Scared of Video Marketing? Here's Why You Should get Involved
Viral videos are big news online with a new trending clip appearing nearly every day. Video content on social media platforms engages consumers in a way that retains their attention for much longer than a simple text or photo ad, and those which make people laugh end up getting shared far and wide, spreading your brand to people who may never have heard of it. One common mistake people make when producing a video is having the intention to make it go viral. As we can see from the variety of viral clips there's no hard and fast rule on what goes viral and what doesn't, and sometimes things become popular for all the wrong reasons.
Genuine and original content catches people's eyes more than slick, overly produced pieces that look like they cost the earth as consumers become more knowing about marketing tactics. Popular styles at the moment include recipe videos, where a camera is placed above the work surface and ingredients are brought in to frame as the dish is made. These pieces are typically less than a minute and show the whole recipe from start to finish, making it look easy enough for anyone to do. Of course, this style won't work for everyone, but companies producing small functional items could employ this style for an instructional video. Whether parody or pastiche, using a popular video style to demonstrate your product could see your video going viral among your customers.
The aspect of your video is crucial to it's performance. For a long time, marketers stuck to the “vertical is best” approach, mirroring the way in which people hold their phones while browsing. When platforms like Facebook and Instagram started cropping videos to a square shape to make the newsfeed flow nicely these vertical videos became cropped to such a size that people did not want to squint to watch them. A video presented in a square aspect will not be cropped and therefore appears to the user as intended, upping the number of views.
While video sharing on Facebook and Instagram is growing, YouTube is still a major player. Having a company channel allows for uploads of longer videos, advertising revenue and the creation of a resource hub if your business is of the type where instructional videos are needed. YouTube uploads can be shared and embedded on other social platforms, so YouTube can work for you across all online channels.
Video length is important too. If a video contains useful information, not too much waffle and promotion and is interesting to your core audience they will watch up to eight minutes of content. Conventional online wisdom states that videos should not be longer than three minutes in order to capture and retain the attention of your prospects, and while this holds true for mass appeal brands there are industries where the passion that customers have keeps them watching content they find useful or interesting. The length of your video should be dictated by what you have to say, not what others say is the maximum length.
Lastly, a video does not have to be professionally shot to have appeal. Sometimes the hand-held mobile phone shot footage look is the best “filter” for your message, and the quality of mobile footage is improving all the time. There are many user-friendly video editing programs available now, so you can do much of this work in-house, reducing the expected spend on a video clip by a huge margin.
If you want video on your social media channels or website, don't be put off by preconceptions of slick, short video clips being the best approach, as we can see there are a lot of different aspects that go in to making a successful video and there is no reason why you can't do it too.
