Publishers and media outlets all over the world are focused on video. Audiences want it so strategies demand it. But with a need for video to fill various social feeds, and accompany content on websites and mobile apps, how can an organization keep up?
We have a few pointers to help you grow your video production without burdening your budget or burning out your teams.

Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose

This cuts straight to the heart of the two major issues outlets run into when scaling up: time and money. By repurposing existing content, you spare yourself the expense of creating videos from scratch and spare your crew the time needed to capture or track down new assets.

Repurposing isn’t just re-using the same video in multiple places, though that is part of it. For example, perhaps an older video about the effect of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef could accompany an article about a new scientific report. But repurposing also means re-working.

Many assets can be used and re-used in new videos on similar topics. Not every story requires fresh footage from the field. Look to your archives (or your Wochit media library) for high-quality visuals you can put to further use in expanding your video output.

Empower your staff

As in other strategic areas, empowering your staff broadly to partake in video creation is a boon upon any scaling efforts. Video creation or asset collection need not be restricted to exclusively a video team.

Reporters, social media managers, and staff members all up and down the chain can be empowered to create videos or capture assets. This keeps the full burden of video development and creation from falling onto the shoulders of a few, potentially creating a bottleneck in your output.

By allowing your staff to collectively engage in your video strategy, the additional burden on staff time is distributed in a fashion that does not negatively or overwhelmingly impacts any one person or team. This sharing of power also avoids the need for significant investment in new video-centric staff or equipment.

Focus on shareability

When videos are being crafted for social, it’s natural to focus on constructing them to prompt engagement and sharing. But this same focus should be carried through to all of your videos.

Making your content especially shareable means the content does some of the work for you. A bigger video focus is all about increased visibility and drawing new audience members. A focus on highly-shareable content serves those goals, bringing your content to more people who are in turn likelier to return for more.

What makes something shareable? There’s no perfect equation, but some factors to consider are brevity, emotional resonance (especially positive emotions), wow-factor and uniqueness (if the subject or content is something out-of-the-ordinary or “unbelievable,” people often want to share that with their own networks.)

A unified focus on shareable content, regular repurposing of existing videos and assets, and a staff that is empowered across the board to create video are all direct, low-impact ways to scale up your video operation. You’ll have more videos to share and more eyes upon them without breaking the budget or overwhelming your team!