Curious about engaging content, building teams, and start-ups?

Tune into our fireside chat with Al, @VidOps CEO and Holly, @Subly CEO to get some answers to our burning content Qs!  

Thanks to Al for invaluable content world insights

Transcription below

Holly: Hi, I'm Holly, the founder and CEO of Subly and, I'm really excited to have Al with me today from VidOps joining me, talking all things video, content, building a start-up, accessibility, great things of what we do and what we don't know, and trying to learn from each other.

So, Al, over to you!

Al: Thanks, Holly. Yeah, I'm Al, the founder and CEO here at VidOps. We're a video production company with a twist in that we have a digital platform that enables us to connect creatives around the globe. So, I'm super excited today to chat about growing a start-up as well, and hope that I can provide some value to our viewers, especially those who are looking to develop their marketing and of course, it's always a pleasure to chat about video. So shall I kick us off with the first question?

Holly: Let's go for it. Woo, woop!

Al: Okay. My first question is around growing startups and maintaining momentum. Holly, can you tell me how marketing content has helped you maintain your momentum at Subly?

Holly: Of course. And, even before we even had a business or a product, it was all about content for us. So Subly is built on a landing page and pushing out lots and lots of content about what we were building as we're doing this at the same time.

So for us, it was around that consistency as we didn't really have a product at that time. How could we inform my users on an ongoing basis, as what's happening, keeping our Founding Members engaged, telling them what's coming. It was all about the planning, and the consistency, and that really helped to create that momentum so people would never miss out on a message about what's coming from Subly. The other one was around our community.

So not only was it us pushing out the content and that consistency on that element, it was How can we engage with our community so they do the work for us, and so they love our project and they keep referring it, time and time again. And that really helped kinda build the company brand, build the story, work with our customers and our community on that. On the other side of it was also around, how do we build those features?

Whether that's in blog, in our product, it was all around, how can I keep those features keep coming, keep people informed about it? It was all around, kind of showing them, and showcasing what our product does, and what it's going to do. So it's all those elements. Consistency, community, and all those features. And that's what's really helped to build that momentum, and that strong brand that Subly has built to date.

Al: Awesome. We actually love using Subly and, yeah, so it seems obvious. But I couldn't agree more that the key is to create content that people want to what, and ideally, that it adds value for their audience. But yeah, speaking of the team, what were some key factors that matter to you when building your team at Subly?

Holly: Sure, so our team is everything at Subly. It's helped us go from that company with the landing page, all the way to an actual product, and thousands and thousands of users now. But for us, it was more round, not necessarily the education, or the skills that that team had. It was, who is the right culture fit for us? Because you can always build skills, and you can always train people, but who is the right culture fit?

Who wants to be on the journey?

Who do you think that could grow at the business?

Who's autonomous?

Who can kind of get on with things?

Especially when we're all remote as well, like we can't always be checking in with each other. It's about how do you empower that person to keep going and be prepared to fail and fail hard and keep trying, and things are gonna get a bit messy at times. But how can we kind of see that not only the evolution of the product. But how can we have that person evolve, too into the role that they really want to be in. And so for us, it was all around the best culture fit for us, and who could also... say, that they wanted to be a product manager, how do we take them from being a project manager to a product manager? And how can we help them develop as well.

So, it's all around, yeah, that culture fit for us, an who is adaptable from being in a location and, not being able to speak with people all time. So it's all around culture and adaptability for us.

They're the core elements of the team.

Al: Awesome.

Holly: Okay, Al, so I'm going to fire it over to you now. You've gotta cover the questions for me. But I want to know, how's accessible content helped you improve the brand awareness with your customers at VidOps?

Al: Yeah, so subtitles help capture audiences who've got the sound off. I mean, I don't know if you've ever found yourself scrolling through LinkedIn or Instagram, and you haven't got the sound on whilst you're on the train. So, as you scroll through having the subtitles that captures your attention. And then, of course, for people who are hard of hearing, and deaf audiences it enables them to also engage with content, as well. So this way content provides maximum upfront value, and it's zero effort from the customer side when it's accessible and easy to view.

Holly: Yeah, I couldn't agree more, like that's kind of the one of the biggest things that we say around video and content is that it really does, it makes it so accessible to everyone everywhere, where they don't–– they're just scrolling or they're trying to learn online without the sound on. So it's all around kind of how accessible it is.

And you did touch on that repurposing of content.

So what types of repurposed content have you seen really work well for for you at VidOps?

Al: I mean, obviously, as a video production company, we're capturing content for our clients, and so we want to show off the work that we're doing for our clients to new prospective customers, and what will often do, with our client's permission, is reuse the content we create for them, in our own marketing efforts.

So we'll cut together all of the aerial photo shoots or drone clips to create this aerial montage to showcase that side of the work that we can do. And then we'll cut together all the animations, and we'll have little snippets together in a showreel. And, this is super great for us to reach more audiences and it helps us gain a brand presence, too.

So we're constantly trying to build the brand on social media. So for example, on LinkedIn, we'll post these types of snippets from clients' productions every day, and that really helps to also boost our SEO.

Holly: Yeah, we do the same too, Al. It's all around like kind of taking those three minute, five minute videos, and then whether it's us on creating content or, whether it's our community. We dod the same. We chop it up into multiple segments. We can use it multiple times and again, as you said, it s SEO across all those channels, as well.

Al: So, you've used different types of content for marketing purses, but mostly vlogs. Why did you choose this type of video content?

Holly: Yeah, so actually the story of Subly is that it all came from the problems that we experienced in our day-to-day lives with video.

So whether it was us as a user and watching a video online and understanding how subtitles are put onto it.

For us, as actually creating the video content, whether that's in kind of an L&D team, in a company internal comms, a creative company or for social media, for example, on the YouTube channel, we saw so many different problems. That's how it had the company evolved. But we could see that video is growing at an exceptional rate on whether that's us doing live streaming or prerecorded piece of content. As you said, it was all around. Okay, we used video because one were a video company, and that was a main way that we communicate.

So we only see natural for us to keep harping on about our product, and testing our product and doing vlogs to really showcase that. On top of that it was also as a start up, and as an early stage company, we really want to build community around our product and, we needed to make it personal.

So why would you use Subly over an incumbent that you've been used to in the past?

And it was all around that story from both myself, the founder of why I created it and I could resonate with the audience, but also them understand all the different problems from our community and then trying different products as well. So it's all around.

Let's build this community.

Let's build this brand around video, and you can also see the face of the brand, and who's behind it and that's what you really want to do, is like humans behind Subly. We're not just a product. Video really allowed us to do that. So it was all around the engaging the community, the face of the community and, also being able to test our product, as well.

Okay, then. Well, thank you so much, Al. for this fireside chat. It's been so informative. And I hope it really helps our community. If anyone wants to know about video production and VidOps then go to vidops.io

Thanks so much, Al, for your time.

Al: Awesome, thank you so much, Holly, it's been a real pleasure.

Originally posted on: https://www.getsubly.com/post/how-to-harness-content-to-build-a-successful-brand-ft-vidops-ceo