In the movies, a lot of the most iconic scenes were never supposed to make the big screen at all. They were ad-libbed—the result of actors masterfully playing their roles to outshine a carefully crafted script.

But if you don’t have millions in your video production budget, Matt Damon isn’t too likely to appear in any of your digital marketing or social media videos (crafting a 3-minute story of pure improv is definitely to be envied). It’s up to you to deliver a performance that, Oscar-worthy or not, is good enough to engage your audience and create interest in your company.

So, naturally, you prepare. You ask for questions in advance and memorize answers you can confidently repeat when the cameras start rolling. But as you start to recite those rehearsed responses, something happens. Suddenly, the same questions you answer every single day start to sound more robotic than cool and confident.

And when this happens, it can actually do more harm than good. Too often, interview subjects get so locked into trying to recite perfect answers, they forget that personally connecting with their customers is what selling is all about.

Your customers aren’t looking for Brad Pitt. They’re looking for you.

When potential customers view digital content, they’re not only looking for information about your products and services. They’re also looking to build a relationship with you and your company. They want to hear your backstory, to get to know the people behind your success and to feel your passion for what you offer.

If you’ve been with your company for any length of time, you shouldn’t need a script to make it happen. In fact, unless you’ve had professional acting training, a script can be a liability because the answers (and your personal strengths) are already upstairs.

A script can be a liability because the answers are already upstairs.

Bullet points are the silver bullet in high-quality video production.

Over the years, we’ve found that the best way to get the most genuine responses on video is to ask key questions to the person being featured—without scripted answers. We prepare bullet points and a few phrases for the respondents ahead of time, but never do we write a formal script to follow unless our client is a professional speaker.

Clients will often ask to see a list of questions and answers days before a shoot. But a list of bullet points that frame the discussion allow the client to get prepared and at the same time, sets the client up to answer naturally and comfortably.

Here are a few best practices for making your video interviews easier—and more valuable from a branding perspective.

1. Sit down and have a relaxing conversation. Video shoots don’t always have to be question and answer forums. Oftentimes the best on-camera responses are achieved by simply “talking shop”. We put ourselves in the customer’s shoes, and explain to our clients what we want to know about their company and their products and let them roll with it.
2. Do it until you get it right. The perfect response doesn’t always come out immediately, and that’s okay. We always emphasize with our clients that we aren’t going to run out of film, so if you feel you didn’t cover a certain topic well enough or fumbled too much through another, we can go back and ask the same question again (and again), until we get it right.
3. Edit videos to fit into multiple platforms. The various social media and web platforms all have different standards as to how long a video should be. No one gets on Twitter to watch something that’s five minutes long, but at the same time, a 30-second clip probably isn’t long enough for the front page of a website. We explain this to our clients and let them know that it’s okay if they can’t speak at length about certain topics. There are plenty of places for short and sweet.
4. Keep it simple. And engaging. If your customers were all-knowing experts, they wouldn’t be coming to you for answers. That’s why we encourage clients to avoid acronyms and complicated industry buzzwords in video interviews. When you keep things in layman’s terms, they tend to have a greater impact on your target audiences.

Video production is an important part of any digital marketing or public relations plan, but only when it’s done correctly. If you have any questions about how we can help you create compelling video content, let us know!

In the meantime, this blog is a wrap!