As the social media market becomes increasingly saturated, social media audiences have ever shorter attention spans and, in many ways, higher expectations – you have to work harder to grab them. It takes creativity and innovation to stop the scroll and that’s something I worked on for years at the BBC. My digital content strategy involves both the editorial angle and the format of a story which can differs depending on the media publishing platform. With this strategy, I create stories that engage audiences, achieve maximum audience and adapt easily to different platforms for efficiency of team resources.
A good animator can explain complex concepts, engage viewers and transform ideas into award winning content. For BBC Media Action I was the executive producer for ‘Your phone is now a refugee’s phone’ which won the Social Good award in 2016.
Your phone is now a refugee’s phone: This animation was specifically made as mobile first content - one of the first teams at the BBC to do so. It aimed to increase empathy for the plight of refugees by allowing people to imagine being on a journey as a refugee across Europe.
What if a Chinese dragon is not a dragon?
In this animation, we used a nod to Chinese culture with shadow puppets for a Chinese New Year animation.
Maps are very popular with audiences on social media, especially as part of an explainer as they can simplify complex stories.
The world’s longest rail network: This animation used animated maps and footage to communicated a fairly dry economic subject. It was also designed to work horizontally, vertically and square to minimise costs but still work for distribution on all platforms.
Trailers/ Adverts: When making specials for online and social media, I also make a trailers which run on TV and digital platforms.
Explainers are the backbone for news audiences on social media as there are often knowledge gaps which are not dealt with on TV news.
China Explained is a series of videos which aim to demystify the behaviours of Gen Z in China.
One of the highest performing editorial categories on social media is human stories, especially those that inspire us. To reflect this I created a digital series called Changemakers where we could tell the stories of people whose life or work have has made a difference.
Behind the headlines: A more in-depth look at the stories that are being talked about on social media.
Crossroads: a light hearted look at Chinese cultural traditions that are found here in Britain.
Bacteria in Hollywood: As part of the Bacteria special, we asked our experts whether Hollywood got the science right or wrong in some of our movie classics. The results were delightfully engaging achieving hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook.
Editorial: Shocking/ Surprising
Often alternative angles on trending stories do well on social platforms. This look at the call to prayer in Gaze got over 150K views and thousands of comments on TikTok.
For Chinese content you can’t get elsewhere, we take surprising stories and turn them around quickly to achieve amazing numbers. We often get millions on YouTube or TikTok for these clips.
Kyle Obermann
For COP26, I worked with a popular wildlife and conservation photographer on Chinese social media, Kyle Obermann. China is a land of wildly diverse natural beauty - and tens of thousands of species. Now there are five new national parks protecting this cultural legacy - based on biodiversity rather than natural beauty. But what do they aim to achieve?
CGTN Europe was a fledgling channel on YouTube at the time but the video achieved hundreds of thousands of views on Weibo.