Use video to boost your written content – lessons from sports journalism

Videos inserted into text look great, they break up your content making it easier to read and by watching the video you’re increasing the time they spend on your site and the likelihood they’ll finish reading the article.

Sports journalism is a great example of this, using visuals to illustrate analysis and create more digestible written content and there’s no reason why corporate content can’t adopt the same approach whether it’s for investor relations, product launches or just blog posts. You may not have a content library to match a sports news site but assets like research and podcasts can be reproduced as video as well as a new project planned and designed to accompany articles.

So how can you combine video with text?

1.Using multiple video clips

The easiest way to use video with copy is embedding multiple short clips within the text, like this BBC analysis of the England vs Pakistan cricket test match. They also add in social media posts which are a nice touch and help drive traffic to your other channels.

2. Gifs for instant illustration

But we’ve seen the use of video and multimedia in journalism taken further with the use of Gifs and annotated stills to help with technical analysis, like this Daily Telegraph piece for the Rugby Union Six Nations earlier this year. Gifs can show an action or message almost instantly as they ‘play’ on a loop. They also have a very small file size compared to video so they don’t overload your website.

3. Interactive visuals

The Telegraph also have a slick click-through interactive guide to how the game was won, using a mobile-friendly combination of photos, simple animations and copy to illustrate the tactics (if you don’t have a subscription we’ve made a recording showing how it works below)

 

The guide is a really effective way to explain an idea or tell a story, but its components are well within the budget and scope for most organisations. By combining copy with still photos, branding and motion graphics (which they can reuse for each match report once the style is built) they produce an experience that feels dynamic, illustrates the message effectively and is a fantastic way to show their analysis is cutting edge, or at least feels like it is.

You may not have a huge content archive but if you don’t want to commission a completely new video project there are many ways to create content from assets like photos and turning quotes from copy into motion graphic animations. Still photos, Gifs and short video clips can be simple and low cost to produce, either from existing content or as new, and can transform your written messaging.

If you’d like to talk about how video and multimedia could be used with your written messaging please email me at: nick@bouchemedia.com