Overview: Communications Tactics

"text to speech and voice cloning software ... Create lifelike voiceovers for your content or use our AI voice generator as an easy-to-use text reader... spoken audio in any voice, style, and language ... renders human intonation and inflections "

On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better... first consider the goal of the campaign.... Determining performance on marketing-based goals can be a bit complicated to pin down... If site perusal is your goal, short video is best... Why produce a long video when you…

News... is a standardized nonfiction literary form and only one of the many kinds of a journalistic output.... if the context of what we called “news” for nearly two centuries has radically altered, is news still functioning as it should?... The invention of the electric telegraph in the 1830s allowed ... bursts of information in ... messages, wh…

The second meeting Madeleina Kay had was with Luca Jahier. It went longer, and the wifi cut out midway this time - see the 2nd part of this lovely chat.

One of the vlogs I did at the EU Week of Regions & Cities with the winners of the #EUinmyRegion blogging competition I ran for the EC. All vlogs can be found in this Moment.

“So far, the growth around online video news seems to be largely driven by technology, platforms, and publishers rather than by strong consumer demand,”

using Facebook to repackage some of its magazine stories into video form... takes advantage of a Facebook tool that lets publishers merge a series of photos into videos... kept things simple... roughly 30 seconds and rarely going beyond a few words, a chart, or a photo in each individual slide... take as little as two minutes

BBC Business Unit has been experimenting with 'news you can use', a concept which mimics tutorials and informational videos popular with YouTube viewers, in a bid to engage a wider audience on social media... Using just his mobile phone, Shaw is able to shoot videos quickly and easily, wherever he can grab the interviewees.

Deepstream makes it easy to remix one or more livestreams by adding context and background... by introducing a new role into the livestreaming ecosystem: the curator... easily embed live video into a player that includes context cards... set up with just a few clicks to feature news stories, polls, maps, tweets, free text and more to help you expl…

David and Petros were there to conduct the FT’s first experiment with livestreaming 360-degree video... we failed to produce a watchable live stream... we learnt eight specific lessons for next time:

Even for brands associated with hard news…their top or second videos in terms of Facebook engagement numbers turned out to be animal videos... interest in video news does increase significantly when there is a big breaking news story. But the rest of the time? Online video news is less of a force than publishers might hope... 97.5 percent of time…

Facebook Live videos will appear on many more News Feeds — regardless of whether users Like, Wow or Haha the content. Posts linking out of Facebook will need a lot more user interaction to get the extra eyeballs.

TL;DR: My Osmo is awesome, but I need better audio kit.Don’t watch this if you expect to see award-winning journalism - this is just me doing my thinking in public, and I think I love my Osmo, even if I definitely need more kit to manage the audiovisual better in noisy places (and get a real journalist to ask intelligent questions):

what the Associated Press has learnt about the process of creating 360-degree video stories

media companies, from the Telegraph to Bloomberg, have spent serious money pushing their video products... the path to monetisation is still not clear: the cost of creating content is high, and business models involving adverts are being affected by adblocking and falling rates (cpm's)... if you are going to attempt to make money from video, succ…

When people watch a live video after the fact, the engagement graph provides a valuable signal that can help people explore the video and easily identify highlights that they may find engaging...the engagement graph could push broadcasters to pepper their streams with moments of delight...

Media companies are ‘broadcasting’ pre-recorded clips use the social network’s new feature... does not recommend streaming pre-recorded content... a strength of the feature is the ability for on-camera hosts to interact with viewers in real time... After they are streamed, Facebook Live videos function as normal Facebook videos.

Video will not save your media business. Nor will bots, newsletters, a “morning briefing” app, a “lean back” iPad experience, Slack integration, a Snapchat channel, or a great partnership with Twitter. All of these things together might help, but even then, you will not be saved by the magical New Thing that everyone else in the media community is…

Very few ... are capable of regularly creating compelling videos ... as social platforms look to saturate their feeds with video... they’re essentially competing for the same limited set of good videos. So those who create the ​quality​ stuff can demand payment. In recent weeks, those payments have begun flowing. For Facebook... people are simpl…

thinking of videos as pieces that can stand on their own, not “the way to slightly better monetize an article page"... There’s usually no reason to watch an interview. It’s better in text or as a podcast.... the Vox team works like independent YouTubers.” For any given video, a single person is responsible for the entire production process, from …

“In five years time, I want News U.K. — The Sun and The Times — to be as well known for its video content as for its newspapers” ... 70 percent of The Sun’s articles have some video component... a main driver for the video verticals is to appeal to advertisers and brands who want to sponsor videos... It will continue posting several Live videos a…

Digital media companies are caught in the "crap trap," mass-producing trashy clickbait so they can claim huge audiences and often higher valuations... This era is getting flushed away... A content revolution is picking up speed, promising a profitable future for companies that can lock down loyal audiences, especially those built around higher-qua…

Great explainer video - accompanying article here.

BBC journalists have been told to follow youth-friendly media such as Buzzfeed and Vice by making more “dynamic” and “informal” short videos in which the reporter acts as “a friend” to the viewer... “snappy, energetic” films of between 60 and 90 seconds that will be more popular with viewers watching on mobile phones... 60 per cent of its digit…

podcast listening is generally done via your earbuds or in the confined space of the car. There’s nothing more intimate than having another human being speak directly to you. - Seven secrets of podcasting success — Medium

An open app platform will let digital news publishers play with the big guys... Siri was also shown answering basic news and information questions while you watch... imagine uses for breaking news and other journalistic purposes. - Apple announces an app platform for Apple TV, potentially big for news outlets investing in video » Nieman Jour…

Apple TV isn’t the TV-killer ... but it does create a significant opportunity for digital publishers and video companies... a built-in App Store, which for the first time will enable third-party developers to build apps for the platform — an important milestone for Apple and potentially the future of video. - The new Apple TV is great for We…

what are the characteristics of videos that engage consumers?... Depending on the expert, success is thought more likely if a video is humorous, shocking, dramatic, topical, warm, arousing, angry, scary, socially beneficial, cute, violent, sexy, uplifting, intriguing, quirky, interesting, authoritative, tear-jerking, educational, controversial…

A tl;dr version of “From One Spokesperson To Millions” the brilliant 45-minute longread by @jessedee on taking one of the most successful campaigns of all time - Paul Hogan’s 1980s Tourism Australia campaign - and updating it for the age of user-generated content. Some key quotes:

What would you say to a young person considering a career in Journalism? I would advise learning programs like Final Cut Express, and thinking about following the example of the Center for Digital Storytelling's model of 2-4 minute videos that tell a tightly-focused story. - Ending a 31-Year Run at The Denver Post | Jason Salzman