AUDIENCE BUILDING FOR THE WEB: Part Two – Audience Needs

In the previous post, Audience Building for Web Video: Part One – The Human Factor, I explained two basic theories that describe how audiences interrelate with content. In this article, I’ll look at audience needs.  

Over the years (yes, even before the Internet), I’ve developed a simple list of Three Audience Needs to inform my decisions to produce, market and distribute content. Looking at how content is promoted on the web, I think there’s a general tendency to focus on technology and tools. There’s a loud chorus out there on how to SEO your show and use the latest techniques. This focus can overshadow audience needs and can result in a one-size-fits-all tech-centric approach. The failure to consider audience needs explains, in part, why some web shows struggle to build audiences. What works for one show doesn’t necessarily work for another.

 To apply my list of Three Audience Needs to the web, I’ve looked at available web tools that invite and engage audiences. Some tools, like those for sharing and feedback, are useful across all needs while other tools are more specific. For example: shows that fulfil the audience’s ‘Need to Know’ have a higher than average sign-on rate for push tools like RSS, email, and subscriptions because people see these as a way to get the information the want or need. Also, shows that fulfil the audience’s ‘Need for Cultural and Personal Identity’ have better success with merchandise because merch helps people feel connected to a show. I’m not suggesting that other shows should not use these approaches. Experimenting is good. However, when faced with limited time and resources, prioritizing the most relevant tools and strategies will reap higher rewards.

These needs are non-hierarchical. In other words, people don’t have to satisfy one need before they will seek to satisfy another. (This isn’t like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). Also, audience needs can overlap. Most shows fulfil two needs while the occasional show will fulfil all three (a triple threat!)

Now here are my Three Audience Needs:

1. NEED TO KNOW

People need information to survive and feel safe. They need to know what’s going on in their world and they need to learn. The Need to Know explains why some people are news junkies or fans of do-it-yourself, issue-driven, and other factual shows. People who want information tend to want it straight-up  — not watered down. They seldom plough through a lot of irrelevant content to get what they need. If a show fails to deliver the goods, people who Need to Know will go to a more direct source.

SHOWS: The Need to Know is a powerful motivator so it’s no surprise that a lot of content targets this need; (and you thought it was just because info content is cheaper to make). Shows that fill this need include news, how-to, documentaries, talk and interview shows, some dramas that are issue-driven (especially social issues) or portray how to cope with more complex things like relationships.

TOOLS: Think about how people seek information. Topic keyword SEO works well. Also, people want to be the first to know, so tools that push content like RSS, email alerts, and subscriptions are effective. Tools that help people share with friends and give feedback work well. Strategies like affiliate partnerships related to the topic or issue are also effective.

2. NEED FOR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS/SOCIAL

We need to interact with other people and feel we are part of a community. This is fulfilled by knowing and interacting with other people but it can also be fulfilled by connecting with other fans and the show’s performers and creators. This explains the popularity of celebrity. To take this a step further, people can even form virtual relationships with fictional characters. Character fan bases are huge in the popularity of some genre fiction.

One more thing: When thinking of how to fulfil this need, there is a certain kind of show I call the Super Slam. This is when the show, performer, and the character played by the performer combine into a compelling brand that hits an audience sweet spot. When all these things work together, audience building can generate a powerful fan base.

SHOWS: Shows that fulfil the Need for Personal Relationships and Social include dramas (including soft genres like comedy, romance, children’s, light mysteries), celebrity-driven shows, issue-driven shows that are fiction or factual, talk and interview shows hosted by a personality.

TOOLS: Think about how people want to reach out and connect. Audience feedback tools fulfil this need as do community building tools that let fans connect with one another. Tool for sharing let fans spread the show to like-minded friends who will join them in the show’s community.

3. NEED FOR CULTURAL AND PERSONAL IDENTITY

People need to define themselves within groups and the larger society. They need to be part of a ‘tribe’ and they need to display their membership to their fellows and to outsiders. The range of cultural and personal identity seems endless and provides many opportunities to create content.

