What You Need To Know About Video

I apologize in advance if you think I’m beating you over the head about video - but if your content strategy is still driven by static text and imagery - someone’s about to eat your lunch.  Here’s a quick history lesson and a question.

YouTube

Back in the day it was all about YouTube - you’d film your video, load it up to your channel and then post that video onto your blog and share it out.  This would drive traffic to your website and give you content to share on your social platforms, (content that in turn would drive people back to your website.)

Social Embeds

We changed strategy a few years ago when social platforms started allowing embedded video to play in their streams.  Instead of posting the video on your blog and sharing the link to social - now you would load the video directly to the platform.  

This reduced traffic to your website but increased activity and interaction on social so it was worth the trade off.  The only hold out was Facebook that didn’t allow 3rd party videos to play in their news feed.

Live Streaming

The arrival last year of Periscope and Meerkat announced the beginning of live streaming. It was great for people who already had a large audience but not so much for smaller businesses as after you finished the live stream the video was only retained for 24 hours and then deleted.

The arrival of Katch.me was great as it saved the live streams enabling you to post them to your blog and then share out across social - pretty much the old YouTube model.  However with the death of Katch last week (over 1 million users but no revenue model) - live streaming for small business seemed toast, until…

Facebook FTW

January saw people on Facebook watch over 100 million hours of video a day.  The last few months have seen the release of live streaming capabilities to all business pages.

While video content is given a higher ranking than text or images, live streaming video is rewarded even further, giving business owners who experiment with live video much greater visibility in news feeds.

Is Video Right For You?

Where are you connecting with your customers?

This information is coming to you as text and imagery because email is my primary channel.  If Facebook was my primary channel I’d probably be doing this as video.

I’m bullish again on Facebook, particularly for small and medium sized businesses.  But, if you’re going to invest time and resource in the platform, video should definitely be part of your strategy.

Find yourself procrastinating and avoiding your work? Listen to this, it really helps you get things done

Image Credit: Machine Gun Ettiquette by drinks machine on Flickr

Curious About Snapchat?

• 200 million+ users - growing rapidly
• Driven by Tweens & Millennials (and social media gurus!)
• Brands are all over it

Ephemeral Advantage

The biggest thing to wrap your head around is that information on Snapchat is temporary - it has a shelf life between 1 second and 24 hours - but after that - it’s gone.

This is its core point of difference and its core advantage.

To the generation who grew up with the internet, who subscribe rather than buy, who don’t own but share - not having to worry about storing something is actually freeing.

Authentic Information

Content is either 10 second videos or photos with text or sticker overlays.  You can’t use a video you created for YouTube or take your favorite Instagram photo and upload it - everything is created and experienced inside the app.

When something you share has a super short shelf life - there’s no real point in spending time making it look great.  As a result - the photos and videos on the platform are raw and honest and often humorous.

If social media so far has been our idealized selves - Snapchat is our actual reality.  

Stories & Interaction

During a 24 hour period you can add your photos and videos to “Your Story” - a continuous loop that strings them together to show your day’s “story” - after 24 hours the content is erased and a new story begins.

This the part of the app that is gaining traction and the one advertisers are most geeked about.  I know this all sounds odd but bear in mind that there are in-app celebs whose stories get watched on a daily basis by up to 4 million viewers!

Should You Be On SnapChat

Unless your primary target market is Millenials and you have an additional 30 minutes every day to personally invest in marketing - my view would be - not at this time.  I suspect that recommendation may change over time...

Written while listening to: Frustration by music2work2

Image Credit: Snapchat

Why You Should Forward This to Someone You Know

Think of your next piece of content and ask yourself which one of these behaviors would you like the reader / viewer to do:

• Nothing
• Talk about it to someone else
• Limited interaction: 1 click (like, thumbs up)
• Significant interaction: Multiple click (share, redistribute)
• Considered interaction: Creative (comment, write review)
• Sign up for your newsletter
• Buy something

Make the ask

The data tells us that if you suggest a behavior at the end of a piece of content that people appreciated, they are more likely to do what you ask. 

The thing is - you can only suggest one behavior - try two or more and the likelihood that the recipient will do anything reduces.

One size doesn’t fit all

As with all content marketing - the more targeted and specific you can be the better.

“Got friends on Facebook who would benefit from reading this?  Use the share link below and post it on your timeline - they’ll thank you for it later!”

“I’m focused on building my presence on Twitter, if you tweet and you think your followers would enjoy this article use this click to tweet link to easily send it to them.”

“If you’re watching this on YouTube please give us a quick thumbs up - the button's just down there - if you’re watching on the website - the thumb is up here on the top left!  Thanks!”

It takes time and resource to produce good content, it makes sense to put a little effort into making it as easy as possible for people to share it.

Specific call to action

If you have someone working for you who writes your content - take a moment to forward this to them and the next time you chat, have a discussion about crafting action and platform specific calls to action.  you can use the button right here:

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Written while listening to: depressing music

Image credit: Like by Luca Sartori on Flickr