Video is one content type that has continued to grow in importance, in reach, and in impact. It’s the ability to educate, entertain, and deliver brand messages with sound, motion, and visuals and this makes it the preferred medium for the younger audience.
However, videos shouldn’t be created just for the sake of creating them. You need to remember that each content asset you create is for a purpose.
The success of your videos is therefore tied to how much of your goals you were able to achieve. And if you haven’t been approaching your video creation in this light, now would be a good time to change tactics.
If you have been quite successful with your video marketing campaigns, there’s room for growth. This guide offers you 10 valuable tips to guide you in optimizing your video content.
Why Videos?
Videos are not the only content formats we have neither are they the best content types for all situations. Why are they so important to the success of your content marketing campaigns?
There are countless reasons brands have been increasing their investments in video creation over the past few years.
Let’s see some of the more popular reasons you should invest in video content types.
Videos offer a great medium for brands to tell their stories to their audience. You can keep it real with your audience through your videos and connect with them personally
Videos offer the triple advantage of audio, visuals, and motion. You are able to engage all the 5 senses of your audience through your videos
Videos are so easy to consume that your audience need not do anything extra to get a great user experience with them. They can watch your videos while fully occupied with other tasks or when in relaxation mode
Video is a content type that is quite flexible for use in different situations. They can be created in short formats and used on social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. You could also create long format videos such as full feature films and documentaries. And then there’s the feature in-between where you can create videos that could span a few minutes to less than an hour
Videos can be created and optimized for different devices and platforms
Video content can also be mapped to every stage of the buyer’s journey. Educational videos can be created to meet the needs of viewers at the top of the funnel, while highly engaging and shareable content takes care of those at the middle of the funnel.
You can have videos of product demos and testimonials created for those who are at the bottom of the funnel.
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Constraints
Despite all the benefits of using videos, there are still some obvious constraints that have to be dealt with.
I – Videos cost much more to produce than most other content types.
Anyone could put a video together by simply using low-cost equipment even without professional skills.
However, the output will be far less in quality than the average video on the web. That means investing in expensive video gadgets or paying professional video producers to create quality videos.
II – Although video contents are far less in number than text contents, there are still many online. That means your videos will be competing with other videos for the attention of viewers.
III – Not every web user likes to watch online videos due to data constraints or for some other reasons.
10 Optimization Tips to Improve Your Video Investment
1 – Have a Clear-Cut Purpose for Your Video
Every video is created with a purpose in mind – whether it’s to educate your audience or promote your brand. It could also be to offer helpful tips to your viewers or engage them through your video.
You need to develop a clear purpose for your video before even putting pen on paper. And once you have done this, then the logical thing is to stick to that purpose throughout the video.
Your purpose provides the metric for measuring how successful the video turns out. Never give in to the temptation to measure a video’s success by the number of likes or comments.
Any measuring that will be done should be based on how much of the purpose you were able to achieve through the video.
If your video was created to drive your brand’s awareness or visibility, then video reach would be a good metric to measure success.
Pro tip: align your video’s purpose with your marketing goals. This will make it easier to measure its success and contribution to the overall business goal.
2 – Optimize the Length of your Videos
There’s no hard and fast rule on the ideal length of a video. That’s because a lot depends on the viewers and the purpose of the video.
To find out the ideal length to use, you should track the average time that your viewers spend on your videos. You can track what time into the videos that they stop watching. Then compute an average with the total time realized and you will have yourself something to start with.
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The purpose of the video also matters in that an educational video will be much longer than a demo video. It’s the same way that a full feature movie exceeds a promo in video length.
Once you have these details, you can optimize your video length to ensure that more users stay and watch till the end.
3 – Create Transcripts for Your Videos
Transcripts offer twin benefits of boosting your SEO and improving user experience with your videos. Search engines can only understand your video content through the title and description because they are text-based.
Also, including transcripts help search engines get a better understanding of what your video is all about. This will enable them to properly index your videos for the right search terms.
Whenever these search terms are queried, your video will be returned as one of the search results. This means that the videos get better exposure to the target audience.
For improving user experience, transcripts help your audience with hearing difficulty understand your video. Those who cannot watch your video due to bandwidth or data constraint will be able to read the transcripts.
