Have you noticed that more and more of your Facebook content has become video?
The way content has been portrayed over the history of humanity has had various forms. Aging back to the 1600s when the first newspapers were physical printed, to yesterday’s digitalization, where most of our content is now virtually displayed on our smart devices. This development in technology entails numerous changes in the way we create, view and use visual content.
Video as a medium has become one of the most popular forms of conveying information in today’s society. Mostly since it can convey a large amount of information in little time. As a result, many businesses leverage this medium to engage their audience in a new & modern ways. “Most of the content 10 years ago was text, and then photo, and now it’s quickly becoming videos” Zuckerberg. (Fast Company, 2016).
With up to 8 billion video views per day, Facebook is expecting 90% of the newsfeed to be in the form of videos (BBC, 2016). Even Cisco believes that video will make up for 80-90% of the Internet traffic by 2019 (Cisco, 2015). With this development, we business students need to ask ourselves – how we can use video for the good of our future businesses.
Businesses can benefit from video content in countless ways. The most popular and also common way video is currently used is to advertise a company’s product or service. People who view web video are 65% more likely to purchase than other site visitors (Adiele Studios, 2015). As such, it is becoming close to essential to make use of video as a medium, if any business wants to keep the upper hand of the market.
Is video really worthwhile considering though for small businesses? Definitely! Making videos has never been as affordable and easy. With numerous programs and platforms such as the Wideo.co, users can make engaging videos for free with little prior video editing knowledge. Templates can easily be used to kickstart various types of videos ranging from simple tutorials to product explainers.
With the growing amount of video content in this world, it is crucial that a business does not miss out on this step. More than 800 million hours of video already exist on YouTube alone (YouTube, 2016). However, only few of them reach their viral potential and ultimately boost the businesses value. The importance every company needs to consider behind a video is the audience. A company needs to clarify whom they want to reach with their video and what message they want to get across. If this is done in a creative and unique way, the reach and potential of a video is immense.
References
Adeliestudios.com. (2016). The Top 15 Video Marketing Statistics for 2015 | Adelie Studios. [online] Available at: http://www.adeliestudios.com/top-15-video-marketing-statistics-2015/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
Cisco. (2016). Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2014-2019 White Paper. [online] Available at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/white_paper_c11-481360.html [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
Fast Company. (2016). Mark Zuckerberg: Soon, The Majority Of Content We Consume Will Be Video. [online] Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3057024/fast-feed/mark-zuckerberg-soon-the-majority-of-content-we-consume-will-be-video [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
Social Media Today. (2016). Top 5 Facebook Video Statistics for 2016 [Infographic]. [online] Available at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/top-5-facebook-video-statistics-2016-infographic [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
the Guardian. (2015). Why online video is the future of content marketing. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/jan/14/video-content-marketing-media-online [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
The Huffington Post. (2016). [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lucia-doynel/video-is-the-future-of-co_b_9759344.html [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
The Wideo Blog. (2012). The Power of Web Video Innovation | The Video Marketing Blog. [online] Available at: http://wideo.co/blog/the-power-of-web-video-innovation/#.V-JibJOF7rI [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
Vidyard. (2016). The Future of Video Marketing: My Top 10 Predictions. [online] Available at: https://www.vidyard.com/blog/the-future-of-video-marketing/ [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
Youtube.com. (2016). Statistics – YouTube. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].
Dear Fabian, thank you for your interesting blog post! I very much agree with you and noticed that my Facebook newsfeed is more and more dominated by videos. For companies it is crucial to create videos and be present on social media platforms as Snapchat has billions of daily views, Facebook has now more daily minutes watched than YouTube, and video on Twitter transformed one to one branding (Gary Vaynerchuk, 2016). However, it seems like 90% of the videos shown to me are not educational or worthy of my time. The videos displayed to me on Facebook range on a spectrum from cute kittens to advertisement to the most absurd activities. As you mentioned it is crucial for businesses to not miss out on this trend and if it is done in a creative and unique way, the reach and potential of a video is immense. However, looking at this from the consumer side I find it very hard to reach a specific target audience when consumers are getting overwhelmed with videos, returning to the problem that in today’s society we have an overflow of information and impressions. I agree with you that videos are essential nowadays, but it will also get harder for businesses to come up with a unique way to address the right target audience as the number of videos online increases, as shown on the graph that you provided.
Gary Vaynerchuk. 2016. The rise of video marketing on social and how it affects your business. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-rise-of-video-marketing-on-social-and-how-it-affects-your-business/. [Accessed 1 October 2016].
Dear Fabian, Thank you for your interesting blogpost. I did an internship at a big corporate and there I got to attend a seminar given by Facebook and Twitter. They also said there has been a shift from posts with only text, to posts with images, to posts with video. However, it is not only important to know your audience but even more to create interesting content. It is easy and affordable to create a video, but to engage your audience is not so easy. When nobody finishes watching your video’s, why bother even making them. A few tips I learned at this seminar where very simple but eyeopening. For instance, the majority of the video’s online have been filmed in landscape orientation. But if you watch these video’s on your smartphone, half of the screen is black. You must have very good content to get people to turn their screen to watch your video. One tip was to make use of the full size of a smartphone screen and film in portrait orientation. Another tip for video’s on Facebook was to use subtitles to get people engaged. Most of the time people have their phone muted, when using subtitles people will understand what the video is about without having to turn on the sound.