When it comes to video storytelling, tools are a critical factor in determining the quality of your product. Reliance on outdated video-production tools can affect your ability to compete with other brands battling for audience attention and loyalty.

Video is becoming an incredibly valuable tool for disseminating information quickly to audiences. In fact, 43.4% of internet users watch online videos as a source of learning each week. For media organizations seeking to build loyalty and report on breaking news, it’s important to have a suite of tools that makes it easy to create brand-consistent videos with just a few clicks. 

Given trend shifts in the video-production industry, read on to evaluate if your tool suite could use an upgrade.

What goes into video production?

The world of modern video production is more important than ever, given that companies need to put tools in the hands of as many reporting teams and video editors as possible. While some videos may require high production costs and complex systems, it is beneficial to also have tools that make it easy to respond to timely local news and major events. For content that needs to be published quickly, companies need to have resources available that allow reporters to share content at any time, from anywhere with the click of a button.

Today, publishers producing the best videos customize their themes, ensure brand recognition, publish directly from advanced interfaces and much more. The videos that stand out in today’s crowded marketplace live on multiple platforms and speak directly to viewers while getting online quickly.

Video production challenges 

There’s no doubt that today’s video storytelling is better than ever. That quality comes at a cost, though. Modern video storytellers face a variety of challenges with video production, including the following:

1. Time

In today’s fast-paced news environment, publishers need to be able to post top-quality videos in less time than ever before. This time crunch is a real problem for many organizations and can easily separate the winning digital publications from those who fall behind.

To combat time-related issues, teams benefit from platforms that allow them to automate many of the repetitive tasks of video production. Tools like templating and brand recognition packages help publishers push to-the-minute video content without missing crucial deadlines or falling behind the news cycle.

2. Incorrect formatting 

Many storytelling teams have tried to get around time-crunch problems by creating one-size-fits-all content. Unfortunately, this kind of content often feels unoriginal and duplicative. Additionally, it may not be properly sized or formatted for the intended platform. As consumers increasingly gather information from alternative sources such as social media, email and websites, it’s important to have content that can be adjusted and reformatted for each location.

To combat this issue, teams have two choices: invest far more time and energy in each video or use a platform that makes it easy to create diverse material that remains on-brand. The right digital publishing tools provide comprehensive customization options, including the ability to swap out themes while applying branding across videos and publishing them in the correct sizing. 

3. Software limitations

Relying on limited, low-capacity software to produce critical video content can be a big pitfall for publishers that want to stand out. Software limitations make it virtually impossible to remain competitive in the video-storytelling environment and may even create unnecessary bottlenecks during breaking news events.

To combat software limitations, today’s digital publishers must find video-production software that provides powerful tools, including theme customization, personalization, publishing flexibility and more.

4. Team size

Historically, teams have needed to grow larger to support video storytelling efforts. That’s because video storytelling tools are often complex, and not everyone was equipped to use them. As a result, teams needed to create entire publishing and production departments full of people who knew how to use advanced tools.

Today, however, large teams can actually make it harder to be agile and adaptable. Therefore, the most competitive publishing teams out there are paring down, opting for more intuitive software (that doesn’t require specialized skills to use) rather than larger teams. This allows your teams to be effective in a variety of key focus areas, while still producing engaging content.

Critical Focus

Video production software can help increase competitiveness across the market. With this in mind, let’s look at a couple of recent advancements in video-production software that will help you optimize your strategy. 

Automating branded content

To be recognizable, branding should incorporate the same logos and color schemes across all videos. This is necessary to ensure brand recognizability, while producing quality material quickly and easily. Modern video-production software can help you reuse branded assets and themes where they are needed. The ability to save brand themes and layouts across multiple platforms allows media teams to rapidly implement them across the board. This gives teams more time to focus on making the content stand out while maintaining brand consistency. 

Anywhere, anytime video production

As teams have pared down and become leaner and more agile, video-production software has morphed to support the needs of small teams. In other words, your teams must be able to easily create videos from anywhere, at any time, with any device. This makes it easy for reporters in the field to cover breaking news across your social channels and your website.

Ease, automation, and always on-brand content

Today’s media teams must have the ability to easily create quality video-storytelling materials without sacrificing speed, accuracy or branding. Today, this is critical for any company that wants to remain competitive, creative and innovative in today’s fast-paced video-publication environment. 

Great video production serves several purposes: it spreads breaking news, educates audiences and promotes viewership. Clearly, media companies make a significant contribution in building their brand and that brand trust should be maximized across platforms. Streamlining that process allows teams to focus on creating the kind of content that promotes brand recognition and audience retention.