SHOWS: Genre fiction, documentaries relevant to a defined group, special interest, issue-driven, celebrity-driven.

TOOLS: Think of what helps people find their tribe. SEO by genre, topic, and issue is effective as is promoting via genre and fan media (blogs, magazines, etc) and groups, special interest media and groups. Think of how to help people be part of their tribe (badges, merchandise, clubs, subscriptions). Tools for feedback and sharing help them connect with the show, with like-minded people, and to advocate to others.

Those are the three basic audience needs and I think understanding them makes it easier to work the choices for audience building. What are the ways you’re building your audiences?

AUDIENCE BUILDING FOR WEB VIDEO: Part One – The Human Factor

I’m a huge believer in video on the Internet. I think we’ve barely begun to see the opportunities. A lot has been written about search optimisation, promotion, and paid services. I think these tools are great but I also think one shouldn’t slavishly follow a prescribed method. Guidelines for building audiences are useful but they are not a guarantee.

Beginning with this post, I will write a series of articles that go beyond tools and strategies to examine the people factor — audience psychology and behaviour. Content creators who understand people can make better use of the latest tools and strategies and can better understand why audience building strategies that work for one video or series don’t necessarily work for others.

What is an Audience? To begin, I think most people intuitively understand an audience is a defined group of people who collectively view, hear, or otherwise receive content with or without input and participation. Beyond that basic definition, there is a vast scholarly body of work on audience analysis. Let’s outline the two basic concepts.

1)      Passive Audience: This is also called the Hypodermic Model because it’s based on the concept of ‘injecting’ content into a passive homogenous mass of people. It assumes the creator or exhibitor is the powerful deliverer of content and that the masses have few choices but to receive what is delivered. This model views media as a powerful tool to shape the minds of the masses. Critics argue it limits content to a prescribed message and ignores how audiences use media beyond simply receiving it. It also ignores how each viewer’s individual experiences and beliefs cause him or her to have different perspectives on the same content. While the Hypodermic Model is rejected by most of today’s media thinkers, it has some proven applications. The most obvious example is propaganda  delivered within a controlled environment that excludes dissenting messages.

2)      Active Audience: The definitive example of an Active Audience Model is the Uses and Gratification Theory (Blumer and Katz 1974). This model portrays the audience as a diverse proactive group who choose and use media in different ways to fulfil their personal goals and needs. It acknowledges individual perspectives. Critics of the Uses and Gratification Theory point to flaws in data used to arrive at the theory and say it fails to explain why some people do appear to behave like passive consumers.  This theory continues to evolve as more media scholars analyse and build upon it.

If you think web video most closely fits the Uses and Gratification Model, you’re correct. Audience behaviour on the Internet is exemplified by people making choices and interacting with content. The next post, Audience Building for Web Video: Part Two – Audience Needs explains what motivates audiences to choose certain shows.

5 More Tips to Better Documentaries

If you missed it, check out the previous post, 5 Tips to Better Documentaries. Now here are 5 more tips gathered from my own experience and that of fellow filmmakers:

1. Location, location, location. Follow this tip for both its visual and contextual value. Visually interesting locations add production value while establishing a setting gives your story context.
2. Use voice-overs and narration to enhance, not to duplicate visuals. This is basic common sense but I still keep seeing documentaries that tell me what I’m seeing. Viewers get restless when faced with this visual and audio redundancy. Why? Because people absorb images faster than they absorb words. This means they have already processed the images before the narrator finishes speaking. When the audience is ready to move on but the film is holding them back, the result is an impatient bored audience.
3. Edit, cut, and edit some more. Be ruthless. Remove shots that don’t move the story forward. When you’re left with only the best shots, trim them. Put the film away for as long as your schedule permits (at least a week if you can) and go work on something else. Then come back and look at your film with fresh eyes. Trim some more.
4. Have great audio. Viewers will forgive less than wonderful visuals but poor audio is not tolerated. It’s true that documentary filmmaking can involve some tough recording situations but don’t let poor location audio drag down your film. Replace ambient sounds and add sound effects and music. Poorly recorded location dialogue can be replaced with voice-overs.
5. Respect your subject. This is about more than following privacy and libel laws. It’s the ethical thing to do and it will help you get a more authentic story. Respect builds trust. For you to make your film, somebody let you into their life to record their image and all that is personal to them. If you manipulate this, it will show as false and the audience will know it.

