How to Make the Most of Your Video Content
Whether it’s for social media, your website or your sales funnel, video has undeniably become a powerful tool. Just like 80% of businesses who used video for marketing purposes last year (Wochit, 2018), you have probably invested time and energy into this content format for your business. In the words of Enterprise Marketer video blogger Jeff Julian – the way we consume content is moving more and more toward video, motion graphics and audio. Video has moved its way up the marketing agenda. Good video requires investment. As budgets for video increase, companies are looking to secure a good ROI. In this blog, we will answer the question of ‘how to maximise your video content investment’?
Having A Strategy Is Crucial:
Just like other content forms, your video content needs to be built and distributed through a strategic plan. Understanding where and how you can use video will be crucial in relation to production and distribution. Are you creating videos for the sake of videos? If so, then you need to step back and ask a few questions. The big question usually revolves around the why! What will be the purpose of your videos? Once you start unravelling this, you can move onto a few other questions that will inform your strategy and help you maximise your video investment.
What is the objective of your videos?
Who is your audience?
Do you have brand guidelines in place?
What formats will you need?
Where will you be using and distributing your videos?
From product videos to vlogs, there are endless types and formats to think about for your business. Take a look at the chart below which shows the different types of videos businesses have invested in.
Be Smart With Production:
Video is a versatile format. Working with a smart video production company can ensure that you get a good return from your investment. When planned correctly, your video team can capture additional content which could help support the main video. Examples cases include using the additional content as social media cut downs or recording different messaging so you can A/B test your content to name a couple.
At Habitual Media we pride ourselves on being enterprising. That means we are always looking for ways to maximise the value of content for our clients. As a creative partner, we sit, think and build value into our video approach.
Using & Maximising Your Videos:
Are you just sharing videos on social media? If so, there is so much more you can be doing to maximise your video investment. Knowing where you can use video will help inform your strategy and increase engagement with your audience.
Establishing A Home For Your Videos
Before moving onto all the fantastic distribution channels for your video content, it’s best to first establish a home base. Sites like Youtube and Vimeo let you store videos online, for free! We would recommend using Vimeo – you can view our channel here. Vimeo is great for quality, flexibility and its ease of use.
Looking to rack views and reach a wider audience with your videos? We would recommend using Youtube as your home-base. Youtube is the 2nd largest search engines on the web (more on this in the next section), meaning your videos will inevitably get more organic reach simply by being on the platform.
Include Video On Your Site:
It is well known that video is one of the most engaging content forms. Video combines auditory and visual sense, which catch our attention like nothing else. According to Forbes, the average user spends 88% more time on a website with video. It’s a no brainer – video increases user engagement and time spent on your website. This is because viewers retain information better when viewed in a video, compared to say a blog. We would recommend having an explainer video on your homepage to engage users as soon as they hit your website. Remember to adequately compress your videos before putting them on your site, ideally to under 5mb so it doesn’t affect your page load speed.
Your Videos On Social Media:
Social media is the natural channel for distribution for your videos. That being said, there are many different formats you can explore. As mentioned in the previous section, you will want to be smart with your video production. That includes creating appropriate social cuts when shooting your videos. A good production company can easily create 15-30 second cuts which will sit nicely on your social channel’s main feed.
If you have any Behind The Scenes content, you can utilise that in your stories. In addition to adding content onto your feed, be sure to take advantage of video banners. Facebook gives you the option to upload a cover video, which could be an opportunity to grab the audience’s attention. You can chop and remix videos you already have, with bright colours, white space and written messaging. As long as your video is between 20-90 seconds, and have minimum dimensions of 820×312 pixels, then you should be good to go.
Call To Actions:
Having a high-quality, engaging video is great…but what actions do you want the viewer to take? Often forgotten, but highly effective CTA’s can maximise your content investment by driving actions and conversions from your viewers. Creating CTA’s at the end of your video will give it more purpose and guide the viewers along the journey. Common CTA’s include: “visit our website”, “sign up for our email newsletter”, “request a free demo”. Did you know that viewers are 95% more likely to remember a call to action after watching a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text format. Be sure to take advantage of this!
Tag Your Videos For SEO:
We mentioned earlier that Youtube is the second biggest search engine. Correctly tagging your videos when uploading will boost your SEO. Yes, you heard that right. Adding relevant titles, tags and descriptions to the metadata of your video is an easy way to maximise the value of your videos by increasing your brand visibility. Helping your videos be associated with the right target keywords could get them indexed to rank for relevant searched. If you want to go one step further, create a transcript to accompany your video and add these when uploading.
Sharing Your Videos:
Distribution is an important part of getting maximum return from your video investment. You have spent some money on your production, now you want people to actually see it. Believe it or not, video views don’t magically come around, you have to make an effort. The first thing you can do is sharing within your network and also asking them to share – this is a surefire way to get organic views on your video. You can also do outreach to relevant people, especially those that might find value in your video and ask them to watch it. If they like it and find value, they will then be inclined to share it, creating a potential snowball effect. You can also reach out to relevant influencers who are more likely to have a larger audience, compared to Bill, the marketing guy down the hallway
Whilst most of those methods just require pure effort, you can look to put your videos in front of a wider audience through paid advertisements. Setting up ads on social media have never been easier, in fact you can ‘boost’ a video on your Facebook page through the click of a button.
Like what you have read? Shoot us an email and grab coffee with the team to talk about anything video. Click here for more information.