Articles by: "Jim Politis, Max Velocity Product Manager – The Weather Company, an IBM Business"

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 Reliance on outdated video-production tools can affect your ability to compete with other brands battling for audience attention and loyalty.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.

Marketing | Supporter Spotlight | Video

The benefits of bringing maps and weather data into your video content

March 13, 2023 Jim Politis, Max Velocity Product Manager – The Weather Company, an IBM Business

Sometimes the weather is the story. However, weather also impacts many of the stories journalists tell – from sports events to celebrity weddings, groundbreaking ceremonies, and more. Maps and weather data can be powerful tools to create more memorable and impactful videos. Digital publications and platforms can leverage these elements to illustrate location, specify routes, and provide predictions regarding the potential impact of current and upcoming weather to create more engaging content.

There are many benefits of incorporating maps and weather data into video content, and all it takes is adding this capability to the existing software stack. Let’s take a look.

Why maps and weather enhance storytelling

When it comes to video content, it’s important to have tools that make it easy to enhance coverage of breaking news quickly. Maps can make it easier to visualize stories, such as election news and big-city races. Creating custom maps for breaking stories helps your viewers feel like they are involved rather than just passively watching. As a result, digital publications can increase engagement and viewer loyalty.

They can even provide coverage on a street level, which helps personalize a reporter’s video stories. By offering street-level viewing, your publication can go beyond generic maps. This personalization adds a level of depth to your storytelling that many other publications lack, making your stories unique and compelling for your viewers.

Additionally, weather data can be used to provide further context and insights to stories of all kinds. Companies can use weather to illustrate the role wind may have on a football game or how the path of a storm might affect an outdoor event. Since weather impacts almost every decision, this content has immense value for audiences.

5 ways map and weather content improves video storytelling

By bringing maps and weather data into video stories, journalists, reporters and content developers can provide more comprehensive, engaging videos. Here are just a few of the ways that maps and weather data can improve your digital video content:

Generate maps for specific stories.
Maps can be generated for specific stories with the right tool. They can be customized to support the story with stunning visuals.

For example: Local digital publishers may choose to cover a 5K race or marathon. Incorporating maps into the story would allow teams to graphically showcase the route, and bring in “guests” at certain points along the map.

Illustrate the impact of weather on the story.
In the case of a big event such as the Boston Marathon or New York City Marathon, publications might include commentary from elite athletes. Since weather can influence the outcome of races, content creators could showcase the impact of tailwind and humidity and include commentary and predictions about how the weather conditions will impact the race.

Weather was a major factor in the Ineos 1:59 Challenge, in which Eliud Kipoge broke the 2:00 marathon. Kipoge noted that “One of the biggest factors in running a fast marathon is the weather – temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed and direction will all have a significant impact, even the air pressure has some effect.” The addition of this unique perspective on how the weather impacts potential outcomes – and makes reporting more engaging.
Display live conditions.
Content producers can illustrate the impact of weather on all sorts of current events such as outdoor sports games, state fairs or festivals, graduation ceremonies, holiday community events, and more. (For example, check out this bike race coverage.
Bring stories to life with guests & visuals.
Display the impact of weather for upcoming event stories and bring in local meteorologists as expert guests. With weather graphics, teams can discuss the impact a hurricane will have on a community or how snow will affect the morning commute.
Drive revenue with weather-related ads.
In addition to providing context and engaging more viewers, this form of storytelling can also be used with sponsors to drive revenue. For example, an owner of a tire company can sponsor the video and provide tips on what type of snow tires are best to buy when winter weather is approaching. Local advertisers – such as hardware stores during BBQ season or local caterers during graduation stories – will also find that the weather tie-in makes their advertising more relevant.

Real-life examples of combining weather data and map overlays

Wondering how to combine weather data and map overlays in videos? Here are a few use cases:

Election coverage
Election coverage always draws a large number of viewers. It risks falling flat however, if high-quality graphics are not incorporated. With the right tools, journalists can enhance their election coverage by showing counties graphically. Digital publications and channels can bring reporters in at different polling locations, providing on-the-ground coverage for a more comprehensive and detailed viewing experience.
Marathon, parade, or other coverage of big events
Marathons and races cover a large area, which can be difficult when there are only a few available team members. With advanced video tools, however, teams can use a distributed workforce, which allows reporters to create, publish, and live stream content at any time from any location along the race route. The same goes for parades or any events that would be enhanced by maps and weather data.
Telethon coverage
The right video tools allow team members and sponsors to create and publish videos without requiring them to use specialized skills, complicated hardware, or expensive equipment. As a result, publications of any size can have the ability to host telethons or fundraising events. With the right tool, guests can easily participate from a remote location. Maps can then be used to showcase which areas have contributed the most and to set goals across a specific demographic.

