Video, video, video, video. Video is the language. And it’s here to stay. If you want to deeply connect with your audience (and which brand doesn’t?) then video should not only be your weapon of choice but your superpower.
The numbers stack up. According to Cisco, by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic. That’s 15 times higher than it was in 2017. If you’re creating content for social media, you’ll also be interested to know that social media posts with videos get 48% more views. (Hubspot). For B2B, LinkedIn Video converts 90% better than other content types.
But if you’ve never created video before, you might be a little bit scared. It can be costly. It can be time consuming. It can be disappointing. But it doesn’t have to be, with a little knowledge.
Consistency is key to content marketing, if you want to cultivate a strong relationship with your audience, you need to make a commitment to publishing content regularly. So how do you keep up with the frequency? Who’s got time, or enough ideas to create that much content – let alone video.
Don’t get us wrong, original content and fresh ideas are important. It’s the gold standard. And money spent on quality content is well spent. But with some clever hackery, you can add to your original content with a diverse library of video assets on a minimal budget. Here’s how:
Leverage existing content
Chances are you’re already sitting on a goldmine of brand stories waiting to be told. Have a look over your website, press releases or your socials. If you’re new to the brand, a content audit can help you. Which stories gained the most traction? Which of your audience’s passion points have you already talked about, already researched? Has your brand produced a whitepaper in the past? How many stories or ideas can you tease out of it? Or your blog? Lay it all out, then put your thinking cap on. Could these stories be re-told in another way with video? Examples of what this might look like:
- A piece to camera / talking head (phone or webcam) from an expert in your team about a topic that you blogged about.
- An animated explainer video that goes into detail on a topic that you covered in a white paper. (A meaty white paper or ebook can spin-off many mutually exclusive pieces of content)
- A presentation with voice over as a long-form education video.
Go live
Live social video is a winner for high authenticity, low production values and low cost. Why low cost? Because you will never spend longer on the actual shooting than the length of the video. Sure, you’ll need to put time and effort into the content structure and a little rehearsing, but if you’ve followed our previous point, that might already be done for you. Bonus!
Hot tips: Don’t overcook it. Embrace the rough and ready style. Audiences expect to see a blooper with live. That’s what makes it human. Experiment. Make sure you have a community manager helping out to moderate and answer any questions in real-time. Reading a script to camera whilst ignoring questions from your audience won’t win you many friends or much love. You need to interact. At the same time, don’t get too hung up about the number of viewers in real-time. The video will be published at the end and will amass the majority of your views over time, like a normal video.
Your live video could be:
- An interview or panel discussion with experts in your field.
- A tour behind the scenes shot on a camera phone.
- An unboxing or demo of a new product.
Interview cut downs
Raid the file share or archives for those lonnnnnng videos from your conference, presentation, documentary or TV that you always thought would be used for something but that never have. There’s bound to be some gold nuggets in there. Take cut down of 15 or 30 seconds, crop to square, add subtitles and some provocative post copy to introduce – voila! You have a shareable, bite-sized piece of video. You can even make them into a mini-series.
Re-purpose TV Assets
Most agencies roll their eyes when you ask them to do this. Not us. We get it, your global marketing team have invested millions in the TVC, they want to get as much mileage out of it as they can. Just don’t do what some brands do and post the unedited TVC straight to social. Get creative. Think about what would stop your thumb when you’re scrolling. You might need to resize it, create a shorter montage, add subtitles, supers, a new voice over. Maybe the whole thing doesn’t really doesn’t work on social but you can pull a few split seconds out and make them into a visually arresting gif or looping video. Not sure? Send us the link, we’ll take a look! You’d be surprised what we can do.
Gone are the days where you need a crew of twenty people all dressed in black and two months to make a video. So we hope that these ideas help you to unleash some of your creativity and start creating video. The only way you’ll learn is if you try. So don’t be intimidated. Get in there!
What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to video? #letsconnect
