you’d like to know about how your audiences engage with digital media, or share examples of what’s worked, and what’s not…

AL on Twitter!

As you may have noticed, there’s a new feature on our blog – a tweet feed. Yup, we’re on Twitter. Follow us for quick news, insights, thoughts and signpoisting to some great resources by the whole AL team. And please do direct us to good people to follow! Follow us at www.twitter.com/audienceslondon.