Blogging with purpose
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This is a guest contribution from Amy Brown of Wordprax.com.
Videos don’t have a magic wand, as believed by certain marketeers (both amateurs and seasoned ones).
Threading video marketing success is hard work, and requires a fair bit of creativity. While it’s true that video content can enhance engagement at a much greater rate than its more static counterparts, if quality is being compromised, your video marketing endeavor isn’t going to get as far as it could. And the reason is simple enough – as opposed to the other forms of advertising, video marketing is expensive, and thus, not hitting the goals is a much nastier burn.
The right video should be a mix of things – all of which have to be in the right amount. Now, we don’t want to make it sound like an overwhelming undertaking, but if you want your video marketing campaign to bring in huge numbers for you, the are quite a few must-follow practices to be kept into account:
Get the First Impressions Bang on
You know what they say about judging a book by its cover, right? Likewise, the featured image that is displayed until the play button isn’t hit is what entices users to hit the button in the first place. Intrigue them with the featured poster and you are assured a greater number of clicks.
Make Originality Your Strong Suit
Like any content marketing strategy, there are a truckload of done-to-death things attempted for video promotion. You need to inject a degree of uniqueness to your concept, make it entirely original, for people to find it novel.
Animations Draw People
Instead of live motion or overtly-flashy 3d renditions, if you are using hand-drawn characters, your video hs a better chance of being liked more.
Avoid the auto-play
We understand you want to make sure the lazy users do indeed watch the video, but nobody likes it when they are surfing the Internet and all of a sudden a song plays from some tab on your browser and you have no idea which one it is. You either turn your desktop sound off, or you simply hit the close button the tabs playing the sound. That’s what’s gonna happen with the auto-play button on your video. So, instead of this, go back to the first point.
Get the idea across in 30-60 seconds
If there is one strong suit of our Internet audience, it is their lack of patience. Now even if they find a piece of video interesting, you can trust them to fast forward the seek bar and make it skip a few seconds if the video extends beyond a few minutes. Engaging the viewer so as to boost your conversion rate can be done even in 30 seconds. So make it short and sweet.
Keep it Pixel Rich
HD videos are the order of the day. When your audience doesn’t find ’720p’ option on the resolution button, they are most likely going to switch to a video that has it – and that won’t be yours.
Have you taken into account the costs you will have to incur while developing the video content? If that’s a worry for you, you can get quality videos developed at pretty cost efficient rates. But if you wish to take along all the licensing costs, then be ready to invest big.
Storytelling is what will glide you past the fluff on the Internet. If your video is a combination of a dozen things banged up together, without any sense of story, you are doing a great deal of disservice to your efforts and aspirations. The script should tell a story that symbolizes your brand in one way or other.
Don’t be too mainstream. Everyone has seen those thronging crowds surrounding the product that rises from the ground up or for that matter, the glowing logo that dwarfs everything else. Be more creative, even if that means being grounded. Today, subtlety works in mysterious ways. Stay true to the underlying message the brand is trying to across and keep everything fuss free so that the video makes an instant personal connection with the audience.
The image files used in the video should be bale to make a connect as well, and it should look authentic. Don’t put a vintage picture for a video promoting an iPhone (unless the ‘story’ asks for it).
Self-Hosting Instead of YouTube?
When all is said and done, have you given a thought to self hosting the video instead of posting it on YouTube? I mean, when the video is indexed on the search engines, why should you send your audience to YouTube, instead of to your your site. And there are much better conversion rates on videos hosted on business sites, since unlike YouTube, users won’t be tempted to click on the other recommended videos on some totally new channel.
In either case, the keyword used along with the video will play a huge role in determining how well it is indexed on search engines and the volume of organic visits you are receiving. Promote video across different channels and implement the alternative ways of content marketing like promoting through Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus in order to get eyeballs for the video. The more ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ you get on the video, the more chances you stand of getting greater number of eyeballs for the same. If you are uploading a video on YouTube, a transcript would work excellently. In the transcript, you can give a detailed description of what the video is all about, and you can make this description optimized for SEO. Get all the keywords right there in their right measure. And apart from self-hosting and YouTube, you can also try other popular networks like Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Break.
Scripting success through video marketing, as iterated before, has to be a mix of certain to-be-followed rules and set of methods that are somewhat of a rarity in this genre. Get things in order before you get them to work.
Amy Brown is a web developer by profession and a writer by hobby. She works for WordPrax a WP development company and as a blogger, she loves sharing information regarding WordPress customization tips & tricks.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
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Script Video Marketing Success with the Right Content
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Script Video Marketing Success with the Right Content #bloggingtips
