Make 2017 Your Year for Video

If you've put off incorporating video into your content marketing strategy, let 2017 be the year that you finally embrace it, or—at the very least—try it. Think about your own personal consumption of social media. Which posts are you most drawn to when you're relaxing at the end of the day? If you're like most, it's going to be the posts that have a visual element to them. Whether it's an image, a meme, or a video, some reports suggest video will account for 80 percent of all web traffic by 2019.

That's a pretty huge number. 

So how can you finally get started creating video content for your marketing plan? Over the next few posts, I'm going to give you ideas, tips, and tools to make it easier for you to accomplish!

Video Content by the Numbers

You know that video is important, but when you start looking at the numbers, you begin to understand how important it is. Following are a few statistics to help you understand the magnitude and effectiveness of video.

• 1200% more shares - According to Brightcove, social video generates 100% more shares than text or images combined.
• 100 million hours of video are watched every day on Facebook.
• Companies that use video see, on average, 41% more web traffic from search than those who don't.
• Native uploads of video to Facebook have 10x higher reach than just posting a link from YouTube.
• 62% of Google searches include video.
• According to Google, "How to" searches on YouTube are up 70% year after year.
• 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers. (HubSpot, 2016)
• Nearly two-thirds of consumers prefer video that lasts under 60 seconds. (Animoto, 2015)

While the numbers speak for themselves, I won't kid you, it takes time and dedication to get started. It won't happen overnight or even in a month, but the most important thing to keep in mind is just to get started.

Basic Elements of a Video Marketing Plan

All good and successful ventures begin with a plan, so don't neglect this critical step before embarking on your video marketing.

What is your goal? Is it to increase website conversions? Increase newsletter signups? Create buzz around a product or service offering? Build brand awareness? Your answer to the goal is how you will structure your videos, and each video will probably be unique to the goal attached to it.

Where will you use the video? Will it be embedded on your own site, on social media channels, or both? If it's both (and it probably should be), you'll want to tailor each video to each place you're going to use it. Whereas a formal video will work fine on your site, you will probably want to have a different, more informal, approach to sites such as Facebook and YouTube, etc.

How long will your videos be? Again, if it's on your website, you can get away with a longer video time, but statistics prove that anything more than 60 seconds is too long on social media channels, and people will most likely not see the entire thing.

How often will you produce a video? There is no hard rule here, but like most things, consistency is key. Be realistic as well. While you may think that you can produce a video a day, the likelihood of that happening is slim. Perhaps, in the beginning, shoot for one video a month, and then gradually increase it as you get a better feel for how long it's going to take you to shoot and edit the video.

Optimize and promoting your content. You can have the greatest video in the world, and if no one knows about it or sees it, then you're going to struggle to achieve your goals. Similar to a blog post, you'll want to consider keywords to use in your title and description that are relevant to your market and the topic you're covering. Make sure that people can share your content. I realize that it may seem like an obvious step, but you'd be surprised at how often I come across content that gives me no way to share to any of my social networks. I'll cover this more in the next post, but one thing you must do is make sure your video is branded with your logo. Once people start sharing your video content, if your logo isn't embedded in the video, who the video is by could get lost.

So are you ready to get your video content underway for 2017? My next post is going to cover ideas and tips on how to create video. Topics you can cover, what you'll need to get started, and more!