As frequent readers of this blog will be aware, successful content marketing involves publishing your content in front of your marketplace wherever they are—not where you want them to be.

It also means the format of your content needs to match what they want to consume—not what you want them to.

And that means video.

Video’s the most engaging type of content. With such high engagement, it’s not too surprising that most marketing professionals believe it has the highest ROI compared to other types of content.

Investment by businesses in video content is rising, and we should all be creating more. Facebook for example is likely to be ‘all video‘ by the early 2020s.

In this post, I’m sharing:

  • 5 reasons you must be incorporating video into your content marketing strategy
  • A summary of some of the best video tools available that make it easy to do so …

Engage Your Audience

According to Wordstream, 45% of people are watching over an hour of video on Facebook or YouTube every week.

Not only that, one third of online activity involves watching video.

Why?

Because it is so engaging.

Just as television precipitated a decline in book reading across all ages, we’re seeing the same online.

People are less inclined to read content. Instead they want it presented in a way that’s engaging, effective and requires the minimum amount of effort. Video is that format.

Build Trust

By engaging viewers so effectively, video builds an unsurpassed level of trust.

For example, by seeing someone on the screen, or even hearing their voice, you develop a sense of relationship. You get to know a bit about who they are and what makes them tick. You feel a sense of personal connection.

It’s no longer just faceless words on a screen that could have been written by anyone. You know them and have a sense of personal connection.

For example, the following video comes from a company that upcycles furniture.

By watching it, you sense the passion with which they work with the furniture. You see the faces and personalities behind the business. A sense of trust develops almost automatically as a result.

The good news is that, while human voices and faces in videos are remarkable trust builders, other types of video can be just as effective.

For example:

  • An explainer video that shows how some software or an app works—you get to see immediately whether it will work for you, and develop trust in its ability to do so
  • An animated video that explains how to do something—by finding the information to be effective, you develop trust in the business behind the video.

By making videos available to your marketplace, you boost your sales conversions. Research shows shoppers are nearly twice as likely to purchase when they view a video.

Brands have traditionally relied on press releases and other written communications to build trust and drive home messaging. Now, with videos so readily accessible to businesses of all sizes, brands have the most powerful marketing trust-builder at their disposal.
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Drive Traffic

Let’s think of some of the different ways in which video can attract traffic to your website.

Organic Search

By using video, you can expect to see on average a 157% increase in organic search engine traffic.

With video on your page, you keep people on the page for longer when they click through from the SERPs. This sends a positive signal to Google, and helps drive ranking increases.

You also encourage link building. People will embed your videos in blog posts and other content, and often link back to you in doing so.

All of this helps build your search engine visibility.

But don’t just think of the traditional search engine.

Remember too that YouTube is the second largest search engine. You want to show up for your keyword terms there too, right?

Recommended Resource: SEO and Content Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Video Traffic

Of course, you’ll also attract traffic to your site by sharing links:

  • In your videos
  • In the accompanying text when sharing your video on sites like YouTube.

According to ThinkWithGoogle, almost half of people look for videos about products before they make a purchase.

So if you don’t have a relevant video for your marketplace, you’re missing out on traffic that could otherwise be yours for the taking.

Email Traffic

What word in your subject line could boost your open rates by up to 19%?

Video.

But it’s not just the subject line.

Video email marketing can have a 280% higher ROI than traditional emails—and sometimes a lot more. Here are some specific examples:

  • Cetera Financial Group saw a 600% increase in their click-through rate (CTR)
  • Lenova saw a 450% increase in CTR (and 4x higher open rates).

Social Traffic

As I’m sure you’re aware, video positively flies on social media. That means you can not only use it to drive traffic, but also to…

Build Social Reach

Some regard YouTube, mentioned above, as a pseudo-social media site, with sharing, likes, following and other social-esque features built in.

By publishing regularly through your own YouTube Channel, you can build up a sizeable—and often highly profitable—following of subscribers to your channel.

But what about the social mainstays like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram?

