“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Creating and publishing your brand video can be one of the most effective marketing decisions you make today. Video marketing can often be a difficult path for brands to successfully negotiate their way through.
In order to simplify this process, I have listed my top 10 video marketing tips for creating video content
1. Start With A Story
Know the story you are going to tell with your video content. Concentrate on how that story will be enhanced by a visual narrative. All your images and audio should support that story.
2. Create An Emotional Connection With Your Audience
Your audience are bombarded with all sorts of visual content 24 hours day, 365 days a year. They do not tend to remember factual information, they are more likely to remember and connect with content that elicited an emotional connection with them. Think about how your video content will make them feel after they have viewed it.
3. Create A Brand Identity
The best video marketing presents a cohesive package for your audience. This means they instantly recognise your content and will immediately know what to expect. They know your style and format and appreciate your branding choices. Your video brand becomes something your audience associates with a certain level of insight and entertainment value.
4. Stay Focussed On Your Message
Video content needs to be sharp, focussed and to the point. Value your audience’s time and only give them the insights they absolutely need.
5. Start Every Video With A Bang
If you loose your audience in the first 5 seconds you will not get them back. We appear to be making very fast decisions on what we will watch or not based on an instant value judgement on how a video starts.
Concentrate your best ideas on making your video start in a compelling manner. Think about if you can hook your viewer in the first 5 seconds.
6. Make Your Video Content Easily Found
The best brand video in the world will have no impact if nobody sees it. Make your video content easily found by the relevant search engine. Give your video relevant titles and descriptions. Remember the best SEO practices are not about trying to play search engines; they are about making it easy for users to find relevant, educational and entertaining video content online.
7. Think About Current Developments
The one constant in life is that there will be always be change. This equally applies to your video marketing. The best video content knows how to tell a story that takes full advantage of evolving technology. Think about how your storytelling can be improved by using 360 Degree Video, Virtual Reality, Personalised Video Marketing, Live Streaming and more AI Video Integration.
Every current development will not work for every brand, pick what works best for your brand and go with it.
8. Have A Regular Publishing Schedule
Your video marketing should not be about creating a “one hit wonder”; it should be about creating regular quality content. As in any form of content creation you need to create a video publishing schedule overtime. This allows you to create a customer video resource that they will appreciate.
9. Create Platform Specific Content
I am a fan of thinking about creating different content for different social media platforms. I don’t think a one size fits all. Think about what your customers are doing on each social media platform at anyone time. Create more casual and entertaining content for Facebook for example, that reflects the nature of the platform.
YouTube can be used for more in-depth educational content and video content, which is more likely to be requested by a user rather than stumbled on as in Facebook. Obviously there are no hard and fast rules, just think about what your customers expectations are on each social media platform and tailor your content accordingly.
10. Never Stop Innovating
Never stop innovating is the key to keep evolving your marketing strategy. Use the extensive video analytical information available now to inform your decisions. Don’t be afraid to try new things, some will fail however the results of other innovations will surprise you.
11. Optimise Your Video Content For Mobile Platform
Since more and more of users are watching their content on mobile platforms you should make your content mobile friendly. Keep the screen as uncluttered as possible. Avoid using complex or excessive graphic content on your videos. Think about running silent video content for when users may not want to use headphones. Keep your content short for when users are only dipping in and out of mobile content.
It might also be worth thinking about creating video content tailored to the screen dimensions of a typical mobile phone.
12. Always Have A Plan
If I were to give only one tip for your video marketing it would be always to have a plan about how you are going to tell your story. Your plan is the core to your video marketing success. It states your objectives, how you are going to achieve them and what your success will look like.
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. “
Henry Ford
Successful video marketing is about knowing the story you want to tell and understanding who needs to hear it. Understanding those two elements will guide you in all the choices you need to make when developing a video marketing strategy.