How Seenit can help you to tell the best UGV stories

A great story has the power to turn a passive audience into passionate supporters. At Seenit, we believe the best medium to communicate your message is through crowd-sourced, collaborative stories. Rather than giving a brief to a production studio to create a slick, scripted campaign, why not call upon your own community to be the creators? 

Given that around 3.8 billion people already own smartphones, user-generated video is a no brainer. In a world where trust is scarce, giving your people the tools to tell their own stories builds credibility. In fact, consumers today are 2.4 times more likely to see user-generated content as more authentic than traditional content. 

Creating quality UGV can be hard. Although it may give you opportunities to produce video quickly and easily, there will be challenges along the way - especially if you are trying to coordinate lots of different people and locations. From copyrights to continuity; from direction to editing - things can get very messy very quickly. The good news? Seenit streamlines the process, a lot. Here are 5 top tips for a successful Seenit story.

1. Define your purpose 

Just like every project, a clear and defined goal is absolutely vital. For example, when we ran our Christmas from Home  video, our purpose was to promote a sense of togetherness whilst we were apart. For the project brief, we asked a simple question: “What does Christmas mean to you?” The outcome was exactly what we had hoped to achieve: a collection of clips from our community that brought everyone together - not to mention the warm fuzzy feeling we were left with. For another example, check out BeautyStack. Their #BringBeautyBack UGV campaign had a clear purpose: to let their clients, the government, and fellow professionals know that they were Covid secure and ready to work.

2. Create a storyboard

Before you invite your community to contribute, it’s a good idea to do some forward-planning. We recommend putting together a storyboard to visualise what your project is going to look like. Used in video production, this will consist of rough sketches that visualise how the story will play out. What makes UGV so special is the uniqueness of it - you can’t know in advance exactly how it will look, because that’s largely up to your contributors. You can, however, give a bit of guidance to your community about the look and feel you’re going for. When it comes to editing, you can use your storyboard to determine where the uploads you’ve received might sit within the story. 

3. Set up your project brief

To begin, hit “create project” in the Seenit studio. You’ll then be prompted to enter the name, ID and create a brief. Your project brief will be the first thing your contributors see. So, whatever you do, don’t leave it blank. Instead, use it to communicate the purpose of the story and the type of content you want from your community. The more information you give, the better the content you’ll get back. Within the studio, you’ll find a section for filming directions. Here, you can specify a little bit more about what you’re looking for - is it purely a talking heads videos? Do you want photo submissions? A mixture of mediums can enrich the final edit. 

4. Get the best content from your contributors

Communication is the key to getting the best quality content from your community. While some of those you’ve chosen to contribute may be comfortable on camera, others will need more support. Offer as much reassurance as you can, and take every opportunity to calm their nerves and give advice. As part of your project brief, Seenit lets you film an intro video. This is your opportunity to set the tone for the rest of the project and give your contributors some much-needed inspo. You could even use it to give filming tips to help people get started. We find that projects with intro videos get 50% more contributions - so, that’s something to keep in mind. 

5. Pull it all together

Through the Seenit editing studio, you can compile all your clips together into one slick video. You don’t need to be an expert editor to make a compelling video. However, a passion for storytelling will certainly help. Go through all of your footage and pick out the best uploads. These can form a rough skeleton of your project as a starting point. From here, you can go through the rest of your clips and decide where they might fit in. If it feels appropriate, you can always use music to help elevate the mood and heighten the emotional response from your audience.

Your first UGV project will always be the most daunting. But, the more you do, the more comfortable your community will be contributing to your UGV stories. Plus, the more content you get from your contributors, the more material you have to work with in the future. Seenit is simple to use - whatever your level of experience in video production. Of course, if you do need a helping hand to get your project off the ground or pull it all together, we’re always here to support you