Video Killed the Old Content Stars (...But Are You Sure?)

By Silvio Porcellana

Video is the new star of content marketing. Everyone’s crazy about it. By 2017, it will make up 70 percent of internet traffic, which means that an article like this would probably become a video too. And you will click PLAY instead of SCROLLING down to see the content.

Experts have already advised us to include videos in our marketing strategies, and a quick search on Google will show hundreds of articles confirming that this is the future of content marketing. So should you integrate video into your marketing strategy?

Fact: Video Is a Powerful Format

How many times have you seen the mesmerizing first few seconds of a video on a blog or a social network and decided to watch it until the very end? Surely, a number of times. You’re probably among 500 million people who watch at least a video a day on Facebook.

Video has a power of engagement that no other type of content has. It combines the immediacy of images, the evocative power of sound, and the suggestion of words, conveying much more than the individual elements alone. It excites you, makes you laugh, makes you think, creates a positive connection with those who have published it.

Is this true even if a video posted by brands? Well, yes. No format has the same power of conversion as that of a video: 40 percent of people are more inclined to make a purchase after having seen one.

Marketers are increasingly aware of this with 70 percent of them already using it in their marketing strategies. In fact, more than two-thirds of marketers are planning to increase their online video ad budgets, with an expected growth of 58 percent specifically for mobile.

Moreover, video is a perfect format for mobile devices. On average, we check our smartphones 46 times per day, but often just for a few seconds or when we aren’t doing anything else. This is a short amount of time for an article, but just enough time for a video to capture our attention and convey a message. It’s no coincidence that one of the most viewed content on Vine, with 128 million views, only lasts 6 seconds.

Here are some examples showing the power of video:

1. First Kiss. Wren, a clothing brand, literally broke the web with its video campaign, which featured a series of kisses between strangers.

WOW! It’s a simple and emotional idea with a total of 94 million views on YouTube.

2. iHeartRadio. To promote its music festival in Las Vegas, the company used Snapchat to launch a preview of the concerts lineup and to offer exclusive promotional content during the event.

Second WOW! This got 340 million views in two days. Not bad.

3. All I want for Christmas is a PSP. This was a video campaign launched by Sony that showed several situations simulating user-generated content. The purpose was to promote the new PSP as a Christmas gift. Here is the result:

Third WOW . . . what is this horrible video? If that’s what you are thinking, you are in good company--1,200 users who clicked the dislike button agree with you, not to mention the endless stream of negative comments that this campaign generated on social. The viral power of the video was there, but in this case it backfired on the brand. Are you still sure that videos always work?

When Do Videos Not Work in Content Marketing?

When you just want to talk about yourself. If you are relying on self-promoting your own brand and you do not care about your customers’ point-of-view, do not make a video. Make a presentation on SlideShare, write an article on your site or on a blog, but avoid publishing animated content on YouTube or other platforms--no one will share it.

A video that has little interaction is useless and conveys a negative feeling. A few dozen views will give the impression that the video was made by a brand that no one likes.

Watch, for example, the official video for Expo Milano 2015:

That’s over 2 minutes of video just for an institutional message. A press release would have been good enough. It is no surprise that this video has only received 6 comments, less than 200 likes and just over 60,000 views. Don’t you think this is too little for a worldwide event?

When your target audience is elsewhere. Everyone watches videos—even your target audience, whoever they are. However, video-sharing platforms are very different and you don’t know whether your target is on the channels where you have chosen to publish. Snapchat, for example, has a much younger audience than YouTube: 71 percent of its users are under 25 years of age.

If your target audience is over 35, then perhaps it’s better to go elsewhere. Pinterest allows you to publish video content as well as photos, so if you plan to post your videos there, keep in mind that the wide majority of its users are female (42 percent women and 13 percent men). So if you want to publish exciting content that promotes your motorbikes, a video can be a good format to use, but not on this channel.

When it is not the right time. Snapchat and Periscope have made instant video a new way to communicate—but it’s a very dangerous one. If you want to broadcast your event live on Periscope, ensure beforehand that you know how to make good use of this channel, or you will end up like French President Francois Hollande.

Hollande's team thought it would be a good idea to launch a live-stream of his meeting with a delegation of workers. While the discussion with the workers was courteous, the comments posted by users and appeared live were anything but. No one was able to moderate them. The Élysée press team did not admit their mistake, instead they invited users on Twitter to continue watching their videos.

