Video content is king in the search engine optimization (SEO) world. In the reputation and crisis management world, it is a critical communications tool. We asked Robert Weiss, president of MultiVision Digital, a business video content marketing agency in New York, what you need to know to utilize online video content to your best advantage.
Why is online video content an important tool for online reputation building and repair?
Reputation management is the process of populating or refreshing the first page of Google with relevant content that will resonate with the searching audience and thus achieve a high ranking. Over the past few years, online video content has become the content of choice for many people. They are seeking out video more and more because it gives them what they are looking for — an informative picture of you and your business. So when people go searching for your company’s name and/or an issue, you can have your informative and relevant content come up in the SERPs (search engine result pages) to provide the answers and information they are looking for. Google gives preference to the best content that provides answers to their customers’ questions.
How do you advise readers to plan their reputation management video content strategy?
If reputation or crisis management is your objective, plan to create many videos within a budget rather than just one video with a high production value. The first step in this approach is to stop thinking about video. Instead, think about your business. What questions are people asking about it? Who in your organization is working on interesting things to resolve your clients’ issues? Once you have these answers, create an online video production plan to best support those talking points. That way, when people search for your company, and the issue at hand, the video content that you have created, and you have control of, can outrank any new story that might get published.
What are essential steps for a video content marketing strategy?
Create video content that answers common questions your customers have. These might be about how your product works, or about the process that you go through to deliver your service. Create several bite-size snippets of video content that inform, educate and show how and why the people at your company do what they do. If addressing crisis management, the content should illustrate what you are doing to resolve the issue at hand. Be transparent. Allow your team working on these products or services, or on problem resolution, to tell their part of the story in a compelling way. Another approach is to create thought leadership videos to counteract any negative rankings. Educate and inform people on new ways to look at your products, services or operational process. Inspire them to say “wow, I didn’t know that” or “I have that problem and didn’t even know it.” Don’t sell. Inform and educate. Enlighten your audience while giving them insight into your organization. Thought leadership videos, in conjunction with other crisis management videos, go hand in hand in building up positive content that you have control of and downplaying any negative press.
What role can video play in social media?
Once you have an online video content marketing library, you can use video to respond to any social media post. Because social media plays such a critical role in crisis management resolution, instead of replying with impersonal text responses, you can give your consumer base a high-touch, personal feel for your organization and how you’re going about resolving the issue at hand, in real time. Showing people is more effective than telling them. This is what makes video critical to any type of crisis management situation. When you can present videos that show your side of the story — again, not one video, but many videos that cover many different aspects of the story — while highlighting the people on your team who are working to fix the problem, it goes a long way in managing the narrative. Further, because video gives the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time and can convey a story with emotion and conviction, these videos can also be used to follow up with those news outlets that are creating negative stories about you, to convince them that you’re doing the right thing in responding to the problem.
So how do you integrate online video content into a crisis management situation?
If you are in a position in which you need to create online video marketing content in response to some type of crisis management situation, the first thing to do is acknowledge the issue at hand. Be transparent about the issue. Let people know the steps you are taking to correct the problem. Make sure that you have ongoing video that updates the public on the progress of your undertaking and the people who are undertaking it. Providing the media with controlled stories in which the CEO shows, rather than just talks about, the company’s response to the crisis, helps to deflect the media’s attention away from the CEO and direct it toward how the company is fixing the problem… and will ultimately give a more positive impression to the media and to the general public.
What is the benefit to having a video content marketing strategy in place for crisis management?
We’ve all seen companies that have been hit hard by negative news. Add in social media complaints and protests to the mix and the company can quickly lose control of the message. This can impact sales, shareholder value and reputation for a long time. A sound video content marketing strategy has many business applications, from branding to thought leadership to lead generation to the sales process, but for crisis and reputation management, it allows a business to take control of the message. With online video content, you can show the public that you acknowledge the crisis, convince them that you are taking ownership of it, and keep them apprised of how you are managing the crisis, in real time. Unfortunately, too few organizations have a crisis response plan in place that includes the ability to move quickly on preparing such videos. So the best thing to do is to start creating online video content today and have the experience and resources in place to respond should any crisis occur at your organization.
Robert Weiss has more than 15 years’ experience in digital marketing and sales. His company, MultiVision Digital, located in New York City, has produced more than 560 business videos over the past six years for clients ranging from solo-entrepreneurs to global Fortune 500 companies across almost every industry. MultiVision Digital’s expertise includes concept and budget planning, producing (planning, scripting, storyboarding, talent and editing) and YouTube video marketing services. A graduate of Bryant University, he is also a USA Hockey Level 3 coach. This is the nineteenth in a series of interviews with experts whose work relates to online reputation management.