Posted 01.08.2016
By Rob Twells
We asked our good friends over at Future Proof Films to give us the top reasons getting a video made is a worthwhile investment, here is what they came up with!
The two most common questions we at Future Proof Films get asked are “who’s your typical client?” And “what’s the most common type of video you create?”
The answer for both of these questions is always, It varies. A lot!. And the reason is simple? Video is versatile, very versatile.
Whether you’re a small company promoting a service on Facebook, a sole-trader promoting a product on Twitter, or a large company looking to explain your business on your website, video is the perfect way to communicate your message to your customers.
There’s a huge range of social media platforms that your customers will be engaging with on a day to day basis, from Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to Snapchat, and Periscope to YouTube, to name just a few. Fortunately, virtually every platform available makes video extremely accessible which means you can engage your customers with video on whatever app or website they use.
So, you’ve hired an incredible video production team to create you an equally incredible video. But how do you use it across all of your social platforms? The good news is, it’s very easy to do: you just need to understand each platform’s culture and limitations.
The best place to start is YouTube. It’s the standout choice when uploading videos for your audience and customers to watch, whether it’s on your YouTube channel or embedded on your site. As a Google-owned platform, YouTube also integrates perfectly with Google and gives your website a great SEO boost meaning you’ll climb even higher to that coveted first position!
Whilst YouTube may have some truly incredible statistics, you’ll also want to upload your video directly to every other platform (or embed from YouTube if uploading natively isn’t an option).
For instance, Facebook highly favours video content that’s natively uploaded to the platform, meaning your video will be placed higher and more prominently on a user’s timeline. Facebook is also great for video as it uses an auto-play function when scrolling through a timeline – a great way to stop a user mid-scroll and convert them into a potential customer.
As I mentioned above, the secret to winning on a platform is understanding its culture, and with Facebook, the users want a quick, sociable experience, so a short 60-90 second video will always work better than one over two minutes. As you’ll see with the other social media platforms, shorter is always better when it comes to engaging your audience.
Instagram and Twitter’s short video limits are a great example of the above rule and the time restrictions are also great for pushing you to engage with your audiences in a much more visceral, snappy way. But how do you make your video work on Instagram?
Instagram is extremely visually focused and works because its users want to get constant hits of visual impact. One great way to make your video work on Instagram is to edit it into a highlights video of itself or a kind of trailer. Videos can be uploaded to your feed or your Instagram story!
One company taking Instagram by storm is Buzzfeed’s family member Tasty. They use short videos to show (incredibly) delicious looking foods and recipes to entice their audience into reading (or viewing) more to discover the actual recipe for the dish. It’s clickbaiting at its finest!
Twitter is similar to Instagram in the way that video works in Twitter through its brevity and conciseness but it differs in the way that it’s much more direct (or at least feels it). Being able to reply to a tweet with a video is a great option and to the person receiving the video, it won’t even feel like you’re selling to them, you’re simply replying to them; you’re listening to them.
One great example would be targeting Twitter users complaining about a product or service. You spot their tweets and as you offer a competing product or service, you reply with your showreel/explainer video/product video/etc. This kind of targeted advertising is exceptional because not only is it free, it also works!
So with just one video, you can upload it to several platforms and edit it into a trailer of itself for other platforms. Which is even better news if the video production company you’re using doesn’t charge for social media friendly edits.
You’ve sussed out that video works on every platform, now you want to find out if (and how) video can help you reach your company’s goals.
The first thing to do is to determine exactly what your goals are. Are you looking to promote a product? Inform an audience? Capture an event? Explain a service? Or simply advertise your company?
If the answer to any of those is yes, a video is the perfect tool! Not only is video proven to be more engaging than images or text alone, a video also boosts customer confidence and helps audiences retain information. Meaning no matter what your goals for your video are, simply by using video you’re engaging them on a much more visceral level and helping them retain all of the information far better than had they read the article, press release, training document etc.
In fact, many of our largest clients have been companies looking to make the move from written advertising to visual advertising because they’ve recognised the sheer power of video. One great example would be our work for the company K2P, who went from using a large manual to train their staff members, to thirty 90 second training videos. These worked great, were a source of information their staff members could easily digest, and helped them get greener by cutting down on printing costs.
How is video constantly evolving? In the way it looks, the way it’s captured, the way it’s delivered, and the way it’s consumed. It does so to keep up with expectations (we all expect 1080p to be a minimum requirement in our viewing material) and also to keep up with other technologies (such as Virtual Reality).
One of the greatest recent video advances is the use of 360-degree videos. These have been used to allow us to walk with dinosaurs, view stunning landscapes and swim with great white sharks. But they can also be used for more corporate video solutions.
An obvious choice would be property tours, where the potential buyer can walk through the house, viewing it all as if they’re actually there. Another great use of 360-degree videos would be to film live events and then sell virtual tickets to people who physically can’t attend the event but want to feel like they’re there. Couple these ideas with virtual reality headsets (which are often cheaper than you may think) and you have a very immersive audio visual experience.
As a constantly evolving entity, video proves that it is and always will be an incredibly versatile tool for your business. You could even say it’s future proof. (We’re not called Future Proof Films by accident!)
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