Video moves into focus

Most utility companies have a social media strategy but few are making the most of video as a marketing and customer service tool, says Steve Hemsley.

Video is the glue that joins social media and marketing together and You Tube, bought by Google for £883 million in 2006, is now the second-largest search engine behind its parent. Savvy businesses are using the medium to generate sales and boost customer service by creating informative videos that add value.
Companies are creating their own You Tube channels and using the Instagram video-sharing tool and Twitter Vine, a mobile service that lets businesses create and share short looping videos. One company that has had its own You Tube channel for a while is Npower, which has produced video content aimed at domestic, SME and big business energy users.
Scotland’s leading business water supplier, Business Stream, began integrating video into its social media strategy three years ago. The company, which provides more than 93,000 corporate customers with their water supply and wastewater services, uses video to guide customers through the process of reading a water meter, understanding online consumption data and accessing online bills.
“The videos are all optimised for key search terms and hosted on the Business Stream website and on our own You Tube channel,” says digital marketing manager Duncan Mackay. “The videos include embedded links that take viewers to the appropriate page on the Business Stream site.”
The company realised early that its videos must be short to retain viewer attention and it has cut the length of most of its videos to just 30 seconds, providing concise and targeted information. Bite size videos are produced for seasonal topics too, such as providing small businesses with advice on how to protect their pipes from freezing.
“The customer service team tells us which topics they are receiving questions about and this data drives the content of our videos and social media,” says Mackay. “Producing the videos negates the need for many customers to call us, which reduces call centre costs.”
Business Stream has seen a 40 per cent increase in video views in the past year and a 49 per cent rise in interactions with its various social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter.
UK Power Networks marketing communications manager Toni Kinslow says using video is much more engaging than simply relying on web copy or blogs.
“We produce quick two-minute ‘How To’ guides telling customers how to check switches or what to do with their freezer food in a power cut,” she says. “We also tailor our video content by surveying our customers.”
UK Power Networks has already generated more than 11,000 hits on its You Tube channel and more than 5,000 views on its own website from its customers in the east of England, London and the South East.
Many companies regard the technology and the production costs as a barrier to investing in video and are reluctant to move beyond using infographics. Yet effective videos can be produced for a few thousand pounds.
The UK Power Network videos are produced by digital marketing agency ­SiteVisibility, whose marketing manager Simon Burslem is urging utility executives to move out of their comfort zone.
“While re-tweeting blogs and posting content on Facebook is good, social has evolved dramatically,” he says. “Creating video to boost social lead conversions is a powerful marketing tool for businesses.”

The power of annotation

Digital media agency Atelier Studio’s sales director, Renaud Clarke, is an advocate of using annotation on social videos so companies can refresh and re-use their content.
Video annotations are unique to You Tube and allow companies to overlay clickable text on to their video to make the content more engaging and easier to navigate.
A utility can use annotations to ask viewers to like and share a video, get responses to particular questions as part of a market research strategy, encourage people to subscribe to the You Tube channel and include tariff details or FAQs. All this supports the visual content and can link to a series of related videos.
Annotations also allow a company to integrate its video content with the user’s web journey. “If a video is informative, others will share it on Facebook and Twitter or integrate it within their own web content, providing a powerful online marketing tool,” says Clarke.
Atelier Studios has helped waste treatment and renewable energy specialist New Earth Solutions produce social videos with added annotation.
Marketing industry estimates suggest that a company can experience an 87 per cent improvement in driving social traffic to a conversion page when annotations are used.

British Gas case study

Utilities are not using video to inform and service customers.
When British Gas wanted to maintain awareness of its partnership with the British Swimming teams after London 2012 it produced videos to support its Facebook app Super Swimmer Challenge.
There was exclusive video content featuring Rebecca Adlington, Keri-Anne Payne and Steve Parry, and the Facebook community took part in a challenge and “liked” a professional swimmer for the chance to win prizes.
Nearly 2,000 people signed up to the challenge, and the initiative helped to add
 2,800 swimming fans to the British Gas Swimming Facebook page – increasing the size of the community by 44.3 per cent in six weeks.