Making Video Content Work For You

The way in which people process information has changed. Attention spans are significantly reduced, and people’s tendency to read, both as a leisure activity and out of necessity when navigating their day-to-day has declined exponentially.

This might be quite a cynical way of looking at it, but that fact that, as of 2017, 74% of all internet traffic consists of the consumption of video content speaks volumes. According to a study by Animoto, four times as many people would prefer to watch a video about a product than read about it.

But it’s not just the fact that video content is easier to digest that written content. It’s also that the quality of video content produced on a corporate level has significantly improved in recent years. Now, when you look to produce a corporate video, advert, or video testimonial, putting anything together short of a masterpiece is going to date your business. On the other end of the spectrum, if you produce something of a significantly high quality, your brand is going to be destined to lurk in the minds of your users for decades to come.

One of the primary pitfalls businesses can fall into when producing video content for themselves is what I like to call ‘content transmogrification’, that is to say turning copious amounts of text into copious amounts of text within the context of a video. Don’t expect your audience to read something just because it happens to be accompanied by a musical score and some boring visuals. It’s still just text. Expect your readers to watch. Create a story. Invoke an emotional response. This is all part and parcel of producing a quality video.

The unfortunate thing is that it doesn’t take just anyone to create something that’s going to do all of the above. You need:

• Resources
• Equipment
• Video Editing Skills
• A Vision
• Passion for the content
• Common Sense

That last bullet point might seem fairly harsh, but the reason that a lot of corporate videos get a bad reputation is because they’re all too often created by people with the best of intentions, combined with shallow foresight and a lack of technical knowledge.

Video marketing is valuable for a number of reasons, primary of which being that, as Hubspot suggests, video content will account for 74% of all internet traffic throughout 2017. The audience already exists, the main legwork is going to come when honing your technique and making sure that you produce a something engaging that balances itself out by representing your brand well.

The benefit of high quality video, whilst costly, is that it’s brilliantly malleable, and can be used on your business website, social media pages, and shown to prospective clients or customers to convince them to trust in your brand.

Making video work for your business is about understanding, and you shouldn’t be forced to create video content in order to keep up with the times. Whilst there is pressure to jump on the bandwagon or risk the loss of potential custom, make sure you spend the time creating a game plan, and deciding exactly how, when, where, and for what budget you want to create your video.