Holy Island: a case for video

Guest post by Ed Maule

Video is the fastest and most engaging way to impart information, news and marketing messages to a wide audience. And the virality of video is a significant aspect of this powerful online channel. Viral videos are watched, commented on and, most importantly, shared on a global level.

Video also offers an opportunity for those without the loudest voices (or budgets) to make people sit up and listen. One of the sectors where this is most needed is local charity: real people, trying to make a real difference, in a world where it’s hard to be heard.

With YouTube second only to Google as the biggest search engine, video offers charities and communities the opportunity to be seen, understood and engaged with. The key is to produce content that’s interesting, well produced, informative and findable (key words, tags etc etc).

Siren Broadcast, the video content arm of Siren Communications, recently teamed up with Holy Island – a remote village on the Northumberland coast, cut off from the mainland twice a day due to tides.

The island has recently seen its population decline, partly due its location, far from many amenities. Siren lent its support by producing a video, highlighting the issues of remote living and bringing to light the need for funds to build a new village hall community centre, a vital social hub for local residents. You can read more background to the Holy Island story here.

The short film is designed to give viewers an insider’s view of Holy Island, highlighting the challenges for residents and the need for financial support to build the new community centre. Working alongside Reuters and other video production agencies, Siren is now seeding this video to local/national media, influential travel bloggers and national broadcasters.

The key to this film, and all video content, is that it tells a story. It engages the audience, inspires the viewer and most importantly, encourages a response. The video itself has an immediate call to action – ‘jump online and make a contribution’.

Before beginning any video production, you need to ask yourself these questions:

• What is your message?
• What are you trying to communicate?
• Who are you speaking to?
• What are your available assets?
• What is the objective?

Whether you’re raising money for a local charity, selling long haul flights, offering fabulous beach holidays or marketing camping trips in the UK – always ensure you know your message, know your audience and know your objectives.

Video offers a rich and engaging medium to captivate an audience and tell a story. It’s important to utilise this digital channel to enhance online messaging and increase engagement, response and conversion.

Nb: For a longer version of this video, click on this link. And to contact Siren, please email [email protected] or [email protected]

Acknowledgment: Siren Communications was the official PR partner for Travel Perspective at Social Travel Market, held at World Travel Market, in 2011 and 2012.

Picfair: fighting back against theft of photos

By Steve Keenan

I’ve known Benji Lanyado for a few years, from his time on the travel desk at The Guardian. A very good writer, he was also firmly in the vanguard of print journalists who took social media to heart.

He pioneered ‘Twi-Trips,’ whereby Benji landed in a city and asked Twitter users to determine how he would spend his day (his first was to Paris in February, 2009) He also created a timeline map - Kerouapp - to help illustrate these articles online, and later turned his hand to coding and created RedditEdit - an aggregating site that aggregated an aggregator. Neat.

So when he invited people to join a mailing list for his latest project, PicFair, I signed up knowing he wouldn’t be wasting his time. And he hasn’t. He started writing the code in February and has now launched the site, and all for under £4,000. He write about the process on his own blog.

Basically, it is the first site that allows anybody to post their own photos and to set their own price to use. That’s really it. It’s simple, democratic and PicFair earns its cut by charging the buyer 10% commission (July 30: My colleague Mark Frary rightly points out that there are sites that pay for images so ‘first’ isn’t strictly accurate. I do think PicFair is a different breed, however).

It’s been going for under a week - so clearly it may take a few days more for my initial canon of work to sell. But it is attracting attention - writer Matthew Teller has already posted his own stringent analysis - is Picfair fair?.

Travel writers and bloggers are giving it a go as it’s appeal is obvious. Travel writer Donald Strachan has already earned a fiver for this image, snapped on his way to work.

So I asked Benji some questions. Here are his Q&A responses:

What inspired the idea to stop photographers getting ripped off?

AirBnB, in a big way. I’ve been thinking about Picfair for years - but seeing AirBnB do so well convinced me to get on and make it. I’m trying to do exactly what they did - seeing an old industry with a huge, greedy middleman tier between a buyer and a seller, and trying to replace it with technology, so everyone gets a better deal.

Is photo theft one of the biggest downsides of internet journalism?

Ha, no. Shitty business models and legacy organisations moving too slowly are the biggest downsides of internet journalism. But yes, photo theft is a pain in the arse. But it’ll change. People, myself included, used to not even think about downloading music or films for free, but now they think twice about it, knowing that they’re screwing someone, somewhere. The same will happen for images. It has to. Picfair wants to be part of codifying some kind of Better Behaviour Around Online Images (BBAOI) movement, but they’ll have to come up with a catchier name than that.

Do you expect professionals to join up - or is it likely to be one for amateur snappers?

Both. Although I expect it will be more the latter than the former, simply because there are more amateurs than there are professionals. Another thing that inspired me to make Picfair was the rising quality of the amateur ranks. Professionals might not like it, but amateurs can take superb pictures too. Last year 9 million images were added to the global stock image market, while over the same period of time 142 billion images were added to Facebook and Instagram alone. If 0.01% of these are fit for market, that’s 14 million images.

Who are the purchasers most likely to be?

