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marketing insider group shares the complete guide to creating video content

Now is the time to become an expert on creating video content. Not only are 91% of businesses already using video as a marketing tool in 2023, but 96% of marketers are placing ad spend on video.

That’s because nowadays, consumers are spending an increasing amount of time on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc. With all of the benefits that come along with creating video content, like building your brand identity and increasing your SEO, there’s no reason why your company should miss out.

If you haven’t already, this is your sign to hop on the video content bandwagon. And lucky for you, we’re giving our readers the scoop on creating video content that generates conversions. In this post, we’re taking a look at how to create video content that will benefit both you and your audience.

Quick Takeaways

  • 94% of marketers say that creating video content has increased their audience’s understanding of products and services 
  • 83% of professional marketers believe that creating video content is more important now than ever
  • Creating video content will maximize your ROI, educate your audience, and increase your SEO
  • Sharing explainer videos, product demonstrations, company culture videos, and customer testimonials are some of the most effective forms of video content
  • A video content marketing strategy will help maximize your ROI and scale your marketing efforts

In a world so heavily saturated with video consumption, creating video content is one of the most effective ways to reach and convert your audience.

What Exactly Does “Creating Video Content” Mean?

According to a recent report, 83% of professional marketers believe that creating video content is more important now than ever. But what exactly qualifies as video content?

Video content marketing is exactly what it sounds like – companies creating and sharing videos to promote their products and services, educate their audiences, and encourage engagement, with an ultimate goal to increase conversions.

But why such a rise in popularity? For starters, social media consumption in the US was boosted by 215% during the 2020 pandemic. By 2022, audiences were spending an average of 19 hours per week consuming video content. To put it into perspective, that’s just a few hours short of an entire day spent watching videos online.

bar graph shows increase in consumption of video content from 2018 to 2022

Image Source: Wyzowl

If you haven’t started creating video content yet, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to connect with your audience. But reaching potential customers isn’t the only reason why you should start creating video content.

4 Reasons To Start Creating Video Content

In 2023, there’s no question that sharing video content is the most powerful way for brands to engage their audiences. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a B2C or B2B company, or even if you have decent video editing skills. There’s 4 main reasons why you should start creating video content ASAP.

1. Video Content Is A Great Way To Educate Your Audience

Want to help potential customers learn about why your product is the best? Create an explainer video that clearly explains how your products and services work.

According to Wyzowl, 94% of marketers say that creating video content has increased their audience’s understanding of products and services. As a professional marketer, you already know that customers will only buy your product if they know how it works and what benefits it offers.

2. Videos Have Great ROI

In 2023, industry professionals have reported that creating video content has significantly increased:

  • Brand awareness
  • Traffic
  • Leads
  • Sales
  • Dwell time

bar graph shows increase in sales from creating video content between 2016 and 2023

And the real beauty of creating video content: it doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Nowadays, you can record a great video in a matter of seconds on your handy-dandy smartphone. Spending less on production means maximizing your ROI.

3. When It Comes To Creating Video Content, You Have Options

If you’ve been in the business for some time, you might think of YouTube as soon as you hear the word “video”. But in today’s industry, you have a number of video sharing options:

  • Social Media. Post stories that will eventually disappear on channels like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Not only is it quick and easy, but it’s a great way to speak directly to your audience.
  • Live Videos. According to Facebook, live streams get 6x as many interactions as regular video posts.
  • Webinars. Share webinar content to establish authority by answering your audience’s questions and teaching them about trending topics in your industry.

The list goes on and on. Figure out which channels make the most sense for your business, and keep posting video content consistently to maximize your ROI.

4. You Can Amp Up Your SEO By Creating Video Content

Have you ever noticed that Google often features YouTube videos at the top of Page 1? By using keywords and consistently creating content that targets commonly searched topics, the chances of your content landing in Google’s top results are high.

screenshot of YouTube video content featured on Google SERPs

Image Source: Google

Add in the exposure you’ll get on YouTube when people search for your topics, and you can expect a pretty significant increase in traffic.

6 Types of Video Content You Should Create

Now that you’re convinced of the power of creating video content, you’re probably wondering what kind of videos successful companies are creating. We’ve got you covered.

1. Explainer Videos

Remember, explainer videos are a great way to educate your audience. When customers understand the magic behind your products and services, they’re much more likely to make a purchase.

Video Source: Consumer Reports

Explainer videos can be animated, time lapses of illustrations, live recordings, or really any method you find appropriate for your brand, as long as you effectively get the message across.

2. Product Demonstrations

Show off your products and services with product demonstrations. These are different from explainer videos because you’ll be flaunting your product’s special features and benefits.

Video Source: The Gorilla Glue Company

Find yourself a charismatic host to speak passionately about your product, and brainstorm creative ways to engage your audience during the demonstration.

3. Company Culture Videos

Brand storytelling can be one of the most effective ways to make an emotional connection with your audience. Create video content that highlights your company values to draw attention from both potential customers and employees.

Video Source: PSIA-AASI

You’d be surprised at how many new customers and employees you can attract by sharing the “why” behind your brand’s offerings.

