A massive shift is happening in digital media – brought on by the 2020-2021 pandemic’s accelerated use of major social networks like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, repetitive looking and sounding content is awakening customers to rhetoric that can fail a brand’s ability to interface successfully.
What this means for physical space
People want to connect with each other through space in ways that create good feelings between them. Additionally customers want to see that companies are made of people who share common interests and desires, so it should be natural to leverage the strengths amongst your community to create a narrative that engages your audience.
How can you interact physical space with marketing + community?
Before you consider what media you’ll be working with, think about where you will produce that media and how you can give your audience a glimpse behind the scenes through its production.
What this means is that you can use physical spaces at your workplace to actually capture media in a way which brings your audience into your workplace. Additionally, choose who from your community will be highlighted as important voices for your brand – either as one-offs or recurring presenters etc…
For the podcast example, remember that you can record audio anywhere its generally quiet so long as your mics are great; putting a condenser mic close to your host and interviewees face means that their voice can be captured in a way that background noise becomes ambiance… and if you record video of a conversation in a place with activity behind/around the subjects it might just show your audience where you work whilst bringing them into a conversation about who you work with, and how they work.
Setting the Stage: Dedicated Space for Media Production
Of course, if you develop an active content production cycle and regularly produce video and audio content you may want to invest in a production environment that offers your team turn-key productions with no setup or tear-down time in between shoots.
Here’s what the Broadcast Studio at StartWell looks like:
We developed a professionally sound-proofed room for this purpose. Initially, our flagship podcast was audio only, which meant that our room simply needed a sturdy table and chairs with audio recording equipment. As our team got more comfortable producing films though we invested in mounting cameras on the walls to capture podcasts in high quality multi-cam HD.
Uploading video separately from audio versions of podcasts gets you exposure to a different kind of audience – some folks like to listen to conversations whilst driving and others want to relax at the end of the day and watch a conversation unfold.
