Planned Spontaneity

This is pretty much my personal “tagline” as I use it so abundantly. As I often tell clients, viral brand videos always start with a healthy ad budget and planned spontaneity.?

More often than not, we are planning content to look spontaneous, but it’s a premeditated output. From the editing style right through to the potential responses (response map) to comments, questions, and how to deal with the scourge of the internet, the Troll…

Sorry to dismay you, but the majority of social media campaigns are all about Planned Spontaneity. This post talks through how I create content, planning for as many possible scenarios as possible. It’s not just a ‘video shoot’ but an opportunity to create a wealth of content that can be used to further increase the reach of your brand. From behind the scenes footage, to specific hero photos and videos for ad creative, you can even take the script from your video and turn it into a blog post and Adword campaign.?

The approach that I follow when producing content is pretty straightforward. We begin with a social media strategy, develop a content plan, and then get to building out the content based on the opportunities identified in the strategy and intentional content plan.??

I look at a content opportunity as an event - at this “event” I look to create more than a single asset, but multiple assets in various formats. This way, one event can provide an assortment of content possibilities, from photos and videos to blogs and podcasts.? The image below captures most of what is possible from one single event.

Before the content is produced, I focus on planning the publishing, making sure we are hitting the right audience, and when they are online. Flowing through this is where I write guidelines that give direction to what I’ll be producing. Here I create a response map for potential replies to comments. This way, when you get asked if you are ready to reply, you can tweak the response to suit the context and timing, but at the very least you have the product or service knowledge to respond both accurately and efficiently.

Planning also allows me to walk into a content event, shoot the content, and then edit and publish live from the event, thus capturing the excitement and leveraging the spontaneous nature of good social media.

What this looks like is all in the pre-planning: your shot list, the video footage you want to walk away with, and even the details right down to the editing style and colour grade of photos and videos. This way allows you to capture that desirable “spontaneous” style. Whilst the shots might not be exactly as if they are shot in a studio, they are structured, authentic, and genuine.?