Have you secured the rights?
Be sure read our separate Digital Rights Toolkit to check you’ve secured all the necessary rights before publishing.
Who is your audience?
Do you have an existing audience that you will be promoting your digital content to?
Do you want to limit access to your content depending on the viewer’s location and are there rights considerations that influence this? For example, does the release need to be restricted to UK audiences only?
Find out more about building online audiences and download our free Online Audiences Toolkit here.
Do you have a marketing strategy in place?
The importance of a strong marketing plan cannot be overstated. It’s vital to consider how you will promote the stream to your audience at all stages; from announcement to on-sale, launch or live stream, reminders, all the way through to ‘last chance’ messages before the streaming window ends.
A reasonable budget, relative to the scale of your production, is also key to support your strategy. As a guide, aim to keep at least 5% of your total project budget for marketing and promotion.
Is your content optimised for online viewing?
Most platforms have their own guides for file formats and sizes required for publishing. Refer to these, but the most common is 1080p (this is pixel height of the file and can sometimes be called 1920×1080) in .mp4 or .mov format (the latter being of higher quality but also larger file size).
Don’t forget accessibility
As a baseline, if your content has dialogue then it should be captioned. It may also be appropriate to create an audio described version for people with visual impairments.
Refer to our Accessibility Toolkit for more information.