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A recent study found that goldfish have a longer attention span than the average human.1 According to the study, the average person has an attention span of only 8 seconds, one second shorter than a goldfish. What does this mean for businesses? The need to create compelling content that grabs an audience’s attention is more important than ever. Businesses are looking for more creative and engaging ways to present content, and for some, video may be the answer.
In a previous post, we discussed how video is the future of content marketing. Rather than read an article, an increasing number of people are choosing to consume information by watching video. Why video? It’s entertaining, informative and quick.
Video can be a powerful communication platform for businesses. However, you should follow some best practices when creating video content. Otherwise, users will likely lose interest within the first few seconds and you will have wasted time and resources producing it.
Here are some best practices that brands should follow to create more engaging and effective video content.
1. Establish goals.
Before producing a video, businesses should establish goals. There are two main questions to ask when formulating video content goals. One of those is why are you creating a video?
- Some examples of why are
- To educate audiences on how to use your product or service
- To entertain a target audience
- To motivate individuals to take an action
The other question is how will you know that your video is a success? In other words, how will you measure it?
- For example, some common measures of success for brand videos include:
- increase website traffic by X percent
- get X amount of views
- generate X new leads
2. Target specific audiences.
When content is relevant to a viewer, it is more likely to grab their attention and compel them to take meaningful actions. When creating video content, you should consider what audiences you want to reach and if video is a viable way to reach them – how do you know this? Know your audience inside and out. Asking these questions will help guide you:
- Who buys your products/services? Who do your sales representatives talk to?
- What is the age of your audience?
- What kind of media do they most often consume?
- What is their lifestyle and income level?
- What is their knowledge of your industry?
- What gap or need do they have that you are trying to fill?
With a clear understanding of your audience you can evaluate where and how is best to reach them. Specific audiences do better with video than others.
For instance, creating a video and sharing it on YouTube might be perfect for reaching younger audiences. According to Nielsen,2 YouTube reaches more US adults between the ages of 18 to 34 than any cable network.
Businesses may also want to consider uploading videos to other platforms like Facebook,3 which is ideal for businesses that already have a large following and high engagement there.
For younger audiences, posting to platforms like Vine and Instagram could be most effective.
3. Set an appropriate length.
Length is an important consideration when creating effective brand videos. The average length of the top 50 YouTube brand videos is approximately 3 minutes.4 This is a good benchmark time limit, but videos can still range from 10 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on their purpose. In general, a basic brand video should be kept under the 3 minute time frame. However, if it is an instructional or testimonial video, it can be longer.
Also keep in mind, though, that the average attention span is just 8 seconds. That means the first few seconds of your video needs to be engaging and inform the viewer whether it is the content they are looking for or not. With no clear idea if a video will appeal to them, users will drop. That is why understanding who your audience is, is of the utmost importance.
4. Track performance metrics and adjust.
>Businesses should have a way to track the performance of each video. These metrics go beyond your measures of success. Tracking the following metrics help you determine how well your video is resonating, and can inform if you should make changes:
- number of unique video views
- number of likes, shares, or comments
- average time users watched video
- if the video includes a call-to-action, the number of users that completed it
5. Integrate with other content marketing strategies.
Videos can increase engagement and further your marketing goals if you reach your target audience. In order to optimize the reach of video content, brands should integrate it with other content marketing. In the next blog in this series we will discuss tips for sharing your videos.
Organizations can optimize their content marketing success by including video in their strategy. However, if they do not plan carefully, they could lose valuable time and resources on a video that it is dull and ineffective. By following these best practices, they can produce and share high quality content that is worth watching.
1 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232266
2https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html
3https://www.facebook.com/business/news/video-ads-on-facebook
4http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/infographic-ideal-length-everything-online-tweets-youtube-videos-160972