How to make a news video: tips and tricks for publishers

Today, information is everywhere and it comes to us from every direction. Publishers know this very well and have learned to adapt. And they know perfectly well how the challenges in the digital playing field have multiplied.

Some key words that sum up these challenges?

Here they are:

– Speed and continuous updating: we don’t even need to dwell on this point; just think about our daily habits and the way we use news sites, but also publisher profiles on social networks.

– Quality: this is no longer just a matter of the quality of the information itself and the research on sources (of course, these points are always fundamental), but also the quality of the “packaging,” the media, and the channels through which the news is conveyed.

– Capturing attention, engaging the reader, clarity of messaging: together, these elements represent a decisive and very complicated challenge, given that we are constantly bombarded with information and our reduced attention span.

– Recognizability of the publisher’s “voice:” this is a complex issue that brings together the recognizability of the editorial focus, the tone of voice, but also elements related to graphic choices.

– Personalization: This is an increasingly decisive point that concerns the ability of publishers to offer information (and thus added value) based on what people may actually be interested in. Getting closer and closer to their readers, establishing an increasingly tailored dialogue with them: these are the ambitious goals. We’ll return to this over the course of the post.

– Economic sustainability and monetization: These are crucial issues. Newspapers, magazines, and publishers in general have struggled to find sustainable business models capable of supplanting traditional ones and fitting into the digital ecosystem where we’re all accustomed to enjoying even high-quality content for free.

– Scalability: another major challenge. In today’s very open and fluid playing field, any content and information creator can find himself or herself having to deal with an exponential surge in audience and traffic in just a short period of time.

In short, it’s clear that holding all of this together is extremely complex.

Complex, but not impossible. 

More importantly, behind each of these challenges lies a wealth of opportunities all to be exploited.

The role of video in news production  

When it comes to digital communication, there is no doubt: video is always the most effective content, the one that guarantees the best performance, the one that users are most familiar with, the one they prefer, by far.

But let’s look specifically at the benefits of creating news videos. Here’s we’ve identified the 7 main benefits, which are mutually reinforcing:

1) Comprehensibility of news and information.  

Here, this data is enough: on average, users watching a video understand and believe 95% of the message it contains. When it comes to text, this drops to 10% (insivia.com).

2) Speed of fruition. 

A video can convey the same amount of information as a text-only article but in a much shorter amount of time and in a way that is much easier for the recipient.

3) Ability to attract the attention of online users and increase engagement.

4) Stimulation of shares.   

Videos are the type of content that is most rewarded by social network algorithms.

Producing and distributing videos gives a decisive boost to spontaneous sharing by users, with all the payoff in terms of traffic generation and audience growth.

5) Big boost for everything related to SEO.  

This is a key point for all online publishers. Just consider these two statistics to understand the importance of video in SEO strategies:

– On average, the organic search engine ranking for video is as much as 50 times better than links that contain only text (seoinc.com).

– Posts that contain videos have a 157% increase in traffic compared to those that contain only text (searchenginepeople.com).

6) Better chances of monetization.  

When reasoning on how to make a news video, you must consider the possibilities of monetization and the relationship between costs and benefits.

Again, video is unrivaled in this regard: in fact, the possibilities for advertising within video are vast and potentially very fruitful. 

(For more on the trends in video advertising, see this post on our blog).

7) Better possibilities for personalization.

We mentioned this above. One of the most solid and crucial trends in digital information is the distribution of content tailored to the segments of your target audience. This is what we mean by personalization. This is a process that starts with knowing your target audience, and this starts with Big Data. And which is then implemented through the fundamental processes of video automation; and this brings us to the next paragraph.

The automation breakthrough in news video – benefits and opportunities  

The future (but also already the present) of news video must involve automation. 

That is, producing data-driven video in a simple and automated way.

How?

With Video Automation platforms such as the one offered by Babelee.

What are the benefits for publishers?

Let’s look at the main ones. Again, they are mutually reinforcing:

– Dramatically reducing production time by using the platform’s automation features.

– The resulting reduction in production costs.

– Decisive optimization of editorial work: Video Automation platforms use material that has already been created for the newspaper (e.g., text articles or infographics). So, editorial resources are freed up to be used elsewhere. And even when it comes to video updates, everything happens automatically, in real time, with each feed update.

– In this way, video production can become much more substantial. Translated: video multiplies the possible advertising spaces to be monetized in a decidedly impactful and non-invasive way.

– The increase is also related to the number of page views, thanks to the creation of calls to action that point to the pages of the various articles.

– The ability to implement elements of interactivity and personalization: this is a decisive point, one that increases engagement, significantly improves the user experience, and naturally leads toward reader retention.

This is another feature that is made possible by Babelee, with the integration of the Video Personalization platform.

How to make news video – tips and tricks  

After reviewing the benefits of ideo automation, here is a quick list with some concrete tips and tricks for improving your video news production:

1) Be brief, and build your video around a main communication objective, the decisive point on which you want to focus your users’ attention.

2) Take care of the very first few seconds of the video: these are the seconds when the user decides whether or not to continue watching the content.

3) Always optimize your videos from an omnichannel perspective for all types of devices, with a strong focus on mobile. The vast majority of users watch videos from their smartphones.

4) Pay attention to the audio! Inserting a voice over is always a good idea, even when it comes to videos that are automatically derived from written articles. Beware: many users watch videos in silent mode…and it’s important that they remain understandable.

5) Consider all graphic aspects very carefully. The graphic aspects make your video recognizable, almost on a subliminal level, and lead it back to your masthead, even when it is shared spontaneously on social networks or messaging apps, for example.

6) Prepare for repurposing, which is the practice of reusing previously produced video content that is appropriately recalibrated. A typical example is when a video posted on your newspaper website is then turned into a video for social media and perhaps even to snackable content for TikTok or Instagram Stories.

(We have devoted this blog post to the topic of repurposing video content.).

7) The powerful weapon of live video. Classically, when we talk about news, we’re also talking about “live coverage.” Digital has greatly expanded these broadcasting possibilities, which in many cases do not even require large media or tools.

Live streaming is a very powerful weapon, especially in terms of audience engagement. But it’s also a double-edged sword that you must manage carefully, with all the variables and possible technical contingencies.

8) Back to SEO. This is a point we already touched on quickly above: video greatly improves search engine rankings. It is not enough, however, to simply add a video to your pages to achieve this goal. It’s a matter of implementing a whole series of best practices, which we’ve collected in this checklist for SEO video strategy.

Finally, a more general key about how to make news videos (and beyond). Publishers can have access to an enormous amount of data on the uptake of their content to understand what worked best and what didn’t work.

This is decisive, because you can recalibrate and refine your content production to be more relevant to your target audience based on these analyses.