Broader impacts and online video

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Who is Kirsten Sanford? What is my experience? In research, video production, storytelling, and dissemination.

All of this brought me to start Broader Impacts Productions, where we provide a turnkey approach to addressing the broader impacts of research using professional video production, dissemination, and impact analysis techniques to not only help tell the stories of scientists and the science they do, but also help evaluate the social impacts of the video itself.

Personalized video production process
Social media outreach using established accounts reaching millions worldwide
Analytics by an expert in the field

So, why is video a good bet for outreach?

Video viewing is up in all ways thanks to time-shifting technologies. But, what we are talking about here specifically is the growth of video viewing online.

While viewing continues to grow on all internet connected devices, the largest increase is in mobile. Smart devices made up 26% of all mobile devices in 2014, but represented 88% of the traffic. These devices are poised to make up 54% of the market in 2019, with an estimated 97% of the total mobile data traffic. It’s estimated that there will be 1.5 mobile devices for every person on the planet in 2019.

The caveat here is that video is data heavy. It takes a lot of bits to stream video. So, while these numbers are going up, so too are HD, Ultra-HD, and 4K video formats that require more bandwidth.

People are moving away from tv screens to internet connected devices for their media consumption. And, mobile is becoming a larger and larger player in the game for eyeballs.

Nielsen reported that there is significant growth in the 18-34 year old age group (otherwise known as millenials) from 2014-14… 54%. 35-49 year olds are up by 80% over the year, and 50-60 year olds show a 60% increase. The interesting thing here is that the youngest age group is not engaging in as much watching of television. They might be watching a lot of Minecraft videos, but youth viewing habits are different from those in older age groups.

Millenials view an average of 11.3 hours of online video per week. 57% of the 18-24 year olds report preferring content that looks professional and polished. http://acumen.defymedia.com/acumen-report-constant-content-2/

Video has rapidly become the preferred information consumption format on the web. Studies have shown 80% of online visitors will watch a video to completion, while only 20% will read text-based content in its entirety. A full third of online activity is spent watching videos, far outranking any other online activity. Not only do videos capture people’s attention, but they also increase people’s understanding. Research suggests that video improves comprehension 74% compared to non-multimedia content.

So, the take home message here is that video viewing online is rising, and it is a useful communications medium. Should you produce videos for yourself or your organization?

How do you approach a video production project?

Before you jump into making videos there are several questions that you should consider…

And, once you have considered all the right questions, and decided to jump into video… how do you actually do it?

That all depends on whether you bootstrap to produce the project on your own, collaborate with other departments in your institution, or hire an outside agency.

Here is a video we did recently for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund of one of their funded researchers.

Once you have your video, it’s time to get the word out. How do you go about doing that?

One of the first steps in any marketing campaign is to target the places where the audience hangs out. Go to your audience, don’t expect them to come to you.

Being present on social media platforms can give you a big megaphone for getting your message out.

So, we are uniquely positioned to produce and disseminate the videos we produce for scientists… let’s talk numbers… how do we know if videos are having any impact at all?

So, we are able to not only quantify how many views a video gets, but where and who is viewing, and how engaged they are with the content. Additionally, we are able to show shifts in attitude and learning resulting from viewing the video as measured by surveys.

This is an excellent method of quantifying the broader impact of a PI’s research shown in a video.

There are many possibilities for addressing broader impacts outreach mandates, but…

However, a video is just a video if you don’t consider it in the context of how and where it will be released, and what you want it to do

Videos created with a purpose can be conversation starters… a point of entry for people to begin learning about your work. Properly incorporated into a media outreach plan, they can be followed by conversations through social media platforms, comment threads wherever the videos are housed, Reddit AMAs, or even Google+ Hangouts. There are growing opportunities for places these conversations can take place.

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Broader impacts and online video

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