“Video is a highly desirable form of content, but the kind of old way of thinking about video is that when you hear the word video, you think expensive and difficult. That’s not the case anymore. It doesn’t have to be.”—Dane Frederiksen
In this #ContentChat recap, Erika Heald is joined by Dane Frederiksen, founder of Digital Accomplice, to discuss the challenges and opportunities in creating and reusing B2B video content. They discuss why video content is so valuable for engaging brand communities and how to create accessible, cost-effective video content that complements your content strategy.
Watch the entire conversation on YouTube or read through the highlights below.
Evolution of Video Content Creation
Video content used to require professional teams and equipment. However, it is now simple to record and edit videos with fairly common and accessible tools.
“Back in the day, whenever we would be doing any kind of a video, it always had to have a video crew. We would sometimes use a professional studio. And one of my employers actually had a professional studio on site where we did all sorts of stuff like that. In the post-COVID world where everybody had to get video enabled at home and a setup that was reasonably good for recording, it has really made it a lot easier for content teams.”—Erika Heald
“If something amazing is happening, like Bill Gates is at the airport, you could have shaky iPhone footage and do a quick interview with him, and that’s probably high-value content because of who it is. It’s not about the production value.”—Dane Frederiksen
Social media, especially, has opened the door for new video content opportunities. B2B teams can tap into the power of influencer marketing (or influence marketing) to create compelling video content.
“We all think of social media now about like influencers and TikTok, and influencer video. There’s this opportunity for B2B marketers to use those same things, the same platforms, and we can even use things like influencers or maybe remote video. We can take advantage of this shift that’s happened.”—Dane Frederiksen
Highly produced content still has its place, and effective planning can make the most of that content across channels and formats.
“There are still studio shoots and high-end production. That definitely has a place, and that’s important in a lot of cases. But there’s been a shift that has kind of snuck in under a lot of marketers’ noses; they haven’t quite realized that all this remote video that we’re doing for conferences is actually a great way to harvest content frequently at scale and low cost.”—Dane Frederiksen
“Marketers aren’t sure what kind of video content people want, specifically in B2B. So we lean in heavily on things like having a webinar and we’ll make the webinar available for replay. But we don’t necessarily do a lot of reuse, and people don’t even necessarily plan for reuse.”—Erika Heald
Planning for B2B Content Reuse
Any written content can be turned into valuable video, and vice versa.
“Whatever you’re blogging about, or LinkedIn posting about, or tweeting, or whatever else you’re doing with text, all that stuff can also be video. It doesn’t have to be on camera. You could do animated text with backgrounds. You could do things with AI voices if you don’t have someone to speak or they don’t want to. There are tools to take whatever else you’re doing for content and make it video.”—Dane Frederiksen
“The format of video already contains all the other formats within it, right? You’ve got images, you’ve got sound, and everything that’s being spoken can be transcribed into text. So there’s a basis there already for just pulling out the pieces that you want. And you could take quotes and text and repurpose those for articles.”—Dane Frederiksen
Before creating any content (video or otherwise), understand the channels and formats where it will lend the most value to your community.
“If you do start with the end in mind of the different platforms that you want to be on and the different types of content people care about, you can start to backfill and start to make a plan that’s going to get you that in the production process.”—Dane Frederiksen
Content governance helps you cover your basis and effectively scale your content creation.
“It really comes down to having a well-defined content governance process. If you have the planning documents and your script templates for creating video content, for example, and you also have built into your structured template for working on that project your distribution channels, then it becomes evident some of the things that you’re going to want to be thinking about.”—Erika Heald
Be open to exploring your video approach while ensuring all efforts align with your content strategy and business goals.
“I’m an entrepreneur with my own business, so I can quite easily test something that I see the value in without repercussions of making people on my team spend their hard-earned money and time doing. But if you have an organization with other people, that might not be the best way to go. You do need some sort of strategy, but maybe the strategy could be the minimum viable strategy of let’s set aside an hour and test something.”—Dane Frederiksen
“With any kind of content creation, you have to at least have a goal of something you’re trying to achieve as a business and something that you want the person who views or reads or shares your content to do. You want them to feel something, think something, or take a specific action.”—Erika Heald
Making the Case for Video Content
Showcase how easy it can be to create video content as a proof of concept of what you could create with more resources.