By including transcripts in your videos, you will be optimizing your video for better reach and richer user experience for your audience.
4 – See the Bigger Picture
Videos are not standalone contents that a business creates because it has the funds to do it. Videos are created for a purpose that must align with the business’s objective.
Each video that you create plays a role, no matter how minor, in reaching the bigger goal of the company. If your content creators are not mindful of this fact, there is a tendency to disconnect from the big goal.
The topic, keyword, and content research must align with those of the company. The video content strategy, production process, and analytics are all subsets of those of the company.
To get the best value from each video you create, always see the video as a part of your company’s bigger picture.
5 – Communicate with Your Audience
It is assumed that you already have a clear picture of who your target audience is. If you don’t, then you should hold off your video creation and find out who your audience is. This process will provide you with a detailed user persona of that person you are creating videos for.
The user persona will tell you the kind of language that your audience understands plus what needs they have. You will also find out such details as age range, sex, interests, needs, location, and motivation.
These details will help you in communicating with your audience the right way. Your conversational tone should align with how your audience likes to be addressed. Your choice of words, language construct, and sentences should be what they can relate with.
Avoid using unnecessary words that are out of the vocabulary of your audience. Avoid trying to prove your knowledge or skill to them if it isn’t needed. Only if you are able to do this, then you will find it easy to communicate with your audience.
6 – Tag Your Videos
Earlier on we established that search engines aren’t as good at understanding videos as they are with text. That’s why you need to take advantage of every opportunity to include text in your videos.
Tags offer a way to add descriptive texts to your videos to enable users and search engines to find them. Tags also enable search engines to better understand your videos and index them properly.
The tags help to associate your videos with your target keywords, so your videos can appear in relevant search results.
7 – Choose How to Publish Your Videos
After you have created your video, there’s an important decision you have to make. You will need to choose the platform(s) to use for publishing the video to your target audience. The choice you make at this point will affect the overall success of your video.
Available publishing options include hosting on owned platforms, post on video hosting sites, or self-host.
There are owned platforms like Vimeo and Brightcove that you can use to distribute your videos. Though the video’s reach might be limited, you are offered some tools to customize your videos. They also provide you with tools that you can use to monetize your videos.
The second option is posting your videos on video hosting platforms such as YouTube. This option offers the advantage of exposing your videos to a larger audience.
These platforms also offer some basic features for free while providing you with simple tools to configure your hosting settings.
The third option available to you is to self-host your videos on your website or blog. This option gives you greater control over your videos, allowing you to drive web traffic through those videos.
However, this option will cost you more money to set up and manage yourself. CDN (Content Delivery Network) is distribution servers that can help speed up the transfer of your video files to users’ browsers.
Whatever options you decide to go for, let it be the one that best fits the overall purpose of your videos.
8 – Promoting Your Videos
After hosting your video through the preferred hosting platform, you will need to promote it. Promoting your videos will mostly be through social media networks.
But before that, you need to determine the preferred social media networks where your audience hangs out. This is vital if you want to reach the right people through your promotions. Again, from the user persona that you created earlier on, you will be able to tell where to find them.
You will also need to find out the best days and times that you will be able to reach the highest number of people. This is necessary if you want to engage more people through your video.
9 – Monitor Responses of Viewers
After all is said and done, you need to find out how viewers are responding to your video. Are their responses to your video positive or negative? Do they respond to your video using strong emotional words, whether positive or negative?
You will need to monitor their responses to find out how they feel about your video and areas you need to improve upon. You will also be able to receive insights from the responses that will help you gauge your video and brand appeal.
10 – Promote to Email List
It is assumed that you already own an active email list, subscribers, or contacts. It is best practice to send emails that include the video thumbnail and link.
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This way, you will be able to generate more video views from those who constitute your email list.
Conclusion
Videos have become very vital components of any business’s content marketing strategy. Videos can be aligned to the business overall strategy to enable the business to benefit from the successes.
Videos are flexible and offer the advantage of audio, visuals, and motion to viewers. They can also be mapped to each stage of the buyer’s journey. However, videos come at a cost if you intend to create professional videos of high quality.
This guide offers you 10 actionable tips that you can use to get the best out of your video investments.
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