3 reasons why your next event video won’t engage

Video is a huge component of any great event so many event planners are becoming video producers. Smartphones have amazing cameras nowadays, but don’t hit record before you have a strategy in place.

We collect various forms of video at our events. From conference sessions to behind-the-scenes interviews, the videos we collect at our events have great potential. That being said, there are many brands who are missing an opportunity for successful video strategies and here are a few reasons why brands aren't successful.

Lack of quality

Serious video strategy requires a specific look to quality. While there are many cost saving tools out there, great video content starts with a great video. The quality matters and it's worth the investment in the right equipment. You also need to consider the right host or interviewer. Not every speaker should be recorded and not every person can be a good interviewer. Videos should reflect quality from the beginning to the end - everything from the video itself to the conversations happening. Make sure that quality has been thought of from the very beginning.

Blurry focus

Some people believe that it's best to capture the most content you possibly can and figure out what to do with it later, but that's not the best way to a great video engagement strategy. What you really need to do is list out the deliverables – what do you want people to learn, understand or think about your event after watching the videos?

Storyboard out the content you want to be able to deliver post-event and create the opportunities to collect this content during the event itself. For example, if you're going to interview your speakers and sponsors, you want to make sure that you're asking them questions that can be used for sharing after the event. Don't focus on anything that is too time sensitive or to specific to that particular company. You want to focus on the larger trends and conversations happening so that the content lives on long after the event.

Rather then spending the money to record all of the sessions at your event, keep in mind that short content is most interesting to your audience. Getting a speaker to do a two minute interview post-event is a much better way of engaging your audience with your speaker’s content then simply posting an hour-long session on YouTube.

No distribution strategy

So many event organizers collect great content at their events, but when the event is over, they move on and forget to share the video content. It's imperative that you have a great sharing strategy that will engage your audience throughout the following months. Rather than sharing all of your videos at once, create a long-term strategy for releasing content and support your videos with blog content, quotes that you can share on relevant social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter and images that look great on Facebook. By taking a piece of content and spreading it widely on social with strategy, you can have a much larger reach.

WRITTEN BY LIZ KING

Liz King is founder of TechsyTalk, a platform for event professionals to explore technology. Liz is one of the industry’s acclaimed social media experts and a regular guest author on zkipster’s blog.