Social media

Audio and video sharing

Audio and video sharing, and the use of multimedia more generally, has become increasingly popular in recent years. Sound and video capabilities provide a great opportunity to create and present content in new and engaging ways.

With the increase in high-speed broadband infrastructure and mobile data networks, digital multimedia content is reaching more and more people. The increased adoption of smart phones and other handheld devices that extend the reach and accessibility of online multimedia content is allowing access to multimedia content almost anywhere, anytime.

As part of your digital strategy, you may want to consider taking advantage of richer content to reach and engage with your audience.

Often audio or video can present messages or content faster and more engagingly than text can. Integrating video into your online presence can increase your ability to capture and connect with your audience.

You can publish your rich media files on your website, as part of your blog or other online presence that you control. However, just as you can allow your customers, supporters and donors to share your text content, you can allow them to share your audio or video content through word-of-mouth or virally. This may be easier to do on a third party platform than from your own website because a third party site has a ready-made audience.

Online videos

An example of the Department's channel on an online video sharing site.

For video content, you can post to video sharing sites such as YouTube or Vimeo. When you upload your video to these sites, you will have the option of choosing to allow embedding. This lets other people include your video in their website or blog. It also allows you to embed your video into your own site, increasing the visibility and awareness of your content, and enabling other people to spread the word for you. Allowing comments from people who watch your video can also give you useful feedback.

The use of video is only limited by the imagination, and ranges from pure entertainment and home videos through to education and product promotion, PR and advertising, as well as political and social campaigning.

All you really need to create video content is a webcam and a microphone, together with software tools to capture, edit and combine recordings. For a relatively low cost, you can set up your own small production studio using a digital video camera and a modest desktop computer or laptop. There are also many businesses that can help you develop a screenplay and produce professional studio-based video for your organisation.

Podcasts

License: CC BY-SA 2.0 DE Attribution: Peter Marquardt

Another common method of sharing audio and video content is via podcasts. Generally speaking, podcasting is the technology that allows for distribution of audio or audio/video files automatically over the internet through a publish and subscribe model, similar to that used for text content via feeds or RSS.

Podcasts have become a popular way for the general public to share their content, but are also used by organisations and media sites as a cost-effective supplement or alternative to text content, or more formal video production and broadcasting.

To create a podcast, you need to record your content, upload it to your website or blog or a third party hosting platform such as iTunes and then create an RSS feed that points to the content. When you publish more podcasts, the RSS feed will then point to and distribute the new content to those who have subscribed.