4. Behind-The-Scenes

Who doesn’t want an inside look at the process behind delivering your products and services? Don’t be afraid to show off the craftsmanship that goes into creating your company’s goods.

Video Source: Evening Standard

You’ll really want to capitalize on this type of video content if your brand specializes in personalized products or specialized sourcing of materials. The more involved your viewers feel in the process, the more interested they’ll be in making a purchase.

5. Customer Testimonials

Word-of-mouth marketing is the oldest trick in the book. By posting customer testimonials, you won’t have to rely on customers sharing your success stories.

Video Source: The Gorilla Glue Company

Ask an existing customer to share on video why they love your company’s products and services. When prospects see how passionate customers are about your product, they’ll likely want to try it out for themselves.

6. Employee Portraits

Give customers an inside look at the heart and soul of your company by sharing employee portrait videos. A short video showing the day-to-day actions of a passionate employee can help your audience better understand your business and the community it serves.

Video Source: Life And Thyme

If you’re a small business wanting to engage with or expand your community, this is a great way to show new audience members what you’re made of.

6 Steps To Creating A Video Content Marketing Strategy

You’re just a few steps away from reaping the benefits of creating video content – but every great marketer knows that your content is nothing without a solid content marketing strategy. Here’s 6 easy steps to maximizing your video content’s ROI and scaling your marketing efforts.

1. Why

Before you start churning out video content, you need to clarify the purpose behind it.

Are you a small business that wants to show off the face behind your brand? Do you want to demonstrate how your business helps create positive change? Are you offering an innovative product that needs an educational “how-to” video?

Regardless of your reasoning, determining the “why” behind your video content will help make sure you can effectively get your point across to viewers.

2. Who

There’s no question that your target audience lives at the center of your success. Make sure your video content’s purpose aligns with your buyer personas to guarantee a positive reaction.

Video content is a great way to create an emotional connection with your customers, so creating the right emotions and telling the right story is key.

3. What

You may already have an idea of what kinds of video content you’ll create after reading about some of your options above. But before nailing down your video style, make sure it’s relevant to the needs and wants of your audience. Remember, answering your audience’s questions via video content is one of the best ways to establish credibility in your industry.

4. Where

It’s important to decide what your final product will look like before figuring out where you’ll share your company’s videos. Short videos for entertainment are ideal for platforms like TikTok, but longer, educational videos should be shared on a channel like YouTube.

Here’s some options to help you decide which channels are optimal for your videos’ length:

  • YouTube: up to 15 minutes for unverified accounts, up to 12 hours for verified accounts
  • Facebook: up to 15 minutes long
  • Instagram: IGTV can be up to 1 hour long, Reels can only be 15 seconds long
  • LinkedIn: anywhere between 3 seconds and 30 minutes
  • TikTok: up to 10 minutes long
  • Twitter: anywhere between 20 seconds and 2 minutes
  • Websites: it’s your call, but keep in mind that shorter videos are better received

Most importantly, don’t forget your audience when making a decision. Where do they spend most of their time consuming video content? Choosing the right channel will optimize your chances of reaching new potential customers.

5. When

The key to success is consistency. When customers see that your brand is consistent, they know you can be trusted.

Create a content calendar that outlines what, when and where you’ll post your video content to stay organized and consistent. This way, you won’t have to think too hard about what content you’re going to post.

6. Measure Your Success

There’s no way to know if your hard work was worth it without measuring your success. Taking a look at key performance indicators, or KPIs, will help you assess how effective your strategy is:

  • Views: the total number of people who watched your video
  • Impressions: the total number of times your video was displayed on a user’s screen
  • View-through rate: the total number of times your video was watched in its entirety over the number of initial impressions (completed views / impressions = view-through rate)
  • Watch time: the total amount of time viewers spent watching your video
  • Clicks: The total number of times viewers clicked on your video
  • Brand lift: the impact your video made on viewers’ perceptions and behaviors (calculated via survey)

Taking a close look at the metrics above will help you figure out what types of content worked best. After measuring your strategy’s success, you can start making changes to your content calendar to maximize your ROI.

Start Creating Your Video Content Marketing Strategy Today

In the world of content marketing, creating video content is one of the most effective ways to engage, reach, and convert your audience. Not only that, but it can also be one of the least expensive, time-consuming methods to maximizing your ROI.

Ready to start reaping the benefits of quality video content marketing? Marketing Insider Group can help. Get started today by checking out our weekly blog content service, or schedule a free consultation now to learn more!

The post The 1-2-3 Guide to Creating Video Content Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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6 Ways to Integrate SEO Across Teams

When I started in digital marketing, I splattered meta-data and keywords into content like Pollock. I am not proud of this because not only does this date me, but it is also horrifically against best practices as we see them today. If you ever read anything along the lines of “California vacation lovers and those who love California vacations? For the best California vacation, look no further than these California vacations,” I send my deepest apologies. 

Fast forward 20 years, I’m now happy to say that organic SEO best practices have dramatically improved, both for the marketer and the end-user. As we move into 2023, it’s more important than ever to remember search does not take place in a silo. It should be a thoughtful, integrated strategy running across the complete customer experience. 

