Which content development ideas and priorities guide you as a communicator, especially when asked to develop mission-critical video content for your company or organization?
Communicate Clearly
As communicators we’re looking to motivate and inspire our audience. We’re looking to capture discretionary effort—that indispensable element of workforce engagement. Make sure the content comes across simply, clearly and crisply. Be mindful of narrative flow and make sure your story dovetails with the visual content—this may require quite a bit of editing and perseverance. Don’t settle. Take a break to clear your head. Wait for clarity and trust your intuition.
Engage the Heart and Mind
Develop content that engages the heart and mind. There must be an element of infotainment—something playful or imaginative—where we present our message in a way that commands attention from audiences already overwhelmed by information overload. In most cases, we do well to ask if our video content qualifies as a suitable alternative to engaging options vying for their attention on YouTube and other social media. Will they want to share it with a friend or colleague? Would you?
Include a Clear Call to Action
You might have heard this a million times, but it bears repeating: There must be a clear and compelling call to action. What do you want your audience to do? Remember, you may need to use a variety of overlapping communication channels and platforms to ensure your audience understands the call to action, including embedded video in email (best practice usually involves a thumbnail JPG of the video with a play button that’s invested with a hyperlink—when folks click on the image inside the email it takes them to where the video is hosted). Think about ways to provide your audience with at least two or three exposures to a message. Statistics and our own experience tend to validate the fact that we don’t usually get the message during our first encounter.
