Vox’s model, however, is to have their video producers take the story from inception, through research and production right on to delivery. Sure, you can have a consistent presenter but it’s tough to make that land as truly ‘authentic’ and ‘authored’, particularly if said presenter goes elsewhere. Unlike independent creators, they struggle to build a one-to-one connection with their audiences purely because of the nature of their businesses. This is something lots of publishers and brands struggle with. How viewers will find your video should always be the first consideration in your commissioning process - it sounds ruthless but in the YouTube game if you can’t think of a title for it, don’t bother making it. But that’s built on the fact that their writers and producers each have a deep understanding of the platform they’re creating for. Fortunately, Vox have both great content and great metadata. It’s also about getting an audience for it, being able to transact efficiently and being able to target efficiently.” This is, of course, about building a community on social but it’s also about bringing in new audiences and a core factor in this is metadata.Ī former colleague of mine, Tom Martin - founder of FAQTube and now Head of Audience Development at Endemol Shine - sums up the whole ‘content vs metadata’ question brilliantly: “A mediocre video with great metadata will always outperform a great video with bad metadata”. Vox CEO Jim Bankoff in conversation with Digiday noted that “It’s not just about creating great content. I’m speculating here but I would suggest that Vox can create these videos in a matter of hours, thus ensuring that when the news breaks they are one of the first digital-first publishers on the scene with editorial commentary. A simple production set up of a well-informed talking head, archive footage and simple but good looking graphics. They also have an agile and nimble production model ensuring that they can turnaround relevant video content in response to rapidly changing events - and rarely in history have events been so rapidly changeable! This is most notable in Ezra Klein’s videos. Fundamentally, they never forget the key motivation behind their own content proposition - understanding the news, rather than just broadcasting it. This ensures they stay part of the wider conversation without alienating their core audience. They don’t just churn out a Superbowl video for the sake of it. The difference with Vox compared to many other content creators is that they always take a new and intriguing perspective on these ‘tent-pole’ moments. This feels like a no-brainer - if the Superbowl is coming up, make a video about American Football. Much has been written about Vox’s growth in the trade press, but I thought I’d look into Vox’s approach to content strategy from a good old-fashioned YouTube Certified audience development perspective.įirst things first. Incidentally, CNN (or more broadly Turner) also have an interesting YouTube strategy that appears to be paying dividends - they recently announced considerable investment in their fantastic original content channel Great Big Story and Beme News headed up by a duo of YouTube royalty in Casey Neistat and Jake Roper is on the verge of launching - but I digress. Consider that CNN launched their channel 9 years ago and have around 2.1 million subscribers and you clearly see how Vox’s growth in such a short period of time is genuinely meteoric. For a relative latecomer to the YouTube game, that’s remarkable. Two years ago (July ’15) they had 138,000 subscribers, a year later they had 900,000, at time of writing (Aug ’17) they have over 2.6 million. Vox launched their YouTube channel in July 2014. That would make for a very short article. Beyond the simple answer that they create awesome Emmy nominated videos, of course. Like many others in the confusing and semi-defined world of ‘content strategy’, I’ve been pondering what it is about their channel that makes them stand out in such a competitive landscape. There’s only a handful of other YouTube channels I can honestly say that about and most of those I worked on. It’s no exaggeration for me to say that I’ve watched every video Vox have published for months. And with you being the kind of erudite digital-native who still has enough time on their hands to be reading ‘thought pieces’ on Medium, I’ll assume you are too.
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