Video became extremely popular last years in marketing. People tend to watch more, however, tend to watch less or watch shorter videos.
What you should keep in mind, if planning to invest in video content?
First of all - where the video will be published and how it will be promoted. I am sure it is evident, so let's skip this part and talk about making the video really impactful for your business.
The video duration.
Many people talk about duration like "5 minutes maximum", others saying 10 is ok to have a good engagement. Based on my experience, a duration of 5, 10 or 15 minutes does not matter, as good content on YouTube has engagement of about 40+% if the duration is up to 20 minutes (I have about 6 million views of about 150 videos), and it relates to engagement we may achieve at the beginning. There are some tricks how to enhance it, and I always discuss the particular approach with my customers.
The video content - where to say or show the key message.
The position (time code) depends on the audience we expect it to watch. And the audience engagement depends on the name of the video, the person, and the initial impression within the first few seconds.
What to say if we are talking about an interview or presentation?
The content itself shall be created based on the audience's knowledge of the topic, general context, and estimated results (audience reaction). If you want a good impact, it is better to separate the long story to a series of short, engaging videos, which will create a needed story and lead a customer to the desired reaction.
Video edition tricks: dynamic and engagement is the key.
To make the video engaging and avoid the audience sleeping I always recommend using different angles, scale changes, and adding animation or other videos over (about 2-3 seconds). If you are filming the "talking head", I suggest adding some scale change (for the large head, it is about 15% scale) in long sentences when we want to emphasize something – it adds more dynamics.
Name and cover image.
The name and cover image make more that 50% of success in many cases. Be creative, but avoid clickbait. The title should catch, the image should emphasize the title or vice-versa, and the first seconds have to say, "it is worth your time to watch".
But the most important part - try to think strategically, and do not rely on video as a "magic bullet" - video is simply an instrument in your well-shaped content strategy, where you have to understand your customer psychology first.
Oleksii Sologub
Business development and strategic consulting in healthcare.
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