Digitally native publications. People who use Shutterstock and iStockPhoto but think it’s too bland and restrictive. I also think there’s a chance that individual sales could form part of the demand. I built Picfair myself, and the overheads are very low, so I don’t have investors breathing down my neck forcing me to focus on one sector or sale type, I’m happy to see how it progresses, naturally.

Any projected scale in terms of numbers of photos loaded and sales?

One billion sales (raises pinky to mouth). Not really. The most important thing in these first few weeks is that the people uploading to the site are happy with it.

What extra features to come?

3D gamified augmented reality interactive responsive parallax. And Scratch n Sniff.

Will you use editorial judgement to take down frankly appallingly rubbish images?

Nope. Picfair sorts images according to our trending algorithm and image views, so the “wheat” naturally rises to the top of global arrays and search pages. I prefer the idea of algorithmic curation to editorial curation. The crowd can be better editors than editors.

And presume you’ll need to monitor for dodgy stuff?

Everything is post-moderated on Picfair, either by myself or my intern, or by Shared Workforce, an automated moderation service. Testing this was fun. Its willy response time is roughly 10 minutes.

When does the video version of PicFair launch?

Not for a long time. Lots of assumptions to test before I even consider adding video.

Anything I haven’t covered and you’d like to say?

Nope, all good, cheers Steve.

And thank you, Benji. I hope it works brilliantly.

North Korea through the eyes of social media

By Steve Keenan

It has been fascinating recently to see a country open up through social media. In this case, North Korea.

There is now a 3G network in the country and, among others, journalists able to get hold of a Sim card have started to post a flow of images and video.

The first Instagram videos emerged this week, shot by David Guttenfelder, a photographer currently on assignment in the country for Associated Press (see photo, above).

It was reported on Global News and followed up by journalism student Catherine Sutherland on her blog.

Journalists work under restrictive conditions in North Korea and cannot film freely. Minders will often step in to stop photography or filming. But those shots that are taken and posted do not appear to be censored.

Rather than now seeing the occasional documentary from a journalist who entered posing as a tourist, there is a flow of social media starting to flourish.

Sky News reporter Mark Stone is also currently sending a stream of content out of North Korea. On his Twitterfeed, he is free to send out images - such as this model of a satellite North Korea claims to have launched - unless otherwise told not to.

While it is fascinating to see social media giving some insights into life in the country, footage and images from inside are not necessarily new.

Beijing-based Koryo Tours has been operating trips into North Korea for 20 years, and the country’s trust in the operator has allowed it some extraordinary access in that time. Take, for example, a DRPK film the company promoted in 2002 going behind the scenes to film preparations for the Arirang Mass Games (the reason Sky is in the country now).

One of Koyro’s tour managers, Hannah, also has her own Instagram feed which has 300 images and videos, many from inside North Korea.

How interesting to see benign social media being put to such use, to part illustrate a country most of us have absolutely no knowledge of other than straight news reports usually involving missiles, threats, sanctions and repression. Social media has made another step forward into becoming the main source of travel information. And education.

Sunday Times travel editor: looking out for a hero

By Steve Keenan

There were some serious raising of eyebrows and a dollop of deja vu when I read the job specification to be the new travel editor of The Sunday Times, replacing Christine Walker who is leaving after 38 years at the paper.

The job responsibilities, and the skills/experience required to do the job, run to 14 bullet points. Only the first mentions content (words) - the rest lay out what is expected of the successful applicant.

And it’s quite a list, as you can see below. The new travel editor is, in effect, being asked to make money, increase readership, see through digital development, develop strategy and to speak the languages of editors and developers. And to publish a weekly section.

I confess an interest. For five years at timesonline.co.uk, I ran the online travel content of The Times and Sunday Times. I had two staff and a ‘channel manager’ who liased with commercial and a development team. We had resource to build travel search and created daily content through blogs, video and and social media. Looking back, it was the best of times.

But in June, 2010, timesonline.co.uk was shut down in favour of separate websites for each paper, a paywall was introduced and users charged to access. I don’t know how successful the paywall has been, although this month News UK chief executive Mike Darcey revealed that The Times has 140,000 paying subscribers. It is a strategy that News UK is committed to, with The Sun to also introduce a £2 a week paywall on August 1.

Meanwhile, The Guardian and Mail groups kept their sites free to view, and the digital-first strategy is also paying off. The Guardian yesterday reported a sharp rise in digital advertising revenues, while Mail Online reported record figures and expansion. And Mirror.co.uk is hiring 40 more digital journalists.

The digital operation at The Sunday Times is much leaner these days, however. I had become online travel editor at The Sunday Times but left 18 months ago: most of the 2010 start-up team have also departed, including the editor, deputy editor and head of technology (all to the Mail group). The five-strong ST video team has been disbanded in favour of a smaller, merged team with The Times. Picture desk staff and developers have also gone as both papers cut back on staff.

New editorial and advertising systems are being rolled out which should further the integration of print and digital - but there are a lot fewer people to publish the paper and to create, upload and maintain content. Criticism of the Times and ST iPad apps was reported in the Guardian in March.

The job is being advertised internally until 6pm today - it is expected external candidates will also be approached. I genuinely wish the successful applicant the very best of luck - the travel editor of The Sunday Times is one of the best jobs in established travel media. Yet the job specification is setting a very high benchmark to find somebody who can edit, sell, develop and translate. They’re looking out for a hero.