Practical Techie: A video is worth a million words
It’s time again to harp about the importance of video in web communications. The video was king 10 years ago, and now it is both king and queen plus the entire royal court.
Currently, 82% of the internet content is videography. That is a vast chunk compared to text, infographics, maps, photographs, and sound.
In commercial digital networks, videos are the bridge that directly connect the entrepreneur and eventual clients.
A basic tenet is that any promotional video must be no longer than 60 seconds. It is essential to take care that the first 10 seconds “hook” the cybernaut who may be surfing social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That brief initial engagement can be the difference between just ten views or 50 thousand.
Data from 2019 indicates that people spend an average of six hours and 48 minutes per week watching online videos. Consumers like visuals because they are easy to digest, entertaining and engaging, Reasons enough.
VIDEOMATICS — The primary type of visual content in terms of marketing is the explainer video, which explains products or services. Other popular varieties include vlogs and video interviews, video presentations, tutorials, product reviews, product demos, live streams, video testimonials, and video ads. As a rule, 97.8% of internet users aged between 18 and 24 consider themselves digital video viewers, while older age groups drop to 63%.
In the ecosystem of social networks, there are two basic types of videos. One is via a link from YouTube or other media. Another is called “native video,” produced within or for a particular network. Therefore, it is prudent to examine the virtues of each central social platform available for the video producer. So, let’s examine this dynamic on social media.
TWITTER — This social channel offers a series of apps that facilitate recorded or live videography at home production. Twitter-produced video adapts easily to different mobile platforms or the big screen of a desktop PC or TV. Mobile videos should be more vertical to avoid black spaces on small screens, thus a better effect.
FACEBOOK — Like Twitter, this redesigned social network is, known now as Metaverse, has trillions of pieces of visual content. Today it has 1.6 billion mobile users. Short, meaty, native videos compete well on Facebook with the professionals. Especially if they are silent and run on autoplay, or a loop. These incite more curiosity and, of course, are universal in terms of language. A brand should take advantage of this dynamic to achieve virality.
Many Facebook users browse on mobile phones, so it is prudent to produce in a smaller format such as vertical preferably. For even more optimization, include embedded text, preferably in English. FB allows for videos up to two hours long or 10 GB in size. The resolution should be 1280 x 720. Aspect Ratio: 9:16.
INSTAGRAM — Compact videos are the most challenging, but these work very well on Instagram. They run short and in rectangular boxes. The best style is to shoot close-up to highlight the details of the brand product or the persona. The videos should be 60 seconds. Every second of content counts to push the desired message.
YOUTUBE — This platform is so video-rich it would take a person some70,000 years to watch its accumulated content as of 2022.
The platform receives 500 hours of video every minute. Many Internet users come to YouTube from Google, where they search for a topic.
To achieve greater visibility of a brand on YouTube, do not stop using headlines with keywords inserted in the visual. Contrary to Facebook and Instagram, the voice narrative on YouTube is very popular. A bit of background music helps but keep it non-shrill as not to drown the content. Natural sound is better.
On YouTube, you can post long videos (15 minutes or hours) in any format since the platform adjusts the video to each interface on the platform. YouTube tolerates videos up to 128GB in size.
NOTICE — Another dimension of visual marketing on the Net is paid ad videos, but always keep them in the organic style of a native video. However, they must be different from the traditional cinema, and TV advertisements which focus more on the product since their purpose is direct sales. Instead, the native ad is much more handcrafted, tells a story, and contain offbeat images.
