Video content has become a highly engaging and popular medium to use in order to reach your audience. From live vlogs to step-by-step video tutorials, this content can be used to entertain and inform your viewers, and ultimately grow your following.
Let’s look at some of the basics of creating video content, and how to optimise it to ensure you’re getting the best possible exposure online.
The Popularity of Video Content
More online users are consuming video content today than ever before. Statistics show that:
- The average user watches around 40 minutes of YouTube video content a day.
- 78% of users watch online video content every week.
- 55% of users watch online video content every day.
- Users spend 88% more time on a website that includes video.
And this doesn’t simply mean users are passively consuming video content. Video is also having a significant impact on user behaviour.
- 59% of users say they will choose video content over text-based content on the same topic.
- 52% of consumers say that product reviews help them to make online buying decisions with confidence.
- After viewing a video, 65% of executives say they will visit the marketer’s website and 39% will call a vendor.
- 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video content.
Overall, 72% of businesses say that using video has noticeably improved their conversion rate.
Types of Video Content
With video on the rise, which formats are being used to capture viewers’ attention?
Vlog:
A video blog. This is a diary-style video, normally filmed by one single person in front of their webcam or phone camera. This is a platform to share the vlogger’s personal thoughts and experiences.
Interview:
A video interview usually focuses on one or two people answering the interviewer’s questions. This is a chance to interview and influencer who is well-known in your company or in your audience’s industry, or someone you know they want to find out more about.
An interview is a good opportunity to highlight your brand values and align yourself with popular industry figures.
How-to:
This type of video will take viewers through a process and explain how to do something, often with a step-by-step demonstration. This is a good way to build credibility and share knowledge with your audience.
Q&A:
A Question and Answer video session involves answering questions submitted by the audience, on-camera. This is a great platform to use to speak directly to your audience members and to make them feel heard.
Roundup:
This type of video revolves around a central theme and is usually in a list format, for example, “Seven Top Takeaways from This Weekend’s Conference” or “Five Things I Learned from Coding Bootcamp”, etc.
Company culture:
Allow your viewers to “meet the team” or see what a typical day is like for your organisation. This puts a personal spin on your work and gives your followers a better sense of your values.
Behind the scenes:
Videos like these give your viewers exclusive insight into a project, process of product launch. BTS videos have more of a “raw”, unedited look than other video types, as the footage takes viewers on a spontaneous journey behind the more polished final output they would usually see.
Review:
A video review of a product can make viewers feel like they’re getting an honest, real-time look at a product they’re interested in buying before they make the final purchasing decision. Obviously, companies can’t really review their own products without appearing biased, so many will send out samples and free trials to influencers and selected customers, asking them to record a review.
Live presentation:
Think about the popularity of TEDTalks and you’ll get an idea of just how effective this type of video can be. Film any presentations or panels your team is participating in, and share them with your audience as educational material.
Live webinar:
Sharing a live recording of a web conference can add a lot of value. This could be a roundtable discussion, a Q&A session with a client, or even a product demonstration. Participants will respond naturally with no pre-prepared script, giving viewers a real sense of your work and your values.
Event:
An event video covers what took place at a recent conference, meetup or team-building session. Snippets and short montages can be used to share the highlights of any event with your wider audience.
Testimonial:
Ask your customers for feedback, and use this feedback to create persuasive testimonial video content, sharing it with other potential customers. Some useful questions for these videos include:
- What results did you get from our product or service?
- What was your main concern before making the decision to buy the product/ use the service?
- What feature did you like the most?
- Were there any unexpected benefits?
- What would you say to someone who’s considering buying this product/ using this service?
Announcement:
If you have a big piece of news to share – like a new product launch, an upcoming event, or any major change to your organisation – you can share it with an announcement video, to generate excitement around the news, and create trust by showing your audience that you are transparent about changes and developments.
Top Video Content Trends
Here are a few trends and developments to look out when wondering how best to tailor and promote your video content.
Live content:
Live streaming is becoming more popular, especially across social media platforms, and many users are engaging with live posters for longer than they would with pre-recorded video content.
Instagram video content:
Instagram Stories are gaining traction, with more and more businesses turning to the wildly popular social media platform to share their news and updates.
There’s a great deal of opportunity for exposure on Instagram. Research has shown that users spend about 20% of their Instagram time in the Explore tab, looking for exciting new content tailored to their interests. Instagram Stories and videos present a personalised, visual way to engage with a wide audience.
