Bill Gates famously quoted “Content is King” in 1996. Since, the quote has been altered so many times it’s hard to keep up: “Content is King and Context is God”, or “Content is King, and Context is Queen”, etc. The world has changed. In what relationship are content and context today?
Maybe it’s the Swiss in me (we love consensus so much so we have seven ministers run the country), but I think there is no need for a “one over the other” in terms of importance. Neither content nor context survives without the other. Content and context are equally as important.
Think of video marketing as a strategic board game where context drives content, and content excels within proper context.
The most amazing content goes “poof” within the wrong context, and all the context in the world can’t save bad content. Period.
The context considerations here are:
- Video location (platform, delivery mechanisms)
- Client profiles
- Client mindset
- Video duration
- Customer touch point
- Call to action (CTA)
- Your brand identity
I find “client mindset” the hardest one to grasp. How the hell am I supposed to know what my clients are thinking at any given moment?
Gary Vee has an excellent article on this (although the title drives me nuts).
Gary gives the example of a 40-year-old woman on Pinterest who’s in the mindset of planning and shopping, but when she’s on Facebook she’s catching up with her life.
So, if Gary wants to sell her wine on FB it might sound something like this: “Five Bottles Under $10 That Help You Get Through the Day When You Have 8-Year-Old Kids.” Makes sense, right?
Gary doesn’t give a Pinterest example, but I would venture to guess, that it would sound something like: “Five Bottles Under $10 to Have on Hand to Make Your Next Dinner Party s Sure Success”.
How do you PLAN for all this without driving yourself nuts?
In my head, I visualize video marketing content within its context as a spreadsheet. The axes represent context, the fields in the middle represent content. And although we have seven context considerations above (and one could come up with more), they do inform one another.
In terms of context you need to be clear on your client profile and your platform and then everything else falls into place behind those two considerations.
And for content, you need to be clear on your introduction, what to sell (or tell, or show) and word your CTA in a compelling way.
After writing all this down I’m totally amped on the idea of creating a script generator! I imagine an app that would prompt you through a series of questions and then would generate a basic script for each product, client profile, and distribution platform taking time limits into consideration. That’ shouldn’t be too hard…
Happy planning and writing!
For a good video example check this out our VLOG on Video Content & Context.
Content & Context Curated Link Pack
- If you are into statistics you will love this infographic from Hubspot on what consumers want from your video content: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-consumers-want-video#sm.001ikgisu41pegy11s81406s1xthc
- This Wistia blog post addresses some good context considerations, like when to turn old(er) blog material into videos, and what to look for: https://wistia.com/blog/adding-video-to-your-blog
- Why start from scratch if you don’t have to? We found this collection of free content marketing templates from Hubspot useful to give you a starting point and move you into action: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/free-content-creation-templates#sm.001ikgisu41pegy11s81406s1xthc
- Leverage the context of your platform in smart ways and have your videos do even more work for you: https://wistia.com/blog/video-in-context
- You may have a great looking video (or any marketing content for that matter), but does it work well with your platform, respect your audience, and create a smooth experience? Gary Vaynerchuck has some interesting insights: https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/content-is-king-but-context-is-god/
- Looking for video inspiration? Wistia curates an ongoing list of how businesses are using video in all sorts of creative ways: https://wistia.com/library/video-inspiration. And, they pulled five of them into a quick case study: https://wistia.com/blog/5-use-cases-for-business-video