How do you make good video content your audience wants to see and also drives them to take action?
Video is a powerful medium that can be leveraged in a variety of ways for a wide range of purposes, from selling a product or service to building your brand or audience. If you want to know how to make good video content, it requires a little more planning.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind before hitting the record button:
Know the goal of your video
In general, creating content for the sake of content — rather than to achieve a specific goal or purpose — isn’t something you’ll want to waste any time on. Although it’s great to put effort into making video content because you know that’s what your audience is looking for, what they’re really looking for is:
- Valuable content that helps them solve a problem
- Content that teaches them something new
- Content that helps them get to know you better
If you’re interested in how to make good video content, you’ll want to choose one of those objectives before you start to film any video footage to use throughout your marketing strategy or website.
In other words, every second of footage needs to be working toward your goal — or it's a waste.
Start with a great hook
Whether you’re filming an explainer video or videos to use in your paid social campaigns, the first five seconds are the most important. People have short attention spans. They want to know what your video is about within the first few seconds so they can decide to keep watching or scrolling.
If you've been studying other brands’ successful marketing videos to learn how to make good video content, you might have noticed that videos with the most engagement typically start with an engaging question or a bold statement before the speaker even introduces themselves.
Starting with an engaging question or bold statement is a great way to capture someone’s attention and often works better than starting with a long introduction about yourself, your company, or your product.
Longer doesn’t always mean better
One of the most common questions about how to make good video content is, “How long should my videos be?”
Generally speaking, the optimal length of a video depends on where you’re sharing the video. For marketing videos, the shorter the better. If you can keep your video somewhere between one and two minutes, you’ll likely see better results.
If you’re using video on social media, you may even see some success with videos as short as thirty seconds to one minute because attention spans tend to be shorter when people are scrolling through newsfeeds.
Of course, YouTube is one platform where you can get away with slightly longer videos, with roughly seven to fifteen minutes being the sweet spot.
The most important thing to remember, however, is that your content matters more than length. If your marketing video runs up to five minutes and every minute is engaging and useful, don’t worry about sticking within a one- or two-minute time frame.
If a YouTube video feels complete before you hit the seven-minute mark, roll with it. Length recommendations are really just guidelines (with the exception of some social and advertising platforms that require videos to fall within a certain time frame), so prioritize the quality of your video first.
Need help creating a video marketing strategy that works for your business?
Check out our free guide to planning, creating, and executing a rich media content strategy here. If you have any questions, the experts at Tobe are happy to help.
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