“It’s kind of awesome for me to be able to hop on a call with someone, record the conversation, and pretend like we’re doing a podcast. I take that, send it back to them, and then show them this is how easy it is. And there’s more we could do.”—Dane Frederiksen
“These tools are so easy now that you can start to give these sort of free samples to get buy-in. I mean, that’s what they do at the store, right? You want to try the little bite. You like it? Well, let’s take the next step.”—Dane Frederiksen
Video content is also important for keeping pace with your competitors.
“Where are people spending their time? They’re in video land. And if you’re not there, you’re leaving the door open to your competitors doing that.”—Dane Frederiksen
Be ready to measure the impact of your results. Your measurement strategy will evolve as you get more comfortable with the tools.
“I’m looking at Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and UTM links as a way to track the buyer journey. And I just said those things, but I don’t fully understand them. But that’s my strategy, is to head in that direction [and learn] what extent can I track the buyer journey and then tie back that back to ROI.”—Dane Frederiksen
Video Repurposing Examples and How to Get Started
Repackage leftover footage for standalone content.
“If you had a video interview and you have some B-roll that you’re cutting away to in the edit that’s showing the thing that you’re talking about, that B-roll could be very easily repurposed into shorts, maybe on a shot-by-shot basis.”—Dane Frederiksen
Condense large videos into short snippets for social media channels.
“If you had the interview on its own and no B-roll, you could use that for a one-minute or 30-second short on YouTube.”—Dane Frederiksen
Use your existing resources and internal subject matter experts to your advantage.
“Let’s say you’ve got a bunch of photos that you’ve taken that you could repurpose. Put that on the table as something to work with. Or if you’re doing thought leadership, do you have a bunch of people inside your company that are subject matter experts that you could interview and make something come out of that? Or are you doing something that’s really visual on an ongoing basis, shooting video at an event or something that you’re doing out in the real world on a regular basis?”—Dane Frederiksen
Be mindful of video rights, access, and restrictions. You may not have the ability to reuse it or reshare it without breaching agreements.
“When you have an editor who’s done a complicated edit and you hand that off to someone else, there are all kinds of potential implications that come. Do you have the rights to use that footage? Where is that footage? What kind of editing tools did they use? Did they use some plugins that are only going to work with a person that has those and if you hand those off, those don’t work anymore? So you can kind of start out with this beautiful vision of repurposing after the fact, but it could be almost harder than starting from scratch in some cases.”—Dane Frederiksen
Pitfalls to Avoid When Creating Video Content
Gain clear permission when recording at an event or in a space that is not yours.
“I think there are probably a lot of mistakes happening that people don’t realize they’re making just because it’s so easy now to just start doing stuff and posting it without even realizing or thinking about whether you should or could be doing something.”—Dane Frederiksen
“We have this ability to shoot and post on social media within a minute or less now. So I think the big word of caution is to slow your roll.”—Dane Frederiksen
“How many people are filming in airports, and getting in trouble with the TSA didn’t occur to them.”—Dane Frederiksen
Any identifiable person needs to give permission to be used in video footage, especially children.
“If you’re shooting video or images at events, you can’t just include children who are identifiable. Do you have permission from the parents to show those children? Because if you don’t, you absolutely can’t use them in any kind of public setting.”—Erika Heald
Be ready to shift your strategy as you learn how your content is performing and identify new opportunities.
“Things will change. New information comes along. Lessons are learned. So you have to be able to have an ability to fold those in.”—Dane Frederiksen
“What I’ve been working on with this sort of repurposing model is thinking of it as a framework. It’s a way that you can create video for just about any use case of what you’re trying to do with your business, and you can scale it up or down. I’m not advocating that you do this a certain way. It’s just a way of doing things that’s going to tend to have good outcomes and help you maximize your money, because it’s repurposing by design.”—Dane Frederiksen
Video Editing Tools and Resources
Descript makes video editing super easy, even if you have no previous video editing experience.
“Descript made it so easy now to edit with a text-based format and share that with a team, and have non video editors be able to pull out the selects that they want and make that collaboration a lot easier. And then it makes repurposing very easy as well.”—Dane Frederiksen
ChatGPT and proofreading tools like Grammarly can edit scripts and help generate transcripts. Dane and Erika discuss more potential applications and implications of AI in the full chat recording.
“Use things like ChatGPT to condense, proofread, add punctuation… advanced spell check kind of functions.”—Dane Frederiksen
Dane recommends several resources to learn more about video content creation and repurposing in the full recording, including the Content Lab 2.0 course.
Get Started with Video Content Repurposing
If you’re ready to get started repurposing your video content for other channels, or identifying how to transform written content into videos, we can help. Get in touch through our contact form, and let us know what your biggest challenges are and where you need support.
