The Rise of Videos, Images and Content in Media Relations
These days, we hardly notice how much we are surrounded by multimedia content. Videos, photos, infographics, charts…they are everywhere. Social media, email blasts, blogs, traditional media (duh, obviously). Most of the time it passes us by like dust in the wind. But there are a couple times a day when we stumble upon a must watch video on YouTube like “Great White Shark Surfing” or, some awkwardly “wrong” video with Louis CK, or, for those of you more enlightened something more educational.
As marketers, we tend to notice quality business-oriented multimedia content when it’s time for us to try and tell our company’s story. Instinctively, we already know that creating a multimedia news release will have a greater impact than a simple traditional text press release. But just in case you doubted your gut, here’s some data to let you know that your media relations efforts are not in vain when we integrate excellent photos, infographics and video in to our multimedia marketing content (data provided by “The Power of Visual Storytelling” by Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio):
- Our brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than copy
- A news story will receive 94% more views when an image is used
- Use Twitter for business? Include a photo and get 76% more shares.
- Watch your Facebook engagement increase by 150% when a photo is posted.
So, now you get the message, right? Journalists already know this. And their task, just like yours, is to get people to read their article. So when you initiate media relations’ efforts, it’s critical to have a multimedia content marketing strategy that produces great content and gets in the right hands.
Producing great content is always easier said than done. When we see it, we know it’s great, but for some of us (myself included), creativity doesn’t always come easily. So, here are a couple rules to ask yourself when you are creating a story:
- Is it entertaining or educational?
- Would you want read it?
- Will the title grab the readers?
- Is your multimedia content unique?
- Does your content evoke emotion?
If your answer to any of these (or all of them) is “no”- keep working. You’ll get there. (Or hire someone that can).
And after you generate that killer story, you’ll have to consider how and where you are going to deliver the content. Social media, YouTube and bloggers are a great outlet. But remember, a high res image can be 10-20MB large. And b-roll from a video can be 500MB or larger. That creates a whole new challenge in sharing and delivering content. And, while it’s a victory to have a reporter want to cover our story, we still have to give them these big files, and that’s a pain. But that’s a part of media relations, right? So how can we do that?
We can always wait until a journalist requests the file, then share via dropbox or FTP. Ugh. That will work, but it’s inefficient and requires the reporter to take initiative. The traditional multimedia news release can be a good way to solve part of that challenge, but they can be a bit pricey, and take time for the vendor to set up. And quite often, the journalists you want to reach aren’t necessarily tracking the wire. New technologies like ISEBOX, a multimedia content marketing platform, are emerging that allow you to create microsites where you can present your story and all of your multimedia content in a central location that will improve your media relations efforts without costing as much.
To summarize, lets first remember to use multimedia content in our stories. And, then lets step it up a notch and create compelling multimedia news releases that evoke emotion or educate. And finally, create a solid plan and use the proper technology for where and how you will share your content.