All Posts By

Rich Roaf

How “Tax Billionaires to Fix the Planet?” kept people watching

By Resources
@needtoknowpolitics

Should billionaires be taxed to fix the planet?

♬ Succession Theme Song - Max

4 Ways this Video Kept People Watching

  1. Hook people in immediately

You have 3 seconds to show something unexpected and visually compelling.

In this TikTok video we used:

  • A bold text hook on screen: “Tax billionaires to fix the planet”
  • Visual evidence to show credibility, in this case, a newspaper screenshot
  • Footage of well-known villains, in this case, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg

2. Cut to the chase

A good hook is a promise. You need to start delivering straight away.

When writing a script, cut out any waffle. Get straight to the exciting information and powerful visuals.

Think “All Killer, No Filler.”

3. Visual variety

Stop audiences from getting bored by changing up the visuals regularly:

  • Use frequent cuts every 3-7 seconds
  • Show images, data, and graphics to add variety and value
  • Include movement with presenter shots, by moving the camera or cutting between wider and close-up shots

4. Break it up

Try cutting to different clips that break up the narration or presenter.

In our video “Tax Billionaires to Fix Climate Change,” at 3 seconds we cut from the narration to a shot of Elon Musk saying “Go f**k yourself”.

This kept our audience on their toes.

Other ways you can also do this:

  • Using clips that add credibility, such as news broadcasts or expert interviews.
  • Incorporating funny videos and memes to keep your content entertaining.

Join the Campaign Content Accelerator

If you’re looking to put some of these lessons into practice then we’re launching a new course to help.

In the Campaign Content Accelerator we’ll take you through a step by step process to create a suite of social media content for your campaign including text posts, images, videos and campaign actions. You’ll learn alongside a group of like-minded people working in campaigns, communications and digital roles.

How to make a political TikTok in 1 hour

By Resources

Sign up for more video tutorials below and download the VideoRev Hookbook, a toolkit to help you quickly generate viral video ideas.

Enter your details to get instant access to over 30 hooks that the most successful campaign videos are using to drive online engagement.

Start applying them in your own videos and increase engagement immediately.

    How to create rapid response videos webinar

    By Resources

    Thanks to everyone who joined our webinar on rapid response videos co-hosted with NEON, and thanks again to our fantastic speakers.

    Below you can find all the recordings of the speakers, and here are the Presentation Slides and the Video Worksheet.

    If you want more support to create rapid response content then read about VideoRev’s new Campaign Content Accelerator programme.

    Three ways rapid response video can help campaigners win

    Introduction

    Kahra Wayland-Larty

    Why rapid response videos are so important?

    Richard Roaf, VideoRev

    Five steps to create a rapid response video

    Richard Roaf, VideoRev

    How videos can build your media profile

    Kevin Smith, NEON

    How Zoe Gardner creates videos

    Zoe Gardner

    How to create viral news clips

    Richard Roaf, VideoRev

    How messengers, location and actions can help you go viral

    Richard Roaf, VideoRev

    Join the Campaign Content Accelerator

    If you’re looking to put some of these lessons into practice then we’re launching a new course to help.

    In the Campaign Content Accelerator we’ll take you through a step by step process to create a suite of social media content for your campaign including text posts, images, videos and campaign actions. You’ll learn alongside a group of like-minded people working in campaigns, communications and digital roles.

    At each stage you will build on the assets and insights from the last, massively speeding up content creation and improving your hit rate by helping you identify the most successful creative approaches.

    How to make a political TikTok in 1 hour

    By Resources

    Sign up for more video tutorials below and download the VideoRev Hookbook, a toolkit to help you quickly generate viral video ideas.

    Enter your details to get instant access to over 30 hooks that the most successful campaign videos are using to drive online engagement.

    Start applying them in your own videos and increase engagement immediately.

      Climate protest

      How to use video to help the climate movement at COP26

      By Resources

      Thanks to everyone who joined our “How to use video to help the climate movement at COP26” webinar, and to our fantastic speakers Wambui, Hugo and Samuel. Below you can find all the recordings and presentations. Here is the original video tutorial that launched the webinar.

      There has been such interest we’ve created a Slack channel to continue to share knowledge and find ways to collaborate at COP26, so please Join the COP26 Video Slack.

      Richard Roaf, VideoRev

      Richard presented on “5 key styles of video to reach people at COP26” and “5 steps to creating viral videos at COP”. Check out his presentation for links to 20 successful social media videos.

      Recording of Richard’s Presentation

      Richard’s Slides

      Wambui Gichobi, Survival Media Agency

      Wambui presented on SMA’s global rapid response work that brings powerful grassroots stories to audiences with policy changing and resource diversion power.

      Recording of Wambui’s Presentation

      Wambui’s Slides

      Hugo Duchesne, 350.org

      Hugo presented on 350.org’s work to support impacted communities and gave practical advice on how to set up a team to create rapid response videos.

