Sony provides keys to create attractive and viral videos aimed at social networks

After analyzing the most notable Twitter video content of 2022, Sony has managed to identify which audiovisual elements drive public participation and, therefore, help spread the message that the audience wants to transmit on social networks.

Among the news analyzed by the team Sony, whose tweets with audiovisual content total more than 201 million views y 8.6 million interactions, there are topics such as the war in Ukraine, the defamation trial between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, and various European elections. The conclusions are clear. According to the technology company, users are clearly looking for access fast to video content “credible,” with a significant proportion coming from “user-generated content (CGU), far superior to official news sources.”

Based on these findings, Sony extracts three strategic recommendations that could help broadcasters y producers to readjust their content to meet changing market demand. Firstly, the firm points out that companies “must critically evaluate the value they bring to the content ecosystem", whether it is access, the ability to offer quality live or archived images, or the possibility of adding human news from different sources. On the other hand, Sony recommends that companies invest in a workflow that expedites “the acquisition and reimbursement of CGU and news sources on the ground”, which will allow stories to be told from “various perspectives with maximum agility”.

Finally, the third recommendation highlights the need to “maximize the lifecycle of content once publishedAccording to Sony, broadcasters and production companies must ensure that they allow audiences to “easily reuse and repurpose material” as long as it is related to a popular and newsworthy topic.

Olivier Bovis, director of multimedia solutions at Sony Europe, aligns his vision on the future of audiovisual content on platforms like Twitter with the company's conclusions: "Twitter's past, present and, probably, future is surrounded by controversy, but it remains the reference platform for news and broadcast, and large media continue to play a fundamental role as guardians of credible, high-quality content. The most important thing is that all this is obtained and distributed in a flexible, agile and seamless way to give the public variety and depth it seeks, without losing sight of effectiveness and commerciality.”

Study findings by category

Sony's research, beyond drawing general conclusions based on the analysis of the performance and interactions from the videos, allows you to extract keys in four categories: creators, followers, production and finality.

As for the creators, Sony concludes that user-generated content (UGC) represented a higher proportion of results than those produced by traditional media (39% versus 30% respectively), demonstrating that UGC is a “critical engagement driver that companies cannot ignore.” Furthermore, regarding the shared content of “official” sources “Traditional” media, such as news and broadcast, represented half (48%), suggesting that the public continues to turn to these sources to quickly access credible, high-quality content, but the media has to share the spotlight with other sources, such as governments, to which consumers have more direct access thanks to social networks.

Regarding the second category, followers, the Japanese company points out that the number of followers who shared high-engagement news ranged between 95 and 51.4 million, which shows that participation can come from “unexpected places” once a video gains popularity. Therefore, broadcasters “should not be afraid” to share content from Twitter accounts with relatively few followers, using, for example, cloud-based technology to enable cross-platform distribution.

The production It is another interesting axis of Sony's findings. In 37% of cases, it was “unmodified” videos, meaning the video or audio sequences were not edited before sharing. Another popular genre was “unoriginal” content in the form of old videos that resurfaced because they captured the mood of the moment. Finally, with respect to the purpose, almost half (47%) of the videos with high engagement had one or more of the following criteria in common: They allowed reliving moving moments, delved more critically into an event concrete in terms of what was said and who said it, or they provided a explanation of events through unique points of view or those with which the public identified.

In this regard, Sony emphasizes that the cloud production and the multi-format distribution allow broadcasters to contribute added value to content in the same way, with improved touchpoints and innovative video experiences to engage a new audience.