Driving engagement with regular surveys through video
Why video is a sensible investment for monthly, quarterly and half-yearly surveys
Regular surveys are a mainstay of thought leadership for a wide range of organisations, especially those involved in business and economics.
Monthly, quarterly and half yearly surveys are popular among membership organisations to highlight the performance of their sector and any areas of concern upon which they need to lobby.
Quarterly business surveys by the likes of the British Chambers of Commerce (Quarterly Economic Survey), the CBI (Distributive Trades and Industrial Trends surveys) and the FSB (Small Business Confidence Index) often receive plenty of column inches, while they are also a thought leadership tool used by the likes of KPMG and Deloitte (CFO Survey among others).
And regular surveys are not confined to the business and economic sector. The British Medical Association produces a quarterly survey on the workload and wellbeing of doctors in the UK, while the Children’s Society runs a quarterly survey to support their Good Childhood Index.
However, one thing that most of these surveys have in common is that more could be done to drive engagement and results on social media.
Yes, they no doubt get their regular slot in the business pages, or elsewhere in the national and trade press, but for greater interaction on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn they would all benefit from a more visual approach.
Video receives six times more retweets than images on average according to data from Twitter.
By creating and uploading short video clips there is an opportunity to both drive more impressions on social media and get the headline stats out to a wider audience of stakeholders (check out our guide to social video for more on this).
This will also have the impact of driving more traffic to the report page itself – for those who want to delve into the detail – where again video can help. Creating a two-minute summary of the headline findings of the report will further disseminate the key messages, as 70% of people will watch a two-minute video to the end while only reading 20% of text on a web page on average.
However, not all videos are equal. While even a simple talking head video should have a better engagement level than still images or plain text, an animated video is the perfect vehicle for stats-heavy reports because the visuals help to reinforce messages and ease understanding (as with this example for the Institute of Customer Service).
And there is a third factor that makes animated video an attractive option for regularly surveys: economies of scale.
A well-structured initial animated video can be repurposed each month or quarter just by replacing old data with new.
But even if it’s not that straightforward and the messaging needs to change each time, if the overriding framework and style remains the same then the second, third and fourth video will be cheaper to produce than the first.
Making the use of animated videos to bring your monthly, quarterly or half-yearly surveys or reports to life, a sensible investment.