11 Dec How to Elevate Your Feature Articles with Video

In an age of fleeting attention, video is the key to promoting your story and pleasing the client.

So you’ve found a great story. You’ve contacted your featured participant and begun forming your scope for the article. With questions prepared and the skeleton of the story already written, you start the interview process and then it dawns on you: Why not add video?

As reported by Kleiner Perkins in May 2018, mobile video usage has increased by nearly 10 million daily viewing minutes in the last two years. Additionally, IP video views have been estimated to account for 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021. Clearly, the addition of video attracts consumers, but to truly impress you have to capture tone.

As we highlighted in the Collector Series by World Soccer Shop, the ability to express tone and personality through video draws your target audience in and better showcases your participant. By filming each interview, their voice carried the story of their jersey collecting while their quotes were forever cemented in the audio files. The interview process itself remained relatively unchanged aside from taking time to capture short b-roll clips.

However, there are additional measures to consider when thinking of adding video:

1. It is important that the participant is aware the interview will be recorded, and they have filled out a media release consent form.
2. Consider the lighting of the interview and if the setting best fits the story you want to tell.
3. Make sure the videographer is aware of your goals and scope for the story so the video they produce will match your expectations.
4. Determine the medium where you will publish your story and if the dimensions fit the site (blog, social media, etc.).

If you have considered these items, the value of adding video is limitless. To best exceed client expectation, look to utilize a promotional loop. First, the videos should be published on social media. Secondly, the link from social media should be embedded into an article for blog publication. Lastly, the link for that blog should be sent through emails by the client to their audience. Through this loop, consumers are contacted in three different touch points: emails, social media and blog posts.

Feature articles are great. They showcase a particular person with an important story to tell. But how you tell that story is equally important. For clients looking to capture the attention of their audience, video is the answer.