Final Thoughts

Scaling video production with maps and weather can make videos more engaging since these provide more context to the stories already being told. They can also help audiences understand the scale of a story, or make it more personal through localization. By combining live map and weather data, digital publications and channels can provide real-time, up-to-the-minute coverage to viewers, with all the insights, credibility, and professionalism consumers expect.

About the Author

Jim Politis is part of the Max Weather solutions product management team at The Weather Company, where he focuses on Max Velocity, Max Engage, and Max Social. He was first part of the Max Quality Assurance team, and over the last decade at The Weather Company, Jim has been involved with nearly every product within the Max ecosystem. Prior to joining The Weather Company, Jim served as a broadcast meteorologist in Iowa, where he experienced many extreme weather events, from blizzards to record floods to tornadoes. One thing Jim appreciates about working at The Weather Company is that he no longer needs to present important information while hearing a tornado siren through the building walls! He has a bachelor of science degree in meteorology and an associate’s degree in computer science from Northern Vermont University-Lyndon.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight | Video

3 tips for driving more video output

November 16, 2022 Jim Politis, Max Velocity Product Manager – The Weather Company, an IBM Business

A well-produced video can expand your audience, drive loyalty, and increase the value of your digital content. Because audience demand and expectations are so high, digital publishers are now forced to produce engaging video content faster than ever before and in much more significant quantities.

But accelerating video production doesn’t have to come at the cost of quality. A streamlined approach to creating compelling video content can be easy if you follow three steps.

1. Simplify your production

The barrier to entry with video production used to be enormous. The tools to create the content required special training and a steep learning curve. Today, new video product solutions are designed with intuitive tools and user-friendly interfaces that empower users with no specialized training to generate and air studio-quality content much more quickly.

Although sophisticated content should still have a place in your content calendar, breaking news waits for no one, and being the first to air with critical information can be a valuable advantage for grabbing viewers’ attention. In addition, you can go live quickly when severe weather strikes or threats to public safety. Finally, equipping your team with tools to create these videos will remove bottlenecks when posting content.

Also, be sure to find a tool that enables your teams to create videos using their laptops or mobile phones from virtually anywhere with an internet connection. Think of these solutions not as a replacement for professional production workstations but as a way to extend their capabilities. The tools often use a browser-based interface and cloud capabilities to access content, graphics, and production tools remotely, allowing users to report on breaking news and weather stories immediately.

2. Use pre-created templates

A repository of professional and pre-created templates can help you quickly publish updates using high-quality videos that engage audiences and build trust. Simply populate these pre-made templates with essential information so you can be the first to air when news breaks.

Consider templates that embed a customizable lower-third or brand logo. Also, look for templates that leverage a two-box format showing two speakers or one speaker alongside associated video footage or B-roll.

Alternatively, you can place the speaker in the bottom left corner, as vital information is displayed more prominently in the middle of the screen. Some solutions also offer map templates if your story relates to a specific location or geographical area.

Experiment with different templates to determine what works best across your digital platforms. You can find which templates will extend watch time or increase engagement by testing different kinds of content and formats. This information will help your team as they decide which templates to use when news breaks.

3. Add more voices to the screen

Fake news is an increasing concern for viewers in the U.S., particularly on social media. Adding expert opinions from inside and outside your organization can improve the credibility of your content while increasing overall productivity and driving new monetization opportunities.

Remote broadcasting capabilities make the process of creating meaningful content with new and diverse voices to your content far simpler. With the right tools, you can incorporate experts, thought leaders, and sponsors with the click of a button, regardless of their location.

This approach is effective across content categories. For weather, feature experts from impacted and adjacent areas to help viewers understand the extent of a weather event and respond accordingly. For sports or elections, interview local correspondents to add more context and relevance. You can also offer digital sponsorship packages such as native ads that include sponsor interviews, improve campaign effectiveness, and increase viewer satisfaction. For example, you may include a technician from a local heating and air-services sponsor to share tips on reducing energy usage in the summer.

Adding these new perspectives and insights will also help you produce unique content that may be reformatted and repurposed for different audiences and platforms, generating further revenue opportunities.

Better video starts here

Exceptional video content is essential to any good digital content strategy.

By leveraging these tips when choosing a video storytelling tool, you can accelerate your output without adding resources and attract a bigger audience and more advertisers.