Hashem Al-Ghaili, Science Communicator and Video Producer

HashemAl-Ghaili, Science Communicator and Video Producer, especIALGAMES, Science Communicator, My name is Hashem Al-Ghaili and I am a science communicator. Currently I run a Facebook page called ScienceVeaturePage which has over 32 million followers. What I do on this page is that I share content related to science, technology, nature, and medicine. So my Facebook page started in 2009 as a Facebook profile, but in 2015 I converted it into a Facebook page because Facebook page allows you to see insights, what kind of posts are you sharing and who are engaging with them. And so I started focusing on videos mainly because Facebook was paying a lot of attention to videos starting from 2015 and the focus on videos led to massive growth. I mean in 2015 the page only had 66,000 followers and now it has over 32 million which is beyond my expectation. I think video mostly contributed to the growth of the page. I mean if you look people don't want to read an article that is like 600 to 700 words and instead they would like to see a summary of that that can deliver the same idea within say one minute to two minutes. And so videos are very powerful because they also contain amazing visuals that accompany these pieces of information and this is what makes people want to watch them and share them. Plus one of the reasons why I like to focus on videos is because by 2020s most of the traffic on the internet, that's 80%, is going to come from video views. Just think about it. And that's why it's very important to focus on videos. Well my advice to companies and individuals who would like to grow their Facebook pages is that to focus on videos as a start and to create quality content. Something that relates to people, something that people want to share. And so whether you are a company or an influencer the first question you have to ask yourself before making a video is, is this something that I would share with my friends? And so you start taking care of the content quality, you adjust the length, you choose great music and you form partnerships with people who share the same mission. Collaborations are very important and they will help you exchange audience and get new audience from other people as well. So as you have seen the video about C-Section which was about 50 seconds long has been shared over two million times and has received over 50,000 comments. And one of the reasons for its success is that because it contains basically a story that relates to people, C-Section, human birth, something about nature. But it also illustrates the concept in high end visuals, really fantastic visuals and amazing storytelling style. And what I like about it is that it also shows this natural process that some people may have not experienced and they say oh it could have been me. So whether you are related or unrelated to the video you can still somehow connect it to your life and this is one of the reasons why people shared it and commented on it and send it to their friends. Well there are a few rules for effective storytelling. First of all you have to take care of content quality. Second you have to take care of the language simplicity. Language should be made as simple as possible so that everybody can understand. You have to take care of the visual storytelling, the length of the video which is essential and also the music choice. It should be emotional, it should illustrate the concept and it should be related to the context of the video. You also have to make sure that the content you are sharing is shareable which means it combines all these elements that I just mentioned. And as I said you ask yourself is this something that I would share with my friends. One other thing you need to do is exposure for the video. And the best way to get exposure for the video is to form new partnerships and ask your partners to share it in exchange to share their content. And this will help the video to get exposure to audience that's not within your reach basically. The future of social video if you look into the very distant future I think virtual reality where people will be connected by putting a headset and then they will interact with each other or with other people in simulated environments of their choosing. I mean it's going to be like the future that maybe the future from now because of the costs associated with VR to some people but as it becomes cheaper and cheaper more people are going to start using it and it's going to change the storytelling style especially when you will be able to watch videos 360 videos VR style and they surround you. Of course we see that there are videos that are 360 and VR style you can watch them on your phone by moving around but it's different experience when you have a headset and that's why many people are going to like it and it's going to be the future of social videos. What makes a video successful or what determines the success of the video is the conversations it generates. It's very important. I mean engagement is great. Sometimes you may say oh likes, shares and comments but we all know that sometimes these comments are not really authentic. They could be generated by bots. Shares for example sometimes people share videos even though they haven't watched it. They haven't watched them and they just keep sharing them with their friends so you can't really say oh video has got many shares so it's successful. No or comments doesn't make sense. Likes also doesn't make sense. What makes it successful is are these comments really talking or is the video generating discussion about the topic? And if all the comments or most of them are talking or discussing the video content then that's successful because that's what you are going to do from a video. I mean you are interested in generating discussions and probably changing minds. So I would say if a video is successful at generating discussions then it's a success. So when Facebook Live was launched I was among the first people to test the feature and provide feedback on it and I was broadcasting a lot of live videos basically where I would bring scientists and doctors and we would talk about different topics and we would wait for people to ask questions and we answer these questions directly. There were thousands and thousands of people watching and later on I decided to mostly focus on pre-produced videos where you produce them, edit them earlier and then post them but of course I'm going to get back to live videos. Until the page reached 22 million I was the only one who was working on it. I was the only one who was writing scripts, editing the videos, collecting the sources and creating the final piece that I also published myself. But after the page became more successful I was in a position to create a team and now I have an in-house team that produces the videos. I have got someone who helps me with screenwriting, basically writing scripts for the videos, search for the topics, someone who helps with editing the videos. None of these steps would go without me being involved because in the end we want to maintain basically the same style, consistency. Otherwise people are going to notice a change and they might move away, they might unfollow the page. So I'm involved still in video production but I have a team that's helping with that. I think it's important to build a video marketing community because there are a lot of people who are interested in getting into this but they don't have the resources or the ideas and how to start. And so through this community they can connect with people who already have experiences and this. They can also ask them questions and get advices. They can also eventually those members of the community become their collaborators in the future. And this is basically a shortcut for some people. Instead of going through the internet, reading through tons of pages and watching a lot of videos and how to create a fantastic and successful video marketing strategy. So this is a shortcut and I appreciate this event and I'm very happy that I was part of this event.