Remember when we all thought we would work from home for no more than two or three weeks? Ah, memories of a simpler time.
Now that two weeks has turned into more than 60 for many of us, organizations of all kinds are making the switch to hybrid or fully remote work arrangements. For those of us in news and media, we need a lot more than Zoom to work efficiently and effectively in this new world.
One of the largest challenges news, production, and public affairs teams have faced is being able to create, edit, and publish video content remotely. Issues with bandwidth, storage, reliability, and access add unnecessary speed bumps into processes where time is of the essence.
This is where a video workspace can be a game changer for unifying news-making and news-using teams. These platforms enable teams to bring together several video content sources to make them easier to capture, manage, search, edit, & publish. And they can be used by a variety of departments, from production and news to creative services, ad sales, and PR/public affairs.
Considering a video workflow platform for your news organization? Be sure to look for these three things:
Cloud-Based Video News Access & Distribution
It's likely your organization gets news video content from a variety of sources - broadcast, OTT, streams - in addition to what you create in house. Historically, capturing all these different sources might have required different pieces of hardware, and monitoring them all simultaneously would have been cumbersome, if not impossible.
The first thing your news organization should look for in a video workspace is whether there is an appliance-free option. This can take many forms, from managed TV and hosting to content licensing. Regardless of how it works, the goal for your team should be a cloud-based user experience with no hardware for your team to manage and equal access to content across your organization.
What is Managed TV?
In most cases, accessing broadcast content still requires a cable or satellite subscription. Which means you'd need a cable box in your office. Platforms - like SnapStream - that include managed TV alleviate this burden by hosting the cable box for you, managing the service install and configuration, and handling troubleshooting and support. This means less IT and engineering support is required from your organization, you get better system reliability, and your focus can stay on creating content.
Easy-to-Use Video Editing Interface
We are all content creators now. Staying current and relevant in social media channels requires a tremendous amount of timely content. And we all know the social media platform algorithms are currently tuned to favor video-based content. The only way to keep up with the content velocity required to grow followers and engagement is to enable more people in your organization to create and publish quality content, wherever they are
In evaluating a news media video workspace, look at how intuitive the controls are and how easy it is to teach your team to use them. The idea is to give video editor-style capabilities to folks without them needing to be video editors. Make sure frame-specific editing is a breeze, transcripts are easy to reference to find specific moments, and there are a variety of branded formats that can be output specifically for social media.
Alert Everyone to Major Moments
What's important on any given day can vary from team to team. But when big events happen, your brand is mentioned, or your candidate makes a statement, your entire organization needs to take notice. Major moments hit everyone from the newsroom and production to creative services, public affairs, and advertising. And when the news moves fast, it can be a challenge to get the right content to everyone simultaneously.
As you look at news media video workspaces, ensure the platform does 24/7 monitoring and allows you and your team to set up alerts for the topics that matter to you most. This capability ensures your organization can seamlessly stay aligned on everything from the progression of major news stories and statements and commentary about your candidate or brand to confirming advertising adjacencies and placement.
Organizations of all sizes will continue looking for better ways to enable teams in a way that maximizes connection and collaboration in our remote and hybrid work world. The right video workspace can alleviate many of the common challenges news, media, and public affairs teams like yours grapple with as you work to get your arms around the news cycle and create compelling video content.
Want to try the original news media video workspace for yourself? Try us free for 7 days to search and clip the biggest news moments as they happen.