One cold morning in early 2015, I found myself driving past our Nation’s Capitol in Washington, D.C., looking for a parking spot. I finally found one in an underground garage, deep beneath the headquarters of the National Mining Association (NMA).

Seems apropos, right?  Why park on the street when you can go deep underground just like the miners do? This was my first meeting with the CORESafety Team at NMA, and it turned out to be a great one.

They were looking for help with creating original content for their members, and I was highly interested in the subject matter – safety and mining. We’ve been working together for more than a year now, and the content we’ve jointly created has turned out to be quite powerful.

TIP #1:

Try to find a content creator who’s already knowledgeable or at least interested in your association or business. You’ll discover that their overall energy level will be much higher and you’ll be much happier with their results. Of course, you may sometimes have to settle for someone who knows next to nothing about what you do, but if you can at least see a spark of interest in their eyes at the beginning, then you’ll have a much easier time working together. And your content will flow in ways you never imagined.

TIP #2:

  Give your content creator as much help from Day One as possible. Allow them to ask as many questions as they like. Share your previous content with them – web copy, print articles, videos, interviews, infographics, etc. Whatever you’ve developed in the past. will help them get a better picture of where you’ve been, and may spark new ideas in them that you haven’t yet thought about. Also, offer to put them in touch with your subject matter experts (SME), so that they can begin talking to as many people as possible who work in your industry. All of this will lead to content that is richer and more relevant than you might have expected. The CORESafety Team has been great about providing us with earlier-developed content.

TIP #3:

Dig a little deeper. That’s what Smart Content Marketing is doing with the National Mining Association. It’s one thing to conduct a short interview with SMEs and to share a few salient comments via social media. But if you really want content that can be repurposed in as many ways as possible, encourage your content creator to do longer, deeper interviews. You don’t have to publish the entire interview if you choose not to, but at least have it available for your audience.  We started out by asking 2 or 3 questions when interviewing some CEOS of mining companies, but soon realized there was more to learn. The interviews grew longer and we created a “Dig a Little Deeper” umbrella theme that we use when sharing an entire interview, usually in both print and audio. We still pull out a few quotes to include in the CORESafety E-Comms, which go out twice a month, but we include a link to the full interview as well.

Our SMART CONTENT MARKETING STUDIOS in Washington, D.C. are humming this week, and we’re burning the midnight oil!  (But aren’t we always?)

We’re deep into creating new videos (and updating older ones) for one of our longtime clients – Bloomberg BNA. We love working with these folks – they’re sharp, professional, fun to work with, and they create awesome software products.

Over the last 10+ years, SCM has been brought in by Bloomberg for branding engagements and product launches. We’ve created all kinds of individual content assets for them, including email campaigns, sales copy, digital & print advertising, and business videos.

Right now, we’re racing to finish in time for a new Bloomberg software product launch next week.

Want to know how we create software training videos for our clients?  Here’s our 6-step process –

1. START WITH THE SCRIPT

• Our client sends us a script and an “instance” where sample data has been pre-populated to give us something to show viewers on the screen. (Or if they prefer, SCM creates the script for them from scratch.)

• The script includes suggestions for which “screen grabs” or captures should actually be shown on the screen at different times. It also includes a narrative that will accompany each section of the script.  This is called a “voiceover”.

2. RECORD THE VOICEOVER

• Using the script, we record the voiceover narration. This is usually handled by someone on the SCM Audio Team (either myself or one of our other professional voiceover talents). We use professional microphones in our sound studio – Blues, Sennheisers, ATRs, or something comparable.

• To enhance the viewer’s experience, SCM sometimes adds dynamic music to its videos. It depends on the client, the product, the audience, and the goal of the video. A sales video, for example, might benefit from an upbeat motivational music bed, but viewers watching a training video might find that distracting. We discuss all of this in advance with our clients.

3. CAPTURE THE MOVEMENTS

• An SCM editor (in this case it was Senior Editor Fredde Lieberman) starts the painstaking process of recording the instance as it appears on the screen, moving the mouse to point to one location or another, as the voiceover is playing. We use Camtasia software to capture everything that is happening on the screen.

4. ADD THE HIGHLIGHTS

• Then, the editor goes through each part of the script, zooming in on certain areas or panning left/right as the narration dictates, emphasizing sections to direct the user’s eyes where we want them to go. We often use yellow or green highlights, red circles, and blue arrows to add clarity to what’s happening on the screen.

• We record all of these new additions again with Camtasia, and then edit the audio or video as needed.

5. REVIEW WITH THE CLIENT

• Once we’re finished, we do a WebEx with the client to review the video and decide what improvements or edits are needed.

• Because we’ve done quite a few of these training videos, we can usually nail everything down in Round Two.

6. DELIVER THE FINAL VIDEO

• Lastly, we “sharpen” and “render” the training video in Adobe Premiere Pro, and  then it’s ready for the client’s product launch!

We’ll give you a glimpse of this particular Bloomberg video when we’re finished, but for now – you might also enjoy seeing this sales video we created for them too!

If you’re a CEO, VP of Sales, or other decision-maker who’s looking to generate new leads for your company, Content Marketing may be the answer.

While there’s no such thing as a “perfect solution” for attracting new clients or customers, Content Marketing is definitely worth considering as a new approach.

 

Need an “extra set of hands” for creating content at your organization?

Our writers, graphic designers, and video/audio producers at Smart Content Marketing, LLC can help.

Contact Nelson Duffle directly at (202) 888-5330 or email nelson@smartcontentmarketing.com.

The shorter the better – that’s the path that Social Media has led us down.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but now everything has to be so darn short, sweet, and easy to digest. And that’s certainly true if you’re creating marketing, communications, or public relations content, right?

Hit the brakes for a minute, shorty – not so fast.

Sometimes there’s a treasure chest full of hidden content just waiting to be discovered when you do it the LONG way, especially when it comes to conducting interviews…

 

Here’s the Smart Content Marketing recommendation for interviewing:

1. Do your research before your interview.
2. Always ask smart questions.
3. Listen CAREFULLY and be ready to go in a new direction if your interviewee has something meaty to say that you didn’t expect.
4. Don’t automatically try to cut the interview short, especially if it’s going well.
5. Go “long” and remember that you can slice and dice all that juicy content later.