Feeding the Beast: Producing Serial Content Effectively, Part 1: Generating Content

作为视频经理 晨星, 一家独立的投资研究公司, I’m responsible for producing content for a big destination website with lots of visitors. 对我来说, that means creating a sizeable amount of content to keep up the demands of our audience and out advertisers. In this article we’ll look at the challenges of delivering high-volume business content, including both the technical 工作流程 aspects of what I like to call “feeding the beast.”

虽然我现在住在芝加哥, I actually started my career as 1st Assistant Editor at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, 加州. 我研究过 小鸡，来见见罗宾逊一家, 螺栓. The big thing I learned at Disney was how to manage a high-volume workflow. 我们有很好的系统, we knew everything that we needed to deliver to the downstream department, the entire operation ran like a factory for animated films. At 晨星 I’ve taken what I learned at Disney and applied it to online video.

When you work for a trade magazine or any site that has lots of visitors, you need to produce enough unique new content to keep those visitors coming back. 目前, 视频的cpm非常高, so if you’re responsible for producing video in your organization, odds are your ad sales department is always calling you or emailing you, 要求更多可以出售的内容. 有高需求是件好事, but how do you meet that demand in a way that’s quick and cheap without compromising quality.

What is 晨星, Why Does it Need So Much Video?

晨星 is essentially Consumer Reports for investments. We cover everything from mutual funds to exchange traded funds, stocks, equities, commodities. We roll all that up into a number of different products that serve essentially three main audiences. 首先是我们的零售部门, 包括我们所有的网站吗, where typical investors outside the financial industry can go to learn more about investments, 以及什么对他们的投资组合有用. We also deliver content and research and data to financial advisers, 所以如果你和财务顾问一起工作, chances are they subscribe to one of our services or one of our data feeds and use our research in their analysis as well. The third main audience is institutional--big asset-management firms, 捐赠基金, pensions that are investing massive amounts of money and need lots of data and research to supplement what they’re already doing in-house.

在本文中，我将主要关注晨星公司.com (下面的图1), because that’s our primary retail focus for individual investors, the repository of most of the video I’m responsible for producing. 我们每个月有大约300万独立访客. 我们有免费和收费模式, so there’s tons of free content on there for investors including videos, 文章, 引用页, 还有其他数据. We also have a premium model with 120,000 subscribers. They pay a monthly fee to get access to enhanced premium tools to enhance data, 我们所有的分析师都对特定的投资进行报告.

图1. 晨星.com.

To serve these two audiences, we produce about 800-1,000 videos annually for 晨星.，每月的视频浏览量在30万至50万之间(下面的图2). We do this with a two-person team, including me and my associate, Scott Halver. 我们整天都在制作内容.

图2. 晨星公司的视频报道.com.