Can you DIY? How and When to Update Old Video Content

You know that wooden chair you snagged off the side of the road? Or the old nightstand you got off of Kijiji for $10? They still function well! But someone decided they weren’t up-to-date with current trends. Good thing you have an eye for DIY projects and a way with that white milk paint.

With all the content you produce, it’s inevitable that some of your content may end up out-of-date as well. But that doesn’t mean that you have to throw it out and start from scratch. Sometimes all it needs is a quick refresh.

Refreshing your video content can help you save oodles of time and money. It can also be a simple way to re-align content with new messaging or a way to re-engage your audience. Let’s explore what types of videos you should and shouldn’t refresh, what update opportunities exist, and how to know your content needs a facelift.

What type of video content should you refresh?

Not every single type of video in every context lends itself well to an upcycle. But here’s a list of some of the best opportunities you might have on your own site:

• Blog videos: Has a method or concept changed since you last published on that topic? You don’t necessarily have to update the entire video, but you could add updates throughout the clip with text annotations or a even a quick filmed update at the beginning or end.
• Culture videos: Has your team changed? If you’re interviewing a specific person in a culture video that no longer works at the company, consider replacing just their snippet with a new interviewee.
• Webinars: If your webinars are posted chronologically, like most, no one’s watching your 60-minute webinar from 2013. Try updating it (or even re-purposing it) by cutting it into smaller pieces and adding it to a new blog post.
• Product videos: Do you use screenshots or clips of your product in your demo videos? If so, these will have to be checked frequently and updated accordingly because products are always changing!

• Research: New research comes out all the time, but that doesn’t mean you have to scrap last quarter’s video just because some updated research has come to light. You can always update one stat or add a stat in. This even works if the video was a motion graphic.

• Testimonials: Sometimes your biggest advocate leaves the company they were working for and their testimonial is no longer as impactful, since … well, they don’t work for that company any more. As long as your customer team has been doing a great job of re-building relationships at that company, consider updating the speaker in your testimonial video. You can even do this while keeping most of the messaging the same.

   

What type of video content should you avoid refreshing?

Other types of videos don’t lend themselves well to a refresh but are better either (a) left untouched or (b) completely redone.

• Evergreen How-to Content: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Even if you are a DIY wiz. Evergreen content is called that for a reason; if it’s still teaching a valuable lesson, leave it the way it is.
• Home Page Video: This is the video that sits front and centre. Unless you’ve just recently found a mistake or you updated your tagline just a month after you published the video, you should simply create a new one. Change on a home page can be a great way to re-engage visitors!
• Rebranded Video Content:  If you’re going through an entire rebrand, an update to video content probably just isn’t going to cut it. Chances are you’ll need to start from scratch, and it will probably be a more efficient use of everyone’s time to do it this way than try to re-jig old content to fit a new mold.

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What updates might you do?

There’s an endless list of things you can update within each video. Here’s a brief list to get you started when you’re freshening things up:

Statistics or research

• Screencasts or product shots
• Value prop or messaging
• Logos
• Employees (your own)
• Employees (your customers)
• CTAs or form fields
• Filming

On that last one, consider that you may re-film an entire video but utilize the same concept from the previous video. Sure, you’re spending time re-filming, but you’re saving a lot of pre-production time if you re-purpose the initial concept. This counts as an upcycle, too!

How do you know when your content needs a refresh?

You know when you’re wearing bell-bottoms and everyone else is in skinny jeans? Or you’re still mastering cross-stitch and everyone else has moved on to chalk paint? Then you know it’s time for an update.

For marketing collateral, it’s a little trickier, I’ll admit. But with the right practices in place, hopefully you’ll realize your content is heading in the direction of outdated before it’s way out of line.

Keeping Product Site Videos Updated

If you have any big changes in the company like a large number of new hires or layoffs, product launches, product updates, or a refined brand, you’ll likely need some refreshed content.

For less obvious changes, consider doing a quarterly site audit. Keep a spreadsheet up-to-date will all the pages on your website and the videos on each page, when they were made, and when they were last updated. Make note of those that need a refresh and ensure your in-house video team or your agency is planning and has the bandwidth for regular video update projects. It’s a common occurrence, so there should be time allotted for it.

Keeping Content Marketing Videos Updated

Keeping content marketing and blog videos up-to-date is a whole other beast. I don’t know about you, but we have hundreds and hundreds of blog posts. Some companies have thousands.

So how do you keep track of all your video blog posts?

A quick hack is to use a tag or filter for all video blogs, specifically. At Vidyard, we use series naming conventions like “Video Marketing How-To” … partly for this purpose, and partly for audience understanding! This way, you’re at least looking at a fewer number of posts. However, since you’re a marketer who probably has to keep your written content up-to-snuff as well, try following this, more comprehensive, approach:

• When you write a post, rank it on a scale of ‘evergreen-ness’ from 1-3. 3 means it will basically never become out-of-date and 1 means it’s very topical. 1’s could be product information, new technology in the industry, or recent research. 1’s will need more frequent updating.
• Go through the 1’s once a quarter to see if the topic requires an update. For example, if the best way to fit boots for dogs has recently changed, then Mutt-Luks should update their blog post from last quarter on fitting your dog for winter boots.
• Go through the 2’s twice per year and the 3’s once per year just to double check.

It can be a lot of tedious work, but it pays off. Even just adding a quick two- to three-line update on a blog post can bring it back as up-to-date, relevant content that Google will reward. And Google is King, after all.

Or, you can completely update and revamp a post.

Either way, it’s great to include a blurb somewhere within the post if you’ve completed an update. The editor’s note below is what Hubspot typically uses, as an example.

Now here’s a question, you DIY genius. Are there opportunities on your site to update video content without having to completely re-do it? Where will you start?

The post Can you DIY? How and When to Update Old Video Content appeared first on Vidyard.

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