Director of External Affairs, Miami Children’s Health Foundation
For us at Miami Children’s, our patients and their success stories have been instrumental in garnering the support of our community.
As a PR and marketing strategy, we have implemented a Patient of the Month series, which highlights a success story in a short documentary-style video.
We share these videos via social media monthly with our constituency and utilize them as part of our PR strategy to reach bigger audiences. The results have been amazing.
I recommend taking the time to select the right candidates to feature. We have a pre-interviewing process and a lot goes into making sure patients and families are receptive to sharing their stories.
If you look around your organization, there are probably many stories worth telling; finding the right one to feature is vital.
Another important point is to develop a strong line of questioning. There is no message more valuable than a strong testimonial, and to achieve this efficiently, you must ask specific questions that will lead the interviewee to open up.
This will help you engage with your audience and make your video a powerful PR and marketing tool.
Understanding that everyone featured on your video becomes a spokesperson for your organization also is an essential component.
Beyond the video testimonial, we ask our patients and their families to allow us to share their stories with the media and work on securing further coverage to support our cause.
It’s been proven by researchers that one minute of video equals 1.8 million words and, according to Forbes, 59 percent of executives would rather watch a video than read text. So when it comes to using your videos as a PR and marketing tool, knowing how and whom to feature truly makes a difference in engaging your audience while sharing your vision with the world.
Executive VP,
MMI
With Facebook and YouTube garnering more than 1 billion video views per day, online video is becoming an increasingly valuable PR and marketing tool. In fact, 51 percent of professional communicators predict their companies will increase their video budget in 2015.
Business homepage videos have been shown to increase stakeholder conversion rates by 20 percent or more (per Wideo.co). These statistics are hardly surprising. Here’s why:
Video effectively penetrates across all social assets. Shareability greatly expands a brand’s reach to and reputation among stakeholders, meeting them where they are with the type of media they prefer to consume. This shareability also increases video’s effectiveness as a PR tool because results are highly measurable.
Video humanizes brands. By giving companies a human face and voice, video makes brands more relatable to consumers. Video helps companies show their personality—more than any other form of media—the ability to capture sentiment helps brands form meaningful relationships with key stakeholders.
Video creates brand advocacy in a unique way. Videos can showcase brand advocacy through testimonials that speak to a company’s ability to garner results for customers. MMI recently accomplished this through a video for Paragon Bank where customers praised its timely financial solutions, which are missing in large, traditional bank corporations.
To gain the benefits of online video for PR and marketing, create videos that prompt stakeholder engagement through storytelling.
This humanizes your brand and reaches people where they are with timely commentary on your brand’s benefits and involvement in social issues.
Senior Director, Brand Marketing and Digital,
KIND Healthy Snacks
Personal interactions are our favorite way to engage since it lets us really talk about the KIND brand, including our social mission, but the realities of scale can be challenging.
Against that backdrop, we’re exploring other ways to communicate that same feeling of discovery. Video is an ideal way to do this.
Of course, we all want a viral video campaign, but at the end of the day, it’s the quality of the content that can make a lasting impression and earn us brand loyalty.
We see video as another platform to develop and share content that people are interested in, from ingredients information to touching community stories that speak to who we are as a brand.
We’re steadily developing video content and leveraging it as a marketing tool, all while focusing on sparking new dialogue and adding value to conversations already happening, not just “talking to talk.”
For us, the three most important filters we use when developing video content are:
▶ Would we tell someone about the video if we didn’t work for KIND?
▶ Is the story we want to tell a story that only KIND can (or would) tell?
▶ Are we balancing the desire for a certain number of videos, shares or views with a crystal clear point of view?
Whereas sampling allows people to taste our product and drives them to find out more about KIND through our digital channels, powerful and memorable storytelling through video, digital and social media is meant to inspire people to taste and experience our brand.
CONTACT:
Lisbet Fernandez-Vina, [email protected]; Michelle Fowler, [email protected]; Josh Nafman, [email protected]
This article originally appeared in the March 16, 2015 issue of PR News. Read more subscriber-only content by becoming a PR News subscriber today.