      Recording of Hugo’s Presentation

      Hugo’s Slides

      Samuel K, Video Presenter and Filmmaker

      Samuel presented on what makes a video successful on social and gave practical advice to create political videos that cut through with wider audiences and where to source footage.

      Get in touch

      We hope you found the session useful. If you’re looking for further help with videos for COP26 then just drop Richard an email and we’d love to jump on a call: richard@videorev.org

      Climate protest

      How to use video to help the climate movement at COP26

      By Resources

      Thanks to everyone who joined our “How to use video to help the climate movement at COP26” webinar, and to our fantastic speakers Wambui, Hugo and Samuel. Below you can find all the recordings and presentations. Here is the original video tutorial that launched the webinar.

      There has been such interest we’ve created a Slack channel to continue to share knowledge and find ways to collaborate at COP26, so please Join the COP26 Video Slack.

      Richard Roaf, VideoRev

      Richard presented on “5 key styles of video to reach people at COP26” and “5 steps to creating viral videos at COP”. Check out his presentation for links to 20 successful social media videos.

      Recording of Richard’s Presentation

      Richard’s Slides

      Wambui Gichobi, Survival Media Agency

      Wambui presented on SMA’s global rapid response work that brings powerful grassroots stories to audiences with policy changing and resource diversion power.

      Recording of Wambui’s Presentation

      Wambui’s Slides

      Hugo Duchesne, 350.org

      Hugo presented on 350.org’s work to support impacted communities and gave practical advice on how to set up a team to create rapid response videos.

      Recording of Hugo’s Presentation

      Hugo’s Slides

      Samuel K, Video Presenter and Filmmaker

      Samuel presented on what makes a video successful on social and gave practical advice to create political videos that cut through with wider audiences and where to source footage.

      Get in touch

      We hope you found the session useful. If you’re looking for further help with videos for COP26 then just drop Richard an email and we’d love to jump on a call: richard@videorev.org

      How to generate 100 social media concepts in 1 hour

      By Tutorials

      5 steps to creating better performing concepts, faster

       

      This video and blog explain how to run a meeting with 5 people to generate 100 content ideas in 1 hour, using the principles of the Design Sprint.

      We know this process works because we used it with Freedom from Torture to help them raise £300K and create their best performing Instagram post of all time.

       

      Step 1. Write a brief Before the session

      Before you start:

      • Define your objective

      • Identify a very specific audience and their motivations

      • Define the campaign story and the key facts, values, quotes and images, you can use to communicate it

       

      Step 2. Identify successful concepts ⏲ 10 mins

      For paid ads you can use the Facebook Ad Library to identify the concepts that other organisations are putting money behind.

      For videos the VideoRev Hookbook has identified the top 30 video Hooks for campaigners.

      For image posts we use the VideoRev Imagebook, which has identified the 43 top performing creative concepts for Facebook and Instagram.

      Using these tools we can spend just 10 minutes selecting the 10 most relevant concepts.

       

      Point 3. Individual brainstorming ⏲ 20 mins

      We create a Miro board and arrange these successful concepts along the top and have people generate new ideas that apply these creative approaches to our campaign.

      Each of the 5 participants brainstorm alone to generate one new concept a minute for 20 minutes. Leaving us with 100 concepts.

       

      Step 4. Vote ⏲ 10 mins

      We filter from 100 ideas by having participants vote using dots on which concept would engage them immediately.

      At this point, you can select the most popular concept based on voting or develop the top 5-10 into a prototype for user feedback.

       

      Step 5. Prototype for user feedback ⏲ 20 mins

      Using Miro and quick Google image searches we can simply mockup the concepts into a rough prototype with text on an image. We export these images from Miro and put them directly into a Google Form.

      It’s easy to then circulate this to colleagues or friends to vote on the concept. But it’s most impactful to recruit members of the target audience to vote on the most engaging concept.

      Using this feedback we can not only select the concept that is likely to perform best on social media but we can also strengthen it based on the qualitative feedback.

       

      If in doubt, try several out

      Using this process for Freedom from Torture’s Christmas campaign we generated over 100 creative concepts for image and video ads.

      Because you can never be certain which will perform best, we delivered 20 videos and 20 images, and allowed Facebook to optimise. This process led to a 150% increase in performance from the previous year and a total return on investment of 2.94.

      Get started: Send to a friend

      If you found this useful, send this page to someone you’re working with and book a meeting to try out a concept generation session using this 5 step Sprint process.

      To find out more about how you can use revolutionise your content creation using the principles of the Design Sprint, read more about our Creative Sprint Workshops.

      Download the VideoRev Hookbook for viral video ideas

      By Resources

      The VideoRev Hookbook is a toolkit to help you quickly generate viral video ideas for your campaign.

      Enter your details to get instant access to over 30 hooks that the most successful campaign videos are using to drive online engagement.

      Start applying them in your own videos and increase engagement immediately.

        The Evidence

        After analysing over 100,000 videos I discovered the 30 hooks that the most successful campaign videos are using.

        The Results

        Using these hooks I was able to create campaign videos that have received 50 million views and one million shares