Can you think of more ways to make better documentaries?

5 Tips to Better Documentaries

Documentary films are enjoying good public interest and there’s room for growth. Give viewers more reasons to love your film by using these five tips to making better documentaries:

1. Have a story. Don’t confuse a topic or issue with the story. While an issue like the cost of healthcare might be the inspiration for a documentary, it’s the story of people who are impacted by healthcare costs that makes a great documentary. Furthermore, a good story can make the most obscure issue interesting. That’s why I don’t believe people who say, “Nobody’s interested in a film about (fill in the blank). It’s not the topic or issue that matters; it’s the story. And speaking of stories –
2. Have a story structure that viewers can follow. You can go with the classic three acts, a non-linear structure, or any structure that takes viewers on a narrative journey to a satisfying conclusion.
3. Know your topic. Do your research. Having thorough knowledge of the topic is more than just a basic requirement of professional documentary filmmaking. It will help you see the story unfolding as you gather the footage and later edit it.
4. Have a protagonist (even if he or she is the filmmaker) and a cast of characters. People relate to characters. Introduce those characters, develop them, and develop their relationships with one another.
5. Be visual. Tell your story with images and actions. Use talking heads only to convey more than the sum of the words. Here’s a good example from a documentary that tells an amazing story, “Catfish”: Ari retells his intimate conversations with a woman he’s never met by reading their text messages. As the messages become increasingly personal, Ari grows more self-conscious until finally he hides beneath his blankets where he continues to read the messages.

Following these tips is a good beginning but guess what? There are more tips that I’ll cover in the next post featuring Five More Tips to Better Documentaries.

Film Trailers and the Art of Persuasion

I like watching film trailers when they grab my interest and make a promise about the film they are selling. The good ones entice without giving away too much. When I feel as if I have seen a condensed version and therefore don’t need to see that film, I know the trailer has failed.

Trailers are a promotion and advertising tool to sell films. By distilling something of the tone and emotional notes, they persuade potential audiences to want to see more. Trailers are really, really difficult to do well.  Recalling how I dislike trailers that reveal too much, I was careful with my most recent short film trailer to not give too much away.

Trailers for short films are especially tough because the film is already short, so it’s hard to capture the essence and still preserve some mystery about the story. I can’t say one-hundred percent if I succeeded with this trailer for, “The Collection” but the general feedback from a sample group of colleagues, acquaintances, and — okay, some family members too (I know but they are brutally honest) — gives me some confidence this trailer does the job without giving too much away.

You be the judge.

Fimmaking: Use What You Have

Television and client work are rewarding but once and awhile I like to do something just for fun. Thus was born “The Collection”, a short film that is soon to be released.

The impetus for “The Collection” was the common notion to make a short film with only what was available on hand. A look around the house turned up a box, a seashell, and a boy. And oh yes, just outside was a haunted forest. Now what story could I possible render from that?

“The Collection” is planned for completion in January of 2012.

The Idea Checklist: From Vague Concept to Saleable Show

Broadcasters, funders, and production companies must filter through a daily deluge of proposals, many of which are for ideas that probably never should have been pitched in the first place. A producer can be passionate about an idea only to have it instantly shot down as being too niche, not audience friendly, poorly thought out, or too expensive or difficult to execute, among other things. What a waste of time and money.

What if you could put your idea through a basic filter like that used by commissioning executives to extract the workable ideas from the rejects? I’m not suggesting commissioners and funders keep a checklist at their side but the items on this checklist are common practice and are intrinsic to knowing how ideas become shows.