Video for B2B:
Video content has been largely used by business-to-consumer brands, but this year has been a big one for business-to-business companies embracing video. Interestingly, LinkedIn reported that video content is shared 20 times more than other types of content.
Searchability:
Good news for SEOs – video is becoming more searchable, thanks to artificial intelligence which can transcribe audio tracks into written subtitles or closed captions for videos.
Personalisation of video:
More content marketers are reaching out to their audience with one-on-one personalised video messages, instead of phone calls or emails.
Embracing authenticity:
Raw, authentic, real-time footage is gaining popularity over highly edited and polished footage. Customers are looking for brands that are willing to be “real” with them, by sharing authentic, imperfect content that isn’t over-produced. A strong message can be worth much more than a big production budget.
VR and AR:
Users are engaging with video beyond the computer screen, in virtual reality and augmented reality applications. As this technology becomes more widespread and accessible, marketers are exploring the possibilities that come with harnessing AR and VR video content.
Tips for Optimising Your Video Content
Once you’ve invested time and money producing a creative, attractive video for your audience, don’t let it go to waste by skimping on the optimisation. A properly optimised video will be picked up and ranked by search engines, generating more traffic and views from qualified (interested) viewers.
Here are some tips for optimising a video posted to your blog or web page.
Speed and size:
For a good user experience, you need to ensure that the video loads and plays quickly, that the size allows for easy viewing, and the resolution is of good quality. A poor quality video won’t generate many views, and most users will leave the page without watching the full video. This reflects poorly on your content and will impact your ranking with search engines.
Hosting:
It’s important to choose the right video hosting platform for your needs, where you can upload your video files and embed them into your website content. Popular platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are good for generating general brand awareness. The downside is that after indexing, most of the traffic will go to the video platform itself, rather than your own website. You can encourage users to visit your site, however, by including a call to action in your video, and using end screens or information cards.
Filename:
As with other types of content, you will need to choose a keyword your target audience is searching for, which is relevant to the topic of your video. Rename the video file so that the filename includes your keyword. Search engines can’t “watch” your video, so the keyword serves as an indicator to communicate what it’s about. For example, if your topic is “Ten Tips for Choosing the Best Vlogging Camera” with the keyword “vlogging camera”, an optimised file name would be vlogging-camera-tips.mov.
Title and description:
As with other types of content, your title and meta description must be optimised for search. Create a video title and description that clearly state what the content is about, and include your chosen keyword close to the beginning, just as you would with a blog or an infographic.
Tags:
When using a video hosting platform like YouTube, it’s recommended that you include tags to let viewers (and YouTube itself) know what each video is about. If YouTube has a clearer context for your video, it will be able to associate it with relevant related videos and suggest it to interested users watching similar content. Use concise, relevant tags with your most important keywords.
For example, some tags for the video “Ten Tips for Choosing the Best Vlogging Camera” would include ‘vlogging cameras”, “vlogging equipment”, “vlogger tips”, “how to choose a vlogging camera”, “recommended vlogging cameras”, etc.
Categories:
Make sure you choose a category for your video after you upload it. This is another way you can help YouTube to group your video together with similar content.
End screen or information card:
With YouTube, you can also add an end screen or an information card to the end of your video, to direct users to content you specifically want them to see, or encourage them to subscribe to your video channel.
Thumbnail image:
The video thumbnail is a small image that searchers will see when your video is indexed. It’s a big deciding factor in whether or not they will click to watch. Make sure you include a custom thumbnail that is attractive and relevant to the content of your video.
Did You Know? Research shows that videos with customised thumbnails get a 30% higher play rate.
Transcript:
Include a video transcript, to make your content more accessible and easy to understand. Transcripts also act like additional on-page copy, making your video posts easier for search engines to index.
Other on-page content:
Don’t just optimise your video, optimise the page itself, to make sure it will be crawled and indexed. That means good quality content with keyword optimisation, as well as an optimised page title, description and H1 tags. It’s also important to make sure the video is relevant to the page you’re embedding it in.
Note that Google will normally only index one video per page, so if you’re using multiple video files on one page, choose the one you want to rank for and make sure you embed it first.
Make the video a focal point:
While other on-page content is important, don’t forget this is about promoting your video post. If it’s below the fold or otherwise hard to find, requiring users to scroll far down to view it, it won’t get a good play rate. Make sure your video is still the focus of your page to improve your views and crawlability.
Creating video content is a great way to flex your creative muscle, and engage with your audience in an interactive and exciting way. If you have questions about what it takes to create excellent videos and include them successfully in your content marketing strategy, speak to the Lilo team for expert insight and advice.
