Pastor Josh tells us how Pictory increased his social and app engagement.
Introduction
Josh is a Pastor and uses Pictory to create videos and highlights of his sermons. Today he talks to our CEO Vikram Chalana about how Pictory has improved social media and app engagement. Plus how using Pictory has made creating videos simple, quick and reduced video editing time.
Pastor Josh: I'm actually a pastor of a church. I essentially upload the sermons from Sunday into Pictory and let it transcribe.
Then, I'll highlight particular points and create smaller consumable videos for social media and platforms.
I choose the specific content I would like to highlight using Pictory.
Vikram Chalana: Do you use the search function?
Pastor Josh: I'm very familiar with the content since I'm the one that delivered it. I'll go through and I'll scan and most of the time I'm just eyeballing it.
I'll find the section that I particularly want and then I will begin reading through it. l highlight it, leaving off the fillers and then play the video.
I see how it looks and how it sounds, then make adjustments from there.
Vikram Chalana: Great. And how long are these clips that you create for social media?
Pastor Josh: Between two and five minutes.
Vikram Chalana: Okay. And what platforms do you put it on?
Pastor Josh: Facebook and Youtube.
I select my highlights and I customize the video. If I am working on music I move the captions to the middle.
Then I'll just export that single video after it's been customized. It's very cool! I can't tell you how much time it saved me not to have to edit a video.
Pictorys stock footage is great. There's a large database of it and I can usually find something that fits the narrative of what I'm saying.
Vikram Chalana: How do you quantify the benefit of this? Are you seeing more people show up at your sermon, at the end? How do you measure its impact?
Pastor Josh: It’s been great for me. Not everyone has time to listen to 45 minutes. We have broadcast systems and cameras.
We stream the service online and record it. I take the recording, chop it down to the message I would like to convey and upload it to Pictory.
I scale it down a little bit so the upload time isn't too long as I have an issue with my internet speed.
We developed a mobile app for the church and we use this to upload too.
Not everybody has time for 45 minutes, but they usually have time for 2-4 minutes and they get something out of it.
It's created social media engagement and app engagement because people are still able to get something from what we offer.
Even if they can't engage with the content for 45 minutes at a time, having it in bite-sized chunks works really well.
Pictorys stock footage makes it different and sets it apart from what other programs are doing.
Plus you don't kind of get glitchy, sudden movements whenever you go from scene to scene.
It makes people pay attention and go, what’s this?
They don't just have to watch a guy talk, they engage with the content through the story of the footage.
The subtitles are extremely helpful online because not everybody wants to turn the sound on in particular environments while they watch.
I use subtitles and video then layer a little bit of music behind it which encapsulates it even more.
The fact that I can upload my own licensed music and tune the background music slider to the volume I use is very helpful.
For me, it's honestly been one of the software tools that has been the most helpful and effective in our environment as far as accomplishing that purpose.
Vikram Chalana: That’s great!
Pastor Josh: I'm uploading content almost every week and breaking it down.
I'm a few weeks behind right now but by breaking it down into sizable chunks I get three shortened videos out on Sunday, at least.
I'll work through and publish those, push them live on Facebook and YouTube and people watch them.
We actually get more hits off that than we do our service. I think because it doesn't intimidate people because it's a shorter, more consumable bite-size content.
Using other programs takes an exorbitant amount of time. If I use Premiere Pro to transcribe, which is a recent feature.
We've been able to up our presentation game using Pictory.
Vikram Chalana: Fantastic. Love it!
Pastor Josh: Honestly, for what we do, there isn't much else that I can think of that’s like Pictory.
Normally that's odd because I'm a developer and can usually think of five different tools I could use. Pictory as a product is really good.
