What people want is to  be heard:
here's how you can make it happen.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Last week, we talked about making someone’s day. This week, we’re going to take it to the next level and beyond, using smartphone video. 

Hello and welcome to your content-boosting weekly tip from Captain. Helping you plan, direct and perfect smartphone video content to build trust with your audience, and enhance your brand.

Now, the human being is a sociable animal, so in pure communication terms, obviously nothing beats real-time face-to-face interaction.  But as we saw last week, when that isn’t practical, it’s still perfectly possible to make someone’s day with an authentic, one-off message.

So in that specific scenario, you’ve basically got three options. Text or email, an audio message, or a video.  And in terms of effectiveness: Text is ok, audio is better, video is best. Simply because: as you ascend up that ladder, it becomes harder and harder to get away with being fake. If you genuinely mean what you’re saying, then video (especially smartphone video) is the best tool around, because it is what it is, warts and all!

That’s why it’s becoming an integral part of so many company’s sales strategies, with personalised video messages going out to potential leads at different stages of the buying process. At the moment, Captain sends out a personalised video message to every new signup to the mailing list. They’re great fun to do, they’re easy, and they force us to engage with people and at least start the process of making them more than just another faceless email address. 

But we promised a way of taking things to the next level, and we weren’t lying: there’s another, more profoundly powerful side, to the creation of smartphone video that can help you do a whole lot more than just make someone’s day. 

Sometimes, what people want most, what they need most, is to be heard.  To know that what they have to say has value - that it matters to someone, somewhere. That their story is worth telling.

If you’re using a tool like Captain, you’ve suddenly got the ability to reach out to anyone in the world with a smartphone, and make that happen for them. For people who don’t have the confidence, the time, the know-how to be active on social media, with all the hassle that brings. For people who have been silent, but might have something important to say….you can give them that voice. 

And yes, you can spin it into something useful for your organisation, but remember we’re talking about moments here. In this instance, I’m not talking crowd-sourced videos with 1000s of people, I’m talking small numbers, small, intimate moments that you have the power to make special. 

And as we said last week, it would be still be worth doing if it was ten times harder. But it isn’t. With Captain, it’s incredibly simple. And sidestepping the debate about whether a good deed can ever actually be selfless, I can tell you from experience, it feels great. Collecting enthusiastic, authentic voices from different cities, different countries, shaping them into something even more resonant…it’s where it’s at, man. It really is. What a rush. 

So I’ll see you next time. Until then - this is Captain, helping you plan, direct and perfect smartphone video content, and giving you the power to tell someone’s story, and make their day.