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      How Do You Make Engaging Video Content?

      Engaging video content is the mecca of all film makers, creative producers, and content teams dreams.

      How you actually make engaging video content?

      This seemingly innocuous question requires a complex answer.

      Film has so many elements, so how will we know which is the most important?

      • Is it the creativity?
      • Arresting imagery?
      • Attractive presenters?
      • Eloquent scripts?

      Pssst. We’ll let you in to a secret. It’s all of the above… and some more.

      We’ve whittled it down to 6 key ingredients to create a video that engages your viewers, and cuts through the saturated video market.

      1. Choose a Good Story and Tell It Well

      Unfortunately not all stories are created equal. Some things are simply more interesting than others. Or are they? You can’t really answer this properly until you’ve considered a couple of other factors.

      2. Who’s your audience?

      Knowing your audience is the key to why you’re making the video in the first place. Seems obvious, right? But it’s surprising how many people forget that their creative project will be consumed by an audience outside of the marketing teams office!

      Audience segmenting, targeting, and positioning is a key tool to implement to understand your core demographic. Until you’ve cracked this, and have a clear target audience, there is little point creating content. Without a clear audience in mind, you’re shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.

      3. What’s the purpose of the film?

      Is it to entertain, inform, inspire, create awareness? No matter which of the why’s you choose, a video should still be engaging.

      Here’s a couple of examples:

      Corporate films will usually have niche appeal, and are likely to fulfil one of the inform or create awareness objectives. They’re also in the business of narrowcasting – e.g., streamlining their content to a highly specific audience.

      However, unlike corporate films, TV broadcasting is shown to a wide audience with the likes of the BBC and ITV broadcasting content nationwide and even internationally.

      4. Relevance.

      So, whilst a Financial Conduct Authority film may not hold mass appeal, it will be designed to deliver the right message in just the right way to its target audience.

      A brand film, like CIPHR’s, targeted at informing current and prospective clients about their services in the HR sector is, again, not designed to hold mass appeal.

      The news however, or prime time dramas are.

      5. Know what you want to say.

      Write it down, time it out and see how long it plays for. Consider every word and phrase. Is it interesting, relevant, and does it add value to your viewers?

      In short, does it deserve to be in the film? Or, does that information already exist on your website? If that’s the case then ditch it from the script. Be brave.

      There is so much content clamouring for your viewers’ attention, so start with a bang and build from there. Short films are often better than long films.

      It can be tempting for clients to try and squeeze ten gallons into a 5 gallon hat.

      Remember that less is more. There’s a reason why TV adverts are only 30 seconds long.

      Be respectful of your viewers’ time. Ensure your film delivers a coherent message as quickly as possible because this helps make your content more engaging. Attention spans are short. If you lose your audience’s attention they’ll move onto the next thing in a trice.

      6. Know what you want your viewers to think, feel and do once your film has played.

      Armed with all that information we can now reverse engineer a solution. Together.

      In our creative partner dance we square up to the blank page.

      Informed by your answers to the 6 questions above we plan with abandon, trusting our gut, knowing that out of quantity comes quality.

      We write, rewrite, then write some more, uncovering elegant, economic and impactful solutions.

      We run things up flagpoles and see who salutes, simplify complex messages and produce succinct scripts that conveys messages with the right tone of voice.

      Creativity is a messy, non-linear business. That’s just the way it is.

      But we trust our recipe.

      We are confident that by systematically addressing each of these 6 points we will design and deliver a film with structure and purpose, that engages your viewers. We will make you a film that knows what its job is. A film that hits the mark with your audience, achieves its KPI’s and delivers a solid ROI as an integral part of your brand, marketing or communications strategy.

      Working together we will produce that holy grail of corporate filmmaking – engaging content.