There are aspects of the sports media industry that can be overwhelming. One of the most distinct is the amount of mediums through which you can interact with your audience. There’s written content, recorded content, video content, and more – but how do you know which medium you should invest the most time into?
Part of it depends on your brand mission, and part of it depends on the preferences of your target audience – as we’ll get into shortly. At the same time, however, most fields within the sports media industry demand differentiated content across mediums. Especially if you’re just beginning the process of strengthening your brand, you’ll need to use more than one medium to set a space for yourself in the market.
With that in mind, what are some ways you can differentiate content with a written-to-video pipeline, to spread your reach without over-extending yourself? Here are some insights to kick off your conquest.
5 Ways to Create a Written-to-Video Content Pipeline
1) Understand Target Audience Medium Preferences
This is more of a pre-emptive step before we get into the specifics. But it’s nonetheless just as important. Before you take on the task of filling different mediums, you should be aware of any medium preferences that your target audience might have.
Some audiences are more primed to consume written content – perhaps if they’re analytically-inclined and favor content with supporting data and statistics. Others – such as heavy social media users – might prefer to consume content on video.
As the creator and caretaker of a brand, you should do the work to identify your target audience’s preferences when it comes to content mediums. Playing to those preferences with specific types of content is how you’ll best reach your base.
2) Approach Differentiation By Delineating Phases of Conversation
Extrapolating from written content to video content is a very natural progression. And if you’re looking for ways to intertwine written and video content, that’s the most common progression you’ll find yourself following. To better visualize the written-to-video pipeline, think of it within the lens of a conversation.
Written content, in a sense, starts the conversation. With written content, you can put a concept or an idea on a page in tangible terms. With video content, you can expand the conversation. You can go down new avenues, and include more voices and perspectives.
Using this mindset, you can source new video ideas from your bank of written content, and build a self-sustaining cycle of content synergy.
3) Supplement Written Content With Interactive Analysis
When you’re aiming to use the written-to-video pipeline, you don’t necessarily need to start from scratch when creating new projects. That’s the unique opportunity that diversifying across mediums provides: You can use certain mediums to enrich content that originated elsewhere.
One of the most organic ways to do this is to supplement written content with interactive analysis on video, or on a podcast. This can work with informational pieces, or with subjective and editorial works. The key here is that you eventually pass it along to your audience, to spur engagement.
Here’s a prime example: Imagine you’ve written a full 2-round NFL Mock Draft. You could potentially make videos targeting certain subgroups or fan bases, to dive deeper into those pockets of engagement. What do the QB-team pairings look like? How did the NFC West teams fare? And what do you – the audience – think about this? Original written works can be gold mines for these kinds of interactive expansions.
4) Review and Expand Beyond Written Content on Video
Just as the video medium can help you tap into the interactive element of content creation, it can also help you extend the shelf life of certain concepts and expand beyond what’s on the page.
Imagine you made an NBA season record prediction for all 30 teams ahead of the coming campaign. You could use video to check in at various points in the year and review: What’s different than expected? What changed? And what can the readers and viewers learn from it?
It’s important to note that this component and the previous one go hand-in-hand. Any review and content expansion is potential fuel for audience interaction and engagement.
5) Attach Related Videos Through Video Players
Lastly, if you have an active site to house your written content, you can attach related videos to your content via video players. This is a less organic way of intertwining written and video content, as it doesn’t relate to the reader or engage them as intimately.
Nevertheless, video players can be an easy way to get both written and video content on the screen at once, and that real estate and visibility can be valuable when trying to intrigue casual users.
Playbook
- Understand target audience medium preferences
- Differentiate based on phases of conversation
- Supplement written content with interactive analysis
- Review and expand ideas with video content
- Attach related videos to written articles
