Best practices
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      Getting started: publishing a video

      A quick guide to creating great videos on NewsBreak

      Welcome to the NewsBreak Contributor Program! We’re excited to publish your inspiring content and great stories here! Whether you’re already a pro or just getting started, there are a few things you should know about our platform and our audience.


      First, you’ll want to find an interesting story.

      There are lots of places our video producers can find inspiration and story ideas. At NewsBreak, we 💗 local. Local content creators. Local businesses. Local users. NewsBreak is all about helping locals thrive. While it’s not a hard rule that you must create local content, we definitely would prefer it if you do. This doesn’t mean you should label national content as local, please be honest and reliable in your local coverage (our humans and computers will catch on if you aren’t). 


      It’s time to start creating.

      Once you’ve signed up for an account, logged into our portal, and filled out your profile, click the “New Video” tab. NewsBreak is a creative platform that allows for many different styles of creating, but quality and standards are key. In addition to our Content Policy, all content should be fact-checked, contain information and facts, and be free of major spelling or grammatical errors in the description and titles.

       

      Here are some pro tips for creating great video content:

      • Cover a local happening, issue, etc that you are truly passionate about and interested in (maybe it’s even something you have some expertise in).
      • Share your personal experiences (local restaurant reviews, local tours, etc). These can be very engaging, but don't forget to make sure your storytelling is complete.  
      • Create videos that are 1 to 3 minutes to hold your audience's attention. Videos that can hook their audience within the first 10 sec often perform better and receive more Likes. You can also condense your video intros and outros, and cut into your topics or split up longer videos into different episodes.

      It’s important to craft your video titles.

      Everyone wants viewers to click on their headlines and watch their content, however, we should avoid using clickbait titles. Your video title and description help the system understand what your video is all about and distribute your content to the right audience. Also, failing to deliver the promised information in the headline will decrease the audience’s engagement. As a result, your videos should always avoid clickbait titles such as “This will shock you…” or “You won’t believe what happened after…”. Also, you should not capitalize every word in your titles. Titles should be relatively complete sentences and be informative; This will help you longterm to grow your channel. 

       

      Don’t forget about thumbnails.

      A video thumbnail acts as the preview image for your video and lets viewers see a quick snapshot of it as they're scrolling down the NewsBreak. A good thumbnail makes your audience want to watch the video. After your video is finished uploading, you can upload your own thumbnail relevant to the video topic (recommended) or choose to have an auto-generated thumbnail from the video.

       

      Remember to choose a timely label for your video.

      When clicking "Ready to publish?" in the contributor portal, you will always be asked to label your video as Timely or Timeless. If a video is labeled as Timeless, it will get long-tail impressions, even weeks after the publishing date. When you label a video as Timely, it can leverage NewsBreak's advantages of delivering timely news to audiences. It also has a higher potential to get more traffic in a short time, but it won't get high impressions after 1-2 weeks due to its timely characteristics. Below are the clear definition for the labels:

      • Timeless: Videos that do not have a strong sense of time, and can bring value to the audience for quite a while. For example, makeup tutorials, road trip recommendations, local business visits, van life sharing, fishing techniques, barbecue recipes, gardening equipment sharing, etc. Eye-opening videos that bring new pieces of knowledge to users are often regarded as Timeless.
      • Timely: Videos that are highly related to timely events, and valuable to the audience for a certain short period of time. For example, local news reporting, basketball game competitions, or Christmas gift review videos. Notice that videos with specific times and dates mentioned in the voice-over or on subtitles should ALL be marked as Timely. 

       

      Also, choose a location for the video.

      Following the “Timely / Timeless” question, another question that you’ll be asked when publishing videos in the portal is to choose the location of your video. The location you choose will affect the video distribution across the platform, so making the right choice is important and helps reach your targeted audience! Below are the clearer definition for the choices:

      • Choose a specific location: This option is not related to where you are based but to which location the video content is about. Videos that mention specific places should be added with a location. For example, If you are a Florida creator but you are introducing a New York restaurant in the video, you should add the location of New York to it. Local news reporting, local restaurant reviews, or local travel spots videos are other examples. Notice that videos with a specific location or place mentioned in the voice-over or on subtitles should ALL be added with a specific location. 
      • “All of the U.S.”: Videos that are not related to a specific location should be added with “all of the U.S.” For example, makeup tutorials, life hacks, fishing techniques, recipes, gardening equipment sharing, pets, other how-to videos, etc.

       

      You’re almost ready to publish.

      Now that you’ve uploaded your video, crafted a video title, proofread the description, and added a thumbnail, you should be ready to publish. You can hit “publish,” add tags, select your location and timeliness, and you’re all set!

       

      Thanks for reading this quick guide. Anything we missed? Let us know in the comments here. We plan to update this periodically with the best advice.