5 Critical Tips for Making Your Content Marketing Strategy More Video Centric

As marketers, we are very fortunate to live in a time when making a video doesn’t require heavy-duty cameras, microphones, world-class actors, fancy editing tools, etc. Nowadays, anyone can shoot a decent quality video directly on their smartphone or with some entry level equipment.

The ease of video accessibility in recent years is changing the nature of what defines the concept of marketing. Mark Zuckerberg himself claimed a couple years ago that he imagines the majority of online content will be video in the near future. This statement is clearly reflected in his own platform – as the new Facebook algorithm now heavily favors video content.

Hopefully by now, at the very least, you have experimented a bit here and there with video content. If the marketing landscape keeps moving in the same direction, video will likely need to be the centerfold of your content marketing strategy. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you make the shift.

1. Know How to Repurpose Existing Content

If you have been on the content marketing train for a while now, you probably have a great library of branded content built up. Most likely, this includes things like blog posts, infographics, guides, whitepapers, research, and more.

Now, if you’ve dedicated a decent chunk of your library to evergreen content, you can repurpose these posts into videos. For example, if you wrote a blog post giving readers advice on how to manage a sales team, this can be repurposed into a video. Here is a great example of how you can do this:

According to The State of Video Marketing in 2018, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, a number that is up from 63% from the 2017 report. Simply put, if you want to survive in the current era of marketing, you need to know how to use video at every turn to promote your messaging.

2. Provide Lots of Face Time

Generally speaking, people like to see that brands are human at the end of the day. This is the beauty of video marketing. Whether it’s your company, personal brand, or even a side business, using video allows you to express your messaging in a clear, memorable voice and match it with a face.

It’s no secret that most consumers trust people more than brands. If you put a face in front of your marketing strategy, it will be much easier to connect and relate to the messaging. Take Neil Patel for example. He consistently produces video content of himself giving advice to other marketers.

He does a fantastic job of producing educational video content on his social feeds where he can gain valuable face recognition, promote his expertise, and create strong relationships with his viewers.

Ultimately, face time in your video content works to build trust with your target audience. Therefore, instead of trusting the brand itself, they can put their trust in the person.

3. Diversify Your Channels

The sheer number of content outlets these days is nothing short of amazing. There are so many video-based platforms out there with huge numbers of viewers attached to them. Each channel has its own way of getting people to discover new content.

Chances are, in addition to your website, you are distributing (or plan to distribute) your videos on YouTube. While this is certainly a must, you should also consider releasing your video content on places like Vimeo, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Periscope, Facebook, etc.

The key is knowing where your customer segments hang out. For instance, if you are a B2B company, you should definitely aim to release your video content on places like Twitter and LinkedIn. If the bulk of your B2C videos are geared towards younger audiences, Instagram and Snapchat should be on your radar. Do some research and find the channels that put you in the best position to reach the most interested eyes. The more you find, the bigger your reach.

4. Keep it Short

Let’s be honest, how many people can actually sit down for an hour or more and watch a marketing video? Probably not many.

Now, you may have a lot of things to say and do in your videos. For example, if you have converted an in-depth how-to piece of content into a video, you may need a long time to get from A to Z. However, while you can certainly release the full version, you can break up the long video into shorter, individual topics. Let’s say you have produced an hour-long video about developing a content marketing plan from scratch. You can split the video up into sections, which could be related to conducting research, choosing target sites for guest posting, reaching out to site editors, and more. By doing this, you are producing 5-10 (or more) pieces of native content, rather than just one long one.

Keep in mind, the major content platforms each have their own sweet spots in terms of video duration. HubSpot did an interesting report on this:

Some platforms, namely Facebook, factor in metrics like video completion rate. YouTube also prioritizes video content with higher watch times. Basically, you stand a much better chance at getting better completion rates if the video is shorter.

5. Go Live

Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the past few years, you surely know how powerful live video is in content marketing strategies. In fact, Facebook claims that people spend 3x longer watching live video than non-live.

Live video has all kinds of advantages. In addition to better engagement, live video gives you the opportunity to express your brand values, voice, and style in a candid light. There are many approaches you can take for this. Many companies run live Q&A sessions where they encourage viewers to leave their questions in the comments section. Another thing you can do is give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at your operation. Dunkin Donuts was one of the pioneers of this concept on social media. Back in 2016, shortly after Facebook launched its live video feature, Dunkin Donuts did a live walkthrough of their kitchen and showed viewers how their famous snacks are made.

In a matter of minutes, the video had some of the highest engagement rates of any content they had produced prior.

When it comes to video, it’s very, very clear that live is here for the long haul.

Over to You

Video marketing is an elephant in the room that businesses simply cannot ignore anymore. Reallocating your content efforts to accommodate this trend doesn’t have to be a painful process. If you are just starting out, it will likely require a bit of trial and error. Start with baby steps; play around with repurposing your existing content to find out what works. As time goes on, you can slowly restructure your overall plan to be more video-centric.