How to get the most out of your video content

Throughout the years, digital marketing content has blown up due to a variety of factors like the rise of social media and the pandemic, causing us to stay inside and adapt to new working conditions. This has contributed to 63.6% of the world’s population using social media, with an average daily time spent online of 2 hours and 20 minutes (smartinsights.com) – this is time that can be utilised for businesses and marketers to get their content, whether promotional or informative, across to their intended audiences. There are various elements to be considered when producing and uploading video content; including the video length, devices, or the platforms that the content would be best suited for.

Content type

Before moving forward with the video content creation process, it is important for there to be a plan in place – with considerations like what the overall purpose and intended audience are. It is worth asking yourself whether the video content will be informative and professional, or whether the video content will be promotional and product-oriented, with an enthusiastic tone of voice, for example.

In addition, the goal when planning video content should be considered. If the goal is going viral and view generation, utilising current trends is a good way to capitalise on the publicity. Similarly, if the goal is to educate the audience then an informative video is the most likely choice. 

Uploading on platforms

Deciding on what platform to upload on requires careful consideration and research before going ahead. Each social media platform, such as X, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook attracts different demographics which needs to be considered. Some platforms will have a younger audience than others with Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram catering more to 18-29 year olds and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest catering more to 50-59 year olds (sproutsocial.com).

When uploading on platforms it is also important to consider the video size, as each platform has its own requirements. If they are not taken into consideration, videos can become compressed, blurry, and oftentimes unplayable. For example, YouTube welcomes videos at 1920x1080p with 4k support, whereas Facebook and Instagram prefer 1080x1080p for their square posts – therefore, if a video for YouTube was uploaded on Facebook or Instagram its overall quality would be reduced. The aspect ratio of posts that are vertical would be different in comparison, like Facebook’s story posts at 1280x720p which also cater better to mobile users. This is to be considered due to the constant expansion of mobile phone users each year.

Video length is also a factor to consider before video content creation, and this is because different social media platforms have various visual types that may have a time cap. For reference, Instagram has in-feed videos, reels, and stories, each with its own maximum video length. A video uploaded to Instagram stories must not exceed 60 seconds, whereas a video uploaded to Instagram reels must not exceed 90. 

As well as the previously mentioned points, other aspects to consider before creating video content include other restrictions social media platforms put in place – like the maximum video file size, and what formats are supported (MP4, MOV, AVI).

Optimising for SEO

It is beneficial to optimise video content for SEO as it can lead to increased visibility, engagement, and sustainable growth. Several actions can be taken to further increase the visibility and ranking of the video content on search engines and platforms, like keyword placement. 

Keywords that are relevant, engaging, and are included in the title and description of the content, will help to optimise the video metadata – which is the information describing attributes of the video content that helps search engines and video platforms organise and learn it. 

In addition to keywords, other actions to further optimise the video content such as adding tags to the video (a YouTube recommendation) can be taken. Tags that are relevant to the content are beneficial when it comes to recommending related videos and indexing them correctly in search engines. Transcriptions and captions also help optimise video content for SEO, in addition to widening potential audiences that may be visually impaired. 

To summarise, video content is now, and will continue to be, a powerful tool for digital marketers and businesses alike. Due to the current landscape of social media users regardless of age, it is becoming more important to make the most out of video content – whether it is the aforementioned content type consideration, factors to consider when uploading on certain platforms, or the best methods of SEO optimisation. Taking advantage of these tips will help you to get the results you need.