Let’s see…

  • Nearly 82% of Twitter users watch video content on the platform
  • More than half a billion people watch video on Facebook every day.
  • Instagram? If only they shared some stats… but given the popularity of video content on the platform, I’m sure you can imagine…

The exact numbers don’t matter too much, other than that they’re big with lots of zeroes involved.

Here’s a number that does matter…

Video on social media generates 1200% more shares than images and text combined.

In other words, videos are highly effective for building your social reach, and for getting your content in front of potentially large new audiences.

Increase Understanding

Did you know videos can increase people’s understanding of your product or service by 74%?

As we’ve previously discussed in relation to Infographics and visual storytelling, we all process and retain information far more easily when it’s presented visually.

So if you’re struggling to get your message across, particularly if it relates to new concepts for people to understand, video content is the ideal medium.

By way of illustration, Mashable has made a collection of 10 videos that “turn tough topics into child’s play”. Topics include the foreclosure crisis, how the mind processes language, and the health and environmental impacts of fracking, all fairly weighty.

What videos could you create for your marketplace that would help increase understanding of difficult topics—and, in doing so, help attract your market?

Adding video to your content marketing need not be intimidating. You don’t even need a camera or to feel comfortable in front of it to get started.

The good news is there are several great tools available that make creating engaging videos a breeze.

Here’s a summary of four of the best (or see the full list of 23 video tools).

VideoScribe

VIdeoScribe - one of the best video toolsI’m sure you’re familiar with those whiteboard animation videos, with a hand sketching various pictures with a voice-over in the background.

VideoScribe is an easy tool you can use to create them. Just drag images, text and other components onto the canvas. VideoScribe will then animate them for you.

It also incorporates a tool called Tawe. Use it to upload images and have them turned into animated videos.

How to Use for Content Marketing

Try repurposing a how-to type post or article as a script for a whiteboard animation video. Use VideoScribe to create the animation, and add a voice-over reading the script.

Wistia

Wistia - one of the best video toolsWhen you’ve got video content, how can you judge how well it’s working, or what you can improve on (or stop doing)?

If you host the content on YouTube for example, the stats you get are fairly limited.

That’s where Wistia comes in. For each video, you:

  • Upload it to Wistia
  • Add a clickable link within the video if required
  • Customize the video player as required, including functions like auto-play and toggling different controls
  • Put the embed code where you want to publish it.

By connecting your Wistia account with Google Analytics, you can then monitor your engagement stats over time.

The analytical information you get includes:

  • How long people are watching your video for—for example, how many people watch 25%, 50%, 75% or all of your video, and how this changes over time
  • Where people are watching it from, and when.

How to Use for Content Marketing

By posting different videos on your site through Wistia, you can start to optimize your video content. Questions to ask might include:

  • What type of video content resonates best with my marketplace?
  • Is there an optimal length that attracts the best results?
  • Does my market respond better to a ‘talking head’ video, or an animation with a suitable voice-over?

WeVideo

WeVideoSome videos you create for content marketing might be:

Such videos always need to be effectively edited, and WeVideo provides a neat cloud-based solution for doing just that. It means you can access your videos for editing or retrieval from anywhere, and no longer have to worry about backup.

You can start editing your video while it’s still uploading. Oher functionality includes:

  • Slow-mo effects
  • A music library
  • Screen-recording capabilities.

Biteable

Biteable - one of the best video tools for content marketingBiteable is an easy way to create professional-looking, very engaging animated videos from your content.

Here’s a quick intro Biteable provide on how to use their software. It’s less than a minute long, and shows you just how quick and easy it is to use:

While you could add a voice-over on top, you could just let the text on each page speak for itself along with a suitable backing track you’ve selected from the library provided.

How to Use for Content Marketing

Try the following:

  • Condense down an article or blog post into key points you can use
  • Adapt an existing presentation such as a SlideShare
  • Could you add a Biteable video into your blog to supplement other content? For example, a quick explainer on a specific topic. And then share the same video elsewhere too?

To Conclude

As you can see:

If you’re not doing so already, aim to start experimenting with video in your content marketing as soon as possible. See what works best for your business and adapt your strategy over time to optimize your results.