Why Use Video?
In this blog I am going to discuss why it is becoming increasingly important to use video to promote your brand.
The volume of digital traffic is increasing on social media. Although it is essential to communicate through video, a bad video could be damaging to a brand. I work with many businesses on their professional branding and video content. I feel it is equally important to train businesses to be able to add to their business story and utilise digital technology for their own updates and business marketing. This blog is part of a series of blogs in my SHOUT! series, about how we communicate.
Over the next few blogs we are looking at video communication starting with the ‘why?’.
The Importance of Video Content:
Broadcast television for marketing is prohibitively expensive for small businesses and until recently, television was the only medium for video communication.
Over the last 20 years it is the combination of technologies; the smartphone, the ability to record video and photography on the smartphone, the internet and social networks – has meant video broadcast is now available to everyone.
Businesses now have global markets at their fingertips and the technology to communicate but why use video?
1. It gets attention!
There are 4.3 billion internet users in the world today and over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created every single day! (source www.socialmediatoday.com)
With this sort of volume of traffic it is essential that businesses do everything they can to grab the attention of their audience. Did you know visual elements increase people’s willingness to read content by 80%?
2. It improves non-verbal communication: 93% of human communication is non-verbal. If you combine visual media with text it is a better way of capturing the imagination of your target audience.
3. Speeds up processing: Our brains can only process a certain amount of data at any one time. Video and visual media is content that can be processed much faster than text alone. This means content delivered in video format will take precedence over text alone.
4. Increases engagement: Photographs and videos are much easier to consume than text. Facebook campaigns generate 65% more engagement and tweets average 35% more retweets when a video or photograph is attached. Facebook’s algorithm also prioritises video posts, so posts with video are more likely to appear in newsfeeds.
5. Influences emotion: We all think we make purchases based on rational decision making. The reality is that consumers let emotions influence buying decisions and video is king in driving an emotional response to a brand.
6. Drives Sales: 97% of marketers claim videos help customers understand products. (Hubspot) There is a direct link between utilising high-quality video in marketing and the growth of sales. Video can help consumers visualise themselves using a product or service and they can see it improving their life.
7. Viral opportunity: If an audience likes content well enough, it has the potential to ‘go viral’. This will share your content with a large social audience as people share to their on-line communities and social networks. This builds brand credibility and identity.
8. Personalises your brand: Facebook live, Instagram Stories and Snapchat are fantastic platforms for offering audiences an intimate glimpse into your business and what you are up to. Video content like this can offer a very personalised connection to your audience with real-time chat and communication. This builds trust in your brand and makes your audience feel as if they ‘know you’.
For 77 additional ‘Eye-Opening Video Statistics’ have a look at this detailed blog from Bitdownloader.
A Few Tips To Get Started:
So there we have some very good reasons for incorporating video into your marketing, where do you start if you want to produce your own content? The tip in this blog is to think carefully about video length.
Unfortunately the average consumer has a very short attention span and the typical drop off time for users to bore of a video is 15 seconds, so make sure the first 15 seconds is engaging enough to encourage viewers to stay!
The recommended viewing length of almost all videos published on social media should be less than two minutes but here are some general duration guidelines for the most popular social media platforms:
- Facebook: Maximum 2 minutes.
- Instagram: Ideally 30 seconds but no more than 60 seconds.
- Twitter: 30 seconds or less. (You can’t upload videos of more than 30 sec)
- YouTube: Still up to 2 minutes although this platform lends its self for businesses to build a digital video archive or library. As you add videos to your channel your catalog will give your audience hours of content to engage with the audience you are trying to reach.
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