Post by: Kim Stephens
Image via CrunchBase
When communicating life safety and preparedness information online, it is really important to remember what retailers have already learned: video sells your message much better than text. The article “10 Web Video Stastics You Need to Know” details some interesting trends in how people are consuming web-based and mobile content. Five key points:
- Visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average (Comscore)
- 59% of senior executives prefer to watch video instead of reading text. (Forbes)
- 50% of smartphone users watch web video on their mobile device. (Google Blog)
- Video and other multi-media product viewing options were rated more effective than any other site initiatives in an Adobe survey of almost 2,000 interactive marketers. (Adobe)
- Video in email marketing has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96% (Implix Email Marketing Trends Survey)
What does that mean for the public sector? It means that we need to be more creative in content production and distribution. This, of course, is already happening. A simple search on YouTube for “emergency preparedness” yields 17,900 results. The content of these preparedness videos, however, does not always compel viewership. To be frank, if your video is lame, no one is going to watch it. Content is king–even with video.
One of the best videos I’ve seen to date is the recent Department of Homeland Security grant funded project produced by the city of Houston, titled: Run, Hide, Fight, which describes what citizens should do in the event of an active shooter in an office building (or any building). The release, or at least circulation, was very timely–just after the movie theatre shooting in Colorado. The best thing about the video is that the viewer feels genuine concern about the actors. I watched the entire 5:55 minutes to see who survived.
I did find the content, however, to miss the mark in some respects: they completely forget people with access and functional needs, both in terms of production and distribution. The video is not captioned nor is there a script readily available, and furthermore, they depict every person in the video as young and able-bodied. What about a person that does not hear that a shooting is happening in the building? What about a person that is in a wheelchair and therefore can’t run, hide, or fight easily? They also disabled the comment section on the YouTube platform, which is unfortunate, in my opinion. How else will they learn what people thought about the content? Nonetheless, the video is compelling. It made me consider my own exit and/or hide plan.
Does your agency have any videos ready for production? Let me know!
idisaster 2.0 
Great blog, video is becoming critical part of Emergency Preparedness programs. We created a concept for edutainment that attempts to engage viewers via entertaining dialogue with educational content…, http://vimeo.com/39932084
Also – we recently launched, risk report, which is a every other week vlog that highlights risks that are or may impact businesses, http://www.preparis.com/blog