Not sure how to integrate SEO? We have six key ways to de-silo your search integration across your organization when it comes to working with search engine optimization teams, agencies, or practitioners.

Search Meets Research, Personas, and the Audience Journey  

Search traffic provides a treasure trove of qualitative and quantitative information about your audiences’ needs, vernacular, attitudes, and more. 

  • Do people talk about your travel product by saying “vacation” or “trip”?
  • Do high school students looking for information about their college of choice search for “ASU”, “Arizona State”, or “Arizona State University”? 
  • When searching for enterprise software, do your customers say “platform,” “tool,” or “technology”?  

Using search data helps you discern what will resonate best with your audience. Couple this with surveys, stakeholder interviews, and digital data and you have a solid (and quantifiable) foundation for your personas and audience journeys. 

When search teams share high-level keyword information across the organization, it can help support everything from media relations to product development to recruitment and beyond. 

Integrate SEO and UX 

According to “SEO For Everyone” authors Rebekah Baggs & Chris Corak, search and user experience teams shouldn’t be kept on separate tasks (or quite frequently within separate silos).  These practitioners or teams often have some of the same goals in mind: ensure the site is easy to find, navigate, use, and enjoy. Although, they may approach the process of getting to the end goal differently. 

 

Don’t let the idea of The One Perfect Keyword create tunnel vision—you want to be looking at the bigger, more nuanced picture. An improved user experience means people stay on the page longer, interacting further with your site, not clicking the back button, revisiting the site anew, and sharing your content—all boons for SEO. The better the overall site experience (think UX, load times, mobile navigation, et al.), the more likely you’ll reach the coveted top ten in SERP.

– Baggs & Corak 

Search and….. the Offsite Experience?

During my Britney-and-Justin-era SEO days, I didn’t anticipate I’d be planning for SEO even before the site experience began. 

Today Google wants you to stay on Google. 


Don’t let the idea of The One Perfect Keyword create tunnel vision—you want to be looking at the bigger, more nuanced picture.
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It is now critical that search marketers consider how their content is presented, consumed, and shared even before the user gets to their site. Examples of this include maps, movie listings, local listings, and product descriptions. 

As top search results provide answers via the SERP itself, search marketers and content creators need to button up content, images and calls to action even before a user steps foot on your site. 

Search and Social

One of my favorite mash-ups over the years has been search and social. It’s interesting to find how search keywords and activity on your site overlap with social engagement conversions and customer care. This isn’t revealed through a pretty venn diagram. This typically looks like a psychologist blot experiment with various overlaps in bizarre and unpredictable ways. 

psychologist blot experiment

As the great resignation continues and teams have more and more to do (with fewer resources, patience, and stamina), one way to offset that workload is figuring out ways to collaborate, leverage each other’s expertise, and do more together, outside of the SEO silo. Top social sites for search engine optimization (and content distribution, amplification, and atomization too!) include LinkedIn, Pinterest, Medium, Twitter, and Meta (the artist formerly known as Facebook). 

Pull quote: According to Pinterest, 444 million people globally come to Pinterest every month to get inspired.  Last year, 88% of Pinterest users purchased a product as a result of their New Year’s Resolutions. 

SEO, Meet Creative and Content 

Content marketers and writers need to ensure content is not just “me me me” or “product product product” copy.  

What questions does your audience need answering? In what cadence? Where? Why?  How (video vs text  vs app, for example)? I can promise with 99% accuracy it’s not, “why are these SaaS tool features so yummy?”

Creative is critical too.  According to Google’s John Mueller:

Sometimes those small differences do play a role in regards to how people perceive your website. If, for example, you have something that is on a financial topic and people come to you and say, “well, your information is okay but it’s presented in a way that looks very amateurish,” – then that could reflect how your website is perceived. And in the long run could reflect something that is visible in search as well.

Poor design can lead to high bounce rates and short time on site, adversely impacting ratings.  Search marketers working on their 2023 goal or to-do list might consider adding “meet with the creative team”  (over coffee or cocktails works!)

For a goldmine of additional insights from Google’s John Mueller Bookmark This: 57 SEO Insights 

SEO and Video 

With YouTube continuing to dominate as a primary search engine, optimizing videos for SEO should be on your radar as well. Videos should mirror your search keywords, be thoughtfully optimized, and mirror the sophistication of your brand, both from a creative and UX perspective. 

Keep your eye on:

  • Channel trailer, featured video, and channel sections
  • Channel name, description, and site links
  • Profile picture, banner image, and video watermark
  • SRT Files,Tags, & Hashtags
  • Titles and headlines for thumbnails

Now’s The Time To Integrate SEO

To help phase your efforts, begin by learning what terms and topics your audience is searching for, build content focusing on those phrases and issues, and use the research to understand the highest interest levels.  Focus your content initiatives on those first.  

In addition, tools like TubeBuddy, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and YouTube Search Predictions will help you learn what is working – and what’s not as you integrate SEO. 

SEO planning tools

 

The post 6 Ways to Integrate SEO Across Teams appeared first on Convince & Convert.