Tips for Better Engagement

As you have seen, sometimes a video can become the worst enemy of content marketing. This does not mean, however, that you have to exclude it from your strategy. Like all powerful tools, it should be used with great awareness of your target audience, the channel, and the content you want to publish. Here are tips to get you started:

Integrate video into your content strategy. A video should never be thought of as content in itself, but rather as a part of an overall marketing strategy, in coordination with the message, the style, and the tone of voice that you decide to assign to the brand.

A video conveys a message more effectively than images or words. It is an ideal format to explain how to use a product, share an expert’s opinion, or present a case study; it can be published on social networks or be integrated into an article. In either case, make sure that your audience is able to see who made it and why it was created. It is okay to entertain and excite people, but this is still content marketing, and the ultimate goal revolves around the brand.

Think social. Gone are the days when making a video required large investments and was the prerogative of the most important brands. Today, making a video is within everyone’s reach. All you need is a smartphone and a good idea. However, it is essential to have a social strategy behind it--yes, because much of the success of a video lies in the fact that it calls for interaction, it can be shared and commented.

With social media, it’s easy to know if your content has worked or not. If you don’t see any movement in your analytics after posting, you know you've failed. But if it appears in your Facebook newsfeed, spontaneously reposted by your contacts, then it’s a success—everyone will talk about you, at least for a few days.

That’s why video offers a huge opportunity for content marketing. But to make it work, you have to think from a social standpoint starting from the planning phase. Make a connection with your target audience, and think about what will arouse their enthusiasm. If you're presenting the right idea, people will reward you by spontaneously sharing your content to their contacts, thus increasing brand awareness.

Last year, Android was the big winner in this field. With its “Friends Furever” ad, it became the most shared video of 2015 with more than 6.5 million shares.

Choose the right channel ... be a purple cow. A very important step is to choose the right place to post your video. You could post it on your website, but to effectively spread the video, as we have just seen, it is essential to share it on social networks. The most important platforms are YouTube and Facebook--they both offer a lot of traffic, but also a lot of competition.

Therefore, you need to explore new avenues and become the “purple cow” of video strategy, as Seth Godin would say. There are growing channels that you must keep an eye on, like Instagram video, Snapchat, and Periscope. They are still relatively less explored by brands but they can offer great opportunities.

• Instagram: This channel is immediately associated with beautiful images of fashion, travel, food...but there’s more. It also allows you to upload short videos up to 15 seconds long. That's indeed short, but it's a good amount of time to briefly explain how a product works, show behind-the-scenes clips of an event, or put a smile on people’s faces.

• Snapchat: Although frequented by a very young target, Snapchat still has potential. Why publish your videos here? Because it has high levels of audience engagement; your content will disappear within 24 hours and your followers are motivated to come back often to see what you are posting. It is also an excellent platform to view videos on mobile (and mobile is the future), allowing vertical format and full-screen view. Lastly, it is a rapidly growing channel. If the Millennials who are using it today are not currently your target, they could be your customers of tomorrow.

• Periscope: Named the best app of 2015 by Apple, Periscope allows you to follow a live event, rewatch it within 24 hours, and interact while streaming through comments. How do you use it for content marketing? To reduce the distance between your company and your customers, you can organize, for example, a video "question & answer" live session. It also can be used to increase customer loyalty, by showing exclusive previews of a product or an event reserved to the users of the channel.

Remember the call-to-action. A video can make people laugh or move them, but it must also lead to a short or long-term marketing result. So do not forget to include a specific call-to-action at the end of a clip, inviting viewers to either share the video, visit your website, follow you on social networks, or buy your product. An important thing to remember is that your call-to-action must be clear and easy to execute. An example? The video campaign #LikeAGirl launched by Always ends with three precise invitations, which entice the user to move on to the next step.

Measure the results. How many visitors did your website get after launching the video? How many conversions? How many people talked about it on social? As with every other element of your strategy, the results of the video should also be monitored: shares, interactions, likes. However, it's not always easy to get the whole picture because there are many channels where videos can be shared and not all platforms will give you all the useful data that you might need.

To successfully measure your results, start the process by first setting a goal (e.g., increase awareness, engagement, cross or up-selling...). Next, track your website metrics and make comparisons after a couple of days. If the data is growing, it means that the video has done its job. Otherwise, you'll have to review your strategy. Google and YouTube analytics are also very helpful.

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