In the workshops I deliver for social and digital communications, one of the things that we always cover is the technology and tools required for creating visual and audio content for brand journalism.
One of the areas I particularly focus on is the use of mobile devices for content creation as many times the communications and marketing professionals i am working with are not in their office with access to a desktop or even a laptop.
This Spring, the second RTÉ International Mobile Journalism Conference is taking place in Dublin, sponsored by RTE and it is primarily aimed at traditional journalists with people attending from across the globe.
If you check their Twitter stream you will see not only who is speaking at the conference and useful resources but what I really like, images that journalists are sharing their mobile journalism kits.
So that got me thinking about how I could share mine.
In this article I will cover three levels of mobile brand journalism kit for the new user to the experience professional.
The XtraLite Mobile Brand Journalism Kit
Whether you are creating, capturing and editing audio, images or video content, often people get concerned about what they should use – so here is version 1 of my mobile brand journalism kit.
Are you surprised how few items you need? I always recommend using your earphone and microphone to help you create better quality audio as I outline in the video below.
A New Trend In Online And Social Video – No Sound Just Captions
Note how this video also has no sound – just text narration as one of the current trends that is happening is that people are watching more social video without the sound being on.
https://twitter.com/KrishnaDe/status/699585912276131840
A great write up on this trend can be found here from Shel Holtz.
An example from Ireland is this video shared from RTE News for the General Election created by one of the mobile journalism team. The team are being creative about their use of video with captions that they are sharing on Twitter.
RTÉ News on Twitter
7 leaders in 7 seconds – meet those taking part in tonight’s #leadersdebate. Full profiles https://t.co/5sgzTei6e2
See also this example of showing the preparation behind the scenes of the preparation for the interview with the leaders of the four biggest parties.
RTÉ News on Twitter
SNEAK PEEK: Go behind-the-scenes as Six One News begins series of interviews with leaders of 4 biggest parties #GE16
I recently wrote about this trend on my Facebook Page, as Facebook are also introducing an automated caption tool that will roll out globally to Ads Manager and Power Editor in the coming weeks and will initially be available for US English captions. They commented in their article about the new update that:
– Internal tests at Facebook show that captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%
– When feed-based mobile video ads play loudly when people aren’t expecting it, 80% react negatively, both toward the platform and the advertiser
– In one study of Facebook video ads, 41% of videos were basically meaningless without sound. Showing captions, logos and products can help communicate your message, even in silence
– 65% of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will watch for at least ten seconds and 45% continue watching for thirty seconds.
The Lite Mobile Brand Journalism Kit
If you want to take it to the next level, then here is the kit I usually have with me for every event I attend – version 2 of my mobile brand journalism – the Lite version!
In this video I share with you more tips about why I recommend these items if you want to improve the production quality especially for your audio and video content. Note – all these images and videos were created on my phone.
https://twitter.com/KrishnaDe/status/699915012308123651/video/1
The Pro Mobile Brand Journalism Kit
When I am taking my content creation to the next level I have more tools – this version 3 of my mobile brand journalism kit is called the Pro kit!
To make it easier to navigate what is in this kit you can see this interactive image which is also embedded below. 
Just hover over the image for the descriptions of the items in the kit.
I have a number of other items I am due to add to my kit including some portable lighting and some tools to help me stabilise my phone when doing a ‘walk about’ at events where it is not appropriate to use a tripod or monopod – I guess I will need to call that my Premium Kit!
Additional Resources For Mobile Brand Journalism
In addition to what I have shared here in this article, you can also find some of my other visual marketing recommended tools here and eight smartphone content creation apps for Android or iOS here.
You can also hear me talking about tools that I use and recommend in a new podcast called Talking Social Business that will be part of the FIR podcast Network – the first episode is available Friday 19 February – more of that in another article.
I also cover tools and technology in my weekly Live Stream Insiders Show – specifically aimed at live stream best practices.
And if you want to learn from me in person especially if you are a communications professional, you can participate in the forthcoming PRII programme – the Certificate in Social Media Communications which starts in a few weeks time.
If you have questions about developing the skills of your team in mobile brand journalism you can contact me here for a private conversation.
I’d love to know the tools you use for content creation on your smartphone – do let me know here or over on Twitter or Snapchat where I share more visual content creation tips.
If you want to bookmark this article to refer to the resources later you can repin it to your Pinterest boards here.
And just to close – there are always some risks of mobile brand journalism – and this is one of them!
Sharon Tobin on Twitter
A poll suggests @labour is tumbling to the ground in #dubw #GE16 Bit like our press conference https://t.co/nQb5dGao0j
