Social Video Wildmoka

Social Video: Get To Grips With The Biggest New Opportunity For Broadcasters

October 25, 2018

Picture Tom, a 27-year-old. He’s on a bus on the way to meet friends for dinner. To pass the time, he’s scrolling through Facebook and stops when he sees a video related to his favourite football team – who are playing that night. It’s a short clip, showing a dramatic goal, which Tom immediately ‘likes’ and shares to his friends. Before the video of the clip itself, he sees a flash of branded advertising – “this goal brought to you by ABC Beverages”.

In a nutshell, this story defines what we mean by ‘social video’, a term which has grown in usage across the content creation, marketing and advertising sectors in recent years. Let’s get to grips with what social video is, before looking at how your organisation can take advantage of the opportunity it presents.

Context: the explosion in online video

It’s no secret that online video consumption has increased dramatically in recent years and disrupted traditional video publishing models:

In early 2017, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg told investors: “I see video as a megatrend, [in the] same order as mobile”. There has been a vast growth in video consumption online in recent years – and software firm Cisco predicts that a million minutes of video content will cross the internet every second by 2021.

Of course, there are many different types of video available online, and not all of this counts as ‘social video’. From streaming websites to product demos and videos of cute animals, there’s a vast amount of video being transmitted online which isn’t strictly ‘social’. So, what exactly do we mean by ‘social video’, and how’s it different to other kinds of online video content?

Social video defined

Definition of social video: Social video can be defined as digital videos which are designed by content publishers to be shared on social media platforms for a specific business purpose.

This definition allows us to differentiate social video from other types of content. Social video is a kind of content designed specifically and intentionally to be shared on social media platforms (rather than a company website or broadcast over a streaming service). Unlike ‘viral videos’ spread on social media that can be created by anyone, we take social video to be a kind of video with a specific business purpose – usually in terms of advertising or for boosting engagement with a broadcaster.

What this means:

  • Social video needs to be highly shareable: the content should be easy for viewers to share
  • Social video needs to be optimized for a range of social networks: different platforms such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter have different requirements for video
  • Social video needs to play well on different devices: it should look good on small screens and load fast
  • Social video will typically be short in length: it will rarely last more than a minute
  • Social video will have a business purpose: it should be branded in some way or contain an advertising message

What does social video content look like for broadcasters?

CASE STUDY

  • Social video is clearly growing – but what does it actually mean for broadcasters? Here’s how one broadcaster began creating social video content:
  • beIN Sports are a leading sports broadcaster in the MENA region
  • They purchased rights to broadcast the 2018 Football World Cup across the region
  • Aware of the new trends of social video, they also wanted to distribute clips of goals, shots, fouls and other events during games direct to social media platforms
  • They used a clipping tool which allowed staff to ‘live clip’ matches then automatically distribute these across all the social media platforms where beIN’s viewers are
  • This resulted in thousands of additional clips being shared and viewed by end consumers – all with beIN’s sponsors’ messages

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Social Video Wildmoka