To begin, remember the people to whom you’re pitching aren’t there to help you achieve your vision. Don’t expect them to embrace your vague idea’s potential and nurture it to fruition. You have to do that before you bring them your idea. Remember, they want something that will keep them in their jobs (or even get them promoted).

A pitchworthy idea is:

• More than a topic or issue.
• Can be pitched in one or two sentences that anyone can ‘get’.
• Has engaging characters who change in the face of adversity.
• Has a clear narrative with obstacles, twists and turns, the promise of triumph or insights revealed.
• Seems similar but not too similar to a successful show.
• Doesn’t seem similar to a show that failed (or was only marginally successful).
• Is portrayed in a proven format suitable for the content, audience, and channel.
• Attracts an audience that appeals to advertisers.
• Has an attention-getting title that conveys the show’s tone, style, and content to its audience.
• Has proven talent attached or could also have new talent whose ability can be showcased in a pitchtape.
• Comes from (or has the backing of) an experienced producer who has produced similar shows.
• Looks expensive and polished but can be made at reasonable cost.
• Lends itself to multi-platform content that engages and retains audiences and spreads the show.

If your idea can survive this checklist, it will have a better chance than the majority of pitches out there. Can you suggest more checklist items to filter ideas?

Factual Program Formats are Your Friend

Factual programming is an ever evolving genre with an array of formats. Formats provide structure and define a show such that we often refer to it by its sub-group as in ‘that’s a Reality Show’ or a POV, Magazine, Making of, and so on. I like the way formats organize the story and information. Kinda geeky? Yeah.

For this one-hour special I did for Animal Planet Canada, I used a popular format I call the List .

Within this structure I combined the theme of animals and people with a list of questions. The theme defines the content while the format structure defines the pace and composition. The List format has been round for years but it continues to be useful. It’s an engaging design because people like information and they like to prove their skill. When I produced this show, I was confined to the linear platform of television but I can see how this format would work very well on an interactive platform like the Internet. Interactively would lend a gaming quality by letting viewers control the segments and even test their knowledge against other players. What do you think about factual formats and their potential on various platforms?

Go Long on Short Films

Looking for an audience? Want to reach more people?

Short films are ideal for distracted audiences with online platforms, mobile devices, tablets, and a plethora of other screens. Scripted fiction is always a winner but short documentaries are also popular. Some good candidates for short docs include author and artist profiles, animation, music videos, and any topic that can be presented in three to fifteen minutes. Here’s an author profile I did recently. I think there’s a lot of value in a good ‘profile of the artist’ to generate fans for the artist and their work. The films can be turned loose on the world where people can watch them on any screen, anywhere.

Enjoy this one.

Who is the Audience?

Audiences are more than a group of people defined by age, gender, and income. This broad demographic approach is only the beginning of knowing a film’s audience. A more thorough understanding includes  the audience’s interests, beliefs, and lifestyle. If that sounds a bit niche it’s because in today’s marketplace, there are few mass audiences and many niche audiences. Most films and television shows need to target at least five audiences grouped into Core, Secondary, and Tertiary.

Core Audience: These are people whose interests, beliefs, and lifestyle most accurately match the target and are most inclined to see the film. For example: A documentary about ski jumping will have as its core audience people who are ski jumping or skiing enthusiasts.

Secondary Audience: The next levels out are one or more secondary audiences who somewhat match and who also might influence the core audience’s viewing choices (for example: children, spouses, and friends).

Tertiary Audience: At the outer levels are one or more tertiary audiences who, though larger in number, might only match in a minor way and will watch if they happen to have the opportunity. Using the ski jumping documentary example, the tertiary audience could be people who live in the area where the film was made or who like action and sports in general.

Understanding these three audience groups for your film helps in marketing and promotion design and execution. For example: A family film and its promotion must appeal to the core audience (older children) and the secondary audience (the parents or grandparents who will take the kids to the theatre or buy the DVD).