'Authenticity. Pointless buzzword or
competitive advantage?'

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Authenticity.

Is it a pointless marketing buzzword or a huge competitive advantage?

Hello and welcome to your video boosting tip of the week from Captain. Helping you plan, direct, and perfect smartphone video content to engage our audience and enhance your brand.

Now, what would you do if I said to you you need to be more authentic in your online presence? What you might do is roll your eyes and go, oh good, another cliche. File it away with storytelling, brand roadmaps and vision statements.

Well, maybe, but that is the question we're tackling today.

Authenticity. Is it something you should be concerned with? Is it something that can make a serious difference for you?

Well, let's find out now.

Online, everyone looks the same

Have you ever had to choose between a set of suppliers, solicitors, web developers, builders? Online they all look the same. They're all saying the same stuff. They all say that they're passionate. The pictures or descriptions of their work... they all look the same as their competitors.

So unless you have a word of mouth recommendation, how do you choose?

Well, you'd have a meeting (or you would pre-Covid, and hopefully will again). You sit down in a room and you have a chat. And in a matter of minutes, you know whether you want to work with someone or not. The slick web copy, the grand status update. It's all gone and suddenly it's all about rapport. Do they mean it? Are they really passionate about what they do? Or are they just another workaday phoney?

Are they authentic?

That's why authenticity is so important in your online presence. Because in that moment, that crucial, pivotal moment when a buyer makes an emotional decision rather than a rational one, that's the moment the Internet can rob you of if you let it.

So how can you capture that lightning in a bottle moment and put it to use online?

Well, I know really that video is the single best way of bringing your offering to life online.

But user-generated video (video filmed yourself) is incredibly effective in terms of instantly capturing authenticity, which, as I hope have demonstrated, can be such a powerful tool.

So what can you do to take the authenticity and amp it up even more?

Well, here's a triple tip for you.

1. Focus on the customer's journey and not yours

Now, aspirational Instagram influences have skewed the graph here a bit. A lot of businesses can get caught up in telling their own stories because it can seem like the right thing to do.

Well, the vast majority of the time it isn't.

Focusing on what you can help your customer achieve is far more compelling than anything else you can talk about. If you mean what you say, it will come across loud and clear that you are genuine and that you are there to help.

2. Show some action

Now, if you're talking about doing something, get some shots of yourself or your company actually doing it. The difference between telling your audience that you do something and showing it in action is massive. It proves you're for real.

The Capture Captain app is especially useful here because you get assigned specific filming tasks to anyone with a phone. This makes it really easy to make sure you cover that stuff when making video content.

3. Forget the detail.

Now in video, as a rule, avoid talking at length about anything too dry or stodgy that can be covered elsewhere.

Video, especially user-generated video, should be used to win over hearts. The mind can get the detail it's after on your website or in your brochure.

Keep it lean and light and when you're talking about results, focus on emotional outcomes more than the factual ones. Let your audience know that you understand how they feel, and you will connect with them in a much more powerful way.

So there we go...

Authenticity. Pointless buzzword or competitive advantage? What do you reckon?

I hope I've convinced you that it's the latter.  So make use of it. It will set you apart.

I'll see you next time. Until then, this is Captain helping you plan, direct and perfect smartphone video content to engage your audience and enhance your brand.